Henry jerked up, looking around in confusion. The first thing he realized was that they were no longer over the waterway. He was still on Thanatos' back, but he could not see well enough to recognize their surroundings.

"Death," he groaned, pulling his slipping sword belt into position. "Where the hell are we? For how long have I slept?"

"A while," replied Thanatos. "We are almost back in the Dead Land."

The Dead Land? Henry stiffened and, despite the darkness, threw a glance back. "Hold on!"

Thanatos dipped out of the mound of the tunnel and into a very familiar cave. "Let me guess," he said, spreading his wings to touch down at the bank of the river where they had camped when they had seen Ripred and Twitchtip. "You are hungry?"

Still dazed from sleep and confusion, Henry slid off his back. "I . . . Hey, we are here already?"

"Yes. As you so observantly remarked before, it is not far from the waterway."

Henry took a step forward, eyeing the water. How many memories did it hold at this point? He smiled when his gaze met a cave some ten yards upstream. On a whim, he jumped the river and finally made his way over to the entrance.

You have no life. Or any idea as to how living even works. He glanced over to the corner automatically and saw the flier so vividly, as if he were really there at that moment. Then his gaze wandered to another wall, and he froze momentarily before his feet carried him in, almost on their own. He barely saw anything with only the glow of the algae, but when he stretched his hand out, he could feel them—the marks of his very first tally. It was still twenty-nine; he smiled.

"What do you hope to discover in here?" asked Thanatos from the entrance.

"The foregone past." Henry twirled around and grinned. "Do you not know where we are?"

"Our first shelter," replied the flier. "After we returned from the rat's land."

Henry nodded, stepping out of the cave again and joining him by the riverbank. "This place." Henry glanced around. "Is it not one that we always end up coming back to somehow? First, there was our first month as allies." He counted on his fingers. "Then, we returned with Platonius and Curie before we took them home. And you don't know this, but while you were imprisoned by the spinners, I camped a mere ten-minute trek from here."

Henry sat by the river and drew Mys, pointing it downstream. "Then, we briefly stayed five minutes from here before we flew for Regalia. And now," he said, raising five fingers, "we are back yet again."

"It is . . . a little like the Dead Land's core," said Thanatos after a pause. "There are resources, and it is in close proximity to almost everything that we may need or want to visit."

"Shall we name it that, then?" Henry stabbed a fish for himself to eat for breakfast, inadvertently wishing he had bread or something to balance it with. "The Core."

"If it should have a name, this one would fit perfectly."

"Then, so I declare!" exclaimed Henry, raising Mys in the air almost ceremoniously. "I dub thee—the Dead Land's Core!" He dipped the tip of his dagger into the water and sprinkled it toward the cave.

"By the power vested in you by . . . ?"

"Myself, obviously," said Henry. "I am an outcast. I need no one to vest power in me."

They laughed together, and as he ate, Henry caught himself staring at the entrance of their old cave. His emotions from then—his agitation and disappointment and all his rare moments of satisfaction—flooded him, and he looked back at Thanatos. Back then, he had thought their alliance to be one of the many disappointments of outcast life. But now?

It was anything but, he thought. It was . . . nice. But technically, it had served its purpose. Or had it? What . . . was its purpose now? Not because I require your company, but because I enjoy it, his own words surfaced, and for the very first time, Henry asked himself what they actually meant. What were they now?

To his dismay, Henry couldn't come up with a suitable term to define their relationship. They were allies. Friends? But friends were not usually as committed to each other as they were now. Because they were, Henry admitted this to himself then and there. They had established a rule to prevent it from becoming a commitment, but apparently, even your own rules were made to be broken in some cases.

It was an odd relationship; Henry nibbled on his fish mindlessly. A friendship that was an alliance, that was also a commitment, and . . . and what? He blew out a breath, frustrated that he had caught himself overthinking something again. No matter what you would call it, it was what it was.

