"Did you bewitch them?"

My eyelids flutter open.

"I'm talking to you, hello--you're hugging in your sleep? Michael, that's a night pest."

Kael's eyes slide open, staring into mine. My right arm under his neck is totally numb, prickly, and my left arm around Kael's lifted shoulder rubs those fingers. "Hi," I say.

Kael smirks.

I smirk back.

"No, for reals, did you bewitch them?" Nomsa says.

My arms unloose, and Kael sits up, or maybe they sit first so my arms glide off. But I roll to my back and shake my arm, trying to restore feeling to it. My hip aches where it dug into the ground all night.

"Bewitching isn't a thing, Nomsa," Kael yawns. "I told you."

"Hmmph"--she, dressed in a one-sleeve jumpsuit, circles a finger at us--"then explain this, please." Her green gaze narrows.

"You wouldn't loan me clothes, so I was freezing," Kael says.

I sit up, blood flowing hot into my numb limb.

Nomsa drops her boots at her side, hems around her socks flared out and dyed yellow. Imitating suns, probably. "You'd rather let a night pest hug you than freeze?"

"Troy's not a night pest," Kael says. "Or did you miss your light beam not doing anything to them?"

"Hmm," Nomsa says. She marches from the door of her tent and plops cross-legged beside Kael. "But you said"--her eyes flick to me--"Troy's from the Obsidian Castle. Which is full of dark pests."

Since Nomsa's hardly acknowledged anything I've said, I keep my mouth shut, still trying to wiggle my numb fingers. They respond like warm wax.

"The night pests found out Troy had mist lancer abilities, and tried to kill them, so they escaped and I saved their life." They glance at me. "That's all the important stuff, right?"

"I think so?"

"Yeah," Kael says to Nomsa. "That's what happened."

She frowns, hands picking at the toes of her socks. "What were you doing in the Obsidian Castle at all?"

Her gaze flits up to me, and surprise zaps through my chest. She's actually asking me. "Oh." I cough. "I grew up there? I don't know, I..." I glance at Kael.

"Troy was born here"--Kael points up the hill--"and when we took it over, somehow Troy ended up switched with a night warrior baby and ended up in the Obsidian Castle."

"Or maybe I wasn't born in the fort...I was a baby, I don't remember."

Nomsa's lips harden. "That's awful, Troy. You spent your whole life with those pests?"

"Yep."

"Until like two weeks ago," Kael says. "When the night warriors found out about their powers and tried killing them."

She scoots forward, leans over Kael's lap, and picks up my hands. I still can't feel with one of them. "Hi?" I say.

A breeze slides up the slope, and goosebumps crawl in my skin.

"Is Michael saving your life why you serve him?"

My eyebrows furrow. "What? No. I don't serve... Ew."

I pull away, but she tightens her grip on my wrists, not letting me escape. Her fingernails carve into my skin. "Then why did you hug him the whole night to keep him warm?"

"Uh." I force down the heat rising in my neck. My gaze flicks to Kael, who hasn't moved despite Nomsa reaching over them. "What do I say?"

"Guess what, Nomsa," Kael says, expression totally flat.

"What?" She's staring at my face, nibbling her lip, grip easing slightly.

"We kissed. Twice. Turns out I can fall in love."

Nomsa lets go of my arms, and turns, painstakingly, to gawk at Kael. Trying not to shatter some slowly dawning comprehension, I slowly, carefully, move my arms back to my lap.

"You kissed a night pest--an ex-Obsidian Castle dweller? Michael! Our trio!"

"You and Zadia went out." They lean back on their arms. "What about the trio then?"

"No"--she scoots back, squating on her heels--"we kissed once, and tried holding hands three times, barely did anything else, and both agreed we'd had enough for seventeen lifetimes and then some. You kissed this Troy fellow"--she flaps a hand at me--"twice? And you're already talking about falling in love? And you're sleeping shirtless?"

"You wouldn't give me anything to wear!" Kael pulls their knees in, grabbing their backpack to hug to their shins. "And yeah, I like Troy!"

I cough. They both swing to stare at me. "I'm hungry."

Nomsa sticks her tongue out. "Congratulations. Did you not get enough of Michael's face last night?"

My mouth drops. "Wha-we didn't even kiss last night."

"Do you like Michael back?" She looms in my face, and I flinch. "You better not break his heart, ex-Obsidian Castle dweller."

"Yeah, I like Michael back." I edge myself away from her, nearly tipping over in the stream. "Seriously, what's your problem?"

She purses her lips. Then she retreats. "I like them," she tells Kael.

