Arden's eyes cracked open just to close once more.

Sunlight peeked through the tight windows of the prison wagon, casting light upon the boy's firmly shut lids. He raised a nearly limp arm to shield himself from the blinding glare, yet it was abruptly tugged to the ground before it could reach his head.

He snapped one eye open. His wrist was chained to the bottom of the coach. Of course.

The carriage swayed left and right like a rocking boat, making Arden's stomach turn. Was it hunger or vertigo? His body's needs had become vague as more time passed in this cursed mission. Because it was a curse, one that would break him in the end.

The boy had never been so sure of failure. Just a few hours ago he felt alive, invincible. He had conquered his past and found purpose in the future; what more could he ask for? Yet nature was against him. He had become weaker, slower. He neglected the mission, too. What had this quest done to him? Or rather, the crew?

A groan sounded before him. He didn't bother to seem surprised as his gaze bored into Ailyn's fatigued one. The girl glanced around, taking in her environment, and slumped back down to sleep some more. Even she had accepted defeat.

But defeat could not borrow her mind yet. Arden shoved his boot against her leg. "Wake up."

Ailyn grimaced, popping her lids open to glare at the boy. "We're going to die anyway. What's the point?"

"Since when are you so quick to give up?" he queried, genuinely perplexed. The girl always tried to be positive, or at least cared. Had her physical health not been the only thing that transformed during that evening?

"Everyone has changed a little," she snapped back, averting her gaze back to the bouncing chains beside her.

Arden tried to avoid her remark. He knew he had become different, and he didn't need a petty noble to remind him. "Speaking of change," said the boy, shifting his weight to lean towards her shrunk frame. "What on earth was that?"

Ailyn pursed her lips. The boy would have been confused, too. This mission was bizarre already, but after that day's events they had turned a whole lot weirder.

The girl before him was a light manipulator. That was what he had always known. Yet when they were under attack she didn't produce light. Darkness flew out of her and soaked the room in a shadow much darker than Kage's. Arden shuddered at the thought, and the hair of his arms was hoisted up by the reminder of the shade's feel. It wasn't just immobilizing in the sense he could not see; it was a crippling kind of darkness that stifled his lungs and pricked his skin. His limbs had felt frail, and it was a miracle the Seyali soldiers ever even took them all out.

The princess dabbled with her nicked fingers. "I don't know. It cost us the battle, I know—"

"Can you do it again?"

She looked up, her eyes jaded. "I can't. I don't think I want to."

But Arden thought otherwise. She was the only one not affected by the lack of light she had created. In fact, it reinforced her, both physically and mentally. Had she not been stunned over her discovery, they would have won by a long shot. "You can try, Ailyn," he said. "We might still—"

"I said I don't want to," she hissed, rubbing her palms against her forearms. It was clear she was disturbed by her power more than anyone. "I don't want to trifle around with nature's laws. What I did back there was not light manipulation, and I don't plan to cross that line again."

"Then what was it?"

She hesitated at first. Then, she sighed. "I think —— it might have had to do with energy. Life essence."

Arden slowly breathed in. "Go on," he prodded, although he wasn't sure he wanted to hear any more of it.

"When I did that, I felt alive. The spark in my bones was overwhelming. I could have jumped through the roof if I wanted to." She cracked a small smile. "All the fatigue of the previous days was just... gone."

"Maybe you were just excited to use your power again?" he offered.

Ailyn shook her head, releasing a small laugh. It sounded like a croak, scraping her throat as it emerged from it. "That wasn't my power, Arden. I was terrified."

The boy stared at the boards of wet wood beside his feet. What was she suggesting? If it wasn't her power, then whose was it? He couldn't understand, and he didn't think he ever would. All he knew at the moment was that whatever Ailyn's power had become, however the darkness had altered it, it could be used to their advantage.

The princess frowned at his pondering stare. "I told you, I won't do it again."

"But what if it's our only chance?"

Ailyn huffed. "If that's the only option we have then—"

"Gods, could you keep it down, please?"

Arden's head snapped to the side. To his violently pumping heart's relief, Nora's weary scowl came into view. The girl wiped her red eyes as much as the chain attached to her wrist would allow. "If we're being taken to an execution site right now, why does her stupid power matter?"

Ailyn sucked in a breath. "We're being taken straight to execution?"

"No," Arden snorted.

"But we could be."

The thief threw a long glance at Nora, nodding towards Ailyn's horrified grimace. "Us three might. But her? No."

"Yeah," said the spy as she rubbed the irritated skin beneath the cuff. "What better reassurance than the promise of eternal torture next to a psychopath?"

