The temperature is dropping faster than I would have thought possible, sinking degree by degree. As it falls, the wind rises. The trees around us bend and sway and creak, leaves tearing free from their branches.

I’m forced to stamp my foot over the bloody flowers so that they don’t blow away.

Aiden and Luca are rushing to make their way up the ridge to Roger and me. The wind is buffeting them, but Aiden is built like a mountain, and he's able to keep himself firmly grounded against it. He puts a hand on Luca’s back and practically shoves him the rest of the way up the boulders, where Roger catches his arm and hauls him up.

Aiden follows right behind him, then wrenches off his snapback. He stuffs it safely into his bag, where it can't blow away.

Roger and Luca have already seen the magic shining in his eyes, anyways. And we have more immediate things to worry about. The approaching storm, for example.

We’re all feeling the dramatic drop in temperature. Our breaths are frosting the air in thick white furls, everyone’s cheeks turning ruddy from the freezing wind. It’s cold, like - cold. The air feels like an ice bath against my face, my hands. Luca pulls his hood up over his hair, shivering.

I can tell from the look in Aiden’s glowing blue eyes that he wants to keep us warm, but he’s wisely decided against it. We have no idea how much energy he’ll need to expend to rescue Hayes.

Speaking of.

I aim my flashlight at my boot, then lift it so that Aiden and Luca can see what’s beneath.

“Christ,” Luca mutters, dropping to a crouch for a closer look.

“How the hell did you spot that, Jamie?” Aiden asks, shouting over the roar of the wind-rattled forest.

“Saw some of the petals blowing away,” I yell in answer, as Luca examines the crushed flowers. "Roger said that they grow around the worksite!"

Luca straightens up, his expression grave and serious. “Hayes must be bleeding pretty heavily, if this came from him!”

Aiden lets out a deep exhale, then closes his eyes for a second, focusing.

“I think," he rumbles, "I think he’s somewhere in this…”

He points his finger, moves his arm in a narrow arc. Roger checks his watch for a bearing.

“Well, that way is further up towards the worksite,” he yells, pointing to where Aiden's finger stopped. “I doubt that Hayes would start going back up, even if he was disoriented. If Jamie is right about Hayes tracking these flowers down here, then he should be at this elevation or lower, and we shouldn’t go any higher. So we should head - this way, I think!”

He points at the rightmost edge of the range Aiden indicated, then shudders as another massive sweep of wind crashes over us.

"Then let's go," Luca shouts back. "If we don't find him before that storm-"

He breaks off as the forest very suddenly grows darker around us, even darker than it was before.

I look up at the sky and see that clouds are suddenly spilling into it, hurled along by the fierce wind. Angry clouds, huge and heavy and steel-grey with impending rain. They blot out the already thin moonlight, deepening and thickening the darkness of the forest until all I can see is what’s illuminated by our flashlights, and the swirling blue light in Aiden’s eyes.

Aiden, Luca, and Roger also looked up when the moonlight went dark. Now our eyes all drop to each other, and there’s a split second of silence.

Without a word, we all spring into action, flat-out racing in the direction that Roger pointed.

We fall into a line. Aiden - by far the fastest out of all of us - ends up in the lead, with Luca right behind him. Then Roger, then me. The darkness is so complete that from a distance we must look like four points of brightness, although from up close I’m catching glimpses of Aiden and Roger as they weave through the beam of my flashlight.

Aiden’s booming voice cuts through the roar of the wind. I think he’s yelling something to us, at first, but then I realize what he's saying: Justin.

Roger, Luca, and I join in, shouting for Hayes whenever our panting breaths allow it. He doesn’t call back to us, or if he does, he’s not loud enough for us to hear him over the wind.

I hope that he can hear us, though. Regardless of whether or not we can hear him. Even the faintest trace of a voice in the distance might be enough to keep him fighting.

I’m starting to feel faint sprinkles of rain on each surging gust of wind. The dark, threatening cloudbanks haven’t unleashed on us just yet, so this must be carried from somewhere further away, where the rainfall has already begun.

But it must be getting close.

I’m sharply, painfully aware of each second ticking by, but I try to stay focused on not tripping over the uneven forest floor, on keeping my eyes roaming for a sign of Hayes, on keeping pace with the others -

Aiden suddenly crashes to a halt, breathing hard. Roger and Luca stagger to a stop behind him, but I rush forward and take his hands into mine.

“What-?” Roger begins, then stops when I hastily shake my head at him.

