Chapter 15 - Chapter 14 - Lust

Cleo did not run as much as she forced the forest to make room for her.

Branches bent away from her face before they could strike. Roots loosened from the soil and flattened into brief, treacherous steps beneath her boots. Ferns recoiled from the hem of her coat. Looks like this land is getting used to me.

Las stumbled more than once, one hand pressed hard to his temple, the other clenched around the back of Malach's collar.

The Bishop was not cooperating.

That was, in Cleo's opinion, deeply rude for a hostage being rescued.

"I am telling you," Malach said through his teeth, breath catching as Las's power held him in that awful, quieting grip, "this is going to become politically inconvenient for everyone."

"You were tied up in a witch camp," Cleo snapped, dragging him over a fallen log. "You're welcome."

"I was exactly where I wanted to be."

Las let out a strained, breathless sound that might have been a laugh if his face had not been so pale. The forest was punishing him. Cleo could feel it in the way his control shivered at the edges. Every fear in the camp had followed them into the trees. Salacia's attack had left the animals frantic, the witches enraged, the roots themselves almost conscious with thirst. Las did not merely hear emotion. He stood inside it, soaked in it, battered by every feeling that had not been properly contained.

"Cleo," he whispered.

"I know."

"No, you don't." His voice was thin. "He's fighting me."

Malach's mouth curled. "Correct."

Las tightened his fingers in Malach's cloak and tried to press down on the Bishop's agitation, his fear, his rage, his absurd insistence that a silver hellcat mattered more than his own escape. But Malach was strange inside, all hollow rooms and locked doors, his emotions cold in some places and burning in others. Las could amplify or quiet what existed. He could not make obedience out of nothing, and Malach's obedience, it turned out, was extremely selective.

"I am not leaving without Zora," Malach said again, more clearly this time.

Cleo nearly shoved him into a tree. "It is a pet."

"It is Theron's companion beast."

Cleo stopped.

For one second, the forest's imposed path collapsed around them. Branches snapped back into place. A cluster of dry leaves fell soundlessly between her and the Bishop.

Las whispered, "Cleo."

She turned slowly to Malach. "Say that again."

Malach's eyes, peach-bright even in the dark, sharpened with satisfaction. He knew he had struck flesh. "You heard me."

Cleo's hand twitched toward her blade.

Then a voice from the trees said, "I wouldn't."

Three women stepped out first, bows drawn.

Fishing bows, reinforced with horn and steel wire, the kind used to shoot moving things from slippery decks. Their faces were wind-burned, hard-eyed, familiar in the way Aazorians were all familiar after one had seen enough of them: suspicious, hungry, unwilling to be impressed. Behind them came more of the Lioness crew, half a dozen at least, armed with hooks, knives, and short spears. Kinsley Lafitte followed at the center, coat open despite the cold, hair still damp from the sea wind.

His gaze moved from Cleo to Las to Malach.

Then back to Malach.

"Well," Kin said. "This looks like a party." 

Cleo adjusted her grip on the Bishop. "Move."

Kin did not move. His crew did not move either. The women of the Lioness stood in a rough crescent, weapons lifted, their boots quiet on the moss. These were not court guards. They did not have formation discipline or polished armor. They had something worse: practical coordination, the kind built by hauling nets in storms and cutting screaming things apart on blood-slick decks. They looked at Cleo and saw not a goddess or a guardian, but another problem that could be hooked, dragged, and gutted if necessary.

Las's breathing worsened.

"There's too much fear," he murmured.

Cleo kept her voice low. "Then use it."

"No."

"Las."

"No." This time there was a tremor in the word, but also a line underneath it. "If I push them, they'll kill each other. Or us. Or him. I don't know what happens."

Kin's eyes flicked to Las. "He the one who plays with feelings?"

Cleo's gaze narrowed. "Who told you that?"

"Someone who I currently hate." 

Kin stepped closer, though two of his crewwomen hissed warnings at him under their breath. "And you must be one of the strangers from Milada's collapsing family tree."

"Again," Cleo said, "move."

"No."

Malach gave a tired sigh. "For what it's worth, Captain, I am in favor of being returned to the camp."

Cleo stared at him. "You cannot be serious."

"I'm extremely serious. I dislike being rescued by amateurs."

Kin's mouth curved. "You heard the man."

"You don't know what he is."

"No," Kin said. "But I know what he is to Theron."

Cleo looked at him properly then. He looked ordinary, rugged, and extremely angry. And knowledgeable. Way too knowledgeable about things he should have no knowledge of. 

Kin lifted his spear a fraction. "And right now, every person in this forest seems to want him. That makes him the most useful thing I've seen all day."

Malach closed his eyes. "I object to being called a thing twice in one evening."

"Noted," Kin said.

Las's hand slipped from Malach's collar to his shoulder as another wave of emotion rolled through the woods. Cleo felt him shaking now, not from weakness, but from overload. The camp behind them was panicking. The forest was choking. Salacia's magic had left the whole place dry and furious, and every living thing with a pulse wanted someone to blame.

Cleo tightened her hold on Malach and calculated.

She could fight mortals. Easily, if Las could hold. Less easily if he folded. Kin and his crew knew the woods badly, but they knew violence well. Malach might resist at precisely the wrong second. Salacia was somewhere behind them. Milada would not stay still for long once she realized what had happened. And Zora—

Zora was not here.

For the first time since crossing into Kaen, Cleo understood that this mission had not merely become complicated.

It had become badly designed.

***

Back at the camp, Milada stood with Areilycus unconscious in her arms while Salacia tapped her newly-minted foot against the camp's grass.

