Kaz could hardly believe his eyes when the city the druid had mentioned appeared on the horizon. They had been traveling uphill for a fairly long time, so finally reaching the top and being met with such a sight was shocking, to say the least.

The city was so much bigger than he'd imagined. It stretched over most of the coastline in front of them. There must have been hundreds of houses, but Kaz's eyes were mostly drawn to the tall towers jutting out of the mass of the city.

The city was still a few miles away, but it didn't seem that way at all. Not when looking at it from above like this. Kaz couldn't help but grin. He couldn't wait to explore it.

"This looks nearly as big as Reighir," Elaya commented, sounding taken aback. Looking at her, there was clear fascination on her face, even excitement, but there was also suspicion and wariness. Kaz understood. He knew he should feel the same way, but his own excitement was making it difficult to worry about things. Besides, as long as he looked like this, no one would be any the wiser, right? His hair was long enough that no one should notice the tips of his ears unless they were very close to him, even though he didn't have his headband anymore.

Well, it had actually been a necklace, not a headband, originally, but that wasn't important.

"No walls," Rhenor pointed out, frowning down at the city. Kaz blinked, looking back at it to confirm that Rhen was right. Nothing was separating the main part of the city and the small houses dotting its surroundings. He hadn't noticed that at all.

In Istamid, walls around cities had been there for centuries—a remnant of the time when humans still ruled their land and sometimes warred with each other. This would happen with dragons, too, but the Dragon King wouldn't allow any infighting. Kaz's theory as to why was that there was few of them as it was, and humans vastly outnumbered them because most of his peer generally liked fighting.

"This place might not be dangerous enough to have them," Elaya suggested, though her frown told Kaz that she wasn't very sure of that.

Rhen just shrugged. "I suppose little is dangerous when you have magic."

He sounded anything but happy about that very likely possibility, but Kaz was sure Rhenor would change his opinion on magic once he got used to it over time. He still suspected, though, that there was more to Rhen's dislike of it than simply seeing it as unnatural due to having no proper contact with it throughout his whole life, and being unable to use it.

Still, Kaz wasn't sure if it was his place to ask.

"They might not use magic," Elaya replied, sounding irked at the thought. "I mean, you've seen Rethan."

Kaz frowned. Throughout his short but memorable stay in Rethan, he'd not learned much about the local culture, mostly due to being stuck in a cage and unable to communicate. He knew they'd had something that stopped anyone from using magic, but he didn't actually know why, and he hadn't thought to ask. "Why did the people in Rethan not use magic?"

Elaya sighed, looking over at Kaz. "Some nonsense about people being irresponsible with it. Because supposedly the druids were, and they are the reason dragons rule Istamid."

Kaz stared at her with wide eyes, his mind reeling at the ridiculously casual statement. "What?"

Elaya's eyes softened, a flash of guilt appearing in them. "Right, we forgot to tell you."

She went on to explain to him everything they'd been told about the dragons and druids by the only man in Rethan who could use magic while Kaz just stared at her, a million questions overwhelming his brain, but the weight and shock caused by all the new information making it impossible to ask any of them.

The druids had conspired with the dragons to overthrow other druids? The idea of his ancestors working with druids in the first place seemed impossible to him, but them then betraying them to gain power was believable.

Kaz hadn't questioned much before how dragons had managed to take over Istamid because there wasn't much to question. When dragons managed to coordinate attacks, there was very little that could be done to stop them from burning down any city they set their mind to. It didn't happen often, but they were capable of it, and the humans had warred with each other often. That was what he'd been told, anyway—three centuries ago, there had been a large-scale war, and the dragons had attacked right after it had taken place while the human kingdoms had been weakened.

It made sense, but after hearing this, paired with the fact that now Kaz knew that druids actually existed, he couldn't help but question certain parts of that story. Given what they could do, how powerful they were, it was hard not to doubt the accuracy of the dragons simply striking at the right time.

He wasn't sure if he trusted the man from Rethan, but that didn't mean that what he'd been told was the truth. Because surely, if the dragons had somehow managed to defeat the druids, they would have boasted about it. The druids represented hope for the humans, yes, but that hope wouldn't burn very brightly if dragons killing them all was a fact.

"Are you okay?" Elaya asked, a grimace of concern on her face. Kaz blinked at her. He wondered how long he'd been standing there, thinking.

He nodded. "Yes, just...surprised."

Elaya flashed him a smile. "So were we. But honestly, I don't believe a word Corill said. He seemed like a hypocrite to me."

Next to her, Rhen nodded once before shaking his head. Kaz hadn't had much of a chance to make an opinion on Corill, but he was starting to think that was probably for the best if both Elaya and Rhenor didn't like him. Or maybe that was just because Kaz had gotten captured.