I have no word for it because I've never had a relationship of this sort before, Henry suddenly thought. Not with anyone who was not family, even less a flier . . . who was not his bond.

Henry picked at the fish. Formerly, he would have had a word for a relationship such as this—he would have called it a bond.

But they were not bonds.

Would they even ever be?

Not now and not ever.

He bit his lip, eyeing the flier. Had he really meant that? Or had he just said it because there had been people around?

More importantly, Henry stuffed a piece of fish into his mouth—why the hell did he care again? They needed not to bond formally to have a relationship such as this. Was that not what he had said to Cevian? That his and Thanatos' lack of formal bond confirmed his own theory that bonds were overrated?

But perhaps the issue lay not with bonding in general, Henry thought. Perhaps it lay in the fact that simply going through a formal ceremony was insufficient to make someone your bond . . . Because it did not actually foster the kind of relationship that everyone spoke about when describing a bond.

This epiphany was both terrifying and enlightening, causing Henry to cease chewing for a few brief moments. Was this why not everyone had a bond? Why some looked for years, decades, to eventually find someone suitable—or not? He considered how he had never understood why this was the case before, never even given it much thought, and now he suddenly had an answer.

Then, an even more stunning thought crossed his mind: Did this also explain what had gone wrong with him and Ares?

For what felt like the first time in forever, Henry allowed himself to be taken back to a day, some half a year after his fourteenth birthday. Luxa had been only ten, four years younger than the customary age, yet they had both spoken the familiar words to their fliers on that day.

Ares the flier I bound to you.

He had said them, yet how much of it had he actually meant? Had his fourteen-year-old self even remotely comprehended what he had promised there? No, the realization slapped Henry in the face. Of course not. He had committed to something he hadn't truly understood, not in terms of what it stood for, what it entailed, or what exactly it meant to him.

Yes, he and Ares had grown decently close over time. They'd had their fun and played their troublemaker game, making themselves a pain in their caretakers' behinds in any way they could. They had flown well together—what they had never done was have a serious, personal conversation. Not because there had been nothing to talk about, but because Henry hadn't thought of Ares as someone to share those things with.

Thinking about it now, Henry realized he had crafted his own definition of what a bond was in his head—a quite absurd one when he considered it now. But, at the time, he thought he couldn't have defined a bond any differently, for it had been the only kind of bond he'd ever had.

He may have looked at Luxa and Aurora, Henry thought. At them, as the only piece of evidence that had contradicted his blissfully wrong definition and understanding of a bond.

Had he envied Luxa for her connection with Aurora? Of course he had. He had envied her for nearly everything. It was almost absurd—in every way except biologically, she had been his sister. His youngest sister . . . whom he loved everlastingly and who also happened to have everything that he had ever wanted for himself: adulation, attention, a clear-cut destiny, the seeming inability to do any serious wrong, and a bond that was an actual bond. A little sister whom he had loved . . . and who had made his guts coil with envy during his every waking moment.

A little sister he had betrayed.

Irritated by his own inability to stop overthinking, Henry tossed the remains of the fish he had eaten into the river and forbade himself any further thoughts of Luxa. She and everyone whom he had betrayed along with her sailed the waterway without him—because they had deemed that they did not need his aid. Luxa had not even bid him farewell. But . . . Ares had.

Henry scoffed. Since when was Ares so open-minded? Was Gregor rubbing off on him already? Those two . . . He shook his head. How in the world had that even happened? The thought of those two attempting to put up with each other seemed ridiculous at first, but then he thought about Ares' newfound open-mindedness and reconsidered. Did they share anything besides that one moment when Ares had saved his life? Henry had no way of telling, but it hardly mattered.

What mattered was that he found that, as much as it amused him, it did not bother him. If Ares found that Gregor understood him better, he thought, they should have each other. It wasn't his concern.

And this was worth dwelling on because it was strange. For more than two years, Henry had presumed that he would spend his life at Ares' side, and now that the flier had made this same commitment to another, he found that he couldn't care less.

