26. Whatever You need to Believe

Twenty long minutes they trudged through snow and ice. The counting protected Aesylt's sanity, calmed her mind enough to apportion itself between putting one foot in front of the other and manifesting a way out of an increasingly bleak situation.

Valerian wouldn't realize she was gone until morning, and by then, there'd be no tracking where she'd gone. Even if he could, she prayed he wouldn't. Marek wanted his brother dead and was looking for a reason. She felt it in her bones, and her instincts were the only defense she had.

Aesylt felt something falling from her pocket. She couldn't reach for it without drawing Marek's notice, but when she realized what it was, she let it fall. Another push from her instincts.

With a hard shove from Marek, she went stumbling forward, out of the cold. The ground was solid but covered in something soft and dry. Hay, perhaps. The nearby bleating of goats gave her guess further credence.

A door slid closed with a rattling thud and a thrown bolt. Her hood was ripped away.

Aesylt squinted to adjust to the addition of light. Five or six lanterns were all there was to brighten the small barn, but it was enough to see they weren't alone.

There was a woman, young and vibrant, radiating with chilling energy. Behind her were five stoic guards and a man in a minister's robe.

She met the cold, dead eyes of the woman, who seemed to be the real one in command. "So it's true," Aesylt whispered. "All this time you were accusing me, and you had your own koldyna."

"Feist has been in our family for generations, you dumb bitch. The Wynters aren't very clever, are they?" Marek tossed the hood into a corner and stepped around until he towered over her. Her hand traveled to her neck in horror.

"Your corruption is not our shortcoming." Aesylt's artificial impudence was swiftly outpaced by her instincts, which were screaming at her to act or die. But she wouldn't get more than a punch in before his guards, or the dark witch, took her down. "Our misplaced trust in your father is a reflection of your poor character, not ours."

The slap happened so fast, she felt the sting before she saw his hand slice through the darkness. "You know, I dream about that day I almost killed you. Touch myself to it, on chilly nights. Never come harder in my life than when thinking about standing over your dead body, cock in?—"

"You're a sick, depraved fuck." Aesylt spat the copper filling her mouth. Her cheek throbbed. "And you should have killed me that day in Val's room, because you have no idea what I'm capable of."

He slapped her again, harder, sending her skittering back. "I know what you're capable of, little cub. The men you slaughtered in cold blood. Aye, they deserved it, but the entire village knows what's in the dark little heart of yours." He poked her chest hard enough to unsteady her footing. "I'm grateful to that insolent little brat, Niklaus. If I'd killed you, Aesylt, I'd never be the steward of Witchwood Cross, would I?"

The revelation was another smack to the chest. The minister. Of course. She looked at the group standing quietly like specters, waiting. "A marriage isn't valid without consent, and I'll never sign that paper." Her windpipe abruptly constricted, her attempts to breathe through both her mouth and nose denied. She clawed at her neck in a panic, catching, briefly, the koldyna's grin.

Air returned to her lungs just as fast as it had been stolen.

"Say that again, cub?" Marek cupped his ear with a perplexed look.

"All that did was..." She erupted into a coughing fit. "Did was... fortify my preference for death over even a minute with you."

Marek nodded at Feist.

A quill appeared in Aesylt's hand. She released it, startled, but another appeared, and then another. Her hand lifted on its own, scrawling phantom words in the air. She tried to pull it back, but it was no longer under her own command at all. "Typical weak man, needs a woman to do what he cannot—" Her words were swiftly killed by a kick, which sent her flying to the barn wall. The sharp pain on impact knocked her breath away again, sending a dark explosion into her vision.

Marek's stormy footfalls echoed through the barn, nearing. Aesylt squirmed, slapping blindly for purchase and fighting the overwhelming call to close her eyes and drift away. Drazhan, she thought, trying to find the old channel in her mind, the one place she could always reach him. But there was nothing. The path was blocked, and she knew by whom.

"I'm not going to kill you, because I need you. But all I need is a signature and your cunt. And I will have both, whether you're conscious... whether you still have all your fingers and toes and limbs and teeth. I'd be content to tie you up and leave you that way the rest of your life, feeding you just enough to keep you alive, visiting only to take what I need, as you grow child after child to strengthen my legacy."

Wheezing, Aesylt spat at his feet. More blood. Everything hurt so much, she couldn't discern what the worst of her injuries were, but there was only one way to heal them, to restore herself to fighting form and turn the situation. That she hadn't considered it yet was a testament to how much danger she was truly in, but she was Aesylt Wynter, afraid of nothing except losing the people she loved. On the matter of her own fate, she was tragically indifferent.

"You're such a dumb?—"

"I can't marry you, Marek, even if I were inclined to subject myself to a lifetime of disgust and shame." Nauseated and dizzy, she used the wall to slide her feet toward her torso. But she couldn't shift until she had her wits back. "Because..." She closed her eyes, straining her breath through what she assumed was a punctured lung. Sticky blood coated the front of her. She wasn't ready to know what it was from. "I'm already married to your brother."

Aesylt whispered her command and winked from their world into hers. The moment she saw the shift in the air, the muting of colors, she clambered to her feet in relief.

A shrill whoosh sounded. She looked up and saw Marek, standing in the same place he'd been in the real world.

