Gregory is another story. He urges his horse forward, ducks beneath a low-hanging oak branch, and reaches Connor’s side. “Better watch yourself,” he says quietly. “You’re in over your head here, and Logan won’t always be around to run to your rescue.”

“Then I shall endeavor to rescue myself.”

Gregory’s laugh is ugly. “You? You’re a puny excuse of a boy who has to use a big vocabulary because you don’t know how to use a sword.”

Connor abruptly reins in his horse and turns to face Gregory. His dark eyes are steady, but something burns within them. “Never mistake a man’s intellect for weakness.”

Gregory shakes his head, mutters, “Useless,” and moves on.

“Maybe if you didn’t sound like a walking library all the time, they wouldn’t keep singling you out,” Willow says as she spurs the horse she shares with Adam and moves abreast of Connor’s mount.

Connor looks at her. “Would you alter your internal composition to avoid the occasional taunt from a small-minded adversary?”

“See?” Willow frowns. “I can’t even figure out what you’re saying.”

“I’m asking if you’d change who you are in here”—he leans forward and taps her above her heart—“just because some people are incapable of understanding you.”

“He sounds like Quinn,” I say to Willow.

Her jaw flexes as she meets Connor’s gaze. “No, I wouldn’t change. And I’d make sure I knew how to defend myself with more than just words. Better yet, I’d take the fight to them.”

Connor’s expression shutters. “There will always be someone who despises me for the books I enjoy, or the clothes I wear, or the way I express my thoughts. If I took the fight to them, I’d never stop swinging.”

“Exactly.” Willow grins as if Connor has discovered the secret to a life well lived, and then she and Adam move ahead of us as we crest the final hill before reaching Hodenswald. Drake and Nola are behind us, as are Smithson, Jodi, and Peter. Frankie moves his horse to Connor’s side and looks at the boy.

“Don’t you worry about them,” Frankie says in a gruff voice. “There are two kinds of people in this world—those who are confident enough to treat others with respect and those who are miserable inside and spend their lives tearing others down because they think it will somehow make up for what they lack.”

“I’ve spent my life learning how to avoid people like them.” Connor nods toward Gregory and Orion. “It’s just a bit difficult to do so when we’re forced to endure one another’s company.”

“We’re almost to Hodenswald,” I say as my horse plods along beneath the graceful boughs of a pine tree. “You won’t have to worry about the Commander’s men much longer. Your part in the journey will be over.” I glance at Melkin’s staff, strapped to Connor’s back, and wonder how I’m going to take custody of it again without the Commander becoming suspicious.

Connor follows my gaze and sits up a little straighter in his saddle.

“You can’t carry the staff,” Connor says quietly.

“I’ll have to. If you give it to me as a parting gift—”

“Then the Commander will wait until you’re away from Hodenswald before he takes it from you by force.” Connor’s dark eyes are steady as he looks at me. “He’s bound to wonder why I would gift it to you, which means he’ll take a closer look at it and realize it’s made from the same metal as the Rowansmark device he carries.”

“I’ll carry it,” Frankie says. “Let that brute try to take it from me by force. I dare him.”

Connor smiles. “You have courage. Both of you. But I’ve observed the way the Commander and his men watch you when you aren’t looking. They’ll take the staff and the modified controller Logan is building. And then they’ll take your lives.”

“The Commander needs Logan to dismantle the beacons in the other northern city-states and work the tech once we reach Rowansmark,” Frankie says.

I meet Connor’s eyes and share a moment of perfect understanding. “The Commander will insist on observing how I shut down the beacons in Hodenswald, and he’s arrogant enough to believe he can work the tech as well as I can. Connor’s right.”

He’s right, and I don’t know what to do about it. I need Melkin’s staff. I can’t hand over the modified Rowansmark controller to the Commander without also having a secret tanniyn-controlling weapon of my own. Not that the staff does more than call the beast, but still. If I can strengthen the signal, and if there are multiple beasts lurking beneath the Wasteland, I will have a weapon capable of getting my people out of a desperate place should the situation in Rowansmark turn against us. No one, not even the Commander, would be focused on killing us if the ground was getting ready to spew multiple tanniyn.

“I’ll go with you,” Connor says, snapping me out of my thoughts.

I stare at him, at his polished boots and the white shirt he meticulously whisks with a fabric brush each night before sleep, and say the first stupid thought to come into my head. “It’s dangerous.”

His mouth tightens. “I’m aware of the danger. As are you, but that isn’t stopping you from committing yourself wholeheartedly to a task that might very well cost you your life, is it?”