Aiden closes his eyes and falls silent. Stray raindrops glisten in his windblown chestnut hair and cling to his stubbled jaw. His broad shoulders are rising and falling fast with his panting breaths. His face is screwed up in concentration.

He’s listening.

He's crushing my fingers as he tries to focus, holding onto me for some kind of rooting in all the chaos. I nearly let out a yelp of pain, but I bite my lip, struggling to keep it in and hold still.

Aiden opens his eyes, and - somehow, I just know. He’s found the path that the soul note wants to take us on.

He drops my hands, and starts to run.

I’ve never seen anyone run the way that my Guardian does when somebody needs him. He’s flying.

I don’t even have to say anything to Roger and Luca. They both know that Aiden is locked on. All three of us leap into movement behind him, tearing through the forest at an all-out sprint. To my immense relief, it looks like we were already going in roughly the right direction.

The wind tears at our clothes, pushes its icy fingers through our hair, whips at our faces. The howl and roar of it through the forest is loud enough to defy belief, second only to the thundering of my heartbeat in my ears. More light, scattered droplets of rain fall onto me. They’re going fast, and so am I, and they hit me like frozen bullets.

I put the cold out of my mind and sink all of my effort into staying in movement. The black forest becomes a blur around me. As long as I have eyes on Aiden, on my Companion Plant, everything will be okay. I have to believe that everything will be okay.

Aiden has been soaring - tearing across the forest like he was shot out of a cannon - but now, very suddenly, he pulls up, skidding to a sharp stop. He flings his arms out wide and tries to yell something to the rest of us, but he’s impossible to hear over the wind.

Nobody can slow down in time to avoid impact, anyways.

Luca crashes into Aiden’s right arm, Roger into his left. I’m the only one who manages to pull up short, throwing myself backwards and then seizing Aiden’s jacket to keep myself upright.

Thank god for Aiden’s powerhouse muscles at a moment like this. Roger and Luca both hit him hard, and all three of them might have gone stumbling forward if Aiden’s arms had so much as buckled. But they didn’t, which is lucky, because -

I let out a frightened gasp, and Roger sucks in a sharp breath. He staggers backwards, dragging Aiden and Luca with him. When we’ve all regained our footing, we stand clustered together, panting, staring open-mouthed at the sight before us.

Out of nowhere, the mountain simply comes to a stop.

We’re standing at the very edge of a cliff. The forest hid it so well that we all nearly went sprinting right over it. The trees grow right up to the edge. They sway and snap behind us, leaves thrown around by the violent wind.

This side of the mountain faces its distant neighboring peak. The forested face of it is directly across from us, but the night is so dark that it’s barely discernible. It looks like there’s just nothing beyond the cliff’s edge, and that's what we almost fell into.

“Holy shit,” Luca shouts over the wind, stammering, breathing hard. “Is - is everyone okay?”

There are weak confirmations from all of us. It looks like there was one casualty: Roger’s flashlight, which must have gone sailing over the edge. But everyone is unhurt.

I lean forward so I can speak into Aiden’s ear without being overheard. “Nice save, Guardian. Three for one.”

Aiden lets out a broken, ragged laugh, but immediately grows serious again.

We all turn as one to look at the cliff. There's a silence as we all get our breaths back. And then, very slowly and carefully, we start to approach the edge.

Luca stops sharply as the glow from his flashlight falls on something. "Guys."

The rest of us turn to find a smeared, bloody handprint on the edge of the cliff. Like someone was holding onto it.

We all look at each other, then drop to a crouch. Slowly, cautiously, we lean forward and peer over the edge into the abyss below.

The cliff is a towering wall of stone rising out from the side of the mountain. It’s extremely steep and flat, but some distance down, there’s a small ledge of rock. It's four feet, maybe five feet wide. I can see that, because Roger’s flashlight landed on it.

