Starsinger

Hunger

They hadn't eaten in three days.

Aaron marched behind Raelyn and Sapphire, keeping his eyes on the surrounding trees. His body battled between the painful alertness of fear and the lethargic exhaustion of hunger. Jace led the way, his movements as mechanical as the Conservatories' machines.

As soon as they were certain that Raelyn had choked up all the lake water she'd swallowed, Jace had taken inventory. In the three packs left in the cave, they had lost their tents, four rolls of bedclothes, two months' worth of dried fruit and flatbread, a wheel of hard cheese, the fake documentation approving Raelyn's scholarly mission, and the mechanical water filter that protected them from drinking strange poisons from the Wood's many rivers. Jace alone had kept his pack on throughout the ordeal. They still had the King's purse, the practice swords, their half-empty water skins, and a small cache of nuts and dried berries. It wasn't enough.

They needed supplies, and they needed them fast. Luckily their map had survived the plunge, tucked safe in a leather pouch along Aaron's belt, where it had been soaked through along with the rest of him. In some places the ink had bled and the parchment was now wavy and coarse against his fingers, but the path was still there. Jace picked out the closest village, a tiny dot nestled in the bend of a long, curving road, called Glenburrow. It was their best hope.

On the first morning after they'd left the cave, Sapphire presented them with a pouch full of purple berries. Jace's brows shot together. "You left your watch to go foraging?"

"They were close by," said Sapphire. "We need food."

"Show me where you found them."

For a moment Aaron thought the scout would refuse. Then she led Jace to a thicket a few yards away from the camp – but there were no berries on the spiny branches.

"They were here last night," she insisted. "Birds must have eaten the rest."

Jace stared at the bare branches, calculating. He had been wary of everything that grew in the Wood since the cave. "I don't like it."

"I know what brambleberries look like, Jace."

"Don't care. Leave 'em."

Sapphire's mouth spasmed with irritation. She turned her hand over and opened her palm slowly, deliberately, letting the berries fall one by one to the dirt. Jace squared his shoulders and stared back, one eyebrow raised.

Without their water filter, Jace wasn't willing to risk refilling the water skins. The striker rationed the group's remaining water mouthful by mouthful, but after three days Aaron's flask was dry as bone. When they passed other caves they could hear water running below in underground streams, but none of them dared even peek into the rocky mouths. The late summer sun was still blazing and Jace set a feverish pace. When they did stop to rest, he would sit terrifyingly still, staring at nothing as his fingers tapped a methodical pattern into the worn leather of his boots. Aaron tried not to notice the haunted look in his eyes.

Their squad had once been caught in the borderlands after the Crolls poisoned the rivers. They were stumbling for miles, starving and thirsty. Aaron knew Jace still had nightmares about it. Survival was the first priority, and their survival was at risk. Because of magic.

Jace had grown up in chaos. He didn't like to talk about it much, but by now Aaron had met his older brothers – all four of them. Jace was the runt, always caught underfoot. He liked order. Order and discipline was how he'd carved a path beyond the shadow of his brothers.

Magic was not order. Magic was the opposite of order. A trick card that threw all of Jace's carefully-laid plans into confusion and turned his strength into brittle fear.