"How did you even arrive at that conclusion?" I jump up, gritting my teeth. "Last night you wouldn't even look at me. You haven't even apologized for totally ignoring me."

"Uh, last night you were a night pest who Michael somehow tricked into coming with him."

"No I wasn't!"

"Nomsa," Kael sighs, "please just say sorry."

"Fine, sorry, ex-Obsidian Castle person." She elbows Kael. "I'm hungry. And you said you'd make breakfast. And I'm telling Zadia first thing."

They roll their eyes, in a complete circle. "Our trio's fine."

***

Kael cooks gray fish, over a tiny black square staked into the moss; it seems to be a magical stone they can funnel light into then it makes heat.

Nomsa's been using it for the past three mornings and four nights--apparently Livia died four days ago (so on mine and Kael's third day of walking), and Madrina disappeared slightly less than four days ago, and Nomsa left the fort that night, swiping one of these things from the barracks.

"The barracks?" I ask. "You use these to...start fires on the warfront?"

Nomsa laughs, splashing water over her face.

I wait for her to explain. Then twist to Kael. "Why haven't I seen any burned soldiers then?"

"Uh, duh, if we used any magic, the night pests would throw their magic at us that night and we'd be goners--unless we threw all our magic at them before nightfall, but then reinforcements would show up and boom, still goners. These are only for lighting torches when they shoot arrows at night, so the non-mistlancers can see."

I swallow. "Oh."

Kael uses a pair of white chopsticks to flip the little fish over, steaming, crackling. Scooting away, I roll up our grass mats, and Nomsa does the water-filter trick to fill Kael's container plus her own gray bottle.

I expect us to sit around and eat together, but Nomsa disappears into the tent, and after a few minutes of rustling and grunting, she emerges with a loaded backpack, then collapses the blue and violet tent, packing it into a narrow sack before Kael's done cooking the first fish.

"Oh," I say, "so we're going to Zadia's quarters right now?"

Kael hands me the fish, stabbed on a single chopstick.

"Yep," Nomsa says. She crouches by the fire-making plate. "The fort's pretty sleepy in the mornings so it'll be the easiest time to sneak in."

"Okay." I stand in the squished moss, and drag Kael's still-damp clothes off the branches, battling the poky twigs one-handed. The clothing comes off without any fabric ripping, but flakes of bark stick to the insides of the sleeves, the back of the legs. But I bundle them under my arm, holding the fish in my other hand, waiting for it to cool.

Kael hands Nomsa the second fish. "Troy, can I have the chopstick back?" He plops a third fish onto the black square, staring intently at it.

"Uh, sure." I gingerly touch the fish on the stick. It burns to the touch, making me wince. So I shut my eyes and add layers of calloused skin to the tips of my fingers, and pluck the fish off. "Here." I toss the quartz-white chopstick at them.

But Nomsa, crouched by Kael, launches out a hand and catches it. "What was that?" She jabs the chopstick toward the fish in my hand, still hot enough to cook calloused skin.

"What was what?"

Her eyes narrow. "It was hot. Then you shut your eyes and grabbed it."

"Can I please have that?" Kael holds out a hand, still staring at the square in the moss, light wisping about its base.

Nomsa hands them the chopstick. She keeps glaring at me.

"I healed my fingers?" I say. I wave the fish around to cool it off. "I can do that, I guess."

Nomsa purses her lips, but says nothing. She waggles her skewered fish about, and we wait for Kael to cook the final one. I take an experimental bite. It tastes like grass. Also duck meat. But oily, or maybe watery. I cross over to the stream and spit out a bone.

Kael stabs the last fish, then packs the tiny fire-making square with its pointed base in the side of Nomsa's loaded bag. We hike up the valley, following the stream, white boots followed by beige boots followed by my olive-brown feet. I don't bother asking about sandals, since we're so close to the fort, and the trail is paved by moss and tender grass.

We eat on the way. I think half my fish is bone. Kael skinned and gutted all the fish in front of us but clearly didn't try to take out any bones--and I don't know if taking out the bones is a regular part of preparing fish, but it seems someone should've done it.

Morning birds call from the trees, and the gurgling stream grows narrower, weaker the higher we climb. I finish eating, and rub my oily fingers on each other. Briefly, I shut my eyes to heal the burned-through tips of my fingers. So I nearly trip on a root, bumping Kael's backpack. They turn and frown in concern, fish bones sticking from their mouth like badly angled teeth, but I wave them onward, and pause for a few breaths to fix my fingers.

We keep hiking, gray shadows dapple the blue moss and light grasses; the trees twist and tangle overhead, locking out the sky.

