❝ Dying is simple, it all just stops. You're dead. The people around you dying, that's the hard part. 'Cause you keep living, knowing that they're gone and you're still here. What you should be scared of is living, knowing that you didn't do everything you could to keep them here. ❞ - Rosita Espinosa, The Walking Dead

I stared at Zoë's face, her familiar lopsided smile full of amusement, her bloodshot eyes no longer obscured by the length of her bangs. My heart thumped against my ribs. I expected her figure to vanish with each blink of my eyelids, as it had time and time again whenever I saw her by the fireplace in the shed, into the woods at night, waving at me from the beach. I waited, stared, blinked, heart wilding in my chest. She didn't move.

"No," I whispered. My trembling hands reached for the edges of the sink behind me. "You can't-you can't be . . . Oh, I'm losing it."

A soft laugh bubbled past Zoë's lips. It was a melodious, pleasant sound, but there was something mechanic behind it. She raised her hands in an apologetic gesture.

"Alright, I admit I shouldn't have popped up behind you like that. Not the most normal thing to do when the other person thinks you've died. I'll give you a minute."

I shook my head. It couldn't be . . . and yet it was. Zoë was standing opposite me, talking to me. Not a vision with the demonic laughter that echoed in my head, fed into my guilt and grief until I could no longer take it, then disappeared when I opened my eyes. This Zoë was corporeal and responsive. The same Zoë I'd met in Azkaban, and yet not quite.

She looked well-fed, her hair had been trimmed and re-dyed to cover up her dark roots and there was no blood on her knuckles or dirt under her fingernails anymore. Her nails were cut short and painted black, but her hands looked whiter, almost . . . lifeless. Like those of the Zoë from my dreams. Hands of a corpse.

And still, she looked beautiful. When I first met her, I wondered what she would look like outside her black and white Azkaban uniform, when her hair wasn't greasy and unkempt, and her bones weren't visible under her skin. Now that she stood in front of me, I couldn't say I was surprised. Her beauty could be seen from miles away. But it couldn't . . . she couldn't . . .

"You're alive," I breathed, first in disbelief, then awe. A sob escaped my lips. "You're alive. Oh my god. Oh my god, Zoë. You're actually alive!"

I sank to my knees and covered my mouth with both hands. Zoë looked at me in amusement, her arms folded across her chest.

"Let me know when you recover from the shock," she teased. "I wouldn't mind a hug."

A cry tore from my chest and I ran towards her with eyes full of tears.

"Whoa." She laughed as I practically threw myself at her, then wrapped her arms around me and hugged me back.

My heart was still thumping loudly in my chest. She was real. The scents of mimosa flowers and coconut wafted off her skin and hair and her arms were firm. I cried on her shoulder for what felt like hours, my fingers clutching the fabric of her shirt as she patted me on the back. I was afraid she would disappear if I pulled back. But finally, she was the one to do so. I wiped the tears away, unable to tear my gaze from her face.

"How?" I managed to ask. "How did you survive? How did you get out?"

"You're not the only cat with nine lives here." She flashed a sly grin and put her hands on my shoulders. "How about I help you fix that haircut first?"

I pushed down my curiosity and the billion questions I wanted to ask her and nodded dumbly. Zoë led me to the vanity, where I sank down on the white leather stool and watched our reflections in the circular mirror adorned with seashells. She grabbed a pair of scissors and a comb from the drawer, took a clean towel from the bathroom and wrapped it around my neck, then rolled up her sleeves.

"I'm so glad you're here," she said. "I was right about you from the beginning, chica. You're a survivor."

She parted my hair with the wide teeth side of the double-edged comb, took two curls between her fingers and snipped the ends expertly with the scissors. It was clear this wasn't her first time.

"I've been doing my own hair for as long as I can remember," she added, answering my unspoken question. "You're in the hands of a pro."

I smiled, still unable to believe my eyes. "How long have you been here, Zoë? Why haven't you tried to reach us sooner? I thought-we thought you were dead."

"You know I couldn't give this location away, right?" She snipped another long curl on the left section of my hair. "If I revealed myself, I'd have a lot of explaining to do."

"You could've just said that. A 'Hey guys, I'm alive and hiding somewhere safe, but can't tell you any more just yet' would've been enough. You don't know what it's been like ever since you-ever since I thought you were killed."

I closed my eyes. There was another snip of the scissors and I felt a curl graze the side of my neck before descending to the ground.

Zoë sighed. "It hasn't been any easier for me."