The sea queen had taken possession of the clearing without sitting on a throne, which Milada had to admit was impressive. Soileen stood near Rhona, rigid with anger. The witch mother looked ill, one hand wrapped around her staff, the other pressed against her ribs as though holding herself together by will. Around them, the Vlax Kaeni moved quickly from hut to hut, bringing water to children, pressing wet cloths to the mouths of animals, whispering apologies to trees that had gone brittle at the edges.

Milada had no time for any of it.

"My siblings are here," she said.

Salacia looked at her. "And?"

"They took Malach."

"Yes," Salacia said. "That is the problem under discussion."

"No, you don't understand. They're powerful."

"My dear girl, everyone is powerful until they are stabbed in the skull. Trust me, I know." 

Milada shifted Ari's weight against her chest. He was too warm and too cold at once, his body limp with the false sleep Las had pushed into him. The sight of him like that kept scraping something raw inside her. He would be furious when he woke. "Lasicus can alter emotions," she said. "Not create them, but amplify or subdue what already exists. Fear, anger, grief, loyalty. If it's there, he can turn it into a weapon."

Salacia tilted her head, actually interested now.

"He can pacify a crowd," Milada continued. "Or drive it into hysteria. He could make your own guards drown themselves if they carried enough despair. He could make a terrified camp tear itself apart."

Rhona's mouth tightened. Soileen looked sharply toward the trees.

Salacia only smiled. "He is a man," she said. "Every man has a weakness."

"Not like him."

"Especially like him. Men who feel are the easiest to manipulate." 

Milada swallowed the first answer that came to her because it would not help. Salacia did not respond to moral warnings, it seemed. Milada had known women like this in Millennia, though never one so spectacularly dangerous. Salacia was not cruel because she lacked reason. She was cruel because reason had become one of the languages of her cruelty.

"You can't do this," Milada said. "I need Malach. He is the only bargaining chip I have against Theron."

Salacia's expression cooled. "Your war with your lord is not my problem."

"No," Milada said, forcing herself to breathe. "But I bet I can make you a better offer."

Salacia's eyes narrowed.

Milada felt the shift and stepped into it. "You don't strike me as the kind of woman who takes orders from men."

"I'm not."

The answer was immediate. Defensive.

There.

"If Theron told you to retrieve Malach and you listened, it must be because you want something in return."

Salacia's smile returned, but it had sharpened. "If I can give it to you," Milada said, "will you surrender Malach to me?"

A laugh moved through Salacia, soft and nearly affectionate. "I want has not been found on Kaen for millennia." 

Milada looked down at her brother.

Ari's face was slack against her shoulder. The red ribbon at his wrist glowed faintly where chaos moved beneath the skin. He had called the thing inside him a blessing because he did not understand yet that some gifts were only knives offered handle-first. He would hate what she was about to say. He might never forgive it.

But he would be alive.

"Chaos," Milada said.

Salacia went silent.

It was so complete a silence that even the water ribbons around her stilled.

Soileen turned her head sharply toward Milada. "No."

Milada did not look at her. "That's what you want, isn't it?"

Salacia's face had changed. Not much. The glamour remained, the poise, the theatrical impatience. But under it, for the first time, Milada saw naked hunger.

"What do you know about chaos?" the queen asked.

"Enough to know there is none left here because Kaen bound it into Theron." Milada tightened her hold on Ari. "Enough to know Theron is dying because of it. Enough to know he's trying to transfer it into my brother."

Rhona took one step forward. "Milada."

Milada's voice shook, but she held Salacia's gaze. "If you can extract it from him, it's yours."

A murmur broke through the camp. Soileen went pale with outrage. Rhona looked as if Milada had just offered to sell the moon.

"Milada," Soileen said, low and sharp, "you do not understand what you are offering."

"I understand that Ari is dying."

"You understand less than that."

Salacia lifted one hand, and the water ribbons drifted upward again, slow and thoughtful. "Your brother is full of chaos?"

"Yes."

"And you would hand it to me."

"If you can take it out without killing him."

The queen's mouth curved. "Everyone adds that clause."

Milada's stomach tightened. "Can you?"

"No."

The word landed brutally.

Then Salacia stepped closer, her new legs trembling once before she forced them still.

"But I know someone who might."

"Gorgo," Rhona said.

Salacia's eyes flicked toward the witch mother. "I loathe an informed room."

"She will not help you," Soileen said.

Milada heard none of the mockery now. Only the possibility.

Ari free.

Ari emptied of the thing killing him.

Malach still within reach if they moved quickly enough.

Theron weakened.

A bargaining chip exchanged for a weapon.

"Then make your bargain with me," Milada said. "Not Theron."

Salacia looked at her for a long moment.

"You are very new at treason," she said.

"I'm learning quickly."

In the distance, far beyond the clearing, someone shouted. Then another voice answered. Metal rang faintly through the trees.

The chase had found more people.

Salacia turned her head toward the sound, and the water around her trembled with renewed intent.

"Well," she said. "We had better catch your fish." 

*** 

The forest had become too crowded. Malach knew it before Cleo did, before the mortal women raised their bows and before Lasicus began to tremble so violently that his fingers dug bruises into the Bishop's shoulder. The Vlax Kaeni woods had a way of holding sound and then giving it back altered: a footstep became a warning, a snapped twig became a verdict, a breath became death. 

Somewhere behind them, the camp was shouting. Somewhere farther back, Salacia was moving through the trees like a lunatic, destroying everything in her path.

Cleo held Malach by the arm. 

Malach closed his eyes for one second. "I am becoming extremely tired of being located."

Cleo lifted her chin. "Move."

Kin did not. "No."

"You have no idea what you are interfering with."

"I rarely do," Kin said. "It has not stopped me before."

One of his crewwomen, Talla, raised her bow higher. "Captain."