"Surprise," he said, a macabre grin splitting his face.

Rahn urgedhis horse to the limit, chasing Drazhan's grueling pace as they stormed the Compass Road on their push north. The deafening thunder of hooves drowned out the sharpest points of his imagination, which had been on a wild tear.

Voyager's Rest was their destination, the seeker had claimed, with more confidence than Rahn thought appropriate for someone who had merely sniffed a nightgown, rolled their eyes back as though possessed by the mythical demons themselves, and spit the words out with a snake-like hiss that had half the room cowering in alarm. But it was all anyone had, and he wasn't opposed to calling upon the darkest magic out there if that was what it took to find her.

The soothsayer believed Aesylt wasn't alone. At least two men were with her, one who loved her and one bent on her destruction.

The second had to be Marek. Everyone assumed the first was Valerian, which gave startling validity to Pieter's disturbing claim.

Drazhan had sent a dozen of his men back to Witchwood Cross and another dozen south on the Compass Road, just in case. The other twenty-five joined them on their hard ride to Voyager's Rest.

The village was a waypoint stop approximately midway between Witchwood Cross and Wulfsgate. Drazhan said he'd stayed there once with his father, and so had Aesylt, on another trip. Her familiarity gave the seeker's proclamation further legitimacy.

Drazhan raised a hand, and the contingent came to a sliding halt. He spun his horse to face everyone, wiping snow off his scarf, and waited for the rabble to subside. "We've reached the outskirts of the village, and in another half a mile, we'll be within the border. The town itself is small, but the farmland extends for miles. If Marek Barynov is there, Aesylt is already in danger. I, Tindahl, and four of my guards will approach the main road quietly and search the inns. Uli will lead a company to the south, Lord Rustan to the west, Lord Pieter to the east, and Baron Augher will hold a barrier in the north. No one is getting in or out of this village without coming through us, and anyone who resists leaves us with but one choice and no hesitation. Clear?"

Everyone gave their enthusiastic assent.

"Uli, you divide the men for the perimeters."

"Tak," Uli said. "On it."

"Pieter, send the healer with us. Keep the others with you."

Pieter nodded.

Drazhan looked at Rahn. "I made you that sword because all men—all women—should have steel. But if you don't know how to use it, then keep it sheathed, unless you want it taken and used against you."

Rahn's head was swimming. Pain. Confusion. Gods, was he soaked—to the very bones of the bones, as his mother would have said, but his mother wasn't there. Neither were his father or Jemma, because they were still in the inky-black sea all the others, bobbing for something to hold onto. Rahn had been right there with them, until a wave had carried him away, sending him crashing into the rocks.

He reached for his side and pulled back blood. That was when the swoon hit.

"Mama," he moaned and stumbled onto his face. "Papa. Jemma." He threw up into a tangle of mossy weeds.

"Jemma!" His mother howled, but it was the following sound, the feral, guttural cry coming from his father, that gave Rahn the strength to rise to his feet.

He squinted against the moon's blinding reflection, because he couldn't trust what his eyes were seeing. Dacian Rhiagain, Carrow's eldest, was wielding a wooden plank. He smashed it to Jemma's head, and she slipped off of the wreckage and into the sea.

Rahn raced down the slippery rocks to the sound of his own screams. He looked up right as his mother went flailing into the sea... and then his father and then... Calder Rhiagain staring directly at him from the piece of wreckage he'd wrested from Rahn's loved ones. Smiling. Laughing. He pointed, and Dacian looked up as well. Smirking.

"Adrahn?"

Shrill ringing shook his balance. "Lost myself for a moment." Not just for a moment but for the second time that day. Aesylt had been enduring the same experience with her own dark history, and she'd linked the resurgence of memories with her heightened physical and emotional state as a result of the physicality of their research. She'd shared that with him for a reason. She wanted him to understand her and had felt comfortable enough to be vulnerable. And instead of telling her how proud he was of her courage in self-reflection, he'd given her space. "I understand."

Drazhan looked ahead as he spoke. "You're with me because I can see in your eyes something I've seen in the mirror. I recognize a man intimate with desperation. I know what horrors can follow." He swung his sharp gaze back to Rahn. "Nothing reckless, Adrahn. If not for me, then for her."

Rahn felt as though he and Drazhan had conducted an entire conversation in the spaces between his words.

No, no, no, no, no. Rahn screamed the words with his lungs. He battered them into the rocks. Mama, Papa, Jemma!

He bore down to shove the thoughts back.

But even at eight, Rahn knew what he'd seen. He knew what had been done. And he knew he was alone in the world.

He could hardly hear himself speak at all when he said, "I respect your lead, Drazhan."

"How?"Aesylt demanded. She balled her hands at her sides, thrusting out her arms to make herself bigger, as Drazhan had taught her.

"How?" Marek flicked his head back. "You used to be smarter than your own good. Not anymore, aye?"

Aesylt swept back a step when he drew nearer. She commanded her body to heal, as she'd always done when the celestial air filled her lungs, but nothing happened. "If you could starwalk, I'd have known."

"Like you knew I was there that day you sent my brother into the forest?" Marek tilted his face to the side in mockery. He shuffled to the left and right in a series of taunting skips, arcing closer with each series of movements. "All that time I was accusing you of being a dark witch and the truth was right there."

