I shut the journal close before Celeste had a chance to explore it further.

"Why did you do that?"

I ignored her question.

Taking the journal in hand, I motioned with my gun for her to walk back to camp. We were fifteen minutes behind schedule. A leader should never be late. My people depended on me to be their one constant, but what I found today was worth it.

The journal was real. Adaeze had said so. She made me believe, but when she died, my hopes had died with her. Now, I know that she had been right. She didn't die in vain, and knowing that changed everything.

I couldn't lead my camp to Westbank like I had planned to do—not with the journal. The danger we faced with Celeste in our group was laughable compared to what would happen to us if it leaked out that the journal was in my possession. Anuli and Jioke were strong, fierce, and loyal, but they were still too young. And what about the others, or my brother, Chika?

No, I could not jeopardize their fates.

Enyi noticed us as we edged closer into the forest where my people waited for my command. He signaled Anuli and Jioke, and then placed Emeka in charge.

We all settled in the grassland, where the tent used to be. My gun was still leveled on Celeste as I addressed Anuli and Jioke in Igbo.

"Divide the camp into three groups. Each one of you will lead a team to ani Igbo."

"We're going home?" Anuli shared a smile with Jioke. "You said we wouldn't be able to return for years. What happened?"

I motioned to Celeste. "The girl brings trouble with her. Don't apologize, Enyi." I stopped him before he could speak. "Now is not the time for platitudes. We need to act and take every precaution while doing so. That means once we leave this camp, we'll no longer be in communication with each other. We'll all take different paths, following the safe roads. I pray that we all reach ani Igbo, but I can't be sure." I paused. "Anuli, take Chika with you. I'll take the girl." I nodded toward Celeste.

"We're taking her to our headquarters?" Anuli asked.

I took a long glance at Enyi's mistake. Any chance that I would let her go died once she opened the journal. She was a complication, but now she was my complication. The only way she could go is buried six feet under ground in the ini ozu. "It wasn't my first choice, but I'm afraid it's inevitable."

"What happens once we reach ani Igbo," Jioke asked.

"We'll begin fighting in earnest. It's been three long years, and we're no closer to gaining our people's independence from Maximilian Navarie." I said. "It's time to end this."

And with the journal, we will win.

I dismissed Anuli and Jioke, and they silently took their leave. Then, I focused my attention on the girl—Celeste.

Though my eyes were on her, I spoke to Enyi. "She lied to us about the journal," I said in English for her benefit.

"I didn't—"

"The last time we spoke, we both agreed that the journal was blank, yes?"

"Yes, but—"

I cut her off. "Then, all of a sudden, you're sneaking around in my camp, trying to steal the journal away before anyone can find out. And now, I learn that the journal that you confirmed was blank has words. Do you not understand what this gun can do to your body? I only need one bullet."

Her eyes were wide. The irises were brown with a thin ring of piercing blue. Against her black hair and dark skin, they almost glowed.

Enyi was a silent presence by my side. His face showed no emotion, but I knew that underneath, he was contemplating everything I had revealed.

"I told you the truth. I found the key to the journal right before Nathaniel took me, and the first time I opened the journal was yesterday, with you. Seeing those words...the glowing. The whizzing," she said in a faraway voice. "I've never seen anything like that in my life." She ran a hand through her hair, a gesture I'd seen her do when she was frustrated.

I frowned, folding my arms and stepping back. "You spent 10,000 citz on a journal you couldn't open. Why?"

She ducked her head, not out of guilt but embarrassment. "I am the Filia Principia. I have the freedom to do as I wish."

"There was no other reason? It was a—what did you say the last time?—a whim." I watched as she nodded her head. "I don't believe that. There was something else that made the journal worth purchasing for that amount. What was it?"

"I don't have an answer for you." She wasn't telling the truth, I could tell, and besides shooting her, there was nothing I could do.

I handed the gun to Enyi, retrieved the journal, and held it in my hands. Taking the key I had stashed in my pocket, I unlocked it. I opened the front page, expecting to see the inscription, but I saw nothing. I flipped through it. All the pages were blank.

How could the words disappear into thin air?

"What happened?" Enyi asked.

"I don't know." I shook my head. "It was right here."

"We didn't use the key to open it last time," Celeste whispered.

"No, we didn't," I said. "Then, how did it unlock?"

"Go through the events one by one," Nathaniel suggested.

"Something must have triggered the journal."

Celeste spoke first. "You launched yourself at me."

"Only because you refused to give me the journal. We were on the ground. The journal was lying next to us."

"We reached for it at the same time."

"But I grabbed it first."

"And I pricked my thumb on the clasp in the process." She looked up at me slowly. "That's when the whizzing began."

"The key must be a decoy, a security measure to keep certain people out." Enyi glanced at Celeste. "When you pricked your thumb, you must have activated something to allow the journal to reveal its true self."

Celeste peered at the dried blood staining her finger. "It was my blood."

In one motion, I cut my thumb on a knife blade and allowed the blood to drop onto the clasp. Nothing happened. I wiped the knife and handed it to Enyi. He nicked his thumb, let the blood pool onto the keyhole, and waited.

