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“I heard there were old smuggling routes that led to this island,” Zeke said between his teeth, “and that I could find them in a place called the Coal Quarter. So I broke into a documents office and stole the records.”

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“A documents office.” I looked at Keil and knew he’d similarly picked up on the location. A documents office had been hit during the robbery spree we’d attributed to Mara. But apparently, Zeke had been responsible for that particular theft.

“It wasn’t even hard,” he said. “There were no guards stationed there, so I walked in and out without anyone noticing.”

Keil narrowed his eyes. “That shouldn’t have been the case in the Coal Quarter.”

“Funnily enough, I didn’t think to give them security advice when I was robbing them.” He huffed a bleak laugh. “So hand me over to the authorities—I don’t care. At least if I’m locked up, she can’t get to me.”

I frowned. “Who?”

“The woman I came here to escape. The woman who found me anyway.” His voice hitched on a shaky breath. “She’s a Daradonian Hunter. Her name is Mara.”

I went rod-straight, the hairs rising on the back of my neck as the memory flashed through my mind: Mara looming above me, drawing a dagger to my lips.

Keil recovered first. “You think a Hunter journeyed all the way to Ansora to track you down?” he asked tightly.

“My uncle Cyrus told me she would come for me right before she killed him,” Zeke said, oblivious to our new tenseness.

“Your uncle was Hunted?” I asked, my voice slightly wispy.

Zeke shook his head. “He was a Wholeborn.”

“Why would a Hunter execute a Wholeborn?”

“Execute? No.” He shuddered. “Those Hunters interrogated him. They would’ve tortured me, too, if he hadn’t bought me time to run.” Something like self-loathing shadowed his expression. “And that’s exactly what I did. I ran.”

I was still fighting to smother my horror when I realized he’d said Hunters. Plural. “Mara wasn’t alone?”

“There was another woman with her. Briar.”

This name hit me harder than the first, landing with a stomach-punching sensation.

“They were searching for someone,” Zeke said, “and they were questioning my uncle about that person.”

Keil and I shared a dark glance. We’d theorized that the Hunters had been looking for me, and Zeke’s words seemed to confirm it, leaving me with a sickly, shivering feeling.

“Why did they think your uncle would have that information?” I asked.

“Because he did,” said Zeke, surprising me. I didn’t know a Cyrus.

Just as I hadn’t known the person from Lye’s account of Briar’s search.

“Amber,” I said, remembering the name. “Do you know anyone called Amber?”

“No,” Zeke said, and I felt myself growing frustrated with my own lack of understanding. How were the Hunters’ searches connected? And why did they believe that these people—Amber, Cyrus—would lead them to me?

“After I left the compound,” Zeke continued, “I started scoping out places to get dullroot on the mainland. That was when I saw Mara leaving a clinic I’d been hoping to target. And I got scared; she’d found me so quickly. I knew my best shot at escaping her would be to get to one of the islands, where I heard the security was tighter.”

“So you went after those documents,” I finished in understanding. “Do you still have them?”

He hesitated, then reached into his back pocket and slapped a wad of papers on the table. My specter flared with triumph as Keil drifted closer to inspect them.

“I thought I could barter with them if I ran out of gold,” Zeke explained, sullen.