"Tell me!"

The dark air beyond the barn whistled, rattling the boards, breaking their concentration.

"The answer is sitting right behind you, in our world. Because this world, little cub, never belonged to us. You must have some koldyna in you after all, or you'd never have reached this place on your own." He grinned and waved beyond her. "I know you've been taking Val here since you were littles. Feist told me. We kept it from my father, but the man is all vision, no backbone. She knew I'd be leading us soon enough. Every time you pulled my stupid brother into this place, Feist would say, ‘The little idiot has taken him again.'"

Aesylt went rigid. It had always been hypothesized that the celestial realm belonged to the koldynas, the crones and warlocks born of the demon realm. Their father certainly believed it, which was why he'd made Aesylt vow never to return. He didn't know her toes had been curled when she'd said the words, the Vjestik way of resisting a vow made unwillingly, and she'd only deceived him because she'd believed he was repeating old superstitions. He'd not been there, always refusing her offers with fear. He didn't know what a wonderful place it could be. How she'd learned to fight, to kill, and to defend, and how she had given her brothers a safe environment to do the same.

Either it had been true all along that the koldynas controlled the celestial world or Feist had the gift and ability to share it, but nothing changed the fact that Marek was there or that her only priority was figuring out how to escape a situation seeming more and more inescapable with each passing second.

"Ahh. I wish I could see your tiny little mind working the problem." Marek moved closer and Aesylt inched back, step by step in a careful dance. "It's unnatural, what you are. You're too pretty to lock yourself away in dusty libraries with dusty scholars, rotting your brain... filling it with nonsense. None of it helps you now, does it?"

"You wanted to kill me that night at Hoarfrost. Now you want to wed me?" The pain had caught up, but there was nothing she could do about it. She required all her energy to stay alert.

Marek snickered. He cupped his crotch in a grotesque gesture. "You don't inspire the ‘romantic' in me, but I need legitimate Wynter heirs, not bastards."

Keep him talking. Keep his mind busy. "You almost did kill me. If not for Niklaus, you would have. You insult my intelligence, but you're the one who tried to annihilate your entire plan."

"It wasn't my plan. All that time, Father had been pushing Val to the stewards. Never me. Until he did say it. And then it was all I could think about. Always should have been me, as the eldest, but Val had a fancy for you, and my father always gave the pissant anything he wanted."

Aesylt carefully examined the space, searching for ideas, for anything useful. "If your revelation about me came after Val returned home, it doesn't explain why you would curse him when he took your place in the forest."

"My father wanted a war. Feist helped me give him one."

"Why?"

"You ask a lot of questions. You won't need this curiosity where you're going." Marek reached behind himself and withdrew a hunting knife.

"Have the Barynovs always been planning a coup against us?" Aesylt's chest locked from the pace of her heart. Every bruise and laceration on her body stung to life. She'd given up healing herself. Marek or Feist or both were blocking it. The world had only been hers to command for as long as others had allowed it.

"Coup?" Marek slowed his approach. His expression contorted in repellence. "The seat was always ours, and you stole it. The Barynovs were first to the Cross. Darek Summerton was a grifter who couldn't even best a wulf, never mind talk to one. Changing his name to Wynter in some ridiculous tribute, like he was the keeper of the seasons themselves? Your entire bloodline is built on weakness."

"How compelling, from the man who needed five guards, a witch, and a minister to keep a little girl from killing him." Aesylt braced after her impulsive gaffe. Whatever reprieve she'd bought was over.

"Do you see them now?" Marek flung his arms wide. A ripple passed over him, turning to a shimmer. His dark hair lengthened. The broad form he was known for reduced to the frame of a strong but average man.

Standing before Aesylt was Hraz.

No, not Hraz. It's not my brother, no matter how I might desperately wish it were.

"Hey, cub." But it was Hraz's crooked smile. The half wink he always saved for her.

Aesylt shuddered through a sob. Both of her hands flew to her mouth but not quick enough to curb her tortured scream.

Then her beautiful, beloved frata lifted a hand and sent her flying to the barn wall.

There werethirteen inns along the main stretch of Voyager's Rest, but it only took four to uncover where Aesylt had been holed up. A bag of gold was all that had been needed to get the "discreet" taverners' tongues wagging.

"Aye, sounds like th' one who checked in, oh, not long past, I ken. One I'm thinking of ha' a fella join her though." The taverner's thick Southerlands brogue had both Rahn and Drazhan straining to make sense of his words.

"Describe him," Rahn commanded, drawing Drazhan's instant annoyance.

"Young, 'bout her age, I'd ken. Pretty boy, if ye like."

Not Marek. Rahn nodded, relieved. "Show..." He lifted his palms in submission to Drazhan, who was still glaring in warning.

"Show us," Drazhan said, turning back toward the older man.

"Aye, but the girl slipped out an hour or so back. Alone."

"Slipped out? Where?" Rahn asked, leaning in.

"Cannae say. Didnae ask." He chuckled, nervously glancing at Drazhan. "People pay for discretion."

"Yeah, you're real discreet, taverner," Rahn muttered, shaking his head.

