Aelin was driving.

  Most of the time when we drove between cities, we drove in an RV, but the two of them that we had driven to Mive weren’t available. Gesai Alard, the twenty-five-year old teacher of our secondary class, had wrecked hers while the city had been under siege. The main RV had been lost amid the chaos of the dungeon breaks and had likely been stolen by some of the adventurers that had been called in to help free the monster-ridden city. I had a feeling that if that was the case, as soon as my teacher, Trent Vowler, came looking for it, they’d surrender it very quickly.

  Which is why we were on a bus. That had been the only thing large enough to fit all fourteen of us that the kitsune God, Mive, had been able to provide for us.

  I felt bad that we hadn’t been able to do more to help the depleted God save more of his city. During the final battle to wrest control from the demons, Mive had been drained of almost all of his levels, reducing him to lower than my level of four. The Gods passively gained a portion of the experience earned in their city, so he had been higher than me once we left, but his weakened condition was something that those of us who knew were going to have to keep a secret.

  Mive wasn’t the only one who had gotten drained either. I looked over at Kara Klix. The white-haired, red-eyed, Ivory woman looked like she had just lost her best friend. She was Ether’s older sister, whom my first love had thought for the last six years had been sold off, when in reality, she had been sent to live with her grandmother, the Goddess Klix. She’d been in the fifties when she’d arrived at the city and now she was level sixteen. She was having to wear Mundane clothing because her original gear was too high level for her to wear and all of our spare stuff was way too low. The yellow shirt and jeans looked very different from her usual red armor and she stood out from the rest of us, who all had on either a blue or green jacket, to designate which team we were on.

  Gesai walked up the aisle and squatted in between the two back rows so she could look at our two unconscious passengers. The silver woman had been pacing randomly since our drive started. She seemed concerned about Trent, who had gotten stuck inside a mental trap while trying to free Astrid Harlax, the other unconscious passenger and potential new member of our team.

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  “He’s going to be fine.” I touched her shoulder as I looked back at the old man that was pretending to be my father. We weren’t certain who my father really was, though there was a strong suspicion that it was the God Nevah, who was Trent Vowler’s grandfather. Since we were supposed to be limiting the knowledge that I was a Godling to as few people as possible, the fact that I looked enough like the white-haired, brown-eyed, milky white old man helped with my cover.

  I smirked as I realized that made me my teacher’s uncle despite him being over a hundred years older than me.

  “What?” The worried woman looked over at me.

  No one except Trent and a bandit named Whisper Err, for some reason, knew that Trent wasn’t actually my father, so I couldn’t tell her what I had found humorous.

  “Just thinking about what his reaction is going to be when he wakes up.” I looked towards the front of the bus. We’d been on the road since six that morning and that was twelve hours ago. We were only a couple of hours from Klix, but most of the other students were starting to doze off.

  “Lagu’s coming up!” The busty brown driver looked over her shoulder. “We’re stopping, right?”

  The redheaded teacher paused for a second. We were only a couple of hours away from Klix, but we hadn’t stopped in Harror due to the size of the city. Lagu was a godless town, with a lot fewer people, so it’d be easier to navigate. It also didn’t have as strict of inspection policy at the wall.

  “Yes.” The silver woman stood up and turned around. “Let’s stretch our legs and find something to eat. No reason to show up at Klix on an empty stomach.”

  I felt Ether tremble next to me and grabbed her cold ivory hand in mine. I looked into her red eyes before I kissed our tank on the forehead. “It’s going to be fine.”

  The nervous woman took a slow breath as she glanced at her sister. “Yeah…”

  It’d been six years since she’d run away from Klix. I couldn’t imagine what was going through her mind. But the closer we got, the closer she was to having to face her mother, who had rejoined the Scarlets, Klix’s personal guards.

  I put my arm around her so she could lean on me as Aelin drove us up to the gate. “Don’t worry. It’ll all be fine.”

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