Evie
Starlight filters through leaves, glittering against the mossy bank where I’m lying. Water laps nearby, gentle and rhythmic. Everything feels warm and safe, like I could stay here forever and never want for anything else.
I close my eyes and sink deeper into the moss.
Logan Ashford’s face hovers above me, his gray eyes intent, yanking me up to stand before I can process what’s happening.
In a blink, Kieran’s in front of Logan, dagger in hand, fully dressed and armed.
“Don’t touch her.”
“Put that away.” Logan eyes the weapon, and Kieran extracts one of the knives holstered on his forearm, pointing it at Logan’s chest as well.
“I’ll put it away when you let her go.”
I look back and forth between them. Kieran’s skilled enough that he could easily force Logan to take his hand off me. Therefore, this must be a possessive male challenge, or whatever guys do when it comes to “claiming their territory.”
I take a deep breath of the sweet air, and as I look Kieran up and down, I want to strip those weapons off him one by one and go back to feeling his weight settling over me, his hands tracing my thighs, the maddening pressure of him right there, so close…
No. I force myself to snap out of it. Logan just said Oliver’s alive. Focus.
“Logan,” I say calmly, leveling my gaze with his. “Release me, unless you’d like to leave this island in pieces.”
Kieran raises an eyebrow at me, the start of what might be an approving smile appearing on his face, but he says nothing.
Logan releases my wrist, but his expression doesn’t soften. “Oliver’s on the boat. I found him while you were...” His gaze flicks to Kieran, then back to me. “Occupied.”
“Take me to him.” I’m already moving, the moss squelching under my bare feet as I suddenly realize that I’m only wearing my undergarments. Then I remember what almost happened in said undergarments, and then—
Kieran’s hand catches my elbow. “Evie. Think about this. We’ve been on this island for hours. No one else has arrived. He’s lying to you.”
“You don’t know that.” I pull free. “You were just as occupied as I was.”
His jaw tightens, but he doesn’t argue. “This better not be a waste of time, Ashford.”
I get dressed, and we journey to the beach in a blur of golden trees and stumbling steps. My legs don’t want to cooperate. My brain keeps trying to slip back into that warm, peaceful haze. But every time it does, I think about Oliver—or Logan reminds me about Oliver—and the fog burns away.
Eventually, the boat appears through the trees, nestled in the cove where we left it. Jade’s pacing back and forth on the deck, and Callie’s slumped against the back mast, looking half-dead.
“He’s below deck,” Logan tells us. “Come on.”
Logan wades into the water first. Kieran and I follow.
The moment I hit the water, the cold hits me, and suddenly everything’s sharper. Clearer. And the second my feet hit the deck, my heat sensing ability flares back to life.
Five signatures. Mine, of course. Jade’s pulse is faster than usual. Callie’s is weak and sluggish. Logan’s is level and intense, and Kieran’s is hot as a furnace and steady as steel.
Five. Only five.
If Oliver was below deck, I’d feel him.
I turn to Logan, dread coursing through my veins. “Where’s Oliver?”
His heat signature remains steady and controlled.
“I lied,” he says, as if he didn’t just use two simple words to shred my world to pieces. “You needed a reason that would pull you out of the lotus haze. Oliver was that reason.”
Steel whispers against leather, and Kieran’s blade is out and pressed to Logan’s throat before I can blink.
“Give me one reason not to open you from ear to ear.”
Logan doesn’t flinch. “Because it worked.”
“Kieran,” I say, although it comes out sharp and flat. “Don’t.”
He doesn’t move the blade, fire blazing in his eyes. “He used your brother as bait.”
“I know what he did.”
“Evie.” Jade takes one step forward, quiet and careful. “If he hadn’t found a way to break through—”
“I know.” The words come out hollow. “I just… wanted it to be true.”
Kieran holds for another beat. Then he withdraws the blade—not sheathing it, but lowering it to his side.
I sink down onto a bench and press my hands against my face.
I will not cry. I will not break down in front of everyone.
Eleanor wouldn’t cry. Eleanor would already be cataloguing data and forming a plan.
