“We won’t be losing it if it keeps us alive,” he said. I pulled out the map I had accidentally torn, and we both looked it over.

“I still don’t understand why Dorwan would be tracking us,” I muttered. “I don’t like feeling like a pawn in someone else’s game.”

“He wants to stop us from telling the Sorceress Imperial that he was the one behind the poisoning, not Auster,” North said, tying something around my neck. I glanced down at the black cloak around my shoulders.

“It’ll mask any remnant of the locating spell still on you,” he said, answering my unspoken question. “I think. At least I hope.”

“You hope?”

“It’s the best I can do for now,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

And he was.

By the end of the week, North and I had developed a routine. It wasn’t the best, and it certainly wasn’t fun, but it was our routine, and we clung to it like a religion. I seized the maps and plotted our path through the maze of roads; I cooked, washed, and mended. North found us food and shelter. My anger toward him for taking me from my home was still there, but I could no longer ignore him or sit around waiting for my life to weave itself back together.

It was a strange experience to wake up one morning and find the leaves of the trees a muted yellow instead of their usual vibrant green. And with the change of colors came a change in the weather. The warm, sticky air was suddenly, at least to me, dry and chilled. It was days before I became used to it, and weeks before I realized that time was slowly marching forward. It was fall—a real fall—and it was beautiful.

I found a bundle of paper in one of the markets we had passed through and used the only gold I had to purchase it. I wrote letter after letter to my parents and Henry, telling them what cities we were cutting through so they would know where to reach me. There was no telling who would read them, or if the letters would even get through the line of Saldorran soldiers.

Was the village still standing? Were my family and friends all right? I was desperate for information, for any hint of their well-being. North dutifully mailed my letters—at least until we got so low on money that we could no longer pay for postage, since we had to conserve every coin we had. This presented a new problem entirely.

“We’re going to have to stop for a few days,” he said suddenly as we cut through a stand of trees. We were on our way into a small village I had found on the map, having seen no sign of Dorwan at all. “I’m thinking we’ll need at least two hundred gold pieces for food and transportation.”

“We haven’t got the time,” I said. “You wouldn’t even let me stop to wash my face in the river this morning!”

“Without any money we won’t be able to continue at this rate. Perhaps you feel differently, but I do enjoy eating real food and sleeping in actual beds. And since you insist on separate rooms, my poor little money bag has gotten considerably thinner.”

It had already been over two weeks since our run-in with the wizards in Dellark. I didn’t think we had time to waste, given that we had less than a month to cross the rest of the country.

I looked away, gripping the strap of my bag. “I don’t think we should stop. I want to get to Provincia as soon as we possibly can. Maybe you wouldn’t understand because you have nothing at stake—”

“Nothing at stake?” North let out a dry laugh. “If Auster takes over the country, do you honestly believe they’ll leave everything as it was? That the wizards will have any place left? Who knows what they’d do to us?”

“So you’re doing this because you’re scared for your own life,” I said. “How inspiring. Astraea would be ashamed of you. You’re supposed to be protecting her people.”

“Astraea can go rot,” North said harshly. I flinched as if he had slapped me. “She doesn’t give me food or find me a safe place to sleep at night. I do that myself.”

“You’re a wizard,” I snapped. “Can’t you just use magic to make your own food?”

“Ah, yes,” he retorted. “Because mud pies are so very delicious and the wind fills empty stomachs quite nicely.”

I gave him a long, hard glare before storming ahead. North caught up to me and blocked my path.

“Move,” I said. “If you want to stop, then fine, I’ll go ahead by myself. You can go wander off a cliff for all I care!”

“I’m sorry I said that about Astraea,” he said quietly. I tried to step around him, but he moved with me. “I haven’t been able to find any customers in the past few towns we’ve passed through, because opinions toward the wizards have changed. A lot of people blame the wizards for the king’s death and the war. I’ll be lucky to find a few jobs here and there to keep us going, but don’t think, not even for a moment, that I’ve forgotten why we set out in the first place.”

His face was so sincere that my body seemed to unwind on its own accord, loosening all the knots and frustrations.

“Well, have you ever thought of bathing?” I asked, turning away. “No one wants to hire a wizard who smells worse than their outhouse. And who knows what creatures are living in that hair?”

“Why do I need to brush my hair, anyway?” He lifted his arm and gave a few experimental whiffs. “And I smell wonderful. All manly and whatnot.”

Seeing my look of utter disgust, without another word, he wrapped an arm loosely around my shoulders, and the black cloak came up around us, and I was falling, falling, falling…