Chapter 83

Liam

I went west one more time on Saturday morning.

I told myself it was a patrol. Ryan knew it wasn’t, and he let me go anyway, because by now he had stopped arguing with me about it.

The ridge above the old service road was still gray with dawn when I reached it. Below, the forest stretched toward the mountains in long gray folds, and somewhere beyond the farthest of them, the ruins of the temple lay under a mountain that had finally finished falling.

I stood at the edge of the ridge and reached.

Sloane.

Nothing.

I hadn’t expected anything. I had been trying for nearly two weeks. At first every attempt had felt like shouting into a well. Now it felt like a habit, the way you check a pocket for keys you already know you