Aliyah's POV

It was the ninth time I had turned over in my sleep, and I still could not sleep.

What Kaia had said kept replaying in my mind over and over again. It was not only her words that haunted me, but the way she had said them.

There had been no hesitation in her voice, no trace of the girl I had known these past few days. She had spoken about Lyra as though she had meant nothing to her, as though everything we had gone through together while walking through the Plains of Orion had been nothing.

As I lay there with my back against the ground,...