But even if it was technically worth dwelling on, Henry quickly found it was a waste of his time anyway because he had no explanation.

So, Henry eventually forced himself back into the here and now and found that Thanatos had fallen asleep on the riverbank, exactly where he had landed. Bemusedly, Henry inspected him for a moment and then scooted back until he could sit more comfortably by leaning on the wall. Even in an evidently safe place such as the Core, it was wiser to keep watch.

***

"We could stay here awhile again."

Henry—in the middle of packing away the torch he had used to grill breakfast—raised his gaze at Thanatos. The flier had slept only for a few hours, but he had woken up with an enormous appetite. "Here? Well," Henry shrugged. "It is a good place."

"Safe and surprisingly remote." Thanatos leaped across the river and stretched his wings.

"Yes." Henry tossed the device to make the torch stand into his backpack and grinned toward their old cave. "But that is not what I meant."

"And . . . what was that?"

Henry's grin widened, and he jumped to his feet. While the flier had slept, he'd had another epiphany, and it pecked at the front of his mind, eager to finally be shared. Because this was one to share.

"This place." He slowly spun in a circle, taking in all the memories he had of this place from various stages of his exile. What had he thought before they had left, the day they had been captured? That . . . outcast life had disappointed him. Back then, Henry hadn't known what expectations it had disappointed, but . . . he was no longer disappointed. Or was he? Had life as an outcast now met whatever non-specific expectations he'd had back then?

He had . . . succeeded at it, hadn't he? He had won his challenge. He had survived, but was he living? Was he successful, as he had promised? "It's a hallmark," said Henry finally, recalling his latest epiphany. "Like, one for how far I've come. Each memory here feels like it belongs to a different version of me." One, restless and disappointed, more than ever uncertain of what he wanted. Another, elated from a victory. Another determined, on the brink of getting his footing in this new life. And now . . . Henry grinned and raised a finger. "Ha! Did you not once tell me that there is "no glory or excitement to be gained out of being an outcast"? And have you not eaten your words since?"

"I concede," said Thanatos. "If anyone could gain glory and excitement out of outcast life, it is you. Though, don't you think it would be—"

Henry cut him off. "Look, it's been a measly half a year, and here I am!" He laughed almost hysterically. "Back then, I worried about whether I could afford to hope to live and see the next day! I was scared of my own reflection! Imagine!"

I don't have to, he thought he heard him say silently, but Henry had no intent to stop talking.

"Not just that. I have succeeded in what I set out to do with the quest," Henry finally voiced his latest epiphany. He grinned ear to ear; his stance was more confident than it had been in a long time when the full weight of what he had accomplished over the waterway sank in. "I have proven it!" he exclaimed. "That I am more than the careless fool! The traitor! The villain! And, you know, this doesn't have to even be the end! Imagine—all we'd have to do is keep ourselves informed on what is going on, quest-wise, and we could make this a thing!"

For a moment, he saw himself—the masked guardian of the questers, appearing to their aid when he was most direly needed. Who they would revere and to whom they would display their gratitude and admiration. Who . . . may not just be not a villain, but a proper hero. "We could—!"

"Henry."

"What?!" He whipped around to the flier, hands on his hips. "You've got any objections?"

Thanatos' face was grave. "No. You've come far; there is no denying that. But . . ." He stared at Henry with concern. "You're getting ahead of yourself. They refused any further help from us. And in the end, we did very little. How can you . . . call that a success?"

"No!" cried Henry. "Did you not hear what Gregor said? Or Mareth? We saved the warrior," he said emphatically . . . desperately, doing his best to cling to his stellar mood, but it was already slipping, drowning him in the misery of disillusionment. "We did our best!" His voice cracked. "We . . . we accomplished . . . something! We must have! Who cares if they sent us away? They will remember me. They will!" He blinked the rising, frustrated tears away. "For something . . . for . . ." If they did not, it would have all been for nothing. For—

"Except they will not remember you."

