There was silence for the briefest of moments as both parties gazed at each other from across the ravaged battlefield. Smoke was still rising from the ground around them; the air stank of burned flesh. Tim had barely taken a step forward when the man standing beside their siblings drew his bow sharply, aiming an arrow at Tim. Or at least, Lauren thought it was a man at first; it looked like one from the chest up, but from the waist down it looked like his torso had been grafted onto the body of a horse.

  “Quick-footed devil!” he roared, eliciting shouts of alarm from the rest of their siblings. “Are you responsible for this accursed infestation? Speak!”

  Tim looked aghast. “What? No! Why would I help you get rid of them if I caused it?”

  “Do not ask me to understand the machinations of a servant of darkness!” the creature shouted.

  Jon leapt forward, pushing his bow down so forcefully that the arrow was launched into the mud. “Calm down, Robin Hood! They’re not the dark gods we were telling you about. These are our siblings, Tim and Lauren. The ones who disappeared in the storm.”

  The horse-man straightened up with a look of mingled shock and dawning comprehension. “Oh! My apologies, I merely thought —”

  But no one seemed to care much for what he thought. Completely ignoring him, both Oscar and Haley dashed forward, Haley flinging her arms around Lauren, Oscar grabbing Tim in a one-armed hug. In her enthusiasm Haley almost bowled Lauren over as she tackled her, but Lauren managed to hold herself upright as her younger sister let out a shriek of relief that pierced the night. “Where have you guys been? We were worried sick!”

  “I never doubted you for a second,” Oscar said, ruffling Tim’s hair. Though he was caked with mud and splotches of a strange green ooze whose origins Lauren would rather not know, Tim looked mightily pleased with himself. “I knew you guys could handle yourselves fine.”

  “It’s been a mess, actually,” Tim said brightly. “That storm was a nightmare. But we managed to ride it out.”

  They looked around at Jon, who had come to a halt just behind them. Lauren braced herself for another assault of affection, but Jon did no such thing. On the contrary, he gave Tim a sharp punch on the shoulder.

  “Ow!”

  “What were you thinking, you moron?” he snarled. “We were right in front of you, you could have just waited for us to get to you!”

  “Nice to see you’re okay too,” Tim grumbled, rubbing his shoulder. “And it didn’t look like you were going to make it anyway. I didn’t want to split up either, but it seemed like the only way we were all going to make it out in one piece.”

  “Sounds to me like you just rolled over and gave up!”

  Looking deeply affronted, Tim opened his mouth in protest, but before he had even got the words out, Oscar had stepped in between them and thrown up his hands to separate them. “How about we stop the zombie apocalypse first, then we can get back to the family cage match. Deal?”

  Jon and Tim glared at each other, but both spoke in unison: “Fine.”

  “Right, how many of those things are there?” Haley asked.

  “A lot,” Tim replied. “And there are more coming. We saw them when we were on our way here. We —” Tim exchanged an uncomfortable glance with Lauren. “We have a theory that these are actually people who died in the hurricane. That their bodies were reincarnated to be used as weapons.”

  “It’s disgusting,” Lauren said, her eyes burning. “That hurricane battered the city relentlessly for almost a week, then they had to top it off by desecrating the very people they killed.”

  “It’s not just that,” Haley added. “The zombies killed some of the centaurs in the camp, and then they just… got up and joined them. What could be causing this?”

  “I might have a theory.” The half-man, half-horse hybrid had trotted up to them, his tail swishing. Lauren jumped; she had completely forgotten he was there.

  “Oh right,” said Oscar, a look of realization dawning on his face. “Tim, Lauren, this is the centaur chief, Sunder. He was kind enough to let us shelter in his camp for the past few days. Sunder, these are Lauren and Tim, otherwise known as the goddess of memory and god of speed.”

  Sunder bowed to them. Tim gave an awkward little wave and Lauren nodded. So that’s what he was: a centaur. She had only ever heard of these creatures, and the few stories she had heard usually painted them as rowdy and rather vulgar.

  “I believe I may know what’s causing the plague. This fog, and the fungus spreading over the wildlife, they’re as unnatural as the storm itself. I would bet that whoever is manipulating the bodies established their control over them using that fog.”

  “Even if we know what’s causing it, it doesn’t help us to stop it,” Lauren said. “We need a plan.”