"How so?"

"Well, he was big on worshipping the gods, but didn't think that letting humans use magic, a gift from them, was a good idea." Elaya rolled her eyes.

"We should get going. We only have a few hours of daylight left," Rhen said, a barely-there tone of annoyance lacing his voice. He must have not liked the topic of discussion because Kaz had no idea why it mattered whether they had light or not when traveling. The island hadn't been dangerous so far, and Kaz could summon fire to light their way, anyway.

But he said none of this and just nodded, following Rhenor as he started to make his way down the very steep hill. It made Kaz wish he had his wings so that if his foot slipped he'd know he could easily stop himself from falling. But he couldn't give them to himself. Not when they were this close to the city. If someone saw, there would be no explaining it away.

Thankfully, after the initial few dozen feet, the hill evened out a bit, making the rest of the way down much less dangerous. They made their way to the tree line at the bottom, the hill making it difficult not to run down it. Since they knew the city was directly ahead, they entered the forest, continuing to head forward.

Despite all the trees and shrubbery getting in the way, it would still be less problematic to traverse than walking around and possibly losing their sense of direction. The city could have been easily spotted from above, but Kaz couldn't see it now, despite the forest not being too dense. There were more hills ahead. And he had never been good at figuring out which direction was which based on the sun, or whatever else people used. Maybe Rhen would know that, though, but Kaz wouldn't bring it up to him right now because Rhen was currently in the middle of telling Elaya what had happened in the cavern beneath Arlow.

"So let me get this straight," Elaya said once Rhenor had finished. Kaz didn't need to look at her to know she was grinning. Her amused tone was unmistakable. "Kaz told you all of that, and you still didn't think something was off about him?"

"I didn't know dragons could look this human," Rhenor defended himself while Kaz cringed. He understood why Elaya was finding this humorous, but that didn't mean he didn't still feel guilty for lying. "I have never even seen a dragon before Kaz."

"Where are you from again?"

"Mavern."

Elaya slowed down for a moment, frowning at Rhenor. "A Dragon Lord is governing that area." She then looked back at Kaz, one eyebrow raised. "Right?"

Kaz shrugged. To be honest, he hadn't kept much track of where all the Dragon Lords resided. Not that he hadn't wanted to, but it always upset him to learn about what the dragons were doing in the present, rather than what they'd done in the past. The present was all too real and uncomfortable to think about.

And besides, Istamid was under their control, whether they were present or not, so it didn't truly matter which Dragon Lord was where. But Mavern was a relatively large town if Kaz remembered correctly, so it was entirely possible.

"Not when I lived there," Rhen replied, his tone perfectly neutral, but somehow Kaz could still tell that he was annoyed. Kaz found what he'd said doubtful because Dragon Lords didn't tend to change where they lived often, and he didn't think there had been any changes in this within the last few decades, but he said none of this. He didn't want to upset Rhenor, and it didn't matter anyway. It was clear he didn't want to talk about this.

"It's not likely that Rhen would have seen a Dragon Lord, anyway," Kaz said instead, trying to get Elaya to drop the subject with a meaningful look. She briefly raised her eyebrows but turned back to pay attention to where she was going. They'd learned to communicate non-verbally years ago, mostly because Kaz's peers didn't approve of him being seen talking to humans in a respectable way so often, so the skill carried an unpleasant history with it, but Kaz was glad they could understand each other this way, anyway—it was very useful from time to time.

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"So what happened after the crystal blew up?" Elaya asked. Kaz cringed once more. That was not a great question to change the topic, though that wasn't Elaya's fault since she couldn't have known.

"A dragon burned down Arlow," Rhen replied. A moment of deathly silence filled the air. But before Kaz could panic and try to figure out what to say, Rhenor sighed and shook his head. "Everyone got away before then. It ended as well as it could have."

Kaz let out a breath. They truly needed to stop talking about dragons for a while, even in references to him. It would help with the mood and make them seem less suspicious when they entered the city.

"That's...quite the way to meet someone," Elaya said. And then she started laughing. Kaz frowned, not sure what was funny about this, but then he noticed Rhenor was smiling.

Oh, he'd found her comment amusing. His insides fluttered as a small smile appeared on his face as well. Elaya was right, though. Kaz would never forget meeting Rhenor, for more than one reason.

"Indeed it is," Rhen said, flashing Kaz a smile over his shoulder. Kaz grinned back, his cheeks heating up. His legs felt a little unsteady, too, but that was probably more from how tense he'd been until now.

Only then did Kaz realize that telling Elaya about this would likely only make her more sure that if she left they'd get in trouble immediately. What else could she think after being told that the two of them had almost died the first time they'd met? But telling her was the right thing to do, so Kaz wasn't going to worry about it.