"What?"

"They will remember a masked outcast," Thanatos said piteously. "But not . . . Henry."

For a moment, Henry considered whether it even mattered who they remembered him as. Before he had undertaken this mission, had he not claimed that it didn't matter? And if he could be their mysterious savior, maybe it wouldn't. Maybe—

"You're really caught up in this, aren't you?" Thanatos stared at him, still with pity, and that suddenly made Henry furious. He hadn't the right to pity him; no one did. "I know you're looking for redemption, but you also claimed you were doing this for yourself." Thanatos voiced effortlessly what Henry hadn't dared to dwell on earlier. "There's nothing to achieve with them for you. Let go."

Henry wanted to scream that Thanatos was wrong and that he had no right to pity him or call him out in such a manner. That the goal he was chasing wasn't misguided this time. But he couldn't. He had claimed to be doing this for himself, but then and there he admitted to himself that . . . it wasn't enough.

His silence apparently spoke for itself. The next emotion that flashed across Thanatos' face was the opposite of the one that had followed his announcement to pursue redemption for its own sake: disappointment.

It slapped him in the face.

"And I believed you." The flier said it like he was disappointed in himself. "I believed that you had learned. Oh, look, for once, he is not doing something for the attention, I thought to myself! Making peace with the past is one thing, but it would do you good to stop risking your life for something that is not even suitable to inflate your already oversized ego even further."

"That is not—"

"If you so desperately wish to chase success and recognition," the flier continued undauntedly, "do it somewhere where it is actually attainable. Make another of those meaningless, lofty challenges for yourself, or something. But there's no point, nothing worth risking your life for, back with them."

Henry froze with his mouth agape. "Meaningless?" he repeated slowly. Only with utmost self-control did he prevent himself from breaking with unbridled rage.

"They are," said Thanatos in a voice that had not an ounce of life. "Because no matter what you believe you have achieved, it will never actually matter to anyone. Who do you think it will matter to whether you are successful—or whether you die out here, just like every outcast who came before you?"

"No," said Henry, this time with unconcealed desperation. Then he yelled. "No! No! You—" His voice broke, and he blinked furiously to drive the tears out of his eyes. It would matter to someone. He would matter. He would, to . . . someone. He would fight until he had no ounce of life left. He would scream and struggle and dig until his hands bled so as to climb out of every imaginable ditch that he was relinquished in . . . So as to matter. Henry sunk his teeth into that thought as firmly as he could, but it slipped away from him anyway.

"We are the forgotten," said Thanatos with so much dejection that it almost smothered him. "I did not want you to be forgotten, but perhaps you and I should both stop lying to ourselves because we already are. I don't know whether to find it sad or laughable that you're so caught in a past that has forgotten you. They will not care either way; it matters jack shit what you do. So what do you still try for? How can you still keep trying?"

I try, Henry thought, gnashing his teeth. "Because it is all that I can still do!" he yelled. "So as not to end up like you! I will not be forgotten!" he screamed. "I will not—not—" Henry whipped away from him and pressed two fingers into his eye . . . hard. They came away wet, and he barely prevented a sob.

"But you already are," said Thanatos. Henry struggled so as not to let his bottomless resignation drain his last bit of resolve. "They don't remember or need you. And you may only blame yourself for that."

In two swift moves, Henry was by the riverbank again and yanked up his backpack. "Their destination is the Tankard, said Mareth? I know where that is well enough." He snorted without looking back, attempting to not think about how it would still be a hassle to find it on his own. His decision was made. "We'll see about that."

"Wait."

Henry actually spun around, believing he had misheard, at least on the part where he had thought to make out in Thanatos' voice . . . what, fear?

"Where are you going? What are you—Henry, what the hell is this?"

He blinked back at Thanatos, utterly lost on his sudden mood shift. The apathy had vanished from his eyes entirely; now, there was a type of pungent distress in his tone. But what did it matter? Henry snorted. What did anything he said matter?