  “I think I might have a way to combat the infection. Lady Haley and I have been doing some work to restore areas of the forest that were dying. Yesterday we encountered a sicklesap tree and managed to nurse it back to health. The sap has extraordinary magical properties, including cleansing the body of impurities. It unfortunately won’t restore the victims’ lives, but it should at least cut the connection between the bodies and the dark magic inhabiting them.”

  “It’s the best we can do right now,” said Jon. “How do we get the sicklesap?”

  “We took most of it to the healers’ huts, but the ghouls have already been there.” He turned and pointed into the distance, where the remnants of a cabin met their eyes, smoke curling from the wreckage. “I did bring some back to my own quarters though. If they haven’t already been through there, then it’s our best chance. I shall go and retrieve it.”

  “You’ll never get past those things alone,” said a new voice. Lauren looked around and received a slight shock to see that there was yet another member of their party, standing some ways away from them, over the body of a fallen comrade by the looks of it. Her skin was a vivid shade of green. Lauren had thought it was some weird trick of the light, but nope, she was very much the colour of a fresh head of cabbage, and she was currently wiping tears from her eyes. “They’ll kill you, Sunder.”

  “I’ll go with him,” Tim said. “I’m pretty handy at getting people out of tight spots in a flash.” He tried to project a confident appearance, but Lauren had a feeling he was just getting better at hiding his fear. Zombies were a whole new low among the roster of supernatural horrors they had faced in their very short time in the world of magic and mystery, and the bar was already halfway towards the earth’s crust.

  “I’m going too,” said Jon. “We’ve seen the type of choices he makes under pressure, someone with a brain has to be there.”

  A smile curved Tim’s lips. “Are you worried about me?”

  “I think we should all go, in fact,” Jon said, pretending that he hadn’t heard a word. “We shouldn’t be splitting up again.”

  A series of moans and low growls crossed the air. Through the trees ahead, shrouded in the same impossibly thick fog, they could see more figures flickering through the dense branches as another wave of zombies approached.

  “Let’s take this conversation on the road, shall we?” Oscar said urgently. With nods and murmurs of agreement, they turned and hurried off in the opposite direction, following the lead of the centaur chief. They just couldn’t catch a break. After spending five days trapped in a horrific storm, feasting on stale and soggy food and having to flee all over the city when their temporary dwellings were flooded, now they were running for their lives from a horde of literal zombies. How did this become their lives?

  The centaur chief led them to his cabin, which was situated further in the forest than most of the other buildings. Luckily it was still perfectly in tact, and it seemed to be larger than the other cabins by a significant margin.

  Not even bothering to turn the doorknob, Sunder rose up on his hind legs and kicked open the door. As they entered, Jon threw up his hands and lights flooded from his palms, perfectly illuminating the interior. For a fleeting moment, Lauren wished Jon would snuff out the lights so that she didn’t have to keep looking at the sights that had met their eyes. The walls were plastered with the pelts of different animals, as well as what seemed to be the chief’s idea of some kind of trophies: heads of lions and bears, the beaks of eagles, deer antlers, and more. The floor was covered entirely in damp straw, and a strong scent of musk drifted unpleasantly through the room.

  “In the other room,” Sunder said. They moved to the room beyond, which was evidently a mixture of Sunder’s kitchen and bathroom. Ignoring the smell emanating from the rightmost corner, they set their sights on the cupboards stretching along the front wall. “The containers we need have a viscous green fluid inside,” said Sunder.

  While Jon provided the lightning, everyone else set to work scouring the cupboards. Unfortunately the process was like finding a needle in a haystack. The cupboards were stacked with dozens of pails, all containing fluids of varying colours, and even more inconveniently, some of them were various shades of the same colour. When both Tim and Oscar resurfaced with buckets of bright green liquids, Sunder insisted that the one they were looking for was darker than either shade presented, and they set back to work.

  They had been at it for a few minutes when without warning, the windows just above them shattered and both Lauren and the green-skinned woman screamed, having been just underneath it. Blackened, scaly-looking hands were poking through the holes in the glass. Jon turned his hand upon the windows and the beam of light projecting from his hands increased in intensity. The zombies retracted their hands with hisses of anguish.

  “Found one!” Tim cried a moment later. “Wait nope — that’s teal, not green… Ah, here it is!”

  “I found two,” Haley said, comparing the colour of her findings with Tim’s.

  “Me too,” said Oscar.

  The zombies had returned, trying to climb into the house through the open windows.