Malach felt Lasicus's influence tremble around him. The boy was near collapse. Not physically, though that too, but emotionally. The forest was too loud, Kin's crew was afraid, Cleo was furious, Malach was fighting the pacification, and somewhere beyond the trees Milada and Salacia were coming, each carrying their own sentence. 

Then another voice joined them.

"Put the weapons down before everyone embarrasses themselves."

Kin turned.

Mags stood between two black pines with six Aazorians behind her, all armed with short clubs, fishing knives, and tight expressions.

She wore her tavern apron over a dark coat and had a scarf tied around her hair. Nothing about her should have seemed strange. She looked exactly like the woman who poured ale, cut off credit, and told grieving men when they had become a public nuisance.

And yet Malach felt his dead skin tighten.

There was a firefly glow behind her left eye.

Barely there. A speck of gold in the wet dark.

His breath caught.

Mags looked at him. "You fucking idiot foreigner." 

Malach's pulse should not have been able to answer. It did anyway, somewhere in the chaos that pretended to be blood.

Kin frowned. "Mags?"

"I said put the weapons down." She stepped forward, and the Aazorians with her spread across the path. "This nonsense ends here. Aazor is not marching behind one drunk captain. The continent is not yours to retake, Kin." 

"You followed me?" 

"Some of us prefer not to be crushed between Salacia's temper and your revelation."

"My revelation?" Kin's laugh came out harsh. "We are starving."

"And revolution feeds children so well."

His crew shifted uneasily.

Mags had chosen her words carefully. She had not brought cowards. She had brought tired people, practical people, the ones most frightened of Kin because they knew he could convince others to die. 

Malach looked only at her eye.

The glow pulsed again.

"Mags? That's your name?" She turned to him at once.

Too quickly. Mags smiled. Malach did not look at Lasicus when he warned him.

Las blinked. "What?"

"Do not touch what she is feeling."

Cleo glanced sharply at Malach. "Why?"

He forced his face into boredom. "Because the boy is already half-collapsing, and if he amplifies the emotions of a frightened mob, we'll be dead before anyone gets to rescue anyone." 

Mags's eyes flicked to him again.

For one treacherous instant, her expression softened. It was gone almost before it formed, but Malach saw it, and his throat tightened with fury. Theron had no right to look at him through another person's face with anything resembling tenderness.

He always worshipped this man. In this moment, all he could think was: Why did you come here, you fucking idiot. 

Then one of the men behind her smashed a clay bottle against the ground.

Grey sleep-smoke poured across the roots.

The Aazorians moved at once, clumsy but coordinated. The smoke curled low, thick with tavern herbs, bitterroot and boiled poppy, meant to drop a brawler without killing him. In the open air it should have dispersed.

It did not.

It clung to the ground with unnatural discipline, flowing around boots, sliding beneath skirts, crawling toward Kin and his crew in deliberate streams.

Malach stared at the smoke.

Fireflies, he realized. Tiny ones. Hidden inside the vapor, guiding it.

Kin coughed first. Then one of the Lioness women stumbled. Cleo swore and pulled Malach back, but the smoke had already reached Las. The boy reeled, overwhelmed by sudden fear, sudden fatigue, sudden confusion blooming all around them.

"Mags!" Kin shouted, voice ragged with disbelief.

He looked at her and knew, with a terrible private certainty, that Theron was watching him from behind that familiar mortal face, hidden well enough that the others would blame Mags, blame anyone but the god who could not enter Kaen and had therefore found a woman angry enough to become a door. 

Malach could have said it.

He did not. He swallowed the truth and let it sit inside him like a hot coal. I failed. He had to come to rescue me. To clean up my mess. 

Cleo dragged him backward as the smoke thickened, and the forest ahead burst with the sound of pursuit. Salacia was coming from the camp, water tearing through the trees in shining strips. Milada came behind her with the air compressed around her body, holding back the worst of the smoke with her absorbent powers. 

The chase was collapsing into several wars at once.

Mags stepped forward through the grey vapor.

"Give him here," she said.

To everyone else, it was demand.

To Malach, it was a plea.

And because he was a fool, because he had always been a fool where Theron was concerned, he almost went to her.

*** 

Salacia claimed she could track any man by the mess he left behind, which Milada found very impressive until she realized the queen meant this literally.

The forest around them had been trampled into her playing ground. Every living thing contained water on Kaen and therefore, every living thing had to listen. 

Sleep-smoke still drifted low between the trees in grey ribbons, and the leaves nearest Salacia had gone brittle from the violence she had done to the moisture in them. Somewhere ahead, people were shouting. Somewhere farther ahead, Malach was being dragged, carried, rescued, stolen, or all four at once.

Milada had Ari's weight still shaking in her arms even after Rhona's people took him back to the healer's hut. Her hands felt empty without him. Dangerous. She kept flexing her fingers, trying to stop herself from running blindly into the woods and tearing every tree apart until someone handed her the Bishop back.

Without leverage, they were as good as dead.

Salacia, meanwhile, was examining a footprint.

Very badly.

She stood half-crouched in the mud, naked except for her own heavy fall of copper hair and a rapidly fading sense of dignity. Her new legs trembled from exertion. The knees were bleeding. The soles of her feet were already cut open in three places, but she looked less pained and more annoyed.

"Land is disgusting," she announced.

Milada closed her eyes for one second. "Can you track him or not?"

"Of course I can track him. I was making a broader observation." 

"We don't have time for broader observations."

"That is exactly what people say before marching into preventable disasters."

Milada opened her eyes and found Salacia pressing two fingers into the muddy imprint. Water rose from the soil in a clear bead, suspended between her knuckles. It turned black, then silver, then faintly pink. Salacia sniffed it and made a face.

