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I smiled back uncertainly. So far Grey’s camp had been nothing like I expected. Instead of a military barracks crossed with a prison, it felt more like a village or even an extended family, everyone working together cheerfully to keep the community functioning.
“It’s not like you expected, is it?” Grey’s ability to guess my thoughts unnerved me, but I smiled back as sweetly as I could manage, keeping silent.
“Other things aren’t like what you think either. Like that storm.”
“The storm?” I looked quickly at him, not bothering to hide my curiosity this time.
“You might have missed us if not for that storm, actually,” he said, making my shoulders tense in retrospective anxiety.
What did he mean by that? We had thought there was no hurry to find Miranda, but had we been wrong?
“You’re leaving for the island already?” I asked without thinking.
Both his eyebrows shot up. “You know about the island?”
I managed a weak smile. “I spoke to Serena. She told me she wanted to leave you because your promised new land turned out to be across the ocean.”
“You saved her?” He regarded me with fascinated, hungry eyes.
I almost corrected him—it had been the combined efforts of Hayes and Luna that had saved Serena—but I bit my tongue just in time. I was supposed to be making myself an appealing recruit, and apparently Grey wanted strong healers.
“So you spoke to Serena,” Grey murmured. “That’s how you found me, then.”
I looked away. My slip had turned out in my favor, giving him an explanation for my sudden appearance here. Serena had never made it as far as the camp, but she’d known it was on the coast of the desert.
“You’ve shown remarkable loyalty to your friend,” he said. “But then I’ve always found that those disenchanted with their homes are most interested in talk of a new home.”
I nodded slowly, easily able to acknowledge the truth of those words, even if they didn’t apply to me. My truth the night before had served me as well as my slip just now. Grey wanted to be convinced, and I had given him just enough ammunition to do it. Was this a glimpse of how he worked on others when the roles were reversed?
“Let me show you our main work here,” Grey said, gesturing toward the ocean.
I hesitated, but the whole point of my presence was to get him talking, so I followed obediently in his wake. Overnight I had been comforted by Miranda’s presence, the two of us sharing her bed before she solemnly handed possession of it over to me.
But now she was gone, and I was alone. I surreptitiously ran my hand over the closest bush, wishing I could send my power along its roots as he could apparently do. Was he listening even now?
I clung to the sense of his presence, however false it was, taking what courage I could muster from it.
“Here you are.” A note of pride entered Grey’s voice. “Isn’t she beautiful?”
I blinked at the size of the sleek wooden ship that had appeared past the screening line of trees. It was as large as the largest I had seen in Eldrida’s harbor.
“Did you build that?” I asked in astonishment, even as I watched the girl from earlier walk back down the gangplank, her arms now empty of branches.
She waved when she caught sight of me, smiling brightly as she headed back into the depths of the crevasse. Grey watched her go with an indulgent expression before looking at the ship again.
He had a warmth in his eyes when he regarded the wooden vessel that I had never seen when he looked at a human.
“We had to build her here,” he said. “That’s why preparing for this trip has taken so long, even with a team of people using their plants power to speed the work. It was the only way since the waters are too treacherous to sail up the coast from Eldrida. We can reach the island from here, but only by charting a very particular course, and only from this exact spot.”
“So there really is an island.” I gazed out at the ocean, which appeared smooth and unmarred by any other landmass. “And you’re saying it’s some sort of paradise that will provide us all with a better life?”
Grey started to nod only to stop, giving me a calculated look that I pretended not to see.
“That is part of the truth, certainly,” he said after a moment.
I turned to him. “And what’s the rest of the truth?” I asked boldly.
For a second, I was sure he meant to fob me off, but instead he looked at the people moving industriously around the ship and gestured for me to follow him. I did so cautiously, but he only led me toward the oldest of the wooden buildings, making no comment when Ember and Phoenix followed me inside.
