Hiran's tired, handsome face holds a smile as she approaches, his hand outstretched, and she takes it, relieved by this semblance of normality when she is standing on thin steel held up by an over-inflated balloon.

"Is anyone else here?" she asks as she grasps Tara's hand too.

"Finn," Hiran answers.

"Caj or Fae?" Allayria presses, glancing around as if they will walk out a door.

"They're not with you, then," he replies and it's not a question.

Allayria turns around, looking out through the passing clouds and down to the frozen tundra below. Something heavy settles in her stomach, an anxiety she had not allowed herself to think about before, when she had to worry about her own survival.

"They're smart and Caj can conjure fire," Tara says, reading some of Allayria's thoughts. "I'd bet on them."

"How is Finn?" Allayria asks instead, turning away from the icy view. She hears Lei trudge up beside her and spares a glance at him. "Where is he?"

Tara's eyes dart between her and Lei, and then to Hiran.

"He was injured," Tara answers.

"Is he alright?" Lei asks, his nose still pink from the biting wind.

"He's conscious," Hiran replies. "He will be happy to see you both." He doesn't explain what happened and Allayria notes how his gaze also flickers toward Lei.

And Lei notices too—she can see it in the pinching corners of his mouth, the flattening sheen of his eyes.

On the walk to Finn's room Allayria lets Lei and Tara drift out in front and then sets a grip on Hiran's arm. The Nature-caller glances down when she does this, slowing too so that they fall several paces behind.

"It's been a while since I've been manhandled," he says with a touch of an old, smarmy smile but Allayria has no time for swollen vanities.

"Lei is not his sister or his mother," she says quietly. "If you start treating him like he's tainted by association I will throw you off this ungodly contraption."

The amusement drains from his face and his eyes, taking on that rare, sharp quality, fix on hers.

"You're sure?" he demands.

Allayria glances over at Lei's form, at the snow that still clings to the shoulders and the hood of his coat.

"Yes."

Tara's face holds a touch of confusion as she and Lei wait outside Finn's room, but in contrast, Lei's eyes are narrowed and he's staring pointedly at Allayria.

"What are we waiting for?" Hiran asks as they reach them, that easy, careless charm back in place as he pats a hand on Lei's shoulder, prodding him toward the door. "This'll cheer the little oddball up."

He's right: Finn's face splits into a wide grin when he sees Allayria and Lei. Even in the narrow bed he looks so small and he holds out a hand, touching Allayria's arm as they approach.

"The metal monster didn't get you," he says and Allayria feels Lei tense up next to her.

"No," she agrees, patting him on the head. "We jumped out a window."

"Of course you did," Tara mutters.

"How's the head?" Allayria asks, prodding at his temple in a way that she knows will make his face scrunch in annoyance. But he does something strange: he flinches.

She drops her hand, her gaze trained on his face.

"You alright, kiddo?" she asks.

"Fine," he answers, but his voice has gone quiet and when his gaze flickers up it holds Allayria's, speaking wordlessly.

Don't ask.

"Are Caj and Fae here too?" he queries, and his smile dims even more when they answer.

"They're alive," he tells them, his dark eyes serious in the morning light. "Caj is a coyote; he survives."

"A coyote... What am I, Finn?" Hiran asks, lounging back on the edge of his bed.

"A peacock," Allayria answers flatly.

It's on the third day that they must give up the search. Time is slipping, precious time aging precious news. There are, as Beinsho pointed out before they left, more important things than a few lives at stake here. The second time this lesson is learned is no less bitter than the first.

No one says it as the ship turns southwest, but everyone's eyes are fixed north, trained on the barren forest, scanning one last time, as if this will be the time there's something there.

But the white forest is empty.

Snow melts into wet, misty air as they drift past the borders of Jarles and Roften into Keesark. They are toeing the boundary between Roften and Allayria's home kingdom since, technically, this is the first time Grismen's strange contraption has flown and the even with the Roften insignia painted on its side the Keesark natives might be leery of a huge, hulking thing floating in the sky.

It was meant to stay under wraps until an invasion plan was in place, Grismen informs her, smoke pluming from the crumbling, clumsily wrapped cigar in his mouth. But when vast billowing furls of smoke had risen up from the Jarles facility Grismen made the executive decision to unfurl the flying creature.

"A good test run," he states, gnawing on the cigar as he scans the map in front of them. "Flies like a beaut."

Allayria murmurs her agreement, though she thinks if Hiran was here he would raise a few objections.

