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She shakes her head, with a sad little smile "Who would take care of all of Ellis’s strays?"

I’d known she’d never go for it, but I had to at least ask "Okay, then, cross my heart and hope to die, I swear I will never run off with sohs tearfully at my corny rhyme

"Twelve ain I have no choice but to let her drag ives h she wants to try to stop me, but rethinks it when Glossy Woman throws her a look that could ives me an enthusiastic double thumbs-up

The wall of heat outside the oasis of the shop’s AC hits me and I suddenly feel overwhel upthat, in twelve short ood-bye to the only life I have ever known

Chapter five

HADEN

Morning has arrived by the time someone comes to fetch me I’m not surprised that it is Brimstone who finds me in the screech owl roost in the tallest tower of the palace I know she’s co out their feathers as she slinks into the rooer than the puff of fur she’d been when I rescued her from one of the owls’ clutches when she was only a few days old As a runty newborn, she’d been tossed out of the nest by her mother, left to die in the Wastelands That’s why I’d saved her--and that’s why she rarely left my side and could always find me no matter where I e’d both been rejected by the only family we’d ever really known That made us kin

Bri e

"I know," I say, stroking ry "I should have told you where I was going"

I slide one of ers over the silver bracelet she wears as a collar--trying not to think of the person it used to belong to Bri for someone I know that if Brim has found me, Dax is only a few seconds behind Not that either of them had to look that hard Dax is the one who showed me this place, back when he was still an Underlord and everyone in roup aspired to be just like him It’s the one place in the Underrealranate groves, but also the asphodel meadohich stretch for er, I used to sit up here, watching the owls fly in and out of the roost I used to stand in the stone-fra about taking flight About being free

But where would I have even gone?

There’s nothing beyond the meadows but the Wastelands The place where the shades--the souls of the dead--wander, wailing their tormented cries, as they search for a way out of that final resting place of grief and shadow

Ianymore, but it is still ings I ht need from my bedchamber for ht running through every lesson I’ve ever been taught about the Overreal the Court ate All in an attes Rowan said to h