Drazhan checked the door, then his sword. "You follow the taverner to the room and see what you can get out of Val or Nik or whoever is up there. If it's Val, we need to know whether he's on our side or Marek's. If ours, get him to the caravan safely. If Marek's, find some chains. There's a flare in your bag that will signal Baron Augher if you need aid."

Rahn hesitated. The past hours, wondering and waiting, had already been unspeakable, but now they were close and Drazhan wanted to pull him away?

"There a problem?"

Rahn tapped the bar. The truth would not help the situation, and if Aesylt had run into danger, Drazhan was the best person in their entire contingent to be there. "None. No."

"I'll let my men know the search has shifted. Find us when you can. I'll leave a trail."

Rahn watched him leave and followed the taverner upstairs. The man dug into his pocket and withdrew a massive key ring, unlocked the door, and was already halfway back down the steps before Rahn could thank him.

Valerian sat on the bed, still half-asleep. He stared at Rahn like he were a ghost.

"Where is she, Val?" Rahn closed the door and stood in front of it.

"Scholar Tindahl?" Valerian squinted and wiped his eyes. "Some fucking dream. The infant king here somewhere too?"

"Where is she, Valerian?"

"I don't even know what you're talking about."

Rahn flipped the bolts on the door and marched toward the bed. Valerian cowered, his eyes widening in a slow return to reality. "Tell me where the fuck Aesylt is or I'll?—"

He whipped around, searching for a friendly face, but there were only others like him. Orphaned, abandoned, screaming for all they'd lost. Teleria Farrestell was the closest, rocking and sobbing with her knees drawn to her chest.

Time became as fluid as the sea. He replayed the terrible events in reverse and tried to imagine them ending another way. He did so until shrill shouts drew his eyes back toward the sea, where the Rhiagain brothers were trying to anchor themselves to the rocks. They each grasped in desperation, but they'd landed not where Rahn had, at an outcropping of rocky beachland, but farther down the island, where the rocks were cliffs.

He blinked, watching them struggle and fail. Calder must have seen him, for he waved both hands over his head, screaming for Rahn to come to their aid.

"And she was fine and here when I fell asleep, which couldn't have been... Scholar?"

Gods deliver me. Rahn shoved his hands under his cloak and pumped them in and out of fists to ground himself. Here. Now. Not then. Never then. "Just..."

Rahn slowly picked himself back up off the rocks and stared at the boys who had killed his family. Calder had been his friend. They'd played every manner of game a thousand times together. Laughed, cried, fought. Calder had loved Rahn's mother's winter soup, enough that she made it even in the summertime. He'd even called her Mother when his own had neglected him.

Both boys brightened when they saw Rahn coming their way. He had nothing to help them. He searched his pockets, but there was only the broken quill he'd had just enough time to stuff into his pockets when the ship had collided with something and?—

His father's dagger.

He didn't remember sitting on the bed. Falling either. Valerian's stricken face stared down at his.

Why is this happening to me? Why now?

You know why, Adrahn. My beautiful boy.

I can't do this right now, Mama. I have to find her.

Right now is when you must do this. For her.

Rahn gripped the sheets and bolted upright. "Where's Marek?"

"Not here." Valerian plopped back on his heels. "Why... Why are you asking me where Marek is?"

"Because he is here, Valerian, and you and I both know why."

"But..." Valerian's head shook and shook. Dread spread over his expression, down his cheeks. "No. No one followed me here, and there's no one who could read the letter she sent me. It was written in Old Ilynglass, and who knows that except her and me and Niklaus and you? And I suppose Duchess Teleria, but why would she?—"

"She wrote you a letter in the old language?" The inky White Sea hit him with a wallop of seasickness, but he stopped fighting it. Too much of his focus had been consumed with stopping it, and it was just as Aesylt had said. There could be no light without dark. No love without hate.

"It's like I told you; she sent for me, and so I came, and we were married, and?—"

"Married?" A flame ignited deep within Rahn, in a part of himself he'd believed long dead. That rogue Pieter was right. He was fucking right. "Don't murder him, Adrahn. He doesn't know. He doesn't?—"

"Who are you talking to?"

"Cut the ropes for the rowboats!" he'd cried, folding his dagger into Rahn's hand before disappearing into the desperate throngs.

There hadn't been time to cut anything. A few had been launched by the time Rahn arrived on the starboard deck, but most had sunk with the ship. Everyone grabbed hold of what they could and then the cold had come.

Rahn saw more people he knew, prostrate and howling for the lost, but he was still thinking about the dagger. His father was a soothsayer—had been a soothsayer, but he was gone, gone... they all were—and liked to say he didn't always know why he did what he did, but a part of him knew.

Maybe Esteban Tindahl had known Rahn would need the steel for something else.

"We don't have time for this. Come with me," Rahn commanded, shoving Valerian into motion. "Now."

Aesylt wantedto close her eyes and drift off somewhere the pain couldn't reach her. The fear she loathed more, because it reminded her she was a fraud, weak and powerless, just like others always suspected.

Choking on a whimper, she looked up and straight into the eyes of her father.

She could withstand any physical torture Marek had planned, but gazing into the past was paralyzing.