I could feel the familiar sting at the back of my throat and the prickling of tears that welled up again, so I bared my teeth to swallow them back.

"I thought I failed you."

"Oh, Polly." She chuckled softly. "You try so hard to do so much for others, you keep forgetting to look after yourself. You think I would've blamed you that you weren't able to convince Peterson? You think it was in your hand at all?"

Her scissors slid across another curl at the back of my head. I looked at her calm face and the focused, gentle movements of her fingers in the mirror. How could she look so unbothered? Did she have any idea her ghost had haunted me every day and night? Did she know what the thought of her execution had done to Theo?

"Do Matt and Theo know?" I asked.

She shook her head. "I went to see Matt, but he was knocked out, so I came here. Bertha told me about Theo. I don't think seeing me would be the best idea in the condition he's in right now."

"He's been so affected by it. Grief has turned him into a completely different person."

"Oh, créeme, it has been more than just grief." A dark look crossed her face for the briefest second, bedimming the spark in her eyes. But before I could say anything, the moment was gone. She shook her head, as if snapping out of a hypnotic state. A smile pulled at her lips. "Are you guys finally getting along?"

"Sort of, I guess. I've discovered a lot of things I never knew."

"Matt told you about the prophecy?"

I turned to look at her. "You know about it too?"

"There's probably not a single Dolphinus that doesn't." She smiled again. "Could you let me finish now, por favor?"

I whirled to face the mirror again and Zoë resumed her work on my hair.

"I know you've heard this from Matt already," she began. "But the version of Theo you've seen isn't really him."

"How do you k-" It hit me before the full sentence could even leave my mouth. Hatsue had watched over us in her Animagus form as seagull the whole week we stayed in the shed. She must've reported everything, including Theo's mood swings. "Do you know what might be the matter with him? He thinks he's possessed by the Devil."

Zoë snorted and shook her head, then mumbled, as if she was speaking to herself more than me, "In a way, he's not wrong."

She finished trimming the last section of my hair, then gently tilted my chin up to examine her work. A content smile lit up her face. "Now that's more like it, hermosa."

I returned the smile. "Thank you, Zoë."

She took out her wand to clean up the chopped curls on the ground and tossed the towel in the hamper in the bathroom. As she carried on with the tasks, my mind buzzed with all the questions I wanted to ask her. The fact that she was here, alive and standing in the same room as me still felt like a fever dream. And as ecstatic as it made me, there was something troublesome to her story, something that she wasn't telling me.

"I'm sorry I couldn't save Stella," she said.

The blood drained from my face. "W-What?"

Zoë closed her eyes and breathed out a sigh. For a moment there, she resembled a corpse so much, I felt goosebumps rising along my arms. She took a seat at the edge of my bed and turned to me with sorrowful, bloodshot eyes.

"The dolphin that saved you was me," she said. "The moment you guys escaped and we got word from the guards on our side, I knew I had to act fast. But it wasn't easy, even for me. That thunderstorm was horrible. So I'm sorry."

"You're Natalia," I breathed in realization, recalling Bertha's words.

Zoë smiled, this time without amusement.

"My second name. I know this place is as safe as it can get, but the Ministry has some vague awareness of the island because of the tracking mark on you, and I couldn't risk it, just in case. For all they know, I'm dead."

I nodded dumbly, awe and understanding hitting at once. "When did you learn to transform into your Animagus form?"

"Since I was very young. When I lived in Puerto Madryn, I used to be part of a Dolphinus tribe. We lived away from civilization and any government. In hiding. It was my parents' way of keeping me safe." A reminiscent look flitted across her eyes, which drifted to the right as she recalled memories of her past. "We were a big colony. Shared a bond tighter than most blood families. I spent half my life on land, the other half under the sea. And then one day, I wake up to find-"

She sucked in her lips and closed her eyes. When she opened them again, her face was passive and her voice shielded by an impenetrable coldness.

"My parents and all of my tribe were stranded on the shore in their Animagus form. All dead. Men, women, children. The only surviving member was an old man named Juan. He told me the local authorities had found us, and after killing the tribe, they were after me next. So I ran away until I ran into someone. That was Andressa, my guardian. She took me under her wing and we moved to New York, where she started to work for MACUSA, and a year later, I entered Ilvermorny."

She took a deep breath and rubbed a hand down her face. I went to sit beside her on the bed and wrapped an arm around her shoulders. Her rigid muscles softened under my touch.

"I'm so sorry, Zoë," I whispered. "I had no idea you've been through so much."