  “Out, out!” Jon yelled. Cradling their found vials, they scrambled back through the door they had come. Tim sped out ahead of them, using his giant hammer to clear the stray zombies that had crept inside out of the way, but it was hardly any use. The cabin was surrounded. Lauren tried to count how many of them there were and decided it was no use. The answer was simply way too many.

  Haley forced her way to the front of the group and thrust her hands out towards the ground. A powerful tremor ran through the ground, knocking the zombies off their feet. With another wave of her hand, Haley split the ground around them, creating a massive chasm that separated them from their attackers.

  But whatever sense of logic their hosts might have possessed in life, the zombies had certainly lost them.

  They kept running towards them despite the enormous pit separating them, then falling like ragdolls into the enormous moat.

  “They’re like rabid dogs,” Tim said in an almost wondering tone.

  “Their minds are blank slates,” said Sunder, looking down at them in pity. “Their purpose is to destroy, and that’s all they know.”

  “How much sicklesap is needed for this?” Tim asked.

  “Impossible to know for certain, but a few spoonfuls usually does wonders for centaurs.”

  Tim’s eyebrows furrowed. Lauren glanced at him and smirked. She knew that look: he had an idea.

  “Does the sap have to be ingested?”

  “Not necessarily, no. Why do you ask?”

  “Does it happen to be flammable?”

  “W-what? Why would you need to know that?”

  “Just answer the question!”

  “Well yes. Most tree sap isn’t, but sicklesap contains aromatic oils, which make it highly flammable.”

  Before anyone could really process what had happened, Tim had circled their group in a blur of sapphire and snatched the buckets out of their hands. Once he had collected them all he looked around at Jon. “Can you make your rays hot enough to start a fire?”

  “Do you swallow bugs every time you run?”

  “Follow my lead,” said Tim, and he lifted two buckets and rushed off, leaping across the great divide Haley had created. He raced around the edge of the pit, the contents of the first bucket sloshing onto the zombies below, who hissed and screeched in fury. An eruption of light suddenly burst through the darkness around them. Lauren’s hands instinctively flew up to cover her face and, squinting, she looked around at Jon, who was blazing like a bonfire. Immense beams of orange light burst from his hands and streaked into the pit just as Tim zoomed away. For a few seconds nothing happened, then the zombies began to shriek, clawing at the edges of the pit as flames blossomed within. They were orange at first, but as they burned they slowly changed to a bright, vibrant green.

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  They watched in awe as first, Tim lathered the zombies with sap, then Jon set them ablaze. Soon most of their vision was obscured by immense plumes of acid green flames, which were spreading steadily across the grounds. The zombies who had been caught by the flames screamed and screamed, then, slowly, they fell to the ground, withering under the intense heat, and they did not rise again.

  “The whole camp is going to be destroyed at this rate,” the green-skinned woman said.

  “It’s already been destroyed Vera,” Sunder said, his voice heavy. “Sometimes to save the ones you love, you must be willing to make sacrifices.”

  Though the circumstances were horrible, Lauren found the flames strangely beautiful. She could have stared at them for hours, but Tim suddenly appeared in front of them, bringing with him a gust of wind that sent her hair flying all about her head.

  “I’m out of sap,” he said urgently. “And there are more coming.”

  “That settles it, we have to get out of here,” said Lauren.

  “No!” Haley cried. “We can’t leave, not now!”

  “We have to. Don’t you get it: we’re the ones who did this. The Harbingers brought the storm because of us — an entire city was destroyed, people were killed, and now they’re being used as puppets to torment us. We brought this at these people’s doorsteps, we have to get out of here now before we end up making things even worse.”

  “She is correct, My Lady,” Sunder said before Haley could protest. “Your adversaries have demonstrated that they’re willing to go to great lengths in their pursuit of you, and they have no concern for whose lives they uproot in the process. If there is somewhere safer than here that you can go to, then you must. You need to protect yourselves and those you love. But I also have a responsibility to my people.” The centaur had drawn himself up to his full height, looking down at them with a dour expression.

  “Your assistance has been greatly appreciated over the past few days, but it would not be fair to the people of this forest if your presence continues to invite such danger. If fate permits it, perhaps we can meet again under different circumstances, but for now you must leave.”

  “What about you? What about everyone else?”

  “We are not totally useless, you know,” said Sunder, with a wry smile. “We may not be able to create earthquakes, but we can still defend ourselves. And if all else fails, we shall run. There are plenty of hiding places in this forest. Worry for yourself, not us.”