And there, in the pool of its light, is Justin Hayes.

~~~~

“Oh, no,” I murmur, too stunned to say anything else.

Hayes is facedown, unmoving. The position of his outreaching arms tells me that he was trying to grab hold of something the whole way down.

What a terrifying descent that must have been. The cliff face as a whole is dizzyingly steep, almost vertical, but there’s a slightly more gentle slope down to the ledge, covered with a buildup of loose, crumbly rock. It’s soft enough that I can see the drag marks where Hayes must have slid down it.

A picture forms in my head. Hayes, hurt and disoriented, stumbling through the forest, looking for help. Walking right off of the cliff, which was concealed by the trees. Twisting around and trying to save himself. Losing grasp, then half-sliding, half-falling down to the ledge.

No wonder the search parties couldn’t find him. No wonder he didn’t answer anyone’s shouts, either. He was probably unconscious. It’s hard to make out too many details from here, but Roger’s flashlight is close enough to reveal Hayes’s blood-matted blonde hair.

My heart clenches in fear and distress as I realize that the ledge of rock isn’t even horizontal. It’s at a slight angle, poised to let Hayes roll right off. It’s a miracle he hasn’t rolled off already. He must be caught on something, because he’s definitely not holding himself in place. He’s utterly motionless, hasn’t even seemed to notice the flashlight on him.

“Shit,” Roger yells, his voice half torn away on the wind. “Are we too late?”

There’s still blue light glowing in Aiden’s eyes, so I know the answer. I have no idea how Luca knows, too, but somehow he does.

“Still alive!” he shouts back to Roger.

Roger pushes back and away from the cliff edge. He drops his backpack and unzips it. A fork of lightning splits the electric air, throws the twisting clouds into pale purple illumination.

Luca’s eyes are scanning Hayes, but Aiden is examining the ledge, and I’m doing the same thing. I think we’re both realizing that the ledge is overhanging… nothing. Beneath it is a free fall, a sheer drop into thousands of feet of empty air.

One of Hayes’s feet is dangling over the edge.

He looks very small and alone, down there. My heart twists horribly, and I press my fingers over my mouth.

I look up at the sky again, but I barely have to do that to confirm my fear. I can sense the impending storm in every breath I take, in the wind blasting against us. In the cold touch of the scattered droplets, each one a freezing little warning.

I reach out and scoop up a handful of the crushed rock making up the slope that curves down to the ledge. It’s little more than loose, powdery rubble. The wind blows it out of my hand in seconds.

Given all the factors, it really wouldn’t take much to send Hayes over the side, plummeting thousands of feet to his death. The minute that storm gets here…

Aiden suddenly freezes, gripping the edge of the cliff tightly. He cups one hand around his mouth, shouting down at Hayes.

“Hold still, Justin! Don’t move! HOLD STILL!”

I look sharply at Hayes, then let out a gasp. He’s lifted his head, just barely enough to look up at us.

He freezes when he hears Aiden's shouted words. Thank god. His one, very slight movement was enough to dislodge some of the crushed rock. It spills over the side of the ledge, disappears into the darkness. A chill moves through me, but it has nothing to do with the cold.

Hayes is still looking up at us. We must just look like three flashlight beams, to him.

“We’re here to help you, Justin!” Luca shouts. “It's gonna be okay, just hang in there!”

We’re too far away from Hayes to see his face, but I think I see his shoulders move in a sob.

“Jamie!” Roger tugs on the back of my jacket. I twist around to find him holding a bundle of white rescue rope. “Which tree should I tie this to?”

I get to my feet and scan my flashlight over the treeline. I start to go for the biggest and tallest, then rear to the left, towards the one I know should have the thickest, sturdiest roots.

As soon as I point to it, Roger starts looping the rope around the trunk.

“What are you gonna do?” I look at the cliff again, then spin back around to face Roger, wide-eyed with alarm. “You’re not going down there, are you?”

“You got any other suggestions?” he shouts back.

“That rock isn’t good to climb down, Roger, you could go sliding right off! The whole fucking ledge could fissure, we have no idea how stable-”

“You think Hayes can pull himself up?” Roger clips the rope into place, securing it to the tree. “Because I sure fucking don’t!”

I bite my lip, then rush over to the cliff edge to stand beside Luca. “Can he pull himself up, Luca? If we get the rope to him?”

“Fuck, no!” Luca narrows his eyes. "I think he's unconscious again!"

I can see right away that Luca is right. Hayes has dropped his head, and once again, he's motionless.

Roger grimaces, but nods, unsurprised. “Told you, Jamie! I’ve got to go down there and get him!”

“Wait - what?” Luca surges to his feet and stares at Roger, his eyes blinking hard and fast. He drops his flashlight, seizes two handfuls of Roger’s jacket. “Wait a minute - no, no no no - I should do it, okay? Not you. I’m lighter, anyways, less pressure on the rope-”

“Yeah, Luc, but you have to be able to climb back up, carrying Hayes!” Roger shouts back. “Can you do that?”

Luca definitely isn't capable of that, and neither am I. But Roger probably is.

“Roger,” Luca says desperately, his words picking up speed, “Please, please, don’t - I already almost lost you once, I can't sit by and watch you-”

He breaks off as Aiden reaches out and takes the rope out of Roger’s hands.

“It’s alright,” he says, icy blue Guardian magic shimmering in his eyes. “It has to be me, anyways.”