“I needed you off that island,” Logan says, closer now. “The lie was the fastest way.”
“I understand.” I lower my hands. “Logically, I understand. Just... give me a minute.”
He nods and steps back, moving toward Jade.
The lotus haze, I replay Logan’s words in my mind.
We’re on the Land of the Lotus Eaters.
Of course that’s where we are. Of course that’s why the fruit was so tempting. Of course that’s why I ate it and then never wanted to leave.
I breathe and focus on the physical. The salt air stings after the sweetness of the island, and I inhale deeper, grateful for the sharpness.
Water laps the hull in a rhythm I can count—steady and real.
Then there’s Kieran’s heat signature blazing three feet to my right, fully readable for the first time since the fruit.
The relief of feeling his furnace burn through my scanning again is so overwhelming my hands shake.
“Logan.” Kieran tosses his dagger and catches it in that perfect, graceful way of his. “You pulled us out of the haze, which means you didn’t eat the fruit. How did you resist it?”
Logan leans against the mast, his arms crossed. “I didn’t care about anything other than helping Jade.”
Kieran narrows his eyes, shaking his head. “That’s convenient.”
“Jade nearly killed herself summoning that storm.” Logan’s expression doesn’t waver. “I was more concerned with keeping her alive than with sampling the local cuisine.”
Jade shifts closer to Logan and touches his arm, and the rigid line of his shoulders eases a fraction.
“Logan and I had some time alone after everyone else wandered off,” she says to Kieran. “We didn’t exactly stop to have a picnic before… well, yeah, you get it.”
Kieran’s mouth tightens, but he doesn’t push further. He just stares out at the water, his dagger sheathed, his posture tense. And he must feel my attention, because he turns his head, and our eyes meet.
I look away so fast I nearly give myself whiplash.
Then, there’s movement at the tree line, and people start stepping out of the forest.
There are dozens of them, moving slow and dreamlike. Their clothes are ragged, their hair is matted, and their eyes are glazed and empty.
Kieran’s sword is drawn in less than a second, his eyes sharp. But he isn’t attacking. Not yet.
Because the people are just... standing there watching us.
“The Lotus Eaters,” I explain to the others. “They’ve been here for so long that they’ve forgotten their homes and families. They likely don’t even remember how they ended up here in the first place.”
One of them steps forward. A woman, maybe twenty, although the dress she’s wearing looks like it was stitched by hand in a style I’ve only seen in historical photographs, its color bleached to nothing by sun and salt.
“Stay,” she says, soft and coaxing. “Everything you need is here.”
Logan’s hand moves to his dagger. “We’re leaving.”
“Why leave?” She tilts her head, confused. “There’s no pain here. No loss. No grief. Only peace.”
No grief.
My eyes scan the crowd, searching every face. Most of them look around our age.
Then, I see it. On the woman’s outstretched palm, partially hidden by the fruit she’s holding, is a sigil branded onto her skin.
The mark of Blaze Academy.
“They’re witches,” I realize. “Look at their hands.”
Jade leans forward, her eyes scanning the group on the beach. “The academy sigil.”
My heart’s pounding now, my heat sensing ability stretching outward. There are forty-two distinct heat patterns, all of them running cool and slow.
These are forty-two witches who left Blaze Academy and never came back.
I start searching faces again, more frantically this time.
Please let Oliver be standing on that beach, because even with empty eyes, at least he’d be alive, and we can save him.
He’s nowhere.
Look harder, I think, and with that, I gather all the energy inside myself and throw my heat sensing abilities out to cover the island. My scanning fans across the beach and into the jungle, and I push harder and harder, examining every inch possible, searching for his signature.
It’s not there.
Either he’s somewhere else in the Lost Islands, or he’s dead. He might actually be dead, and I’ve been chasing a ghost this whole time.
Kieran sheathes his blade, apparently deciding the Lotus Eaters aren’t an immediate physical threat, the sound yanking my mind and my magic back to the beach.
“We have the same problem as we did before we got here.” He gestures at the empty barrels tipped over on the deck. “No food or water.”