"You're not Ezra Wynter." She folded an arm over her face, only for it to be ripped away by some foul magic. "Ezra Wynter would never act like an alleyway thug."

"Ezra Wynter was as much a pretender as his ancestor Darek." Marek was again himself. "But he should be here tonight, don't you think, Aesylt? To watch his little girl get married? Hraz could come in for a minute or two from time to time, I think." He swayed with a cheeky grin. "Only one missing is Drazhan. I could be him too, but then I'd deny myself seeing his face after the way he led my father on."

"He didn't lead anyone on. He's just as impossible as you all think he is." Aesylt's vision doubled again as fresh nausea rocked her. She averted her eyes, in case he tried to get into her head again with painful images. He already knew the tactic worked. She hadn't had a chance to hide her shock. "He was nevergoing to agree to Val and I marrying because he was never going to let me marry anyoneto begin with."

"Didn't stop you, did it?" Marek crouched before her, smirking at her flinch. "I don't care that you're not a virgin. I'd just as soon piss on you as fuck you. But I won't be touching you at all until we've returned and given you the tea, be sure anything that crawls out of you later is mine and only mine, so you can save the terrified-damsel act for our honeymoon."

No one is coming. The revelation crashed into her like a barrel of flour. She hadn't been expecting help, but until the words raced across her frantic consciousness, she'd been unaware of the part of herself dreaming that some villager had seen her being hauled away and had run for help.

But Voyager's Rest wasn't that kind of village. Even the pubkeep had paid no mind when she'd left in the middle of the night, alone.

There was nothing in the celestial version of the barn with which to defend herself. She had no control there, not anymore. For the first time in her life, it wasn't an escape but a prison.

The door wasn't far, but even if she weren't so injured, there was little chance she'd make it there and clear of danger before Marek or one of his entourage stopped her.

But little chance was still better than no chance.

Aesylt shivered as her head came up. One of her lungs seemed to whistle. Something thick and warm spread along her left gut and back, and a dark flash of her landing on a dull tine when she'd hit the wall the second time popped into her head. Not a knife, not a sword, not?—

A pitchfork.

Not everything traveled from world to world. But it had been there in the real one. And if she'd landed that way and had not moved before shifting, it meant when she returned, she'd end up exactly where she'd left herself... impaled.

This world isn't mine anymore. It never was.

But if tonight is the night I greet the Ancestors, I go where my family can get closure. Justice.

I'll be with you soon Hraz. Ota. Oma.

She spat another wad of blood into the hay beside her and winked herself back to the real world.

"Scholar, you really look green."Valerian skip-jogged to match his pace. "Like you haven't slept in a quarter century."

Rahn swatted him away. The memories were coming fast now, and he'd stopped fighting them. Since he'd given in, they had at least still been gracious enough to let him think, to keep his senses tuned enough to recognize the trail Drazhan had left for others to follow.

When he reached the cliff's edge, he clambered down as far as he could without slipping into the sea. Calder and Dacian hollered for him to hurry, that their makeshift boat was sinking. His vision doubled, blurring and spotting, his thoughts torn between a dozen perfect memories from his childhood and the horrors tearing the lives of everyone he'd ever known asunder.

"No, that way," Rahn muttered. A hazy film came over his eyes. His nose filled with brine.

Dacian's hand appeared on top of the cliff. Rahn looked at it as fresh rain and wind whipped him sideways. He peered over the edge and found Calder not far behind, scaling the serrated wall with his fingertips.

"Grab my hand, you imbecile!" Dacian cried, his other hand reaching over and slapping but sliding away from the stone.

"Red cloth. Another one," Valerian said, excited and catching on to Rahn's observations.

"You killed them," Rahn said. Saying it aloud gave it the sharpest teeth, and he couldn't believe the words. He couldn't believe Dacian and Calder had done it.

"It was them or us, and you know..." Dacian grunted when his hand slipped again. "You know why it had to be us, so give me your cursed hand!"

Rahn shook his head, though no one could see him. He shook it and shook it, still staring at Dacian's straining hand. Lightning split the sky. Everything was muddled. Nothing was right anymore.

Nothing would ever be right again.

Rahn stepped on a misshapen rock and almost continued on, but instinct had him kneeling to check anyway. His hand jerked, and the wooden squirrel landed back in the dirt. With a ragged inhale, he reached for it again. Turned it over. Squish.

Was it murder on his mind when he inched closer to the edge... when he toed Dacian's hand with his boot and then... and then stomped on it, hard enough that the boy released his grip and went hurtling into the darkness below?

"What is it? Some child's toy?" Valerian asked.

"Adrahn!" Calder bellowed. "What have you done?"

Rahn squeezed the statue in his fist before slipping it into his pocket. "No, it's Aesylt."

"Don't climb any higher, Calder." Rahn unsheathed the dagger and held it out in his shaking hand. His tears blended with the rain. The screams with the roar of the unrelenting sea.

"You know she loves you... Don't you?"

"Maybe he's all right. We just need to?—"

"Calder. Stop. You can't come up here."

"Gods! What's wrong with you? Help me!"

Rahn squinted against the moonlight at the split in the path. Had they gone east or west?

"You killed my family." Rahn shoved the words from his chest. "You killed them. All of them."