At the crest of the hill, we step out of the forest, from shadow to sunlight as abruptly as blinking.

A bare, rocky field stretches before us, clear to the muddy-yellow wall of the fort. It's a distance of at least a thirty second sprint. How many waves of soldiers pouring from these woods would get shot down before reaching the wall?

Carefully, I skirt the edges of the rock field, toward the stream so I can walk on smoother stones up to the fort.

"Wait," Kael calls, "I'll carry you."

I stop, glancing back. "Really?"

They shrug their bag off. "Yeah, you carried me into the valley."

"Really?" Nomsa says, half her fish still uneaten. She's holding both chopsticks now.

"Yeah," Kael says again.

"Huh." She bites into her fish.

I tiptoe back along the edge of the moss to Kael, and they crouch, letting me climb on. They nudge their bag at me, and I sling it onto my shoulder. Then I wrap my arms around their collarbones, hook my feet around their damp tunic. "Ready?" they ask.

"Yep."

Kael jumps up and sprints into the rock field, jostling me and knocking the backpack down to my elbow, "Wait!" I yelp but choke on saliva gone hurtling down my throat.

"Haha!" Nomsa screeches, and goes barreling past us, arms flung out to her sides. "HAAAAAA!"

Kael runs after her, stepping deftly on the stones, and I cough, gluing my gaze to the ground, like that will keep them from twisting an ankle and sending us tumbling.

"You didn't warn me!" I yelp, backpack knocking my side and probably theirs.

Kael, panting for air, doesn't say anything.

Nomsa shoots a blur of light into the air, at the towering fort wall. A streak of light shoots back, and a voice hollers. Nomsa yells in return.

Kael slows to a jog. "You should've warned me," I mutter.

They trot lightly, then walk the final few steps to Nomsa's side, gasping for air, planting their hands on the solid wall. I slide off, heels crunching dark gravel. I push the backpack up my shoulder and stare out along the towering fort wall, made of fat bricks as large as my head. A dozen steps off, the stream of water cuts through the base of the fort's wall, in a narrow, rectangular gap.

"Did you know"--Kael pushes themself upright, planting their hands on their head--"it's hard to run with someone on your back?"

"No duh," I snort, and peer back across the rock field, to the gray and violet forest. "I thought we were going to fall like five times."

A thump makes me jolt and whirl around, but it's just a rope ladder thrown down from the wall. Nomsa starts climbing, then Kael, who's still breathing heavily. "Okay." I follow, feet dirt-crusted. "We're just going up then."

What are we saying to the guards at the top about who I am? Should I start exhaling mist?

I concentrate on my hands, scaling up planks of wood on the oiled rope, and tell myself to breathe mist. Nothing happens. I forcibly exhale. Again, nothing. So I tell myself to stop breathing mist, like my mouth will spite me and actually do it. Nothing happens. I growl. Why does my breath do it when Kael says so, but not when I want to?

Nomsa's words crawl over my thoughts, about how I'm just serving Kael because they saved me. Like my breath is Kael's to order around because I'm serving them.

"I'm not," I mutter. "I came here because I wanted to."

Do something, mist breath. You're not serving Kael, they carried you across those rocks, and made you sandals--if anything, they're serving you. You're the Destroying One.

Even talking like that doesn't make my breath do anything.

At the top of the rope ladder, I peek over the parapet with my heart thumping, silently prepared for a fizzing light bolt to shoot through my eyeballs, or for a sword to prod at my throat. But only Nomsa and Kael stand there, shaking their arms, breathing loudly.

"Who threw that down for us?" I clamber onto the walkway, also panting for air.

"She did." Nomsa points, far down the walkway, toward a guard with a spear twice their height.

I gulp. "Does she not care who we are?"

"Clearly not." Nomsa shrugs.

"I bet she just wants us to pull up the ladder for her." Kael crosses their arms.

Nomsa sticks out her tongue, then cups her hands around her mouth. "We're leaving the rope ladder!" she yells. "But you can have the rest of my breakfast!" Her hand slides into a pocket on the front of her jumpsuit--it looks like she ripped off the left sleeve to sew a pocket over the left part of her stomach--and pulls out a half eaten fish, and the pair of chopsticks. She prods the chopsticks into Kael's hands, then waves the fish overhead, and plants it on the knee-height wall.

"You're annoying, Nomsa!" the guard yells back. "You're so lucky Michael and Zadia showed up with you or I'd walk over there and pound you!"

"Did she say..." Kael frowns, threading the chopsticks between their fingers. "Zadia?"

"Oh." I look down, at my beige pants and pale shirt. "Do I look like Zadia?"