Celeste didn't need me to nudge her. She swooped down to swipe the knife from Enyi, reopened the wound on her thumb, and dabbed her blood onto the gold heart.

The journal began to glow. The whizzing sound returned. Enyi jumped back, but Celeste and I leaned in. I didn't drop the journal this time. I kept it firmly within my grasp and waited until the noise subsided and the clasp returned to its original color.

I turned the cover. In sloping cursive, the inscription was there. I leafed through the pages, absorbing the expressive, manual writing of my language, Igbo.

12 Maachi 3043, the first page was dated. Seventy-two years ago. It took seventy-two years to return Onyeka's words back to her people. If only Adaeze could have lived to see this.

"That sound." I started when I heard Enyi's low voice. "I've heard it before."

"What do you mean?" I tried to catch his gaze, but his eyes firmly beheld Celeste.

"The maze," she breathed. "But how?" 

I looked between them, a frown gathering at my brow. "What maze? What are you talking about?"

Enyi snapped to attention. "I've told you about the maze, Kambili, the one the smugglers use to travel throughout the city."

"Nathaniel took me once," Celeste said. "But something went wrong, and that noise, that whizzing sound—"

"It filled the room," Enyi finished for her. "Then, the system crashed, and the lights turned off."

"Until Tristan and Liam came to fix it."

As they stared into each other's eyes, I could almost see their minds recreating that moment in the maze. I stepped back and didn't speak, allowing them to have their moment of remembrance.

Enyi took the journal from my hands. "Something about you negatively reacted to the maze and threw everything into chaos. I think that same thing is what makes the journal open when your blood makes contact with the clasp."

I turned to Celeste. "Did you prick your thumb in the maze?"

"No." She shook her head. "I didn't touch anything. I kept my hands to myself."

Crossing my arms, I leveled a look at her. "You must have done something."

She shook her head again. "Never before has anything like that ever happened to me."

"What changed?" Enyi asked.

"You," she answered, swiveling her eyes between Enyi and me. "Kambili. This camp." She backed away slowly, widening the distance between her and us until her back bumped into a thick tree trunk. She raised her hand, as if to ward herself from us. I rolled my eyes at her dramatics.

"Don't flatter yourself," I said.

"Why not? It's true, isn't it? Nathaniel was with me when the maze went awry, and it was with you that the journal opened."

She raised two fingers as she tallied the events. "How else do you explain it?"

"How do we know that the journal wouldn't have opened with just you?" I asked her. "Have you ever pricked your thumb on the clasp before?"

"No," she said, "but—"

Enyi interrupted her. "And what about the maze? I used it once before I met you, and I had no problems."

I nodded smugly as I said, "And we return to the original question: what is wrong with you?"

She wrinkled her brows, reaching for her hair, mindlessly twirling it around her fingers. But she stayed quiet.

"What about your hair?" I asked. "That's different."

"And your eyes. I've never seen brown eyes rimmed with blue," Enyi added.

"What about them?"

"It's not nor-mal." I enunciated the words.

"Then call it a birth defect because my eyes and hair have been the same since I was a child." She shrugged helplessly.

"But why?" I pressed. "I want to know what happened to you, maybe then we'll understand how the journal can open."

"I don't know. I don't have the answers."

Enyi had been silent for a while, but as the conversation lulled, he said, "Maybe something happened when you were in the Shallows. Dr. Mathers said Flora took you there when she kidnapped you, right?"

"What does that have to do with anything?" she asked.

"Those areas are still radioactive from the Old War. It's affected the air, the animals, the plants. I can't imagine what two days in that cesspool would do to a person."

"Have you been?" He never included it in his reports.

"I was making my way to Celestia, but I lost my way. I took the wrong turn but didn't know that I entered the Shallows until it was too late. If it weren't for Tristan and Liam finding me, I wouldn't have made it out. They helped me find Celestia and gain entry into the city. That was six months ago." His eyes grew wide and shadowed as he relived the memories.

"Extreme stress can cause a lack of pigmentation in hair." I remembered the tidbit from a book Adaeze had once given me to read.

But Celeste shook her head. "This can't be true. Dr. Mathers said Flora kidnapped me when I was five, but I was born with my hair and eyes."

"Are you sure?" I asked her.

"In all of my baby pictures, my hair is grey, and my eyes are rimmed blue."

Enyi's face fell. "Then I was wrong."

"Maybe you were only half wrong," I interjected. "Celeste's time in the Shallows isn't the reason for her physical appearance, fine, but it may explain everything else." Taking the journal and holding it under my arm, I said, "The others are waiting for us. We should go."

The three of us walked back to camp in a silent mob. The tension was palpable, and we all brimmed with unanswered questions we were too hesitant to ask.

Enyi clasped my hands in his and squeezed. His eyes searched mine for a moment as though was trying to divine my thoughts. There was no time for him and me to talk. There was still so much to be done before we left, so I gave him a reprieve and smiled at him the way I used to, bumping my shoulder into his, pretending as though nothing had changed.