"I'm the future king, Rahn. I can't die. You would have done the same thing if you were me."

"Scholar? What's happening with you?"

"Can't?" Rahn knelt and watched Calder struggle against the slimy stone wall. "Go back, Calder. Please, I don't want to do this."

"Valerian, are you prepared to kill your brother tonight?"

"Don't want to do what?" Calder screamed and tugged himself up onto the final shelf. "Give me a hand, you dolt."

"We don't even know if he's here?—"

Rahn leaned over the cliff and waved the dagger, his voice a trembling, scratchy mess. "Don't come any closer."

"He's here." Rahn closed his eyes, and Aesylt filled the space of his mind. A soft peace cut through the tension, and an involuntary smile spread across his face. East. "This way."

"Adrahn, look at me. I'm your oldest mate. Get me up, and we'll fix this!"

"But I don't see any red fabric."

"You called her mama. You called her mama and then kicked her into the sea and killed her."

"Doesn't matter," Rahn said and started down the east path, one hand clenched over his bulging pocket.

"Nearly everyone is dead, look around!"

"How do you know this is the right path?" Valerian sprinted to catch up.

He was right, but most of them hadn't been murdered. Rahn pointed the dagger downward. "I mean it. Not another inch."

"I need to know you won't hesitate."

"Hesitate?" Valerian cackled in frustration. "Scholar, I'm fucking lost."

"Where the devil am I supposed to go?" Calder snorted with a tentative look over his shoulder before hoisting himself up with more strength than his brother had shown. Both of his hands gripped the cliff. Rahn's heart raced as he stared, contemplating his own worth, his own capabilities.

Rahn felt the dagger from that night with the same tangibility of the squirrel in his pocket. Both were equally real. Both opened a door into who he truly was. "Your sword. I know you know how to use it. But will you hesitate to take it to Marek?"

"Almost. There." Calder grunted, and Rahn decided those were to be his last words. He saw his sister's face, felt his mother's arms, and heard his father's raucous laugh, and they gave him the last bit of courage to drive the dagger straight into the center of Calder Rhiagain's scrawny neck.

Valerian slowed. "Wouldn't even have to think about it."

The boy's eyes widened, in fear... in shock, but he had nothing left to do except fall.

Rahn saw again Aesylt's pale face, flushed from excitement. She nibbled the corner of her mouth and flitted her eyes upward as she laughed at something he'd said that wasn't funny to anyone but her. She'd always given his words more weight than they deserved.

Rahn, shaking, released the dagger, and it disappeared into the abyss with his old friend.

"How did you know this was the way?" Valerian asked.

He fell himself, but soft arms enclosed him from behind.

"Magic brought us to the village." You are as imitable as the stars in our interminable sky. "Aesylt will take us the rest of the way."

Weeping, he looked up and saw the young Duchess Farrestell, seventeen and fresh off her own grief.

"You poor dear," she whispered.

Aesylt didn't giveherself time to register the pain, already sliding forward and gurgling through the extraction of the thick tine. The koldyna noticed first and narrowed her expression, staring through her beady eyes as Aesylt wavered to her feet.

Marek snapped into the real world. He charged, but Aesylt rolled out of the way, and his fist crashed to the wall, rattling the wood.

"No! I can handle her!" Marek screeched when his guards moved to alert. He squared up, swaying his balance from one foot to the other. "You must really, really like pain."

"You know, I really do," Aesylt replied, grinning through the blood filling her mouth. "But you refuse to give it to me."

Marek snarled, his focus whipping to the gaping puncture in her abdomen that would probably kill her soon. She might have stood a chance if she'd left the tine stuck into her, but it was too late for that. It was too late for anything.

"You're a sick little bitch, aren't you?" He rushed her again.

She had nowhere to go, so she dropped to her hands and knees, crawled through his legs, and dove for the shaft of the pitchfork. Her fingers wrapped around the splintered wood just as she landed on her back, which was a mistake, for it felt so good to lie there, to let the world slip away.

Just a little more, Aes, she heard Hraz say. The real one. The one who had taught her, played with her, loved her. Died for her.

Marek stumbled over. She brandished the pitchfork. His eyes widened in warning. "You couldn't hurt me with that on a good day."

"Is that why you haven't taken it from me yet?" Aesylt steadied her grip when a tremor seized her hands. The ink blots in her eyes dilated, spreading. She was fading, faster than she wanted, and Marek wasn't wrong. She no longer had the strength required to run the tines through him. Holding it aloft was already too much.

But there was one thing she could do. She would fail, but she would die a warrior's death. "If you're not afraid of me, prove it. Draw your sword, and we'll settle this as men would."

Marek's mouth flashed wide in a cackle. "You want to... fight me with that?"

"If you're so confident, why isn't your sword out?" She knew exactly why he hadn't drawn it. The brute wasn't wearing one at all. Only his guards were armed with steel, and they were across the barn, where she needed Marek to be.

"I don't have to fight you."

"Because you know I'll win, even as I am now?" Aesylt resisted the swoon with everything she had. She held tighter to the pitchfork. Come on, come on, come on.

"You're delusional, just like the rest of the Wynters."

"And your fear of me is all over your face." Aesylt lashed her tongue across her lips. "Right there, corner of your mouth."