She flicked the bead aside. "He passed here."

Milada stared at her despite herself.

Then Salacia straightened too quickly, winced, and grabbed a tree for balance.

Milada caught her elbow before the queen could fall.

For one second, both of them froze.

Salacia looked at Milada's hand on her arm as if it were an assassination attempt.

Milada let go at once. "You almost fell."

Salacia's mouth twitched. "You have a terrible attitude for someone asking me for help."

"You have a terrible attitude for someone who needs help walking."

The queen looked away first.

"Follow me," Salacia said, as if she had not nearly enjoyed herself. "Your Bishop is being dragged east." 

Milada pushed past a branch. "He's leverage." 

"Hm," Salacia said. "So no emotional attachment?" 

"None whatsoever." 

They moved deeper into the woods. Salacia did not walk like someone accustomed to land, but she adapted quickly enough. At first she placed each foot too carefully, testing weight as if expecting the ground to betray her. Then she began using water to compensate, drawing moisture from the air and shaping it into thin supports around her ankles. It was cheating, but effective. Her steps became smoother. Still theatrical, but less likely to end in her falling face-first into a fern. Milada tracked differently. She did not understand the forest, not the way Salacia did not understand it, but the traces of chaos dragging behind Malach were becoming easier to recognize. 

Once she stopped calling it radiation in her own head, she could feel the difference between ordinary life and the distortion Theron left in everything he touched. Malach's path did not glow exactly the way Chaos on Tripolis did. 

The air around his passage felt compacted, as if the world had briefly held its breath to let it pass. A superior, terrible power. 

"This way," Milada said, turning toward a slope.

Salacia paused. "How do you know?"

"I can feel him."

The queen's eyebrows rose. "Can you?"

"Not him. The chaos."

Salacia watched her with a new, assessing interest. "And you learned to do that on Tripolis?"

"I learned to hold Diamond Storms in the atmosphere before they killed everyone under them. I thought the storms were … a force of nature. Now I know better." 

"Ah." Salacia resumed walking. 

Milada's jaw tightened. "You know him. Theron." 

"Unfortunately."

"You really hate him."

"I hate most people. Theron is not special.

"That's not true."

Salacia glanced at her. "No. It isn't. But it sounded less revealing before you ruined it."

They climbed over a fallen trunk. Salacia made a dramatic sound at the effort, then accepted Milada's outstretched hand. 

he moment her feet hit the ground again, she shook her hair back over her shoulder and continued speaking as if they were strolling through a garden instead of pursuing a kidnapped dead man through a forest on the edge of political collapse.

"Theron was very small when Kaen brought him home," she said.

Milada looked at her sharply.

Salacia smiled at the reaction. "Oh, there she is. The daughter who wants to know whether the monster was ever a child. They always do. It's one of the more embarrassing side effects of betrayal."

"I don't care whether he was a child."

"Liar. Of course you do. You want to know if someone made him this way because then perhaps there is someone else to blame."

Milada hated that enough to keep walking faster.

Salacia, infuriatingly, kept pace by sending water coiling around her legs like invisible crutches.

"He was quiet," the queen continued. "He watched too much. Children who watch too much are either neglected or planning something, and Theron was both. Kaen adored him in that lazy, infuriating way he adored all the strays he collected. Justitia tried to raise him. Kaen tried to love him without changing his own life to make room for the love. It went about as well as you imagine." 

Milada slowed despite herself. "He never spoke about the Cradle Realm. It was this … blob of existence we knew very little of."

Salacia stepped over a cluster of exposed roots. "That is the annoying part. Theron is not wrong about the original crime. Kaen let them put the chaos in a child because the world was falling apart. Someone had to be sacrificied." 

"You say that like you knew him well."

A strange expression passed over Salacia's face. "We married when we were very young. It was a bad match." 

Milada knew that, of course. Still, hearing Salacia say it in the middle of the forest, hair tangled with leaves and blood on her borrowed feet, made the fact feel newly absurd. "How?" "I was useful." The queen's voice stayed light, but Milada could hear the carefulness underneath. "I was not high-born. I was not one of the pearl-draped court beauties everyone expected him to choose. I was a low-ranking sea demoness from the outer shelves, which is a very decorative way of saying I posed no threat to him. No family important enough to object." 

The forest noise seemed to recede around them. Behind Salacia's chatter, there was a story she had waited too long to tell and now could not stop telling. 

"Kaen liked that," Salacia said. "Or thought he did. He liked people who amused him by refusing to be grateful. I insulted him the first time we met. He laughed for three days." 

"What did you say?"

"I told him he had the attention span of a drunk dolphin." 

Milada failed to stop the laugh that escaped her.

Salacia beamed. "Exactly. He looked at me the same way. As if I had just invented music."

They passed through a stand of thin white trees. Their bark was dry and peeling from Salacia's earlier assault on the forest, and for once the queen looked faintly uncomfortable at the damage. She touched one trunk with two fingers. A little moisture returned to it, not much, but enough that the curling bark settled. "He married me because I was inconvenient," Salacia went on. "Because his court hated me, because Gorgo did not know what to make of me, because Justitia was polite in that awful way saints are polite when they would rather throw you into a wall. Because he loved showing me his world. He thought choosing me proved something about freedom. About desire. About the sea's refusal to obey its own hierarchy." 

"And you?"

"I thought he chose me."

Milada felt the humor thin between them.

Salacia's gaze stayed on the trees ahead. "Men like Kaen do not choose women. They choose what the woman makes them feel about themselves. I made him feel brave, unruly, young, immune to the boredom of being worshipped. Then, eventually, I made him feel guilty. Men are not nearly as fond of women who make them feel guilty." 

