Owen hadn't realized that he had never felt true terror until he heard the sharp, sawed-off cry of the bird and jerked his head up to see Atlas, framed in the window, snapping its neck. It was as he watched the tiny body crumple in her hands that he understood why people called it "sheer terror". The fear that started in his heart and moved through his body to pool in his feet made him feel as though the ground had bottomed out and he was on the edge of an impossibly tall precipice, about to teeter into the chasm.

Around him time slowed frame by frame, and in the brief pause Atlas took to look down at him, a hundred pin-pricks of white hot heat erupted over his body, burning all the more strongly for the cold that paralyzed him. Atlas turned away from the window, leaving behind a square of deceptively peaceful light, but Owen still couldn't seem to move. Every nerve in his body said to flee, to get as far from the funhouse as he could, but something else, another emotion, another thought, kept him suspended in that frame by frame moment.

He had seen awful things since he had come to the spirit world, but nothing had hit him so hard as watching the murder of Zabaria's messenger. Because it meant Lira was in danger. An invisible clock had started ticking in his body, lodged behind his heart. Owen knew the further it wound down, the smaller his chance of ever seeing Lira again. And if he wanted to see her again, he had to make sure Zabaria got the message Atlas was determined to erase.

Owen turned on his heel and walked between the two tents on his left to the outside ring of the carnival. He knew a bird came to Lira's window every few days, but there had to be another one of Zabaria's spirits here somewhere. Nothing so conspicuous as the tall, lithe forest women, but nothing so diminutive as the bird either. It would have to blend in. But it was only mid-Ebb and the occupancy of the carnival was sparse. A handful of spirits wandered about to the few open tents, but a quick glance was all Owen needed to know they were not Zabaria's. He peered around tent after tent as he made his way around the outskirts of the fairgrounds, trying to catch sight of anyone or anything that might know the reigning forest spirit, but hope dwindled with each stall he passed.

How can I even be sure to trust anyone I do find? he thought. Would Zabaria send another bird when the first one didn't come back? Or would she stop risking her subjects once and for all? Could he even afford to wait to see if she would send another? Could Lira? Reaching the end of the tent, Owen stopped, undecided and unsure.

What would Lira do? he wondered. He felt an ache in his chest when he realized she would have sought him out to ask his opinion only to vehemently disagree with it. He couldn't let her down now, not like this. In the distance, the peaked roof of the barn poked over the rise that hid Genzel's cabin from view, and he decided to find Jacks. He kept his pace to a brisk walk so as not to draw attention to himself and found the horse keeper in the farthest stall, brushing down a red roan mare. The horse nickered at his approach and Jacks looked up.

"What's wrong?" he asked upon seeing Owen's likely distraught face. "Lira...Atlas, she..." Owen stuttered, unsure how to explain his fractured thoughts.

Jacks got to his feet, clenching the horse brush. "What happened?" he demanded. "Start at the beginning."

Owen mentally backpedaled and attempted to explain what Vivian had told him, how he had gone to find Lira only to witness Atlas crush the small bird, and what he now feared of Lira's fate.

Jacks' mouth went thinner and thinner until tendons strained along his jaw. "We need to get a message to Zabaria. Now."

"I can't find any of her spirits," said Owen. "The bird was our chance."

"Then we wait until Flow for another. And if it doesn't come then I'll find Zabaria myself."

"But Lira—" protested Owen.

"Will be okay for now," finished Jacks. "Bebinn needs her and she isn't easily replaced. Wherever Bebinn or Atlas have her now, she'll be okay. It's you we need to worry about."

"Me?"

"Atlas knows you know. She'll know you guessed what happened to Lira. No offense, but it's easier to replace you when Genzel is still here. You have to pretend that you are obedient, that you understand what happened to Lira, deny that you know her arrangement with Zabaria, to buy yourself more time. I don't know if she'll believe you, but we need just a little more time. Go to Genzel's, work as normal, don't be caught out alone, stay with me tonight and we'll make sure Zabaria knows what Bebinn is doing." Jacks took another long look at Owen's face and said, "The best way for you to help Lira right now is to do nothing. Trust me."