The smile that pulled at her lips was tired, mechanic, devoid of any emotion. "I wish I could say that's all there is to it."

There was a beat of necessary silence. At last, I was the one to break it.

"I don't know how to thank you. You saved our lives."

She shook her head. "I couldn't save Stella's. So if you want to blame anyone for what happened, blame me."

"It was stupid to think of escaping in a night like that. I should've given it one more day like Joseph suggested."

"Stop it," she said firmly. "Alright? You never know what could've happened the next day. You were worried about Theo's life, and Stella agreed to escape that night, didn't she? You can't blame yourself when that's what she wanted."

"She didn't want to drown."

"And neither did any of you. But you would have, if it wasn't for me. Think about what that means for me, the person responsible for all your survival. I could have failed all of you."

I didn't respond. In that moment, I didn't envy Zoë. I had lived this far shouldering the weight of two failed promises, but despite the overwhelming relief that seeing her alive gave me, I knew it would take years before I forgave myself for Stella.

"How did you survive, Zoë? You never answered."

She looked to her left, then exhaled before responding. "My guard Emilie helped me. She's one of the guards on our side, just like Maureen and Theo's guard Junius. They're all Breeze McBon's people."

"So you know Breeze too? Have you met her?"

"Couple of times now. She knows Andressa, who used to be headmistress of Castelobruxo way back in the day, before I was born. I'm working with her and Andressa to recruit American wizards for the upcoming war."

I shuddered at the mention of the word 'war'. Zoë put her hand on top of mine and squeezed gently in comfort.

"You will make it. I've said it once and I'll say it again. You're a survivor, Polly."

"I'm scared," I admitted, not bothering to hide the tremble in my voice.

"Only a psycho wouldn't be."

You don't sound scared, I wanted to add. But didn't. I let the thought slide into my mental trapdoor, the skill Zoë had taught me, the skill she practiced all the time to make her brain so impermeable and keep her thoughts out of reach.

"I still don't get it," I said. "How the guards helped you get out. I mean, Bernard Dawson would've noticed when you didn't show up at the Execution Chamber, wouldn't he? I'm confused."

She shook her head and laughed, like a parent does when their child keeps asking the same question they have no answer for. Or rather they do, but it's not one the child's still-developing mind can fully grasp yet.

"Don't worry about it," she said. "What matters is that I'm here, aren't I? There's guards on our side, they sent me here, in a safe place, and I got to save you guys. My only regret is not being able to save you all."

I swallowed. "You did what you could."

"So did you."

Before I could say anything else, there was a knock at the door. I leapt to my feet and reached, out of instinct, for the dagger on my waistband, only to realize I was wearing a nightgown and I'd cast my dagger at the floor of the bathroom when I got rid of my clothes. Zoë raised a reassuring hand and went to open the door. Hatsue stood behind it with a smile on her face and a bottle of water in her hand.

My muscles loosened and I sat down again. She put the bottle on my nightstand and signed something to Zoë.

Zoë sighed. "Looks like I've gotta leave tomorrow morning."

"Why?"

"Remember I'm helping Breeze and Andressa recruit wizards from MACUSA?"

I nodded. "How exactly are you helping?"

"I work as a messenger. And I know quite a few people because of Andressa."

I walked up to the nightstand where Hatsue had placed my water bottle, opened it and took a sip. The water was icy cold. I waited for the taste of chlorine to hit the root of my mouth as it did with the tap water I'd lived off of up till now, but it never came.

"So when will you be back?" I asked, swallowing before taking another sip.

Zoë made a thinking face. "In a couple of days. I'll drop by Matt's room before I leave, but I'm not meeting Theo until I'm back. He'll be fully recovered by then." She smirked. "I just gotta make sure Matt doesn't slip and tell him first."

"If you see Breeze, would you tell her I want to talk to her?"

"I doubt I will," she said. "But if I do, of course."

Hatsue sat at the foot of my bed beside Zoë. She wore a flowing yellow dress and knee-length socks, her dark curtain of hair flowing softly down her shoulders. Zoë approached her, draping an arm around her shoulders.

"She'll teach you some sign language so you two can understand each other," she told me. "I didn't know any before I got here, and now we can hold full conversations."

"What's her connection to this place? She doesn't look much older than us."

"You can direct the questions to her," said Zoë. "I'll be the interpreter. It's rather insulting otherwise."

"Oh, I didn't mean-"

"I know you didn't." She flashed me a gentle smile, then turned and signed something to Hatsue, who looked at me in anticipation.