My stomach chooses that moment to cramp, reminding me that I haven’t eaten anything except drugged fruit in over a day.
“According to the texts, the fruit is the only food source on the island,” I say, thinking out loud. “But we can’t eat it without falling back under the lotus’s influence.”
Callie manages to sit up and look around. “The water’s shallow enough here that we can try using our weapons to fish. As long as we stay in the water, we should be free of the lotus’s influence.”
“We still need fresh water.” Kieran calls fire to his palm— orange flames laced with veins of blue-white, like heated steel. “They’re witches, but their minds are compromised. We can try compelling them to convince them to bring us water.”
Logan nods and scans the deck. “Gather anything they can reasonably carry that can hold water.”
We scour the boat for anything that can hold liquid, finding everything from water bladders, leather flasks, an old wine skin that smells of vinegar, and even a couple of glass bottles that survived our crash landing.
“That’s everything.” Jade dumps the last of the containers onto a pile on the deck.
Logan gathers an armful of the bladders and flasks. “We’ll toss these onto the beach. They’ll fill them at the spring and bring them back to the waterline.”
Once all the supplies are nestled in the sand, Kieran wades forward until he’s standing at the water’s edge.
His flames are burning brighter and hotter, the steel in them shimmering in the moonlight.
“Immediately fill all of these with fresh water from the spring,” he says, his voice rich and musical in the way it always turns when witches use compulsion.
“Do not put any lotus in it. Then return them to us here when they’re full. ”
The woman at the front of the group blinks at him and tilts her head like a confused bird. “You should stay,” she says dreamily. “You don’t need water when you can eat the fruit.”
Kieran repeats the command, pushing harder. His heat signature strains, his temperature spikes with effort, and his flames turn blue in the center.
The Lotus Eaters just keep smiling those innocent smiles and watching us with those creepy glazed eyes.
Callie slowly pushes herself up, orange fire flaring from her fingertips.
“Let me try,” she says, and she focuses on the woman, her brow furrowed with concentration, sweat running down her face.
“Immediately fill all the containers with clean water. Don’t put any lotus in them, and bring the full containers back here straight afterward. ”
The Lotus Eaters keep standing there, holding out their golden fruit, unaffected.
Jade tries next and fails, which isn’t surprising, given that fire’s far from her specialty.
I also try and fail.
“Logan.” Jade turns to look at him. “You try.”
Logan’s eyes harden, but Jade’s gaze stays locked on his, as if they’re in a standoff. Then he nods and moves to the water’s edge, his fire igniting in his palm and burning black at the edges.
“Immediately fill all these containers with fresh water from the spring.” His voice is layered and melodic, carrying across the beach. “Do not put any lotus in it. Bring the full containers back here as soon as you’re done.”
The woman at the front of the group blinks. Then, slowly, she places the fruit she’s holding on the sand.
“Fresh water from the spring,” she says, sounding more distant than before. “Yes. We can get you water.”
She moves forward and gathers several of the bladders in her arms. The others follow suit, collecting the remaining containers before turning and walking into the forest like sleepwalkers.
Logan watches them, his expression neutral, waiting until they’re gone before turning to face us with his black-edged fire burning in his hands.
“Kieran was right. The lotus weakened their defenses.” He looks between all of us, his voice confident and calming, laced with the same melodic tone from earlier.
“It’s affecting all of you, too. Your minds are still recovering from the fruit’s influence.
That’s why your compulsion attempts failed. ”
I turn his hypothesis over in my mind.
The lotus has psychological effects. Impaired cognition would extend to weakened magical abilities, including compulsion.
The logic slots into place so neatly that the question I was forming—since emotions fuel our magic and emotions come from our souls instead of our minds, why…
A warm breeze passes by, and the thought thins and frays like smoke in the wind.
“That makes sense,” Jade says, and Callie nods, apparently also satisfied with the explanation.
Even Kieran’s posture relaxes, although his grip remains tight on the hilt of his dagger.
It makes sense. Of course it does.
I’m not sure why I thought it was worth questioning in the first place.