My thoughts drifted to Sonoma. And Ire.
Protect them, I pleaded.
The wind whipped in response; an assurance or a refusal, I couldn’t be sure which.
Rydian crouched beside me in the mouth of the fissure, our backs pressed to stone slick with condensation. He’d woken me a half hour earlier and hadn’t said more than necessary since. Neither one of us seemed interested in goodbyes.
When the others had gone, I shifted my weight, anxious to move.
He lifted two fingers.Wait.
His shadows rose—quiet, obedient smoke—then spilled over us both like a second skin. The torch behind me guttered as if suddenly choked for air.
Wrapped in that shadow, I tasted metal on my tongue. Fear. Steel. The promise of a fight. Remnants of a dream filled my mind. Ash and smoke and scorched earth—the whole valley burnt to a crisp. A dream or a nightmare.
Dorcha and Latha were strapped to my back. My hair was braided tightly, and my Aine leathers were soft against my skin, cold in the damp morning air. I didn’t feel the chill, though. Not when the flames beneath my skin heated me from the inside—ready to consume everything it touched. But it was the hunger stirring in my belly that I leashed most tightly, my nerves dancing alongside that gnawing desire.
Makarios was a weapon I’d yet to master, but I would wield it just the same. Today, I would drain them all or burn them to ash. No more hesitation or being ashamed of what the gods had gifted me. Not if it brought Lesha home. Not if it made Menryth safe.
“On me,” Rydian whispered, pushing to his feet.
I nodded, and together, we slipped from the cave lip, moving down the slope like shadows of the night.
The ground crunched faintly with frost where there should have been dew and wild thyme. To my left, a thin ribbon of black water threaded the camp’s far edge. The sight of it made me think of Nali. And Amanti.
I turned away from those thoughts, focusing on our pathahead as the rocky descent leveled out into a more open ground packed hard by the frigid temperatures.
Rydian’s shadow curtain flexed with us—thicker when we crossed open ground, thinner when we hugged boulders and dead brush. My body whispered its training: Keep low, keep loose, keep moving. My power whispered something else: destroy. Burn. Protect.
Soon, the camp resolved into detail—rows of tents edged in frost, guy lines sparkling with ice crystals. The cooking fires were banked low to spare the smoke. Onyx-eyed horses stood tethered between posts, their coats too still, manes unmoving even when the wind cut through camp. Obsidian eyes. No whites. No shine. A wrongness forced into the shape of a horse and then broken into lifeless obedience.
It was the same with the soldiers.
But I saw more than Obsidians standing watch or huddled around a fire, and the sight of what else Heliconia had wrought spread through me like a poisoned dread. A cluster of figures in white leather and woven bone; when they turned, there was nothing where faces should be. Masks strapped to emptiness.
I stumbled, momentarily enthralled.
Rydian gripped my elbow, steadying me. I tore my gaze from the camp’s creatures and anchored myself in his gray-brown eyes. He didn’t speak, but I found steadiness in the way he looked at me. Like he was just as horrified as I. And just as determined to destroy them all.
We kept moving.
The ground near the outer tents was dead—the frost there not a film but a deep layer of frozen earth, scorched with the burn of ice. I was careful to step without slipping on the slick patches.
We rounded a thick hedge of briars, and Rydian raised his palm.
Two sentries moved along the outside perimeter, their patrol unhurried, spears tipped in ice-burnished metal. Their helmets were smooth—no ornament, only efficiency. The nearer one turned his head, and I caught the glint of eyes like polished coal.
Obsidian.
His pointed ears and male frame marked him as fae. Or former fae. Now, he was only an empty shell. A Made thing. Soulless and utterly loyal to its master.
“Left,” Rydian mouthed.
His shadows pulled across us like a curtain. Ten steps. Twenty. My heartbeat was a drum beating too fast. One of the sentries paused, head lifting slightly as if scenting.
We stilled.
He turned toward us.