 Milada thought of Areilycus, although the association felt wrong and strange inside her head. 

"So you killed him?"

Salacia looked at her sideways. "You do ask blunt questions."

"You answer everything except what matters."

This time, Salacia's smile held real appreciation. "Careful. I might start liking you."

The queen walked several more steps before speaking.

"I struck him," she said. "Whether that killed him … Well, Aazorians believe he is dead. But our world is overrun with men who refuse to stay properly dead." 

"Why help Theron now?" Milada asked.

"Because Theron pays."

"With chaos."

Salacia's face sharpened. "You are very irritating."

"There must be someone you wish to help with it. I doubt … I doubt it is for yourself." 

The queen stopped walking.

Milada stopped too.

Moonlight caught Salacia's hair, the copper gone almost black in the forest shade. For the first time since they began tracking, she looked less like a reckless queen showing off stolen legs and more like the ancient thing she was: a queen who had survived her god's love.

For a moment Milada thought she might strike her. Instead the queen turned and continued walking.

"You are too observant for your own health."

"I've been lied to a lot recently."

"That does sharpen the eyes."

They followed the trail down into a low, damp hollow where the sleep-smoke lingered between roots. Salacia crouched again, this time more gracefully, and lifted one hand. Droplets gathered from the grey vapor and formed a trembling ring around her wrist.

"Mortals," she muttered. "Always throwing herbs at problems."

"Milada."

The voice came faintly from ahead.

Milada moved toward it, but Salacia caught her wrist.

"Wait."

"I can't wait."

"You can if you wish to arrive alive."

Milada tried to pull free. Salacia did not tighten her grip, but the water in the air did. A thin band of pressure circled Milada's wrist, cool and unyielding.

"Let go."

"In a moment." Salacia's gaze stayed fixed ahead. "Your sister has nature magic, yes?"

"Yes." 

"And your brother controls emotions?" 

"Something like that."

"Then stop charging at sounds like a heroic idiot. Men do that. We are trying to be better."

Milada glared at her.

Salacia released her.

The strange thing was, she was right.

Milada forced herself to breathe. The chaos trail ahead was fractured now, mixed with other forces: Cleo's green pressure in the roots, Lasicus's emotional residue. This world was fighting them.

"We need a plan," Milada said.

"Excellent. I love plans." "Milada!"

There it was again. Closer.

Salacia smiled. "That one sounds desperate. Captain, perhaps?"

Milada ignored her. "You take the water out of the smoke. If there are herbs in it, can you separate them?"

"Obviously."

"Do it quietly. If we can clear the smoke, Kin's crew can see. Cleo is less dangerous if she has to fight people who know where she is."

Salacia gave her a look of theatrical astonishment. "You are bossing me. You are bossing a queen." 

"You are barefoot, bleeding, and wearing your hair as a dress. You can be queen again after we get Malach." For a second Salacia only stared.

Then she laughed so hard she had to brace herself against a tree.

Milada stared at her. "This is not funny."

"It is extremely funny." Salacia wiped at one eye, still laughing.

"Milada!"

The shout was now unmistakably Kin's.

The laughter vanished from Salacia's face, replaced by alertness.

"There," she said, pointing.

Milada nodded.

Salacia raised both hands. The moisture in the sleep-smoke began to bead and fall, taking the grey vapor with it. The forest opened in degrees, shapes emerging from the haze: fallen bodies, a flash of Cleo's pale hair, Lasicus bent nearly double, Malach being pulled forward and looking back over his shoulder at someone Milada could not yet see.

Salacia leaned close, her voice bright with anticipation.

"Shall we ruin everyone's evening?"

Milada felt her power gather around her, tight and controlled, the same force she had once used to hold a world-killing storm in the sky. Ahead, Malach turned as if he felt her coming.

"Yes," Milada said.

Salacia smiled like a girl about to break a window.

"Good. I was hoping you'd say that."

***

It happened in a hollow where the trees grew apart and the ground dipped toward an old streambed, dry now from Salacia's theft of moisture and brittle underfoot. The sleep-smoke had thinned enough for shapes to become people again. Kin's crew staggered between the trunks with knives out and eyes watering. Mags's little band of Aazorians stood opposite them, coughing into sleeves, clutching clubs and broken bottles as if they had not just ambushed their own neighbors. Cleo had one hand wrapped around Malach's arm and the other pressed to Lasicus's back, trying to keep him upright while he shook from the pressure of too many people feeling too much too loudly.

Then Milada and Salacia emerged from the trees.

The two of them should have looked ridiculous together: the foreign girl in borrowed Vlax Kaeni clothes, face pale with fury, hair coming loose from its braid, and the sea queen beside her, naked under the weight of her copper hair, bleeding from both knees and walking on new legs. 

Instead, the sight of them made the entire hollow hesitate.

Salacia lifted her hand, and the last of the sleep-smoke collapsed into water. It fell in a sudden wet sheet over the leaves, over the faces of the Aazorians, over Kin's boots, over Mags's apron. Several people gasped, startled back into full consciousness. Salacia smiled as if she had done them all a favor.

"There," she said. "Now no one can accuse me of fighting dirty." 

Kin wiped water from his eyes and looked from Salacia to Milada. "This is your backup?"

"I am no one's backup," Salacia said.

Milada did not take her eyes off Cleo. "Give him back."

Cleo's grip tightened on Malach. "No."

"You knocked Ari unconscious, you bitch." 

"Technically, Las did that." 

Milada's expression became very still. "If you say one more reasonable thing about hurting him, I will stop being reasonable." 

Lasicus flinched at the edge of the threat. Cleo moved in front of him by instinct, and that small movement told Milada more than any confession would have. Cleo would let the world burn if the fire kept Lasicus warm. 

