As the Aeriemaster had bid them, Erin and Arlis left their keets in the shared apartment and went outside. Gunu and Xavara were waiting for them, standing beside their white and black griffins on the cobbled road that lead toward town. Also waiting were Kaleit and Leslyn, both looking a bit sour about that fact.

As she and Arlis reached them, Erin braced for whatever was coming.

“Koben wasn’t satisfied with the efficacy of your disciplinary assignment,” Xavara said as she stared them down, “and neither was I. Starting today, you’re all charged with thrice-weekly watch duty at the Eastern Basin.”

None of the boys said anything. Their sullen faces said enough.

“This is in addition to your regular duties,” Gunu added, “so don’t think you’re getting out of using your shovel, Erin.”

And just like that, the one positive thing she had to comfort her was gone. Erin couldn’t stop her lip from pouting, just a little. “I still don’t understand why I’m being included in this,” she muttered, just a little too loudly.

“Oh?” The Aeriemaster’s gaze hadn’t left her. “And for what reason do you think we should exempt you?”

“I didn’t really do anything,” she said, already wishing she had just stayed quiet. “Yeah, I helped let all the griffins loose, but so did the rest of the recruits. Why isn’t everyone else being punished too? Besides, I’m not the one who got up in front of everyone and announced a vote to release Wrath.” She shot a nasty look toward Kaleit, who glared and curled his lip. He probably made something up when the officials went after him, just to get her in trouble as well.

“My son never lies,” Xavara said, her voice sharp with an unspoken warning. “He said that you both came up with the idea together.”

“Yeah, but—“ Oh. It was Arlis who tattled on her. And he was right, kind of. She couldn’t really debate that one, even if she could believe he was a liar. Not when his mom was the literal general of Nilvar’s Guard.

“In any case,” Gunu sighed, massaging his forehead, “the risks you all took were not yours to take. Your recklessness did result in the wyverns’ deaths, but may have also caused also the deaths of men, women and griffins that might have lived otherwise. We’ll never know for certain, but I expect you’ll consider that, the next time you have another fool idea that you can’t leave alone.”

“Yes, sir,” Arlis said, looking at the ground.

“Right, let’s get going,” the general said, and hoisted herself up onto her black griffin.

Arlis naturally went to join his mother, while Leslyn went to the Aeriemaster. Erin took a hesitant step toward the black, but Kaleit was already halfway there. Well, that settled it.

Erin clambered up onto Sythe and found herself staring at Leslyn’s back, suddenly awkward about the necessity of finding something to hold onto during the flight. Old habits died hard when it came to moments of panic, like in the dark airlessness of that underwater cave where Coyrifan took them, but in a completely non-emergency situation, her new reality pricked and poked her like an annoying mosquito. Or five or six of them.

She tried to mimic Kaleit by holding onto the saddle as Sythe took to the air, but at that big, gut-wrenching lurch, she gasped and grabbed the back of Leslyn’s shirt with both hands, yanking him backward. That, of course, caused him to yank on the Aeriemaster, who was a little more prepared and holding tightly onto his saddle for the takeoff.

Once they’d recovered from the unexpected jerk, both of them turned disapproving looks back over their shoulders toward Erin, Leslyn’s eyes looking sharp as they ever had. She had equal urges both to glare back and to apologize to him at the same time. She did neither.

He faced forward again, and she watched the back of his head, wondering what was going on in there.

While she’d once believed she knew everything there was to know about him, the fact was, Leslyn was a complete stranger. Aside from Liren, she didn’t know what the rest of his family looked like. She didn’t know anything about where he grew up, or how. Likes or dislikes, morality, philosophical stuff, even certain details of his personality. She’d never paid attention to nor asked him about any of that, because it didn’t matter before, when she believed he was Desmond.

Even now, any thought of her uncle, good or bad, was like a a gut punch. Erin endured it, along with the fresh fear of falling as they left the ground behind. It wasn’t as bad as the first time she’d flown on a griffin, but it still took her half the trip to get used to it well enough to look anywhere but directly at Leslyn’s back.

That, of course, made it pretty much impossible to get out of her own head.

When they landed by the pond surrounded by pine trees, both the Aeriemaster and Leslyn were down from Sythe in what seemed to Erin like just an instant. Her fumbling toes and fingers still didn’t know exactly where the grips and indents in the saddle were, and she had to hang a few times to look around for some kind of support for her foot.

Why didn’t Gunu get Sythe to lay down for me? was her incredibly whiny internal complaint.

Leslyn had started to follow Gunu toward some people who sat on barrels near the water, but stopped after a pace or two. He looked back at Erin and rolled his eyes to the sky in pure exasperation, then came back to jump partway up the saddle and reach his hand up toward the struggling girl.

