I breathe and focus on the physical. The salt air stings after the sweetness of the island, and I inhale deeper, grateful for the sharpness. Water laps the hull in a rhythm I can count—steady and real. Then there’s Kieran’s heat signature blazing three feet to my right, fully readable for the first time since the fruit. The relief of feeling his furnace burn through my scanning again is so overwhelming my hands shake.
“Logan.” Kieran tosses his dagger and catches it in that perfect, graceful way of his. “You pulled us out of the haze, which means you didn’t eat the fruit. How did you resist it?”
Logan leans against the mast, his arms crossed. “I didn’t care about anything other than helping Jade.”
Kieran narrows his eyes, shaking his head. “That’s convenient.”
“Jade nearly killed herself summoning that storm.” Logan’s expression doesn’t waver. “I was more concerned with keeping her alive than with sampling the local cuisine.”
Jade shifts closer to Logan and touches his arm, and the rigid line of his shoulders eases a fraction.
“Logan and I had some time alone after everyone else wandered off,” she says to Kieran. “We didn’t exactly stop to have a picnic before… well, yeah, you get it.”
Kieran’s mouth tightens, but he doesn’t push further. He just stares out at the water, his dagger sheathed, his posture tense. And he must feel my attention, because he turns his head, and our eyes meet.
I look away so fast I nearly give myself whiplash.
Then, there’s movement at the tree line, and people start stepping out of the forest.
There are dozens of them, moving slow and dreamlike. Their clothes are ragged, their hair is matted, and their eyes are glazed and empty.
Kieran’s sword is drawn in less than a second, his eyes sharp. But he isn’t attacking. Not yet.
Because the people are just... standing there watching us.
“The Lotus Eaters,” I explain to the others. “They’ve been here for so long that they’ve forgotten their homes and families. They likely don’t even remember how they ended up here in the first place.”
One of them steps forward. A woman, maybe twenty, although the dress she’s wearing looks like it was stitched by hand in a style I’ve only seen in historical photographs, its color bleached to nothing by sun and salt.
“Stay,” she says, soft and coaxing. “Everything you need is here.”
Logan’s hand moves to his dagger. “We’re leaving.”
“Why leave?” She tilts her head, confused. “There’s no pain here. No loss. No grief. Only peace.”
No grief.
My eyes scan the crowd, searching every face. Most of them look around our age.
Then, I see it. On the woman’s outstretched palm, partially hidden by the fruit she’s holding, is a sigil branded onto her skin.
The mark of Blaze Academy.
“They’re witches,” I realize. “Look at their hands.”
Jade leans forward, her eyes scanning the group on the beach. “The academy sigil.”
My heart’s pounding now, my heat sensing ability stretching outward. There are forty-two distinct heat patterns, all of them running cool and slow.
These are forty-two witches who left Blaze Academy and never came back.
I start searching faces again, more frantically this time.
Please let Oliver be standing on that beach, because even with empty eyes, at least he’d be alive, and we can save him.
He’s nowhere.
Look harder,I think, and with that, I gather all the energy inside myself and throw my heat sensing abilities out to cover the island. My scanning fans across the beach and into the jungle, and I push harder and harder, examining every inch possible, searching for his signature.