"Don't listen to her." Arden nudged Ailyn's foot blithely. She didn't look relieved.

The coach wobbled and bounced on the rocky road as silence stretched between the three. Salo was still snoozing soundly next to Arden, and he had to nudge the sleeping boy every few minutes so he didn't completely collapse against him. He didn't like to admit it, but Nora could be right. The Seyali had no use of them anymore. Not with Ailyn alive and well.

Somehow, the thought of impending doom didn't bother Arden. It never had. A good, long rest was overdue, and he needed it now more than ever. A strange tranquility had taken over his worries, and the guilt for his past actions had fled his heart, all because of a certain factor.

But what if that factor died with him, as well?

Arden stole a glimpse at Nora. Her voice had sounded relaxed, even sarcastic. Now the spy was staring at her hands, her lower lip caught between her teeth and her chest rising and falling with a rhythm way too quick to match a tranquil heart. She hadn't accepted her destiny. She hadn't accepted death. It was clear in her narrowed eyes that she didn't want to relax; she wanted to jump up and fight for her life.

That essence contaminated Arden too suddenly for his taste. A plan started forming in his mind, the gears inside his brain rusty but sturdy. No more plans, he wanted to kindly remind himself. No more impossible ideas. Yet as he could almost visualize their escape route, it became almost too tempting to ignore.

"What do we do when we get out?" Arden asked, leaning forward and raising his brows at the fatigued figures before him.

Ailyn glared at him sternly. "You mean if we get out." She nodded towards the doors with a sour look painted on her features. "This isn't the same lock as before. It can't be picked."

Arden crossed his arms and examined the lock with a pout. "I never said we will pick it. We won't even have to touch it."

"How?" Nora released a wavering laugh. "Perhaps the gods will pity us and come to our rescue?"

"No, not gods." The boy stood, holding the side of the carriage to support his trembling legs.

"What are you doing?"

He breathed in a whiff of dusty air. What is there to lose now? With a last prayer that those bruises he was about to acquire would not be for nothing, Arden put as much distance between himself and the wall as the chains tolerated and threw himself on the steel surface.

Ailyn shrieked, her eyes darting around in panic. "What the hell are you doing?!"

He wasn't sure. The fight of the previous day — or was it longer than that? — had certainly left a mark on him, and hurling his bruised body on the side of the coach wasn't easy. Still, he stepped back, his teeth gritting tightly, and launched his shoulder back on the steel.

It swayed ever so slightly to the right. Not good enough.

"Arden," Nora said with warning in her tone. "Don't tell me you left the last of your sanity in Musha."

"That's the thing, though." The boy stepped back once more. The world was starting to spin. "We might still be in Musha."

"Why does that matter?"

Arden looked over his shoulder, rubbing the sweat off his brow and smiling a weary grin at the spy. "You don't think the resistance would leave someone like Salo out of their sight so quickly, do you?"

Nora cracked her mouth open, then zipped it shut as realization flashed in her dark eyes.

Ailyn shook her head once more, the frown never leaving her face. "You want to turn the carriage over? That's impossible!"

"That's the idea."

The boy hit the wagon one, two, three more times. The adrenaline barreling through his veins was too much to allow him the luxury of pain, yet his arm was beginning to feel numb. A few more times, he promised, and kept smashing into the metal relentlessly. Nora and Ailyn watched him closely, keeping their questions and doubts to themselves. It was better that way.

Just after the fifth hit, the wagon rolled to a stop.

Arden plunged his weight back down, panting furiously. It had to work. But what if it didn't? There's only one way to find out. Outside sounded an exasperated groan and heavy strides towards the wagon's back entrance. The light chime of keys drumming against each other made the boy glance at Nora and nod at her disbelieving smile. Yes, he wanted to say. They are this naive.

The lock released a delightful click and the doors swung open, revealing the chubby face of the driver. Deep wrinkles creased his forehead as he bent forward to look around the carriage. "What the hell is going on here?"

"The ground is too craggy," Nora replied with a shrug. "This carriage is reeling a whole lot."

"So you decided to make it reel even more?"

It was Arden's turn to raise his shoulders. "Maybe that would even out the crags."

The driver huffed, swinging the chain jingling with keys in his hand. "Why are you wasting my time?" he yelled, yet his eyes twinkled with amusement.

Ailyn cleared her throat, making Arden's brows shot up? The great princess of Seyal was participating in a scheme? "When are the crags going to be over?" she asked quietly.

It was as if a wave of kindness washed over the man's features. So the Seyali hadn't lost their faith on Ailyn, after all. "I hope soon, miss."