I repeated the question, this time, looking at her in the eye, and waited for Zoë to translate in BSL. Hatsue answered by signing back, and Zoë's eyes were trained on her movements the entire time. When Hatsue was done, Zoë took a deep breath and turned to me.

"She's a Xylomens. That's a name for people who practice the art of Xylomancy, a branch of divination that relies on using twigs. Unlike Seers who can predict prophecies about significant events in the far future, Xylomenses predict the near future. What Bertha is about to do tomorrow, for example, or what the Ministry's next move will be. It's how she has predicted every move you guys made these past two weeks, and even earlier than that. Since Azkaban. Since Hogwarts for you, and Ilvermorny for the rest of us."

My eyes widened in disbelief. So she was basically a fortune teller, except legitimate. Hatsue tilted her chin up, face radiating satisfaction, then signed something else. I waited fretfully for Zoë to translate.

"It's how Breeze has kept up with you throughout the years. Her abilities as a Seer don't extend to predicting the short-term future, so Hatsue has assisted her in that area. She knew you'd run away from home, end up in Gryffindor, all that stuff, and with that information, she's acted accordingly."

"How do you know Breeze?" I asked Hatsue.

She hesitated for the briefest moment, before signing a short response.

"She's her daughter," Zoë translated.

I froze. "What? Breeze has a-a daughter?"

Hatsue laughed, appearing to understand without the need for Zoë to do the translation. She signed a reply.

"Adopted daughter," said Zoë. "They met under similar circumstances I met Andressa. Hatsue has been under her wing since and Breeze helped her secure a job as the British Youth Representative."

I could only nod. Maybe the information would've caught me more off guard, had I discovered it earlier, at any other time. But after everything I'd learned about Breeze, nothing felt implausible anymore. When it came to that woman, it seemed like I'd become immune to shock.

"Okay," I said simply. "Well, thank you, Hatsue. For everything you've done for us."

She bowed her head, a smile pulling at her lips. Zoë stood up and turned to leave the room, her pink hair brushing past her shoulders. When her hand reached for the knob, she paused before pushing down on it and turned to me.

"You and Theo have a big burden to carry," she said. "And neither of you can do it alone. So you need to put your differences aside and cooperate, because that's the only way you'll win." She opened the door. "And this is not just some encouraging pep talk. I mean literally, that's the only way."

She walked out, closing the door with a soft thud behind her, leaving me alone to untangle the mess in my head. I turned to Hatsue. I wanted to ask her how she'd come to know Breeze, how Emilie and the other guards had helped Zoë break out, what was going on in the outside world. But the language barrier between us made any communication impossible. And my brain was barely functioning anymore from all the exhaustion.

Hatsue made a 'come here' gesture with her hand and I went to sit beside her on the bed. She angled my body so I could face her, tucked some curls behind my ear and looked at the tattoo of my Azkaban cell number on my neck. She pursed her lips and took out her wand. A beam of soft pink light appeared at the point where the tip of her wand met my neck.

She leaned back to examine her work and a grin brightened up her face. I turned to look at myself in the mirror. The tattoo had vanished like it was never even there, leaving behind nothing more than a faint patch of redness.

"Thank you," I told her.

She nodded and got to her feet, then conjured a piece of parchment paper and a quill into existence. Before she could leave, she scribbled down a sentence. She placed it on the vanity desk, then with another grin and a wave of her hand, pushed the door open and walked out.

I grabbed the letter. My throat closed up as I took in the words, written in a big but elegant handwriting. 'Breeze misses you every day.'

"Yeah?" I snorted to the empty room. "Well, why doesn't she just stop by to see me, then?"

A yawn left my mouth and I looked back at the king sized bed, covered in lavender sheets. I was too tired to be angry, mull over Hatsue's identity or any of the unanswered questions that consumed my brain. I turned off the lanterns, took another sip of water and got under the covers. My spine cracked as it met the plush surface and the pain seared through my back, after days of sleeping on the stone bed. I would take a longer bath tomorrow.

Rolling over to the other side, I let my head sink in the softness of the pillows and snuggled under the cottony covers. But despite my sleepiness, something was nagging at the back of my brain. I recalled the paleness of Zoë's skin, her hands, lifeless like a corpse's, her brown eyes bloodshot, as if she hadn't slept in weeks. Don't worry about it, she said when I asked her how the guards had helped her escape. But how could I not? What was keeping her from telling me the whole truth?

I let my eyelids close and the tendrils of sleep wrap around my brain, but I still couldn't shake off the thought that something was seriously off about Zoë's survival.