Malach, meanwhile, had gone quiet. 

His attention had fixed on Mags, who stood several paces behind Kin's left shoulder, soaked from Salacia's dissolved smoke and breathing too evenly for a woman who had just seen a sea queen walk naked out of the forest. 

Theron had always been able to stand perfectly still while something inside him broke furniture. 

Malach looked away before the recognition showed.

Salacia noticed the look anyway.

Of course she did.

"Oh," she murmured. "That's interesting."

Milada glanced at her. "What?"

"Later."

"We don't have later."

Cleo took one step backward, dragging Malach with her. The roots beneath her boots shifted, responding to the strain of her power, trying to cradle her retreat into a path. "We're leaving," she said. "Anyone who follows us gets buried."

Kin raised his spear. "You are not taking him through my woods."

"They are not your woods," Soileen's voice called from somewhere beyond the trees, though the child herself remained hidden.

Kin's mouth tightened. "Not you too."

A few of the Lioness women exchanged baffled glances, which under different circumstances might have been funny.

Mags stepped forward. "Give the Bishop to me."

The whole hollow reacted to that.

Kin turned sharply. "To you?"

Mags did not look at him. Her gaze stayed on Malach, and the thread under Malach's ribs pulled so hard he nearly swayed toward her.

"Enough people have bled over him tonight," she said. "Hand him over, and we all walk out."

Cleo's eyes narrowed. "Who are you again?" 

Milada shifted, and the air around her tightened. It did not glow, did not crackle, did not perform. It simply compressed, the way the sky over Tripolis used to compress before the Diamond Storm broke. The leaves nearest her stopped moving. Water droplets suspended in Salacia's hair paused mid-slide.

"Malach stays with me," Milada said.

Salacia laughed. "With us."

Milada shot her a look.

"What?" Salacia asked.

Kin stepped forward too, spear angled toward the ground but ready. "No. He comes with me. Whatever game all of you are playing, Aazor has a stake in it now."

Cleo made a soft, derisive sound. "This mortal thinks he has a stake."

Kin's crew bristled at that. One of the women lifted her hook. "Say mortal again like that."

Las's breathing turned ragged. "Stop," he whispered.

No one did.

Power had a pull. Once enough people brought it into the same space, it was a matter of time before it exploded outward.

Cleo's roots crawled beneath the soil. Salacia's water gathered around her ankles in transparent ropes. Milada's containment field pressed outward with invisible force. Kin's crew tightened into formation. Mags's people gripped their crude weapons, fear rising so fast that Las nearly doubled over from the force of it.

Malach felt the entire hollow tilt toward violence.

Then the sky screamed.

The sound hit them from above, metallic and wet and full of pain. Every head lifted. The trees bent outward as a shadow blotted the moon.

For one suspended instant, Malach saw her clearly.

She was no longer cat, no longer puma, no longer any creature small enough to curl against a sleeping body. 

Zora descended through the canopy as a sea dragon made of silver steel. Her scales had split through fur in jagged plates. Fins unfurled along her spine like torn banners. Her wings, if they were wings, were wrong for air, built more for currents than wind, and they tore through branches as she fell. Her eyes burned green and nearly blind with pain. 

She was trying to reach something.

Her scales had split through fur in jagged plates. Fins unfurled along her spine like torn banners. Her wings, if they were wings, were wrong for air, built more for currents than wind, and they tore through branches as she fell. Her eyes burned green and blind with withdrawal.

She was trying to reach something.

"Move!" Salacia shouted.

Too late.

Zora struck the earth in the center of the hollow.

The impact split the world.

The ground buckled underneath their feet.

Trees snapped at their roots and lurched sideways. Soil lifted in sheets, then dropped away. The dry old streambed opened like a mouth. Fractures raced outward from the dragon's body, black lines tearing through moss, stone, roots, and bone talismans buried too deep for anyone to remember placing them. One crater collapsed under Mags's feet. Another tore open between Milada and Salacia. A third split beneath Kin's crew, scattering women into different pockets of falling earth.

Malach barely had time to draw breath before the ground vanished under him.

Mags fell with him.

Not beside him by accident. She lunged after him. 

Her hand caught his sleeve at the last second, and they dropped together into a dark fracture, the forest closing above them in a storm of dirt, roots, and falling stones. Cleo's hand missed Malach by inches. Someone shouted his name. It might have been Milada. It might have been Theron through Mags's mouth. It might have been his own fear thrown back by the stones.

Then he hit the bottom hard enough to lose the sky.

For several seconds, there was no world. Only pain, dust, and the terrible pressure of dead lungs trying to remember how to breathe.

When Malach could see again, he was lying on his side in a narrow underground hollow, one wall torn open by the collapse. Roots hung from above like exposed veins. Dirt rained softly over his shoulder. Somewhere nearby, Mags groaned. The bartender lay several feet away, half buried in loose soil, face bloodied from the fall. Her eyes opened slowly. For a moment they were only hers, dazed and frightened. Then something shifted behind them, not visible, not glowing, but unmistakable to the part of Malach that had been made by the same hand.

"Mal," she said.

His throat closed.

Above them, the rest of the forest was still breaking.

Milada fell with Salacia because Salacia refused to fall alone.

The queen seized her wrist as the ground split, and Milada's first thought was that Salacia was trying to drag her down out of spite. Her second thought, as the two of them dropped through a collapse of roots and dry stone, was that Salacia had wrapped water around them like a shell. It took the worst of the impact when they struck a sloping bed of mud far below the surface.

They rolled apart in the dark.

Milada came up choking, one shoulder screaming. Salacia landed with much less grace and a great deal more profanity.

"Land," the queen hissed from somewhere nearby, "fucking fuck me." 