  Haley clearly didn’t agree with this sentiment, but she didn’t argue. She nodded and briefly grasped Sunder’s hand. “Once this is all over, I promise I’ll come back. I really want to help you save this forest, to do all the things you told me I could do. The way you described it to me.”

  Sunder beamed at her. Then he nodded and released her hand. “I believe you can, with or without me. Now go.”

  With obvious reluctance, Haley turned and climbed onto Skylar’s back, just behind Jon. Oscar followed, then Tim and Lauren.

  “Woah, I didn’t think we could all fit up here,” Oscar said, examining their seating arrangement. Not only did they all fit, it seemed they actually had space to hold at least two more.

  “Venti can actually expand up to several feet,” Jon explained. “Sytris told me. Something about inflating themselves by absorbing the wind around them or —”

  “Yeah yeah, very fascinating, but can we go please!” Tim yelled, gesturing to their right. A new wave of zombies was approaching, as haggard and gruesome as the others. Jon cracked the reins and Skylar took off across the battered lands. The herd of zombies continued to gain on them, approaching at speed, but just before they closed in Skylar took a giant leap and began to climb through the air.

  Lauren took one last look at the ground below: at zombies parading through the camp, centaurs retreating, and Sunder hauling tail out of sight as the bodies followed him deeper into the forest. Her vision was obstructed by the tree branches, then she turned around, exhaling through her nose.

  She had had very bad memories flying on Skylar. Last time she was up here she was being chased by a relentless army of gargoyles. But then, at least, she had been with Sytris….

  And then, without warning, the emotions she had tried so desperately to suppress for the past few hours came bubbling to the surface. Her eyes stung with tears that she rapidly tried to blink away, unwilling to let any of her siblings notice them, but she soon realized she didn’t have to worry about that. Everyone was too busy catching up on what they had missed, clearly trying to put the memory of what they had just witnessed to the back of their minds.

  “So what have you guys been getting up to?” Oscar asked Tim over the rushing wind.

  “Mostly been camping out at abandoned locations,” he yelled back. “Running all over town trying to find ways to get out of the city, but everywhere was flooded. I did ended up finding another magical being though, his name was Akna. Turns out not everyone magical is a monster. We ended up fighting some giant worms together. He’s the one who helped us pinpoint your location. The storm cleared up right after and we came straight here.”

  “Giant worms huh? Sounds fun,” Jon said dryly. “And you?” he added, looking around at Lauren. “Anything interesting happen?”

  The real answer was that her experiences had been a little too interesting for her taste, but unwilling to let herself be reduced to a blubbering, red-faced mess in midair, she merely said, “I’ll tell you about it later,” in a tone of obvious finality. A few seconds of awkward silence spiraled, but no one challenged her statement.

  “Well, while you were off playing with overgrown grub, we were trying to find you,” Haley said. “But it was impossible to see anything in that storm. And that was without the giant, steel-beaked birds and gargoyles that tried to kill us while we were flying.”

  “Glad to know everyone got their fair share of excitement,” Tim said sarcastically. “What’s the ETA on Sytris’s new safehouse? That’s where we’re headed right?”

  “We should be coming up to it soon, according to this,” said Oscar, who was glancing at the map Sytris had handed them.

  The ventus was going lower and lower. It was a relief to think that they would finally be leaving the air soon, but Lauren dreaded the conversation they would ultimately have to have once they touched ground. But… nothing around them indicated that a safehouse was nearby. Vast, empty fields of grass flew by underneath them, surrounded by nothing but endless rolling hills and wild, unchecked woods. After nearly half an hour, however, Skylar began to dive and they came to a halt in the middle of the woods, just in front of a rundown old cabin.

  Everyone stared up at it, then in unison looked down at the map Oscar was still holding, whose path was marked with a trail of gold from the mansion to what was labeled the “White Toad Glades.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding me,” Lauren said.

  Oscar cocked his head to the side, then began to turn the map in different directions as though determined to spot something that ruled out the possibility. When no such marker appeared, he said in a tone of great bewilderment, “Nope, this is it.”

  “Not winning any points for glamor, is it?” Haley asked, crinkling her nose.

  “Who knows, maybe he thought we were going to use the mansion for longer than a literal week, so he didn’t get around to much housekeeping for the other locations.”