For a moment, his realizations from yesterday flashed through his mind. Had he not thought they were so close they could almost be bonds? The idea had him almost laughing all of a sudden. It was odd; they argued so much, and yet . . . For a moment, he wondered what was different this time. Then he decided it didn't matter either.

"To do jack shit is where I'm going."

"Wait!" Thanatos called once more, and Henry jerked back as he was suddenly in his way. He loomed in front of Henry with spread wings; his eyes were dark amber slits, like someone had snuffed out their gleam. "You cannot . . . Go after them by yourself! You cannot do anything for them by yourself, don't you understand that?"

"Watch me."

"But why?" Thanatos asked urgently. "It will not bring you glory or recognition. It will not matter to anyone!" the flier pleaded. "If you go now, nobody will care. Nobody will want you there! There is nothing there for you to—"

"I am not obligated to explain myself to you!" Henry cut him off, screaming. "I can do what I want. We have no bonds or commitments that tie us together, isn't that what you said? So, you shall not give me orders!" The words weren't the desperate cry for an ounce of self-sufficiency that they had been last time; they were the truth.

"But why?" Thanatos repeated, agitatedly dragging his claws across the floor. "What can they still offer you that you don't have here? You have . . . Have you not made a promise? Have you not fulfilled it? So what are you searching for? What are you . . . what is it that you are still missing? Still hunting?"

"They are my family!" yelled Henry. "Mine, and not yours. They need me." He forced the words out of his mouth, even though not even he himself believed them. "This is not your business, so stay the hell out of it!"

The words tasted rotten on Henry's tongue, almost making him gag, as he searched the flier's face for a shift, a reaction of any kind. But there was none. Thanatos didn't speak, nor did he emote. He didn't move out of the way either. There was something wrong with the way he looked at him. Wouldn't he know better, he'd call it . . . despair.

Before he could look away, Thanatos' face hardened. "They need you," he repeated slowly. "They need the boy who betrayed them because he failed to claw for recognition in a socially acceptable way?"

He might as well have stabbed a knife into Henry's chest. Fresh tears welled up in his eyes. He blinked hard.

"You know what I think?" said Thanatos icily. "That you do not care about what happens to them in the slightest. All you care about is making sure they survive so that they can admire you for whatever contribution you are planning. You say that you want to be a hero, but we both know that is not what you are. You wear this mask of false pride to impress whom? Them? Or yourself? All because you fail to understand and judge where you're truly wanted and where you'd just be in the way."

Thanatos' words barely registered in his misty brain. Henry wanted nothing more than to wake up from this cruel dream . . . that was no dream at all.

A clear voice sounded from his mouth, though Henry had no recollection of thinking the words up. "I once said I enjoyed your company. Well, I changed my mind. This . . . alliance is over. It's over and done with. I already said that I don't need you anymore!"

A small part of him objected, screamed against what his mouth was saying. Because all this was . . . had to be some kind of misunderstanding. Yet it was overshadowed by his omnipotent fury.

"In fact, nobody needs you. So how about you crawl back to wherever you came from—or go to hell, really!" It was what Thanatos had said to him when they had first spoken. There was something satisfying about saying it back. Henry pushed past him toward the exit, and this time, Thanatos was not stopping him. "Not if that is what you truly think of me!" Henry yelled.

Instead of waiting for an answer, he picked up his pace until he practically vaulted down the dark tunnel. "Not if that is how it really is," Henry whispered, shutting his eyes to suppress the still-rising tears.

No, he wouldn't cry over the loss of a relationship, of which he wasn't even sure what to call it. It was not worth it. He would be fine on his own—better than before. Thanatos had only held him back recently. No more criticisms or having to explain himself. No more being treated like an inept child.

Henry wiped his face and pressed his finger into his eye until it nearly popped out of his skull. Things would be better now. That was the last thought he could conceive before the first tear escaped his angrily squinted eye.