Milada coughed dirt from her mouth and looked upward. The fracture above them was too steep to climb easily, a jagged throat of roots and wet stone. Faint moonlight leaked down in strips. The air smelled of newly opened earth.

"Are you hurt?" Milada asked.

Salacia was silent for a beat too long.

Then, offended, "No."

"Milada."

"No."

"Milada."

"I said no."

"You are bleeding."

"I was bleeding before. Keep a ledger if it arouses you."

Zora screamed again somewhere above, and the humor died instantly.

Kin fell with Cleo.

This was, in his opinion, proof that whatever gods governed luck had a disgusting sense of timing.

The ground broke under his boots, his spear flew from his hand, and he dropped through a tangle of roots with Cleo slamming into him halfway down. They crashed together onto a shelf of damp stone and rolled until Kin's back hit a wall. Cleo landed partly on top of him, elbow driving into his ribs, hair full of leaves and eyes already murderous.

For a second, neither of them moved.

Then Kin said, "If this is a seduction, your technique needs work."

Cleo punched him in the stomach.

He wheezed. "Fair."

She shoved herself off him and scrambled for her blade, only to find that the fall had cracked the shelf above and sealed them in a narrow pocket under the forest floor. Roots formed one wall. Stone formed the other. The only visible exit was a crawlspace barely wider than a body, sloping downward into blackness.

Cleo looked at it.

Kin looked at it.

"No," they said at the same time.

From somewhere beyond the rock, Las cried out.

Cleo's face changed completely.

"Las," she shouted, lunging toward the blocked wall.

No answer came from her side.

Because Lasicus had fallen elsewhere.

He landed among the women of the Lioness in a shallow crater full of broken roots, smoke, and coughing bodies. Talla caught him by the back of his coat before he could strike his head against a stone, and the two of them collapsed into a pile of torn moss. Around them, four of Kin's crewwomen groaned, cursed, or checked themselves for broken bones with the briskness of people used to pain as a workplace hazard.

Las lay very still.

Fear from the women. Pain from the forest. Panic from Cleo, distant but sharp enough to cut. Zora's agony above them, huge and animal and addicted, tearing at every root of his awareness. Malach's shock from somewhere below. Milada's fury. Salacia's irritation, which was apparently durable enough to survive this disaster.

Las clapped both hands over his ears, though it helped nothing.

One of the Lioness women leaned over him. "Is he dying?"

"No idea," Talla said. "Pretty boys do this sometimes."

"I'm not dying," Las whispered.

"Good. Then sit up."

"I can't."

Talla stared at him, then at the fractured pit around them. "Can you do anything useful?"

Las opened his eyes. Tears had tracked clean lines through the dirt on his face.

"I can feel everyone," he said.

The women exchanged looks.

Talla crouched beside him, suddenly more serious. "Then feel us a way out."

Above them all, Zora dragged herself from the crater she had made.

The dragon shook her head, scattering metal scales and clumps of earth. Every movement cracked the ground further. Her wings scraped the broken trees. Her claws sank into the soil, and wherever they struck, little veins of green fire pulsed and died. She did not know what she had done. She did not know who she had separated.

She screamed again.

In the crater below, Soileen stood at the edge of the destruction with Rhona beside her, face pale with horror. 

The witch mother lifted her staff, trying to knit the outer fractures before the whole forest peeled open. Soileen looked at the dragon. 

"Poor thing," she whispered.

Zora's head snapped toward her.

For one second, the entire forest held still.

Then Zora lunged.

Toward the largest fracture.

Toward Malach.

Down in the dark, Malach felt the pull of her coming through the roots and turned toward Mags, whose eyes were no longer entirely her own.

Zora's claws tore into the earth.

The fractures widened. The groups were separated. The forest had become a broken map, and every person trapped beneath it now held one piece of the disaster.

*** 

Malach came back to himself with dirt in his mouth. 

The collapse had thrown them into a hollow beneath the forest, a pocket of broken stone and roots where the air was close, wet, and full of powdered earth. Above them, the fracture narrowed to a jagged seam of moonlight. Soil kept sifting down in thin, nervous streams. Somewhere far overhead, Zora screamed, and the sound passed through the ground in a shudder that made the hanging roots tremble. 

Mags lay several feet away, half-buried in loose dirt, one arm twisted awkwardly beneath her. Her apron was torn. Blood ran from a cut at her temple into the grey at her hairline. For one terrible second, she was only herself: a tavern woman who had been caught in gods' business and dropped into the earth for her trouble.

Then her eyes opened.

Malach stopped breathing, though breathing was still mostly a courtesy.

Mags blinked once. Twice. Confused, hurting, human. Then something pressed itself behind her gaze, and the shape of her attention changed. Theron's. Her voice, when it came, was still Mags's, still roughened by smoke and age and coastal weather. But Malach had lived too long inside the radius of Theron's will not to know it. 

He knew the way he used silence to make other people step closer to their own destruction. 

He knew the terrible, private softness that only appeared when Theron was with him.

Mags looked at him with that softness.

"Mal."

It was one syllable, and it nearly ruined him.

He pushed himself upright too fast, pain flaring through his shoulder where he had struck stone.

Mags tried to sit up and immediately folded with a sound of pain. Theron's attention flashed through her face, offended by the body's limits. No chaos lived in Mags's blood. No primordial force waited under her ribs, eager to become weapon. 

She was only flesh, only bone, only a woman with a cut head and bruised lungs. Theron had come with nothing but will and the tiny firefly-thread he had driven through her senses.

That meant he had no power here.

The realization should have comforted Malach. Instead it made him furious.

"You idiot," he said.

Mags's mouth twisted, and for an instant the expression was so much Theron that Malach felt the old ache behind his sternum. "That is not the tone you usually take with me."

