The hotel lobby, with its painted moulding and garish wall pieces, was crowded when the twins arrived. Maebhe rounded the corner first, entering into full view of everyone milling about the front desk, then let out a yelp when Kieran yanked her back into the shadows. Maebhe whirled on him, but he held a finger to his lips. Carefully, both twins peered around the corner.

The small lobby was filled with Gallontean Police. Maebhe leaned back to ask Kieran what was happening, but her attention snapped back to the front desk at the clerk’s next words. Loud enough for his voice to carry perfectly through the narrow lobby, he said, “Room 401.”

That was their room.

Kieran’s grip on Maebhe’s arm tightened, his nails biting into skin as he pulled her further up onto the stairwell, out of sight.

“What are you going to do with them?” The clerk’s voice came again, drifting past the twins into the stairwell. The officer’s reply was garbled, but Maebhe caught “depends” and “cooperate.”

Kieran dragged her all the way back up the stairs and into their room, shutting and locking the door behind him. Pushing Maebhe out of his way, he dragged a chair over to the door, propped it up and hooked it around the door handle. Íde watched with wide eyes, frozen in the act of folding a shirt.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“The police are going to arrest us.”

“They’re what?”

“They didn’t say anything about arresting,” Maebhe said.

“You’re right. I suppose they could just be here to kill us.”

“No, I’m sure they…they just want to escort us out of the city. That would make sense,” Maebhe said.

“That’s not how war works, Mae,” Kieran said. He’d rushed over to Íde and was now helping her pack. “When you don’t know who’s a friend and who’s a foe, you lock them both up just to be safe. You don’t let them go, especially when they know things your enemies don’t. If Unity thinks a group of orinian soldiers kidnapped Nochdvor, they’re not going to let us run home to warn Orean that they’re planning a response.”

“You’re just being paranoid,” Maebhe said.

“Am I? The same thing happened in the Great War—the marionites turned on the alfar, criminalized alfar living in their city and held them in cells until the conflict between them over,” Kieran said, like he was reciting from a history book.

“But we’re not at war,” Maebhe reminded him.

“If there are really police here,” Íde interrupted, “Don’t you think we can reason with them?”

“I doubt that they’ll listen,” Kieran said, unsure.

Maebhe joined Kieran and Íde, tossing a change of clothes into her lightest bag. “We could sneak out before they get to us,” she said, as if it was really that simple. As if they weren’t on the fifth floor, the police probably coming upstairs for them at that moment.

“Excellent, Maebhe! And how, exactly, do you propose we do that?” Kieran asked.

Maebhe scowled at his tone, and all three orinians froze when someone knocked on their door, sharp and insistent.

“Too late,” Kieran said, breaking the silence.

“It’s not,” Maebhe said. She crossed to the balcony door and threw it open. Stepping onto it, she looked down, then up. They were only one floor up to the roof, and it would be an easy climb, the building’s surface all protrusive bricks and gritty columns. “This is how we sneak out.”

Kieran and Íde shared an identical look, eyebrows raised and mouths drawn into long lines. “You could, maybe,” Kieran said. “Íde and I aren’t climbers,” Kieran said.

“But you’re—,” Maebhe began, interrupted by a more insistent pound at the door.

A voice called out, and the handle jiggled. “In the name of Unity and the city of Gallontea, open up!”

“You’re orinian,” Maebhe finished, desperately. “You can climb one story.”

“Get the keys from the desk clerk,” the voice came again. The pounding continued.

Íde cast a last desperate look at the door, then nodded and joined Maebhe on the balcony, taking Kieran’s hand and pulling him along. Both made the immediate mistake of looking over the balcony rail. Kieran backed away.

“No,” he said quickly. “There must be another way. We’ll talk to them, like Íde suggested.”

They all looked back at the door as their sensitive ears picked up on the sound of keys jingling.

“What if we fall?” Kieran whined, long ears twitching back toward the sound.

Maebhe followed his gaze over the balcony ledge. “You wouldn’t die if you fell from this height.”

“Thanks, Mae! That makes me feel much better.”

“I mean it! I’ve fallen out of taller trees!”

“Yeah? You’ve also broken a lot of bones!”

“Again, but is this the time?” Íde asked. Another bang on the door, louder this time, made her jump. They were trying to break the door down.

Maebhe kicked off her shoes. “Watch me do it, and I’ll be waiting at the top to help pull you up.”