Marek's hand traveled there before he realized, grunted in disgust, and swung it away. "You want me to carve you up like a wintertide boar? Fine. Feist will heal the parts I require." He stormed away, his boots crushing the boards with booming stomps.

"Be quick about it, Marek. She's lost a lot of blood." Feist spoke with all the warmth of a post.

"Aye, but the bitch doesn't need arms or legs to bring a child, so give me a fucking moment, Feist, and then you can have her."

Aesylt pursed her mouth and breathed in shakily. She whispered the names of her ancestors, loud enough for her own ears only.

"Fucking give it to me," Marek demanded, wrestling with a guard's belt.

She squirmed until she was leaned up against a bale of hay, shifting her legs until they were under her. Onto her knees, she rose. She transferred the pitchfork to her other hand and, wincing and trembling, lifted it over her shoulder. Tears rolled down her face as she strained to draw her arm back, fighting the overwhelming need to just let go.

On the wings of this life or the bones of the next.

Marek turned.

Aesylt's mouth peeled back in a scream that exploded from deep in her belly. It was the very last of herself. Flesh ripped and peeled as she stumbled to her feet and released the pitchfork in a roar of fury that sent her hurtling back into the darkness before she could see where it landed.

Steel and shoutssounded from a barn ahead. Valerian started to run, but Rahn snapped him back.

"Look," Rahn whispered, watching a lone, hulking figure ambling down the hill in a hurry. Valerian said something under his breath, something like oh no or oh fuck, or maybe that was Rahn filling in the silence with his own internal monologue.

But Valerian definitely said, clear as a whistle on a cool night, "Marek."

Rahn fixed himself on Marek's location. It didn't seem the man had noticed them yet. He was wrestling with something long, like he was trying to pull it out of himself. "Go to the barn, Valerian. Drazhan and the others will be there."

"You asked me if I would hesitate," Valerian stated, glancing from Rahn to his brother's harried shuffling. "I told you I won't."

"And I'm not asking you anymore. Aesylt needs you. Go. Go!" Rahn wrapped his fingers around the hilt of the sword Drazhan had made him, but it was the wet leather of his father's dagger under his palm. In one single stroke of fate, Rahn had changed the history of the Rhiagains forever, and no one but he and Teleria knew. Had the boys lived, the crown would not be in such conflict, because there would have been three heirs, not one insufficient one. Sweet Torian would be alive because he would have been nowhere near the ascendancy. Whether Imryll would have still been put in the prince's path, and therefore Drazhan's, was unknown, which meant so was Rahn's eventual landing in Witchwood Cross and his fateful meeting of Aesylt.

But Rahn had not then nor ever had the gift of foresight. He wasn't thinking about the crown's future that night on the cliff of the Isle of Duncarrow, but of the one stolen from him, and gods knew how many others. It had never been a question whether he would kill the boys who had killed his family, only how fast he'd realized his potential. For some, there was no justice suitable but death.

Marek would have justice, but Rahn was leaving nothing to chance.

Rahn skittered down an embankment and followed a stream at the bottom, aiming to head Marek off at the fence line. He bent as low as he could go and still move, holding his position and his sight of Marek. Water splashed onto his trousers when he slipped into the riverbed. The sound alerted Marek, who perked and swung around in search of the source. When he did, the moonlight caught the side of him, revealing a darkened spot on his abdomen.

Rahn ducked low and waited. Marek pushed on.

No one ever has to know, Teleria had said as she held him on the rocks, both of them sobbing for all they'd lost.

What if I want them to know?

They'd kill you, Adrahn, and we're not going to let that happen now. We've both lost all we can handle, haven't we?

Sweat turned to shaved ice on Rahn's face. It frosted his eyelashes. His trousers fused to his flesh where the stream water had landed. His heart was under an intrinsic pull to go to the barn and be with her, but no one else was coming for Marek. No one else seemed to have notice him slip away. There might not have been another chance, and it wasn't Rahn she wanted to see at the end of a trialing night, but her husband.

Rahn keeled over to retch into the snow.

He continued, closer to where the fence crossed the stream. Marek picked up speed as the incline steepened, and Rahn had to push twice as hard on flat ground to keep up. He dug deep, dredging the final memory of the cursed night that had shaped him and his life forevermore.

When you remember tonight, Adrahn, think not of yourself as a monster but a slayer of them.

Rahn tripped but kept his momentum, half running, half flailing as he narrowed the last of the gap between himself and Marek. Marek paused at the fence line, bowled over in respiratory distress, and Rahn used the brief reprieve to draw his sword and shove the tip between Marek's shoulder blades.

"The fuck?" Marek turned with a yelp.

"I should have done this the night you put your hands on her neck. You don't deserve a trial. There is no fairness in you, and I'll deliver none."

"Tindahl? You self-righteous fuck?—"

Rahn pushed on the blade to shut him up. His hand already ached from the weight—the force. He remembered Drazhan's words. "If she doesn't survive this night, I will find you in the afterlife, where there are no limits to the deaths you will die."

What's the difference between being a monster and slaying them, Duchess?

"Whatever you need to believe it is," Adrahn answered, driving his sword at an upward angle, straight through the monster's heart. His hands shook against the resistance, but he held his ground, baring his teeth through the excruciating effort it took to turn and twist the sword until the blade was pointed upward.