"How close to Bear's Spear do you plan to set us?" she asks, leaning over the map to peer at the small dot signifying the fort. "We can travel on foot if you are concerned about flying over Halften."

But Grismen laughs, breath and smoke swirling out in the cold air.

"We're not taking you to Bear's Spear," he says. "You're going down to Quersido."

Allayria doesn't like the sound of this, much less the self-assured tone in which it's been said.

"Why do you think I'm going there?" she asks coolly and the general glances toward her from under a pair of grizzled, gray eyebrows.

"Beinsho asked we tell you to. The kings and that whole lot are headed there, even our Chieftainess. And now that we're using this," he gestures around to the contraption, "I'll just take you the whole way myself. Carting the Paragon off to Quersido—a fitting maiden voyage for her."

He spits and sets the butt of the cigar on the tabletop.

"And Dynast Wren will love to take a look," he adds, a gnarled smile crossing his face. "That boy spends so much time in the clouds this lass would feel like home."

Allayria glances around too, then out to the slow trawl of the landscape, eerily distant and removed. She has adapted to the strange perspective, but she doesn't think she could ever feel at ease here.

"You've seen the guest yet?" Grismen suddenly asks, shooting a glance her way before trudging over to the commanding panel, peering over the slim shoulder of a sitting soldier and scrutinizing the dials embedded in the panel.

"Higher," he barks, clapping a hand on the man's shoulder. "We need to clear that North Mountain range."

"I have," Allayria answers when he turns back around. She had visited the recovered Jarles prisoner—a Nature-caller who looked at Hiran like he was some kind of god—after she had spent some time with Finn. The escapee is a thin, pale boy, malnourished and timid, but his face is an expressive sea of fleeting joy, relief, and apprehension. It became rapt, perhaps even a little awed, after Finn let it slip who Allayria is. Allayria had to then spend several minutes teaching Finn the meaning of "need-to-know-basis."

"Oddball," Grismen grunts, tapping a finger on a string of numbers at the side of the map. "Not as odd as that little Keesark boy, but fidgety."

"He's been imprisoned by the Jarles for ten years," Allayria says evenly. "I think that would give most people weird quirks."

Grismen mumbles at this.

"I've got my lads keeping an eye on him," he says and Allayria is glad she made sure to tell the others to keep Lei's family tree to themselves.

"He's telling us everything he knows," she throws back, and this is true. The boy had practically vomited the information up when Hiran asked him to, detailing the screenings and selections he'd see, the way the new children were herded in and divided, kept penned up until they began showing some Skill.

"They would just toss the ones that didn't do anything," he had said through mouthfuls of soup. "Though sometimes the soldiers would use them as target practice."

This was another time Allayria was glad Lei was not around to hear these things, though it did nothing to settle the rage churning in her stomach. The bitterness of their failure still twangs in her mouth, sour and nauseating.

I was there, she had thought. I should have been able to do something more.

The boy—Wey—went on to describe how the children had been divided by Skills, the Smith-callers absorbed into normal Jarles ranks while the others were cordoned off. Every once in a while they would be called out, asked to demonstrate something or set against one another. The ones the Jarles liked would be taken off.

"And you were never chosen?" she had asked then, and Wey had shaken his head.

"I Skill well enough," he answered a touch defiantly, "but I've got a limp and they didn't like that."

She tasked Hiran with recording the boy's account, knowing the council will want a copy, though she is certain they will want to talk to him in person too. She thinks the sight of four sovereigns at once might cause the boy to expire.

They touch down on Halften soil a few days after that, settling in the morning mist a half a day's ride from Quersido. Rapture passes across Hiran's face when his feet touch the ground and he actually sinks down, threading his fingers in the grass.

They borrow four horses from the nearby armory and begin to saddle up. If Grismen's calculations are correct—and at this point Allayria would stake several fingers on them being so—they should arrive at the capital just before noon.

"Ride on up before us," the general tells Allayria as they unload crates and supplies. "I've sent a bird, they should be expecting you. We'll come with the boy a bit later on, when we've made sure everything is settled."

She nods and they climb up on their steeds, Finn—still pale and slightly hollow-eyed—perched behind Tara. And then Allayria glances back one last time at the massive, looming whale-like thing, and marvels at how anyone ever had the mad thought that it could fly.

A/N: Chapter 50! That means I've posted 100 chapters of this series. Here's to 100 more! (Lollll oh god.)

Thanks a bunch for all the well wishes. It's been a "Which arm is best to jam a needle into it?" kind of week but we're narrowing things down. And this weekend is almost over and I've managed not to almost pass out at any event or location so 👍