As they exited the forest and made their way over a hill, they were met with a rolling, green plain with yellow fields in the distance, and the tallest peaks of the city beyond that. Along with the sun beating down the way it was, the distant rumble of the ocean, and the waterfall Kaz could see sparkling from the mountains on their right, it was truly beautiful.

It was no wonder humans had decided to settle here, though it begged the question of when that had happened. Kaz was assuming that the people living here were descendants of the humans who had managed to escape Istamid after dragons had taken the land over, but when he'd read about Rethan, everything about its origins had been left very vague. It was entirely possible that these humans had come here even earlier.

"There's a road," said Rhenor, pointing a little to the right. Kaz squinted into the distance, quickly noticing the long, winding line, cutting through the grass. It wasn't possible to tell if it led to the city from here, but he was sure it was. Why else would a road be here otherwise?

Deciding that using the road would be the most convenient and least suspicious option, the three of them started heading toward it. As they went, structures began to appear all around them, ranging from small houses to large farms, usually situated somewhere close to the road, but not entirely next to it. No matter the width, though, all of them were tall, at least two stories, which wasn't that common in Istamid.

Kaz wondered why that was. Perhaps there were too many people to fit into a city of this size otherwise, even though it looked massive.

As they reached the road—cobbled, Kaz noted—and started to walk down it, Kaz became very aware that they weren't the only ones currently using it. There weren't many people as far as he could see, but there were a couple, some on horses, others with carriages drawn by what looked like cows, but almost everyone was too far to properly see.

"We need to think of a cover story for us," Elaya said before Kaz could bring up the same thing. They'd discussed this a bit earlier already, but they'd only decided not to say that they'd come from Istamid, as that might make people suspicious, and it might also create questions they might not have answers to, such as how they got here in the first place. But that was about it. Hopefully, with how large the city seemed, they could blend in without having to explain themselves, but it was better to come up with something, anyway.

"We can say we came from Rethan," Kaz suggested. The obvious problem with this idea was that they didn't actually know much about Rethan, but hopefully, they'd be able to talk themselves out of that. And by they Kaz meant Rhen and Elaya because he was hopeless at talking himself out of things.

"Right, perhaps we didn't like being forced not to use magic."

Rhenor looked over at both of them. "We don't know what stance these people have on magic."

"Well, nothing is stopping me from using it," Elaya replied, shrugging. Her argument did make a lot of sense. Then again, the only reason Rethan had a field stopping magic use was because they used dragon souls to do it, so maybe these people didn't have the means to do the same thing, even if they wanted to.

But these kinds of thoughts weren't helping.

"Very well," Rhen said, turning his attention to Elaya's back instead. "And the backpack full of silver? It makes us look like thieves."

That was a good point, though Kaz wasn't sure if there was a way to explain that. Even if they told the truth, there was a huge possibility the locals wouldn't believe them, which would be understandable. If someone told him they'd stolen money from tax collectors, he probably wouldn't have believed them either.

"We hide it, and keep only a little for now," Elaya said, pointing at a grove of trees up ahead, between the road and a cliffside.

Kaz nodded. As long as no one saw them doing it, that should work. There was only one problem with this. "What about the seal on the coins?"

They all bore an image of the Dragon King's talon. There would be no explaining it away. But Elaya didn't seem worried about that.

"We can smelt the silver if needed. Let's first see how this place works, then we can figure out the details."

Kaz nodded. That sounded sensible. Elaya was always better at these sorts of things, anyway, and she'd proven it many times before. She had managed to join up with a thief group in Sigallah within a couple of weeks at most, after all.

"I am certain there will be some way to make money if we need to," Rhenor added.

Kaz was sure that was true, but he said nothing, mostly because he had little idea of how people went about finding someone to pay them or what exactly one could get paid for, which was slightly embarrassing. So far, his only proper experience with it was Rhen hunting an elk and selling its skin and meat in a village during their travel to Sigallah, and that had to be very limited exposure to the concept of earning money.

Thankfully, hiding the backpack went as smoothly as possible, with them each putting a dozen coins or so in their pockets, and afterward, Elaya using magic to move soil away from a large tree's roots enough to create a sort of pocket in the dirt to stuff the backpack into. She then covered it up again and stabbed a broken branch into the dirt next to it so they could find it easily.

Once that was done, they walked onto the road again. Kaz looked around to see if anyone could have seen what they'd just done, tensing up when he noticed a woman with a ponytail, riding on a horse toward them. She was still relatively far away, but even from here, Kaz could tell she was looking right at them.