  “Honestly, it doesn’t really matter, does it?” Tim said, with a bite of impatience. “I know we were starting to get used to the mansion, but luxury isn’t the main focus. Safety is. So can we please go inside before the universe decides to send some fire-breathing skunk-dragon hybrid or something since the zombies didn’t work?”

  Though still clearly unconvinced, they moved in unison up the stairs. They creaked ominously with every step. The cabin door had a small knocker in the shape of what looked like a pegasus. Oscar reached out tentatively and knocked.

  A musical chime rang out in the depths of the cabin and the door opened of its own accord.

  The interior of the cabin at least was far more welcoming than its exterior. It was composed of thick logs of oak wood, gleaming gently in the watery sunlight. It was also much larger than it appeared at first glance; the living room was as vast as the mansion’s, and lit by a fiercely burning fire in a handsome marble fireplace. There were pictures of children lining the walls, pictures of… them. Not as they had come to know themselves, raised in the embrace of their mortal parents. But them as they had been in their time in Algyria.

  All at once the group scattered, rushing to the walls to view the immortalized scenes of their past. Lauren snatched up a picture of a dark-haired youth that bore a strong resemblance to Jon, gleefully flying through the air as he was chased by an exasperated man that looked like an older, more mature version of Oscar.

  He had the same curly black hair, the same facial structure, but he was far more thickset, wearing a resplendent white and gold tunic with a thick beared. This man…

  Lauren traced her fingers across his face, her mouth falling open as the realization of who he was struck her like a brick. Razen, God of the Morning Sky.

  She turned around and saw Haley, holding up a picture of what was obviously her younger self, clad in a bright green dress and holding her hands around Tim’s head, which was wrapped in a wreath of flowers. Tim was smiling as widely as if someone had told him Christmas was coming early, but he wasn’t wearing glasses. Perhaps he hadn’t needed them at this point in time. Unobstructed by the heavy black spectacles, his hazel-brown eyes shone as bright as the midday sun.

  “Oh my God,” Jon breathed. He was holding a picture of a beautiful woman with flowing reddish-brown hair. Her dress was pale blue, dotted with twinkling snowflakes, and she was holding a scepter made entirely of ice. Their mother, Cyclomene, Goddess of Ice and Snow.

  “He saved these?”

  “He left them here for us,” Haley said breathlessly, cradling the photograph in her hands as though it were a newborn child. Her eyes unfocused, as if she wasn’t really seeing the room at all. She absentmindedly wandered towards the dark brown sofa stretched along the back wall of the room and began to take in all the details of the photo she was holding.

  Lauren too looked down at her photograph, at the exasperated look on her father’s face, which was the spitting image of his firstborn, who was currently gazing open-mouthed at the other pictures hung along the walls. Her stomach churned.

  The tears were coming again. She hurriedly stashed the photo on the table in front of them and rushed into the kitchen area. “Anyone hungry?” she said as she went by, keeping her face out of view.

  She barely heard her siblings’ replies as she stumbled into the kitchen, fighting against the well of sadness threatening to spill over and consume her. Lauren tried to preoccupy herself with her task at hand, sorting through the cupboards. They were as well-stocked as the ones in the mansion, equipped with pristine pots, pans, and bowls, and as wide a variety of ingredients as their other safehouse had boasted. She prepared five sandwiches, trying to recall the various ways everyone else requested theirs. Tim didn’t have a strong preference for toppings, but liked his sandwiches without crust; Jon wasn’t a fan of mayo; Oscar would eat anything as long as it came with two-three layers; and Haley took hers with copious amounts of ketchup.

  It took her almost twenty minutes but once she was done she stacked everything neatly onto a tray, took a deep breath, and headed back out.

  Jon had set down the photographs and was reclining on the sofa beside Haley with his eyes closed. “I wonder how long this one is going to last,” he was saying. “Another week? Two days?”

  “Please don’t jinx it,” Haley retorted. “I always hated when my parents forced us to move around so often.”

  “You had to move a lot?” asked Lauren, handing out the sandwiches.

  “Does six times in the last eight years count as ‘a lot’?”

  “You’re not the only one,” Jon said, still with his eyes closed.

  “Oh yeah? Do tell,” Haley said, setting down the picture and sitting upright with the sharpest interest.

  Jon seemed to contemplate the request for a moment, then he gave a slight shrug as if to say, “Why not.”