Arden looked over the driver's shoulder. Surely enough, he could spot a black dot in the distance, growing larger and larger by the second. Soon, the dot became a mass and the mass became a meager carriage lurching towards them.

The driver's scowl returned as quickly as it had vanished. "What are you looking at, boy?" he spat and twirled around to stare in the distance. It only took him a moment to turn back around and raise a brow at Arden, a small, arrogant smile playing at his lips. "Do you think Mushans will help you? You are prisoners of Seyal. They don't give a damn about you lowlifes."

Arden tried to stop himself, but he couldn't help but chuckle. "Not these Mushans."

The coach halted, its single horse's hooves digging into the soil and splashing mud on the surrounding ground. Ailyn audibly sipped in a breath as the driver peeked behind his shoulder.

The muzzle of a gun peered outside the derelict coach's window and lit up in a blinding flash.

Arden squinted, waiting for the bullet to drill into his stomach or crash into his skull. He was sitting in a prison wagon with the Resistance's new asset, after all, and he wasn't sure whether they would take that the wrong way or not. Yet when the driver collapsed to the ground with a scream, clutching his bloody thigh into his hands, and a blonde woman roughly a decade older than the thief jumped out of the carriage, their goal became perfectly clear.

The woman approached the wide-open doors of the wagon and, after sending the driver rolling down the road with a kick of her boot, she raised her pistol once more and fired another shot, probably at the driver's assistant. A blood-curdling scream behind Arden only confirmed that suspicion.

The boy smiled, a surge of relief rushing over him. "Now is the moment when you—"

"Silence," the woman spat and raised her weapon to aim at the center of Arden's forehead. His stomach churned violently. Had he escaped the Seyali military just to die from a rebel? "Who are you?"

With a quivering hand, he pointed a thumb over his shoulder as nonchalantly as he could. "I'm his friend."

She raised a brow. "You are the greedy ally?"

"I guess you could say that."

The woman reluctantly lowered the pistol, studying Arden through thin slits. Although she wasn't wearing that intimidating scowl anymore, her gaze was heavier than his weary self could handle. Don't be weak, he scolded. Stare right back at her. That's what you would have done in Sevin. Yet he knew he had changed, and he couldn't hide from the facts much longer. With a breath of defeat, his eyes floated to the muddy trail.

The woman visibly grinned. Maybe it was better to let her believe he was weaker than rumored. The bright smile quickly dipped into a straight line as her eyes wandered to the other prisoners in the wagon.

Ailyn still sat there, glaring at the woman with dread and distaste mixed into her emerald eyes. The rebel's lids stretched fully open, her lips parted, her body dived back in shock. Despite the attempts of her swinging hands, she toppled to the ground, spraying soil all over the team

There was no time to waste. Arden hastily wiped the mud from his eyes and fell forward. The world spun into a spiral of dull colors before his eyes. The chain prevented him from hitting the ground as well, yet it also only allowed a light brush of his fingertips against the muzzle of the pistol. Placing his foot on the metal door, the boy pushed himself as far as his bones would let him, the cuff tearing into his skin and guzzling the little drops of crimson emerging from it.

The rebel sputtered incoherent insults as she flung the dirt from her clothes. Was she referring to Ailyn? To the slippery ground? To the gods that involved her in such insanity? Before he could ponder it any further, Arden's finger curled around the weapon's trigger guard. A triumphant laugh fled his strained throat as he hooked his boot behind the entrance's hinges and hurled his weight back into the prison wagon. Adrenaline pumped furiously inside his veins as he slid as far back as Salo's body would allow and pointed the pistol at the cursing woman.

As the rebel stood and dusted herself, she glared at the boy through vicious sockets. "May I ask why you are pointing a gun at me?"

Arden raised a brow, clicking the hammer back. "I would ask you the same thing."

"Perhaps I must have introduced myself first." Unlike Arden, the woman didn't look nervous at all to be threatened with a pistol. On the contrary, she seemed annoyingly entertained. What's wrong with you? Why was this not your reaction, too? "My name is Iona Di Tord, and I am a lieutenant and training supervisor in—"

A loud yell in the distance caused the woman to pause and draw her neck up.

Nora tugged at her chain as she stood and peeked over the wagon's roof. "Reinforcements?" she offered in a hopeful tone.

Iona sucked in a controlled breath, striving to hide the bulging of her eyes. "Yes," she said somberly, unsheathing perhaps the sharpest dagger Arden had ever seen from a scabbard clinched to her thigh. And he had seen a whole lot of daggers. "But not our reinforcements."

***

Better late than never, right?

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