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The beat of wings follows the Graywatch as three alicorns—massive winged horses with spiral horns—glide overhead. The sky-based scouts are barely visible through the canopy, and I can only hope the thick foliage hides us.

If they’re healers or working to quarantine sick people, why do they need scouts like that?

Esme breathes heavily against my palm, her pulse racing where my fingers squeeze her jaw. For a moment, neither of us moves.

“Stay down,” I whisper against her ear, telling myself not to get distracted by the sensation of her toned body against mine. “Wait.”

She nods. Maybe she’s catching on that this is dangerous, or perhaps she’s wary of the Graywatch like most other Meridians appear to be. I drop my hand from her mouth but keep the other one on her shoulder.

Scouts already have the area where the riders are heading covered. So why were they trailing behind?

We wait as the forest settles back into its morning rhythm. Birds resume their calls. Insects buzz in the undergrowth around us. Sweat trickles down my back, and the smell of dirt tickles my nose.

The minutes stack in silence. Esme twitches as if to get up, but I hold her down. Instinct, honed by years as a soldier, insists more danger lurks around the corner.

Less than thirty minutes later, the heavy hoofbeats return. “Here they come.”

This time, they’re slower. They still ride with purpose, but their uneven beat falters and loses rhythm.

The alicorn-mounted scouts pass overhead, then the same detachment from before rounds the bend. Now, though, people on foot stumble along between the horses. Every rider has a captive bound at the wrists with ropes that lead up to the saddles.

An old man trips and falls to his knees. His rider doesn’t ease his pace or look, instead dragging the man forward until he scrambles back to his feet without protest, scraping his knees bloody on the road.

A woman with gray-streaked hair shuffles along with her head bowed. Her lips move in prayer maybe, or a desperate plea to her rider.

I can’t hear from this distance.

The youngest can’t be more than sixteen. He cries silently, his shoulders shaking, his feet ambulating mechanically like his body knows it has to continue even if his mind has already checked out.

I search for signs of sickness. I saw the slack-faced man in the tavern, with his mouth frozen open, but I don’t see anything like that here. Far from vacant, despair and fear animate these people’s faces. Esme has a naive view of her kingdom’s Graywatch. Whatever they are, they’re not here to help. Or at least, they aren’t here to help the commonfolk.

I could disappear the Graywatch with ease, calling up the earth to swallow them and their horses. I could be a hero to those farmers. Or I could succumb to violence and damn them along with their captors, which could help fill that yawning void inside of me.

The riders pass, hauling their dusty captives.

It requires all the control in this plane and the gods’ to remain in the ditch with Esme. I can’t be seen in case someone escapes and flees to the nearest township.

“Busy fellows.” I lift myself out of the ditch, brush leaves and dirt from my clothes, then reach down to help Esme up.

She accepts my hand without comment. Her fingers are cold, her eyes clouded, and she stares in the direction of the riders with a creased brow. She doesn’t look half as haunted as those white-faced people being carted off to gods know where, but she’s certainly disturbed.

Once the coast is clear, we return to the road in silence, my mind racing as I sort through all the implications. Esme’s lack of reaction over the king’s brutal treatment of his citizens suggests she’s less sheltered than I first believed. Add in the fact that she didn’t demand we rescue them, and I no longer know what to think.

An hour of walking later, farmlands spread out on both sides of us as we transition from forest to plains.

The open fields should be green with spring growth and rich with the promise of harvest. They should be dotted with workers tending crops, children playing between the rows, and life humming along like it has for generations.

They’re not.

They’re gray.

This is not the gray of winter fallow, when fields rest and gather strength for the next season, nor the gray of morning mist soaking and blurring everything in sight.

This gray is a dead, washed-out color, like something leached away all the earth’s life. A handful of workers till the soil around stunted stalks of grains barely higher than my knee, smaller than they should be this time of year. Something about the farmers’ movements appears rote, as if they’re simply going through the motions.

Why are they tilling? Their seeds are already planted. From the looks of things, that field needs water.

“What the hell…” I gravitate toward the workers.