  “After my mom died, my dad and I never stayed anywhere for too long. Nothing ever felt quite right. The house, the neighbourhood, the neighbours. There was always something, and my dad always hated it. He said there was always something missing, so every now and then he uprooted our whole lives in search of it. In the end, it was obvious that what he thought was missing was my mom, but I don’t think he ever realized that changing houses was never going to fill the void she left behind.”

  Dead silence met his words. Though Jon was still relaxing on the sofa with his eyes closed, speaking as serenely as though they were discussing the evening weather forecast, uncomfortable looks were exchanged through the room.

  When the silence had spiraled on for a few more seconds Jon seemed unable to ignore the situation any longer and opened his eyes with a sigh of exasperation. “My mom died years ago. Of course I still miss her, but it’s not like it was when I was little. So can we please skip the part where we try to set up a group therapy session? Let’s focus on the matter at hand, shall we?”

  “If you say so,” Oscar said. “And speaking of the matter at hand… we got our asses handed to us. No shame in admitting it.”

  “Are you sure? Because I’m feeling a lot of shame. You know, mostly around this region.” Tim waved a hand vaguely over his heart.

  “You know what, that’s fine. A little shame can be good for you, Timothy,” said Oscar. “But we shouldn’t beat ourselves up about it. The Harbingers are older and more experienced. Besides they caught us by surprise. What we need is a plan of action. Find out their weakness and use them against them.”

  “Are you kidding?” Lauren said incredulously. “I thought it was obvious: the plan is to put as much distance between us and them as possible.”

  Everyone looked around at her in sheer disbelief.

  “Why are you all looking at me like that? We’re not cut out for this. Gargoyles, demon healthcare workers, a magic hurricane, literal zombies, and who knows what else! I refuse to take part in this any longer.”

  “We can’t run from it, that’s the problem,” Jon said. “Sytris spent years preparing safehouses for us, our parents kept us separated our whole lives, even the memories of our childhoods were wiped away, all to keep us safe, and none of it worked! There’s no running from this.”

  “If you want to spend the rest of your lives running from safehouse to safehouse when monsters inevitably come breaking down the door, that’s fine for all of you. I know I may never lead a ‘normal’ life again after all this, but at the very least I want to have a safe one. I was never cut out to be a warrior goddess.”

  She looked around at her siblings as she spoke: Tim, who looked like a child caught between arguing parents; Haley flabbergasted; Jon furious; Oscar, strangely blank.

  “What makes you think that even if you do try that, it’ll work out fine and dandy?” Jon said loudly. “The Harbingers found us not once, but twice. How could you possibly think you can run away from this?”

  “The fact that Sytris’s head is lying in a pool of blood ten feet away from the rest of him!” Lauren shrieked.

  Even as the words left her lips she felt a terrible chill run down her spine. She could tell that Jon had been waiting for her to respond so that he could hurl something savage back at her, but she pinpointed the exact moment her words fully registered in his mind and saw the understanding dawn in his eyes, saw him yank his tongue back into his mouth, which was now hanging wide open. Haley and Oscar were staring at her in utter disbelief.

  “What?” Haley said, so quietly that Lauren had to strain her ears to hear.

  Lauren’s chest was heaving. This wasn’t the way she had wanted to deliver the news. There was never going to be a right way or a right time to tell them, but if there was ever a wrong way this was easily at the bottom of the barrel.

  “What is this?” Haley demanded, and she looked around at Tim, who had suddenly developed a deep interest in the wood below their feet. “What is she talking about?”

  Tim didn’t respond, but they distinctly heard him suck in a very deep breath.

  “This is a new low, Lauren, even for you.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “If you want to run and hide like a coward, that’s your choice. But to make up something so awful, so absurd — just so you can make yourself not look as bad —”

  “It’s true,” said Tim’s soft voice. Haley froze in her tracks. Slowly she craned her head to look at him, eyes bright. His eyes were still trained on the floor.

  “No it’s not,” Jon said, shaking his head. “It can’t be true.”

  “That must be so easy for you to say,” said Lauren, her voice shaking with the weight of her anger, her grief. “Seeing as you weren’t the one who had to watch it happen. Goddess of Memory, remember? While you were off playing hero with barnyard animals trying to save the forest, I had relive the whole thing. The torture, him refusing to tell them anything, and Erymithia lopping his head off with her scythe. So believe it, don’t believe it — it doesn’t matter. If you want to follow his lead that’s your business, but I won’t.” She turned and strode straight through the door, slamming it behind her.