Marek moaned and staggered away, then crashed into the fence with the twisted sword still stuck through him. His hands flailed as he looked at the steel tip protruding from his chest and then, with a slow, distrait look back at the scholar, he pitched forward over the fence and collapsed.

Drazhan surveyedthe carnage in breathless astonishment. Seven dead, none of them his. One was still missing, the one who mattered the most.

Never in his life had he regretted anything as much as not killing Marek Barynov when Aesylt had come home with the man's handprints on her neck.

He'd sent Uli and the others to search the fields for Marek, holding Pieter and Valerian behind to help with Aesylt, who couldn't wait another minute for the aid of Dereham's healer.

They'd arrived mere moments too late.

Pieter and Valerian had wrapped Aesylt in as much cloth as Pieter had in the satchel he'd brought. She was unconscious, her breaths shallow and further apart with each passing minute. What he needed to do was lay hands on her and take it all away, but without knowing all the ways she'd been injured, he'd risk making it worse. If there was even a shard of a sword or dagger or that bloody pitchfork inside of her...

"You done?" he asked from the door, searching the field for any sign of progress.

"We need to bring the healer here," Valerian cried. He sniffled and wiped his face in the crook of his elbow. "We can't move her."

"There isn't time," Pieter said. He sat back, scanning Aesylt, and exhaled. "We could make a stretcher from wood and one of our cloaks. Or..."

Drazhan marched over and descended to a crouch. "Where's the wound entrance? Exit?"

Valerian pointed at two spots, one in Aesylt's abdomen, the other inferred to be directly behind it on her back.

Drazhan slipped an arm above the penetration spot and hoisted Aesylt into his arms. Her head flopped back, her arms to the sides, and Pieter quickly folded them into place over her chest. The fury in the man's eyes was the same that had been there when he'd quietly dispatched the koldyna while she was trying to melt one of Dereham's guards with her dark magic. Aesylt might not want to marry him, but he'd earned Drazhan's grudging respect.

"Valerian." Drazhan moved to the door and checked both sides before turning back. "You have a choice to make."

"Never them," Valerian said, his head high. "I didn't know Marek was here, Drazhan, or I'd have gotten Aesylt out of Voyager's Rest the second I arrived."

Drazhan wanted to know how Aesylt had convinced the boy to come at all—and why—but it could wait. "Both of you cover me. We move fast. We run." He adjusted Aesylt in his arms, avoiding looking at her. That could wait too. It had to. "Go!"

Rahn was sittingon the wagon's gate when Drazhan came sprinting down the path, Pieter and Valerian a pace behind. He pushed slowly to his feet, his heart expanding with hope when he saw Aesylt dangling from her brother's arms, her face tucked to his chest.

"Healer!" Drazhan cried. "Healer!"

A young woman who had just finished looking over Rahn's minor, pointless wounds leaped out of the wagon and ushered them over.

Rahn helped her spread the blankets out and climbed in beside them to assist Drazhan and the girl, Seala, in sliding Aesylt into place. Seala shoved everyone out of the way and climbed over Aesylt to straddle her, mouthing indecipherable words as she withdrew a dagger and sliced through the patchy swaddling covering her midsection.

"Guardians keep us," Lord Dereham cried and turned away, his arms crossed over his chest.

One quick look was all it took to leave Rahn in question of Aesylt's fate. "Squish," he whispered, crawling behind where her head rested. He knelt forward, over her, and pressed his lips to her temple. "This is not how it ends for you. You are as..." A sob choked his throat. "You are the stars, Squish. You are the sky. That's what I should have said when you asked me... when you asked me..."

"Adrahn," Drazhan barked. "Get out of her way."

"He's not in the way, sir," Seala said, looking back. "His presence is calming her." She fluttered her hands over Aesylt's belly and resumed her silent chanting.

"Marek's body is just over there, Steward," Rahn heard Uli Castel say. "The scholar dealt with him."

"On purpose?"

"Unless he accidentally ran his sword clean through the man's heart and twisted, I'd say so."

"Someone keep watch on Valerian. I want everyone to see he's with us when we reach the Cross." Drazhan groaned. "Healer?"

Palm over palm, measuring his breaths as he needed her to, Rahn smoothed Aesylt's hair away from her face. Stay with me. Stay with me, Aes, and I'll make up for all of it. He kissed her again, anyone watching be damned. Any part of me you need is yours.

"The bleeding has stopped. I sense no foreign objects inside of her. I'm working on restoring her now," Seala said. "She's steady enough to get the wagons moving, sir."

"I'll stay with her," Valerian said, rattling the gate as he started to climb.

"You ride with Uli. Bound, until we clear the Fanghelm gates," Drazhan said. "The scholar will stay with her. Riders, mount up!"

Rahn looked up, catching Drazhan's stony gaze when he passed.

"Is she your wife?" Seala asked as the wagon creaked to life. She uncapped her waterskin and took a deep sip.

If I wasn't such a coward. Rahn shook his head. The wagon jerked as it crawled up a short hill toward the road.

"Huh." Seala tossed the skin aside and lifted her arms in a deep breath.