“I got it,” she said, loosing one hand to wave dismissively and nearly slipping in the process.

“I can see that,” came Leslyn’s dubious reply, but he let her be, dropped back to the ground, and went to join the others.

Erin groaned, leaning her forehead against the heavy leather saddle. She’d become so painfully aware of appearances now that she couldn’t even trust that it was safe to accept simple kindnesses like that.

She finally made it safely to the ground, and with a sigh, she went over to the group that had gathered by the shore of the pond. Of the people sitting on the barrels, she recognized the graying forewoman, Tanee, who’d once ridden the griffin named Flamewing. There were also two others, a man and a woman whom Erin had seen about the Aerie, but she didn’t know them.

“—hope your shift wasn’t too dull,” a smiling Gunu was saying to them. “Once again, we’re grateful for your willingness to volunteer.”

“Wasn’t dull at all,” Tanee said, returning his smile. “An honor to sit here and be entertained all day.”

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She nodded toward the water, where the pearly-skinned seabeast Imyra was already popcorning out of the water in arcs and flips even more impressive than the ones she’d been making on her first day in the pond, seemingly trying to get a good look at the newcomers without coming too far into the shallows.

The sight of the energetic little eel made Erin grin. She waved a hello, wondering if Imyra had seen it or not, and whether she remembered Erin from the day before.

“We’re not certain that she understands us,” Xavara said to the four young folks, “but we’ve instructed Imyra to hide if anyone comes to the Basin outside of scheduled shift changes, or if anything flies over. We must keep her residence here a secret, as best we can.”

“I’ll fill them in on their duties,” Tanee said, rising from her seat. She walked in front of them with a critical eye, looking them up and down like a military official examining her soldiers.

Erin watched, the dread increasing steadily as the forewoman paused in turn to stare down each of the boys, then Erin herself.

When she was satisfied with her assessment, Tanee returned to stand square in front of them, crossing her arms. “You’ll sit on these barrels for the next six hours. That’s it.”

Clearly having been expecting something more, Kaleit let out a breathy scoff.

“You don’t like it, too bad,” the forewoman said, completely unimpressed. “As the general said, we’re here to guard a secret. Nothing flashy about it, but it’s a worthy assignment.”

Arlis was already staring out toward the water, that familiar longing on his face. “Can we talk to Imyra while we’re here?”

“Of course you can. But first, let me introduce you to your partners.” Tanee walked over to the two griffins who were currently lying contentedly in the grass nearby, both wearing light, simple-looking saddles.

One of them was a tan with a black “blanket” from her head to the tip of her tail, and the other was a very dark brown whose left eye was white from blindness and the right a gorgeous, gem-like turquoise. They both seemed a bit thinner than the average griffin, and many of their feathers appeared frayed at the edges. The brown had a smattering of gray flecks in the fur on his face, concentrated around his eyes and nostrils.

“Meet Sheffa and Bright Eyes,” the forewoman said, gesturing grandly toward the pair. “Some of the oldest griffins in the Aerie, and of course retired from duty since their dear riders passed, but they’re also the gentlest, and still quite capable of something simple as carrying a few folks back home in an emergency.” She grinned as Bright Eyes nosed her elbow, and gave him a friendly pat on the cheek. “Anything happens, just hop on. They’re trained to return to the Aerie.”

She excused herself after that, tipping an imaginary hat at Gunu before heading over with the others to mount up on the officials’ griffins.

Xavara was just coming back from that direction, having been over there fetching something from her saddle packs. She went to Arlis and placed a cloth bag in his hands. “Since you’ll be missing supper at the Aerie,” she explained, then left with Gunu to return home with the volunteers.

As they walked away, Arlis opened the bag and looked inside. “There’s enough here for everyone,” he said, and handed to bag to Erin. With that, he went right down to the water’s edge to crouch and pat the water with his outstretched fingers, hoping to get Imyra’s attention, leaving Kaleit, Leslyn and Erin standing there by the barrels.

“Anything good?” Kaleit said after a long, awkward silence.

Erin looked in the bag, and her face fell just a bit further than it already had. Food fit for a king, of course. “Goat jerky and apples, and some water.”

He shook his head and walked away, heading off along the waters’ edge.

“Better than nothing, I suppose,” Leslyn said.

“’Nothing’ would be a lot easier on my jaw,” Erin sighed.

“True enough.”

And that was it. Leslyn put his hands in his pockets and scuffed the ground with a heel, while Erin stared at the contents of the bag she held like it was the most fascinating thing she’d ever seen. A few moments later, he went off in the direction opposite Kaleit, picking his way through the thick rushes that grew around the pond.