He checked his hair, trying to push the curls down against his ears further. He was sure it was fine as it was, but he couldn't help but check anyway. If he got the chance to get something to tie over his head to keep his hair in place soon, he was going to take it, for all of their sakes. If he got too anxious, he'd just call attention to them, and that might end very badly.

He tensed up further when he felt a hand squeeze his shoulder, but he quickly relaxed when he saw it was Rhenor. Kaz took in a deep breath as they continued walking, trying to appear as unassuming as possible as the woman finally reached them.

But she didn't slow down. At first, it seemed she'd just ride her horse past them and continue down the road, wherever it led, but then she stopped, her horse coming to a halt with a snort.

"Are you new around here?" she asked, making all three of them stop. They could try to keep moving, but they were no match for a horse, so that would be pointless. So instead, they turned around to face her. Kaz looked the woman up and down, noting the strange clothing she was wearing. It looked like a blue, sleeveless robe, with a blue dark green cape over it, covering her shoulders.

Interesting. The people in Rethan had certainly not dressed this way from what Kaz had seen.

"Is it that obvious?" Elaya joked, though Kaz could hear the slight waver in her voice. Thankfully, the woman didn't seem to notice it at all.

"Well, yes. Most of the people visiting Embertide come by ship, and it doesn't happen that often."

Even though he was anxious, Kaz couldn't help but focus on the way the woman pronounced words. She seemed to stretch out each vowel a bit more than what Kaz was used to. What an interesting accent. It reminded Kaz of how one of the guards assigned to protect his family back in Reighir spoke.

Kaz tried not to let the sudden wave of sadness rushing through him show on his face. He tried not to miss the Capital too much because he could never return there, no matter what, but he couldn't help it sometimes.

"Embertide?" Rhenor repeated, looking back at the city. The woman frowned at them.

"Yes, the city you are heading to." She tilted her head. "Where are you from?"

It was getting increasingly difficult for Kaz not to let his nervousness show. Not knowing the name of the city had probably been a warning sign for the woman, as that was no doubt common knowledge in these parts. But unlike him, Elaya didn't seem at all bothered as she answered the question.

"Rethan."

The woman's face immediately softened into an expression of pity. "Oh, you poor souls."

The three of them frowned at her as the woman jumped off her horse, keeping its reins in one hand.

"I don't mean to offend, but Rethan is an awful town," she said, giving them a look of sympathy. Kaz just blinked at her. He wasn't quite so certain if the woman had truly meant no offense, though that didn't matter to him since he had no positive feelings toward the town.

"Yes," Elaya immediately agreed, her voice suddenly full of exhaustion and pain. It was a bit too sudden, but Elaya was still a much better liar than he was. If the woman had thought it odd, she didn't let it show.

"Our friend was exiled for trying to learn about magic," she continued, looking at Kaz with a grimace. Kaz nodded, ducking his gaze. He would definitely mess up if he had to talk, but he could do this much to support Elaya's improvised story. And since it was technically his fault they'd had to flee Rethan, it was easy to play along.

"We decided to leave with him, but our boat was damaged when we were close to this island, and since we couldn't leave, we decided to explore, hoping for the best."

Elaya shrugged, completing the image of hopelessness as she looked over at Kaz and Rhenor. Kaz was incredibly relieved that she'd thought to include a detail about their transportation. He would have completely forgotten to explain how they'd gotten here in the first place.

The woman shook her head, clicking her tongue. "Don't worry, you are not the first to escape that vile place, and you hopefully won't be the last. If you wish to stay, I'm sure it will be no problem."

Kaz exchanged a look with Elaya, and then Rhenor.

"Just like that?" Rhen asked, sounding somewhat suspicious. Kaz couldn't blame him—he was very confused as well. This felt far too easy.

"Unless you are dead set on causing trouble, of course," the woman joked, a small grin appearing on her face. "Now, would you like me to show you around?"

Kaz could only stare at her. Hadn't she been going somewhere when she'd run into them? He'd think that would be more important than taking a group of strangers on a tour of the city, but of course, if she was serious about it, he would be grateful. Having someone explain the basics would help them greatly, though the ease at which this whole thing was going was putting him a little on edge.

"We would hate to impose," Elaya said, clearly not sharing the same opinion as Kaz about this. Not that he was surprised by that. He'd always tended to trust people more easily than Elaya.

"Nonsense. It is no trouble at all, and it is certainly more important than what I had planned," the woman replied, waving her hand. "Now I believe introductions are in order."

They each gave the woman their names and shook her hand, Kaz sharing his name before thinking through that Kaz wasn't a common human name. If the woman had found it odd, though, there was no sign of it on her face.

"And who are you?" asked Rhen, voicing what they were no doubt all thinking. The woman smiled.

"Adria Sethin, the Mayor of Embertide."