"It's not luck!" Nomsa shouts. "It's called skill!"

Kael stares at me, then grabs my arm. "Let's hurry and go before she realizes Zadia doesn't have blond hair anymore." We jog across the walkway, stones ringing under our feet.

Nomsa hurries after us. "Zadia hasn't had blond hair for ages."

"You little gremlins!" the guard shouts.

"I'm taller than you!" Nomsa yells over her shoulder.

Kael barges down the stairs into the courtyard, worn smooth by hundreds of soldiers, running up to battle, marching down to bed.

"Who is that?" I ask, feet slapping stones.

"That's Babyface," Nomsa says. "Munchkin. She of the Dull Spear."

"What?"

"Her name's Iman," Kael says. At the bottom of the steps we slow to a walk, winding through a bare courtyard. Cobble paths section off round flower beds, only nothing grows in them. Just black soil. "She used to go by Nami, but thought that was boring and put it backwards. So now she's Iman."

Nomsa snorts. "She's also in charge of the wall guard, and blackmails everyone into signing up."

I wrinkle my nose. "Why is everyone so mean here?"

Kael's eyebrows furrow. "You've met one person." They let go of my wrist, folding their arms, chopsticks still in their hand.

"Two." I point at Nomsa, who's cutting through the flowerbeds at our left toward a door. This courtyard has three doors. She picks the smallest one, all rusty iron, and kicks it open. "And people get murdered here all the time," I say.

"Not all the time," Kael says. "There's no point to murdering someone with less power than you. The generals are all too busy with the war to try killing insignificant people like us."

A shiver worms up my shoulder blades; Kael's mentioned their parents are higher up generals. Do they mean their parents don't try killing them, because being a general makes it not worth the effort, rather than...because they're Kael's parents? I glance sidelong at them, but their face betrays nothing. Maybe...they didn't mean their parents specifically. Maybe this place isn't that terrible.

"We won't be insignificant forever." Nomsa peers into the dark hall beyond the door.

"And," Kael says to me, "there's a strict rule that when you murder someone, they can't be immature. That's why Iman's still alive."

Nomsa scoffs. "She still hasn't passed the maturity benchmark yet, the dumbie."

"I'm...so confused," I say, but follow her into the dark hallway, red carpet and yellow banners covering the walls. "How does anybody measure that?"

"Some old librarian made up this test," Kael says, breath prickling my neck. "You can go take it whenever you want."

"Why would you want to take it?" I wrinkle my nose. "If passing it just means you can get murdered?"

"Well, you can't leave the fort either if you don't pass it. Hey"--they poke my arm--"do you want to go take it right now? I think you'll be banned from leaving unless you do."

I stop behind Nomsa, who's frozen in place, staring at the thick carpet. "Why can't you just sneak out?" I ask. "I snuck in, basically."

"You can sneak out." Nomsa creeps a foot slowly forward. "But if someone notices you're missing, you're as good as ostracized for life. Happened to my aunt. And my mom."

"Nomsa," Kael says, behind my shoulder. "There's no way this hallway's booby trapped."

She sticks up a hand. "Give me a chopstick."

Kael hands her one.

She tosses it forward. It lands in the carpet. Nothing happens.

"What..." I wave vaguely at it with my hands. "What was that for?"

"Hmmph." she marches forward and picks it up. "I was hoping it would spring--"

A click-click echoes from the ceiling, and Nomsa stumbles backward, tripping over her boots and hitting the ground. A gray mist jets out of the plaster ceiling, and Nomsa leaps to her feet to scurry past me.

"What--" I say, but Kael yanks the back of my shirt, dragging me away from the spreading cloud.

"Don't touch that," they hiss.

"What?" I say.

"Want a demonstration?" Nomsa chucks her chopstick into the mist. Arcing through the air, the white substance bubbles, then the chopstick lands in the carpet, hidden. The yellow banners to either side bubble too, leaving white streaks, and some of the red carpet tufts curl and wilt.

I gulp, extracting myself from Kael's grip. "What did it just do? I thought you couldn't kill immature people here."

"It won't kill you," Nomsa says, staring at the fog of gray rising to the ceiling and dispersing, faintly making sections of the white plaster bubble. "It will burn all the non-organic stuff on you though."

I swallow. "Does it hurt?"

"It's not allowed to," Nomsa says, going over and fetching the chopstick, now a thin, wooden stick with bubbled white goop melted around the middle of it. "But it's pretty embarrassing when it bleaches half your clothes and dissolves the eyelets on your boots." She grins, eyes too wide. "All the halls started getting booby trapped when Madrina disappeared. It's not just the sleeping quarters anymore."