###

Lira woke in a cell, startled awake by the sound of metal ringing as it hit the stone floor. The pain in her neck and head from the jolt joined the pain already present from falling asleep propped against the damp wall. She rubbed the grit from her eyes and stared blearily out of the cell bars. Atlas stood there, her face as impassive as ever. Lira sat up straighter, mustering a glare. She hadn't seen the messenger since the girl had locked her in a closet yesterday.

At least, Lira assumed it was only yesterday. She had only slept once since she had been escorted down here and she hadn't been in the closet all that long before Bebinn had opened the door.

The witch's facial expression had been one of tight control, though strangely it contained none of the thunderous fury Lira had been expecting. Instead it was the immensely annoyed look of a parent who had lost patience with their child for the last time. She complimented it with a curt, "I'm very disappointed in you, dear. Follow me."

Still in shock from Atlas' betrayal, Lira had followed in a sort of dazed, numb state as Bebinn had led her down the now familiar stairs to the cells. With a rusty clang, she had slid an empty cell open and gestured Lira inside with all the formality of placing a child in timeout.

"We will discuss this later," she had said coldly. "I have other tasks to attend to at the moment."

Now Atlas had taken Bebinn's place, her crimson-tinged eyes glowing in the sinister manner of a predator toying with its prey in the dark. "What do you want?" snapped Lira.

Lira tried to hang onto her anger, stoke it as she would a fire. It was hard, even with seeing her friend's face on the other side of the bars, as though her body refused to believe what her mind knew: Atlas had betrayed her. Her anger beaded on her skin like sweat, in her and on her, but easily wiped away in her struggle of trying to understand and her sorrow at what their friendship had amounted to.

Atlas said nothing, only used her foot to slide a bowl of stew, placed atop the metal tray that had woken her, closer. Some of it sloshed over the sides; there was no spoon. Lira stared at the bowl, ignoring the hunger raking at her stomach, and said in a harsh, aching whisper, "Why?"

"You never do seem to tire of asking that question," said Atlas. "And even when I gave you an answer, you were never satisfied. You always wanted more."

"I thought you were my friend," said Lira. "I thought you wanted to help me."

An expression of contempt crossed Atlas' face as she looked down upon Lira. "I've done nothing but help you since you got here," she said. "And you repaid my kindness in betrayal."

Lira's mouth gaped open. "Betrayed you?" she managed to sputter. "You sold me out to Bebinn!"

"After you went behind my back to Zabaria," Atlas spat.

"I wouldn't have left you behind, Atlas" Lira whispered. "I would've taken you home."

Atlas sighed. "How many times have I told you. This is my home."

"But it doesn't have to me," protested Lira, crawling closer to the bars so she could see Atlas' face better. Her joints ached from being cramped for so long as she arranged herself in a kneeling position, palms braced on her knees. "You could go find your parents, start a new life."

Atlas laughed then, a cruel sound that someone her age shouldn't have been able to make. "You're a fool, Lira, and you always have been. Why is it do you think I've never aged in all the years you've known me?" she asked, stepping closer to the bars and wrapping her tiny hands around them.

Lira stared, trying to reconcile this new volatile little girl with the steadfast roommate she had been paired with so long ago. Years of conversation, even those she had thought long forgotten, now rose from the depths of her mind in this stark, harsh reality of a prison cell, and scrolled through Lira's mind. Piece by piece she matched up snippets of conversation, scraps of affect and tone overlaid with flashes of memory, with what she knew to be true of the spirit world. As each piece connected, it made a sharp grinding sound in her mind, like a rusted gear being forced into place. She recoiled at the conclusion it produced, shaking her head as though she could erase it from the world and therefore make it untrue.

"You can't be," she choked out. She swallowed hard and felt something cold and heavy and solid slide into her stomach. Atlas' smile grew wider until it was more of a sneer, and it was ugly on her pretty child's face. "You're already dead," Lira whispered. "Aren't you?"

The messenger leaned forward so the bars framed her narrow face. "Yes, very good."

Lira flinched again as though the words were a physical blow. Though her mind had come to this realization, it was still reeling with all that this truth changed. And it changed everything. "Why don't you look like them?" asked Lira. She made no indication with her head or hands as to whom she was referring, but Atlas knew.