Watching him go, Erin flushed unpleasantly warm, then cold. That was just how it was, those days.

The day that he’d invited her to call him by the nickname only his brother Liren used, something fundamental changed between them. Erin had never felt comfortable calling him Leslie, and still hadn’t done so even once.

The most mortifying part of it was that, while Erin called every guy thirty or younger a boy if she thought he looked the part, she was still technically a teenager and Leslyn was a man in his early twenties. He’d put up with it, but what had he really thought of her just casually grabbing his hand and acting so familiar with him all the time, right from the moment they met?

She could practically hear Kaleit haranguing her about clinging to him so much that he assumed they’d been married. If he’d thought it looked that way, what did everyone else think of her behavior—like Koben, who knew they weren’t married?

Her dad had often quoted random proverbs like, “If it quacks like a duck…”

Once again, Erin counted herself very lucky that Kaleit didn’t care to spread rumors about her. She could have been eligible for quite a few humdingers.

She left the food on top of one of the barrels and meandered down to the pond where Arlis was. The boy had waded in midway up his thighs and was busily stirring the silty water with his arm. A greenish-yellow Imyra was coiled up like a corkscrew, riding the little vortex he’d created.

As she got closer, Erin noticed a snowing of tiny silver flashes spinning all around the baby seabeast. Those turned out to be fish, most of them no longer than a single joint of her finger. That definitely was not normal.

“Arlis, where did those fish come from?” she called, her voice taking on a slightly wigged-out pitch.

“Imyra brought them over,” he said, as matter-of-factly as if it were an everyday occurrence. “She thinks it’s more fun that way.”

“Must be nice,” Erin said, half-absently. Nice to not have to worry about anything and just have fun all the time. She stood on the shore and continued to watch the two playing, trying to empty the garbage out of her mind enough to actually take some joy in it.

When they had tired of the whirlpool game, Imyra and Arlis moved on to a new game that reminded Erin a lot of the dolphin shows they sometimes had at marine parks. The boy held out his arm for the baby beast to jump over, moving it up and down after each go, and sometimes spicing it up by holding both hands in a hoop for her to leap through.

At one point, the white creature flailed in mid-jump, bending her head and tail up so that her body bowed upward in a vague “U” shape. At the crest of Imyra’s enthusiastic leap, Erin blinked as Coyrifan’s smiling face flashed in front of her eyes, lining right up with the eel’s silvery body.

The seabeast dove under the water and didn’t come back up, even when Arlis began looking around for her, calling her name. After checking the sky for anything amiss, he waded back to the shore, giving Erin a confused look as she pointed at nothing, staring blankly out across the water. “I guess she doesn’t want to play anymore,” he said with a shrug. “I’m going to see what Leslyn’s doing.”

Boots squishing and squelching as if they held half a gallon’s worth of pondwater, Arlis trudged off through the rushes.

As soon as he was gone, Imyra’s head popped out of the cloudy water he’d stirred up on his way back, her sea green eyes focused on Erin. A moment later, the girl’s inner ears vibrated with a familiar rhythm. Imyra began swimming back and forth, fanning her “arm” fins as if she were digging at the water in front of her. She seemed to want the girl’s attention, but it appeared that she was coming no closer because of how shallow it was there.

Erin bent and pulled one shoe off, then the other. As soon as her bare feet touched the water, her ears vibrated again. Imyra began swimming faster, bobbing her head as she did so.

“All right, I’m here,” she said as soon as she was within reach of the silvery white eel. She was about as deep as Arlis had gone, the water softly lapping about just below her hips. “Do you want to play some more?”

She held out her arm, but Imyra didn’t jump. Instead, the frilly little creature sat in the water in front of her, gazing into her eyes. Erin stared back, long enough that goosebumps began to appear on her arms—and not because of the cold water.

Suddenly, she sensed someone nearby and spun around, shoving as big a splash of water as she could in that direction. The splash cascaded back down into the pond, revealing absolutely no one.

“What is going on?” she said aloud.

“…Erin? Is that you?”

She gasped and jerked backward, staring at the water below where the faint voice had come from. It was cloudy, but she could see all the way to the bottom. There was nothing there.

“…Hello?”

She jerked again. The sound had come from right in front of her face.

“Erin?”

Heaving a shuddering breath, she reached inside her shirt collar.

When her hand emerged, shaking so hard that she could barely hold onto it, she lifted her mother’s necklace so that the slowly-spinning purple heart glimmered just a few inches from her eyes.

“…Coy?”