“No,” Kieran said, something in his voice making Maebhe stop what she was doing to look at him. His eyes were trained on the door. When another crash came, it was accompanied by the sound of splintering wood. “Íde’s right. There’s no time.”

“Kieran,” Íde said, “What are you planning?”

Kieran turned to look at them both, and Maebhe’s heart sank. She’d seen that expression on his face before, whenever he’d taken blame for her or caught a punishment that was meant to be hers. “You two go. Get back to Orean and tell them what’s happening. I’ll hold them off while you get away.”

“Don’t be stupid,” Íde snapped, her gentle voice harsher than Maebhe had ever heard it.

“It doesn’t make sense for all three of us to get caught.”

Another crash, more splintering wood. Kieran pulled Maebhe into a hug, startling a squeak out of her. “Go,” he breathed, then released her and kissed Íde, quick and chaste. As he pulled away, he said, “I love you. Both of you. Be safe.”

With that, he marched back into the room.

“Íde,” Maebhe prodded gently. Íde didn’t look at her, just watched Kieran go with wide eyes. “We have to go. We’ll find a way to rescue him—,”

“I won’t leave him,” Íde said, shaking herself. She turned to Maebhe and smiled, then pulled her into a hug, same as Kieran had. “Take the Adriat road home— you’ll be able to avoid Illyon that way. Don’t worry, I’ll take good care of him.”

“What—,” Maebhe began, but Íde backed into the room, shutting and locking the balcony door before Maebhe could get another word out. She tried the handle anyway, debated breaking the glass panels and marching in there, insisting that the three of them not be split up, but a final crash from inside stayed her hand.

“You fools,” Maebhe muttered, half-formed rescue plans already racing through her mind. She didn’t know how she’d pull it off, but she was resourceful.

Maebhe backed away from the balcony door, tried not to listen to the sounds coming from the other side. She clambered up onto the balcony rail and wrapped her tail around it, using the extra grip for balance. Once she was steady, she sank into a crouch and gripped the rail with all five limbs. Then, she turned slowly to face the hotel. She didn’t think about the street behind her.

She tensed, reinforcing her balance by wiggling like a cat about to pounce, and jumped to the overhang. It made a loud clanging noise when her body hit it and inside, things went quiet. As the balcony door unlocked with a click, Maebhe began to climb.

She doubted they’d follow her. She doubted they could. No Gallontean could climb like she could. Orinians might belong to the human species, but they had adaptations Unity humans did not, leftover from a time when the only escape from the large predators that roamed her Valley was up into the trees, into the mountains. Orinians had extra muscles in their legs to make jumping easier, and extra joints in their feet to help with climbing.

And Maebhe, who hunted, climbed, and explored for sport, who used these extra adaptations every day if she could help it, had no difficulty reaching the roof before the officer on the balcony even thought to look up. She hauled herself up onto the shingled surface and paused to catch her breath, peering over the edge just in time to see the officer disappear back into the room.

Only a few minutes later, the guards exited the hotel, dragging a handcuffed Kieran and Íde out with them, and Maebhe covered her mouth with her hands to keep from crying, the weight of the situation finally slamming into her. She felt as if she’d missed her earlier jump and had finally hit the ground.

While the officers shoved Íde into the back of a cab, Kieran risked a look around, eyes running along the rooftops. Maebhe risked a little wave and even from that distance, could see the tension drain out of her twin. Then, he was shoved into the cab as well, an officer climbing in behind him.

Maebhe pushed her panic away, saving it for later. When the driver spurred on the horses, she launched into motion as well. She ran along the rooftop with the speed and agility of a full-blooded orinian, always keeping her eyes on the carriage as she leapt from building to building. Once or twice, she almost slipped on dewey tiles, but she always caught herself, always kept going, even when the horses started to pull ahead.

Her path was blocked, eventually, by a building—too tall to jump to, too uneven to run across. Casting her eyes around the sides of the squat building she stood on, she spotted a fire escape and scrambled down it. From there, she continued her pursuit, but when she stepped into the street, she could no longer see the carriage. She pressed on, anyway, and managed to catch sight of it just as it turned a corner ahead.

Maebhe pushed past passersby, jumped over a stroller, and skidded to a halt once she’d turned the next corner. The carriage was too far to catch, but Maebhe could see where it was going. She watched the carriage carrying Kieran and Íde press on toward Unity Island and the realization that she was now alone in an enemy city loomed all around her.