Kael checks the ceiling again, and the walls. "Doesn't anyone want to just...walk down the halls? Who's setting booby traps?"

"Dunno." She shrugs.

I gulp. But I look down. "I don't think I have anything inorganic on me." I tug on the shirt hem. "Do these have dyes in them?"

They shrug. "Why?"

White and beige. Probably not in danger of mineral dyes bubbling out... "I can set off the traps."

"Okay, go ahead dumbie"--Nomsa motions for me to pass her--"if you're volunteering to walk in front, be my guest."

I stride forward, hands balled into fists.

"Those aren't the only types of traps," Kael says.

"But you said none of them can hurt, right?"

Nomsa's eyes go hooded. "Not physically. Not while Livia was in charge. Not outside individual sleeping quarters."

I hesitate.

Kael steps forward. "Maybe you shouldn't go in front, Troy. We at least know what to look for."

"Fine." I peer down the dark hallway, where it curves out of sight. "I didn't know where I was going anyway."

"You've gone mushy." Nomsa elbows Kael. "I say we let Troy go first."

"Shut up. You were walking in front before anyone said anything."

"That's because I at least have a faint idea of what we're walking into." She waves me onward. "But I'm not above people volunteering after I've explained."

Kael grabs her hand. "Shut up."

She sticks her tongue out. "Mushy Michael."

Kael drags Nomsa past me. "Mushy, I tell you," she mouths at me.

"Sorry?" I shuffle after them, eyes darting to the plastered ceiling like more gray fog will shoot out and attack all of us.

***

Kael and Nomsa set off seventeen traps, on the winding journey through the halls and courtyards to the sleeping quarters. They tell me about at least thirty others, and we duck and hop to avoid motion traps or pressure traps and step silently to avoid sonic detection ones.

I get lost in the maze of the fort; I can't say if we end up near the middle of the sprawling layout or near one of the outer walls. But we reach a wide, silver-painted archway that they both say is for the sleeping quarters--and Kael's drenched in pink paint and Nomsa's other chopstick has turned into a slag mess, and my ears still ring from a screeching blare two left turns ago.

Beyond the silver arch, giant, triangular windows line the black walls, interspersed by round doors and yellow banners trailing from high ceiling to carpet.

"Why didn't we just break a window?" I ask.

Nomsa arches an eyebrow at me.

"I'm going to throw my rabbit jerky." Kael slides their bag down their arm, dried paint flaking off their skin.

"I say we make Troy somersault down there," Nomsa says.

"Why didn't we just break a window to get here?" I repeat.

"And how were we going to get to this point?" Nomsa asks. "Climb over every wall in the castle?"

"But how do you guys live with this? What if you get hungry in the middle of the night and want to go to the kitchen for a snack?"

"It used to just be this hallway." Kael digs around in their bag. "I never slept down here."

"Yeah, Michael and I used to hole up in the library together. Then he went off on assignment without me, so I had to use my bedroom."

I glance at Kael. "So do you even have a bedroom?"

"Technically. In my parents quarters."

I nibble my lip. "Okay."

"My bedroom's probably been claimed by Calvin or Axak's forces now," Nomsa says. "Axak was going around taking all the unused space and claiming it for his authority."

Kael pulls out a long strip of rabbit jerky, then pushes their bag up their shoulder. "Ready?" They rip off a chunk.

"Probably not after last--" I say.

Kael chucks the rabbit jerky down the hall, noise and light exploding in its spinning wake. I jump and wince, but Nomsa and Kael just stare with blank expressions, so I cross my arms and hope they didn't notice.

"No paint," Nomsa says.

"And only one light bomb," Kael says.

"So watch out." Nomsa creeps a toe into the hall, edging into a patch of sunlight. Here, the red carpet has faded to a dull, rusty color.

Grumbling, I painstakingly follow in her wake.

"Hey, at least Zadia's rooms aren't clear at the end," Kael says.

I roll my eyes, then something occurs to me. "How do they reset the traps?"

"The sunlight does it." Nomsa creeps forward, eyes scouring our surroundings. "Like my heat-making plate."

"Really?" I ask. "So in the dark hallways, would the traps not reset?"

"The maniacs who put them there probably thought of that, yes," Nomsa says.

"Oh."

Wetness splats on my head, then I'm blinded by purple goo. Nomsa gasps too, and Kael just sighs.

"My backpack!" Nomsa moans.

I wipe fingers over my face, sloughing off goop. "I didn't think the Lost Fort would be like this."

***

Author note: what did you think the Lost Fort would be like?