"I was nine when I died. Too young for my soul to finish developing, so I retain my human form even here. And even if I hadn't, Bebinn knows enough to alter appearance. She taught me how to add the markings to my skin so that I could blend in more easily with you."

On reflex, Lira glanced down at her own hands, but it was too dark in the dungeon to see the faint lavender tracings. She looked up again as Atlas continued.

"Bebinn is far more a mother to me than my own mother ever was. And she taught me everything I needed to know to repay my father for all he did for me." Atlas bared her teeth in the approximation of a grin, the white of them glowing in the dark.

Lira closed her eyes and settled back further on her heels. Her body swayed with the loss of her sight and she feared she might tip over and not get back up. "Is Lydia dead too then?" she asked.

"No," said Atlas. "She is alive. Unlike you, she appreciates her place here."

Lira's eyes cracked open and Atlas reappeared blurry and fragmented in her half-lidded sight. The torches on the wall threw flickering shadows across her, playing tag with the red markings that cut back and forth in sharp lines across her arms, neck, and face like battle wounds.

"Why are you so angry at me for wanting to go home, Atlas?" Lira asked softly.

The other girl's eyes narrowed at her tone, and she crouched down so they were level on the damp ground. "I did everything I could to make you feel at home here. Everything. We were friends. And you still want to leave."

Lira shook her head sadly, her dirty hair falling in her face. "I've always appreciated everything you've done for me, Atlas." Atlas rolled her eyes at that and it softened her somehow, made her seem young again. "But I don't belong here. Me, Mitsi, Owen, Lydia, Jacks, we're all still alive. We belong in the human world. Maybe it doesn't make sense to you because you belong here. But what Bebinn is doing is wrong. We need to leave so she can't keep hurting other children."

"She's not hurting them," insisted Atlas. "She's helping to right some of the wrongs of the world. She's giving people a chance that was taken away from them."

"That's not Bebinn's decision to make," countered Lira. "And she's keeping them all from moving on to what might be a better afterlife."

Atlas waved her hand absently as though Lira's concern was of no more importance than a stray firefly. "Of course she's not. Lydia fixes the damage so they can move on."

"With the souls of innocent kids," snapped Lira, finally losing her patience and pushing herself to her feet. The ground swayed beneath her and pins and needles raced up and down her legs. "You have no idea what any of this does to them when you send them back. And you have poor Lydia believing she's curing 'sick kids' when she's helping carry out—" Lira cut off, gesticulating wildly but unable to think of a word terrible or big enough to encompass Bebinn's scheme.

Atlas rose slowly, brushing off what little grime her brief encounter with the ground had left on her. "This is why I never told you what happened," she said simply. "I knew you wouldn't understand. You haven't gone through what we have."

Lira crossed the cell and wrapped her hands around the bars this time, wishing she was strong enough to pull them apart. "What happened to you—both of you—was terrible and sad," Lira said. "No one should have to suffer the way you did. But it doesn't give you the right to do what you're doing."

Atlas stepped back, so she was fully in Lira's view, and pulled something from her pocket. It was a green feather, bright even in this darkness, and Lira's hold on the bars tightened until she thought the tendons in her arms would snap and her finger bones shatter. Atlas turned the feather over in her hands.

"Do you remember the bracelet I got you from Bebinn?" she asked, still studying the feather. Lira glanced down at the jade bracelet encircling her thin wrist. "It's a shame it's just a bracelet." She looked up at Lira and smiled lazily.

Cold fear coursed through Lira, turning her entire being numb and then brittle, so that now her whole body might crumble to pieces to be left in this lonely cell for eternity. She stumbled back, and her left hand scrabbled uselessly at the bracelet, trying to pull it off.

"We were never sure, you see, what caused Baleros to turn," said Atlas. The feather twirled in her fingers, over and over. "How could we give you any kind of protection if we didn't know the cause? Maybe you will turn out like him. Maybe you won't. Either way, I guess we will see."

Atlas turned and left. The feather fluttered in the wake of her departure, briefly airborne, before settling gently on the stone floor just outside of Lira's cell.

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Sorry (as always) for the wait and thank you (as always) for being so patient! I'd love to know what you think of this chapter, especially Lira and Atlas' conversation! :) Did you guess the truth about Atlas??