“We should cut off a piece,” said Thorne. “It could come in handy, especially if it’s waterproof.”

They said little as Cress guided him up the dune, the journey made difficult by the unstable ground. Thorne was awkward with the cane, trying to test the ground ahead of him without digging the tip into the hillside and stabbing himself with the other end. Finally they reached the parachute and managed to cut off a square large enough to be used as a tarp.

“Let’s head toward the mountains,” said Thorne. “It will keep us from walking directly into the sun in the morning, and with any luck they’ll offer some shelter, and maybe even water.”

Cress thought it sounded like as good a plan as any, but for the first time she noted a tinge of uncertainty in Thorne’s tone. He was just guessing. He didn’t know where they were or what direction would lead them to civilization. Every step they took could be leading them farther and farther from safety.

But a decision had to be made.

Together, they started up the next dune. The day’s heat was fading, and a mild breeze kicked sand at her shins. When they reached the top, she found herself staring into an ocean of nothingness. Night had arrived and she couldn’t even make out the mountains anymore. But as the stars grew brighter and her eyes adjusted, Cress realized that the world around her was not pitch-black but tinged with a faint silver hue.

Thorne tripped, yelping as he stumbled and collapsed onto his hands and knees. The makeshift cane was left jutting up from the sand, having narrowly missed impaling Thorne when he fell.

Gasping, Cress dropped to her knees beside him and pressed one hand against his back. “Are you all right?”

Roughly shaking her off, Thorne pushed himself back to sit on his heels. In the dim light, Cress could see that his jaw was clenched tight, his hands balled into fists.

“Captain?”

“I’m fine,” he said, an edge to his tone.

Cress hesitated, her fingers hovering over his shoulder.

She watched as his chest expanded with a slow breath, and listened to the shaky, strained exhale.

“I,” he began, speaking slowly, “am not happy with this turn of events.”

Cress bit her lip, burning with sympathy. “What can I do?”

After a moment of glaring absently toward the mountains, Thorne shook his head. “Nothing,” he said, reaching back until his arm hit the cane. He wrapped his fingers around it. “I can do this. I just need to figure it out.”

He climbed to his feet and yanked the traitorous cane out of the sand. “Actually, if you could try to give me some warning when we’re coming up on a hill, or about to start heading down again, that would help.”

“Of course. We’re almost to the top of…” She trailed off as her eyes left Thorne’s face to seek out the top of the dune and caught on the moon, a crescent glowing vivid and white off the horizon. She shriveled away from it, habit telling her to hide beneath her desk or bed until the moon couldn’t find her anymore—but there was no desk or bed to crawl beneath. And as the initial surprise wore off, she began to realize that the sight of the moon didn’t grip her with terror as it once had. From Earth, it somehow seemed so very far away. She gulped. “… almost to the top of this dune.”

Thorne quirked his head to the side. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. I just … I can see Luna. That’s all.”

She let her gaze wander away from the moon, taking in the night sky. She was tentative at first, worried that looking at the sky would once again overwhelm her, but she soon discovered that there was something comforting about seeing the same galaxy she’d always known. The same stars she’d been looking at all her life, seen through a new lens.

The tension in her body released, bit by bit. This was familiar. This was safe. The faint swirl of gasses in the universe, glowing purple and blue. The sparkle of thousands and thousands of stars, as numerous as sand grains, as breathtaking as an Earthen sunrise seen through her satellite window.

Her pulse skipped. “Wait—the constellations,” she said, spinning in a circle while Thorne brushed the sand from his knees.

“What?”

“There—there’s Pegasus, and Pisces, and—oh! It’s Andro-meda!”

“What are you … oh.” Thorne dug the cane into the sand, settling his weight against it. “For navigation.” He rubbed his jaw. “Those are all Northern Hemisphere constellations. That rules out Australia, at least.”

“Wait. Give me a minute. I can figure this out.” Cress pressed her fingers against the sides of her face, trying to picture herself looking at these same constellations, how many countless times from the windows of her satellite. She focused on Andromeda, the largest in sight, with its alpha star glowing like a beacon not far off the horizon. Where would her satellite have been in relation to Earth when she was seeing that star, at that angle?

After a moment, the constellations began to spread out like a holograph in her mind. As if she were seeing the shimmering illusion of Earth rotating slowly before her, surrounded by spaceships and satellites and stars, stars, stars …

“I think we’re in northern Africa,” she said, turning around to scan the other constellations that were emerging from the ocean of stars. “Or possibly the Commonwealth, in one of the western provinces.”

Thorne’s brow knit together. “Could be the Sahara.” His shoulders began to slump and Cress saw the moment when he realized that it made no difference what hemisphere they were in, what country. It was still a desert. They were still trapped. “We can’t stand here stargazing all night,” he said, bending down to pick up the bag of supplies and resituate it on his shoulder. “Let’s keep heading toward those mountains.”

Cress tried to offer him her elbow again, but Thorne only gave it a gentle squeeze before letting go. “Throws off my balance,” he said, testing the length of the cane so he could walk without spearing it into the ground again. “I’ll be fine.”

Burying her disappointment, Cress started up the dune. She announced the top when they reached it, and continued down the other side.

Seventeen

Scarlet was piloting the podship. She could not recall how long she had been flying it, or where she had been before, or how she had ended up behind these controls. But she knew very well why she was there.

Because she wanted to be.

Because she needed to be.

If she did well, she would be rewarded. The thought made her feel joyful. Eager. Willing.

And so she flew fast. She flew steady. She allowed the little ship to become an extension of her. Her hands gripping the controls, her fingers dancing over the instruments. She had never flown so well, not since the day her grandmother had begun teaching her in the delivery ship around the farm. How the ship had warbled under her unskilled hands. How it rocked and sank, its landing gear brushing against the just-tilled dirt, then miraculously drifted back up toward the sky as her grandmother’s patient voice talked her through the steps …

The memory disappeared as fast as it had come, snapping her back into the podship, and she could not remember what she had just been thinking. She could only think of this flight. This moment. This responsibility.

She paid no heed to the stars blurring out in all directions. She gave no thought to the planet falling farther and farther behind her.

In the ship’s backseat, the woman was hissing and cursing as she tended to her wound. She was upset, and this alone bothered Scarlet, because she wanted the woman to be pleased.

Eventually, the angry muttering died down and then the woman was talking. Scarlet’s heart fluttered, until she realized that it was not to her that the woman was speaking. Rather, she had sent out a comm. She heard two words that sent a bolt of panic through her—Your Majesty.