"Then enjoy the novelty." 

Theron looked down at Mags's hands as if discovering them inconvenient. The fingers trembled. The nails were split. Her pulse hammered visibly at the throat. Then the body gagged, a violent, wet convulsion that bent her forward and made her claw at the dirt. Malach moved despite himself, crossing the hollow on his knees before he could remember anger was supposed to keep him still.

"Do not touch me," Theron rasped.

Malach grabbed Mags by the shoulders anyway and hauled her upright before she cracked her skull against the stone. "That is rich, coming from a man puppeteering a bartender."

"She consented enough."

"Enough?" Malach laughed once, low and ugly. "There is the hymn of your entire empire."

Mags's body shuddered again. Her eyes rolled, and Theron's presence slipped.

It did not leave the body so much as get expelled.

One moment Mags was looking at him with Theron's buried fury; the next she collapsed bonelessly into Malach's arms, and something tore upward out of her in a thin, pale, burning shape.

Theron's soul hovered over the body.

Not the grand silver god of Millennia. Not the Stormwright with black veins and jeweled hands. 

What hung above Mags was the stripped thing beneath all of that: human-shaped, translucent, and burning.

Hellfire did not look like ordinary flame. It was too white at the center and too black at the edges, a light that seemed to devour the idea of light as it spread. It clung to him from within. His spirit arched under it, jaw open around a silent scream that only found sound when it hit the stone walls and came back as a tortured echo.

Malach froze.

For all his rage, for all his humiliation, nothing in him was built to watch Theron hurt without wanting to stop it.

"Theo," he said. 

Theron's spirit twisted toward him. The fire burned brighter, an exile exposed inside a realm where he was trespassing, trying to expel him.

He could not survive outside a body here. Not even briefly. Mags jerked in Malach's arms as Theron slammed back into her.

She gasped hard enough to tear something in her throat. Her back bowed. Malach held her until the convulsion passed, one hand braced behind her neck, the other pressed to her shoulder. When her eyes opened again, Theron was there, breathing through her.

Above them, Zora's claws tore at the ground. Dirt rained harder from the ceiling.

Malach released Mags so abruptly she nearly fell sideways.

"Have you completely lost your mind?"

Theron wiped blood from Mags's mouth with the back of her hand and glared up at him. "Right back at you, you fucking idiot."

Theron pushed himself, herself, this stolen body, back against the wall and tried to sit with dignity despite being covered in dirt and blood. It almost worked. That was the most infuriating part. Theron could make a dying body look like a throne. 

"What part of leave my daughter to me did you not understand?" Theron demanded. "This is not a place for you to be."

Malach's hands curled into fists. "My place. Yes. Let us discuss my place."

"Do not start."

"Oh, I think I will." He stood, though the hollow was too low for him to straighten fully, and the posture made him look less like a bishop than a man trapped in a grave with the person who had built the church above it. "Where is my place, Theron? In your Canon? On my knees before your altar? Sucking your cock and kissing your feet and thanking you for the privilege, Your Majesty?"

Mags's face went very still.

Theron had never liked vulgarity from him. "Fuck you, Mal," Theron said softly. "I never made you kneel for me."

"No. You never had to. I was happy enough to do it on my own."

"How is that my fault?"

"How is it now?" Mal raged. 

The hollow seemed to shrink around them. Roots hung between them. Rotten. Deprived of Kaen's saltwater. 

Mags's body was shaking again from the strain of containing him. The body wanted him out. Malach could see it in the pulse fluttering at her throat, in the way her fingers clawed unconsciously at her own ribs, as if trying to peel away the foreign presence from inside. Theron felt it too. He kept shifting, trying to settle more lightly, trying not to crush the vessel while refusing to abandon it.

The sight struck Malach harder than he wanted. Theron without chaos was only will. Will could be enormous, but it had no hands here unless Mags lent him hers.

"You came here for me," Malach said.

Theron looked away.

"You came into Kaen," Malach continued, voice lowering, "in a body that is trying to vomit your soul out every few minutes, with no chaos, no real power, no protection from the banishment, because of me."

Theron's borrowed jaw tightened. "Do not flatter yourself. Covaxani is destabilizing."

Malach laughed without humor. "Bread. Ledgers. Judgments. Say them all if it helps you avoid the obvious."

"The obvious," Theron repeated.

"Yes." Malach stepped closer. "Do you love me?"

Theron did not answer.

He did not even move.

He had never asked it. Not once. Not in the centuries of private rooms, shared wine, blood vials, court corridors, altar floors, beds, battle maps, laughter, punishment, silence. Malach knew the rule as intimately as he knew Theron's hands. He could be wanted. Trusted. Needed. Admired. Favored. Touched and worshipped. 

But he could not ask for the part of Theron still buried beside a wife and a dead brother and whatever original fantasy of home he refused to relinquish.

Malach had honored that rule because he was proud.

And because he was afraid the answer would be no.

Theron swallowed. Mags's throat worked around it. "You know what I can give."

"Yes," Malach said. "I know exactly what you can give. A body. A title. A pen. A church. A bed when you feel lonely." 

"That is not fair."

"No, it is not. Very little about us has been fair. Answer me anyway."

Theron looked at him for a long time. The soul inside Mags flickered; Malach saw the body reject him again in the slight separation at the edges, the brief pale shimmer above her skin. Hellfire licked up his outline before he forced himself down again, wincing with Mags's mouth but refusing to make a sound.

Malach's anger cracked around fear.

"You are dying," he said.

Theron's expression hardened at once. "No."

"Yes. And nowhere have I felt it more clearly than here." Malach pressed a hand to his own sternum, where the chaos that kept him animated still remembered its maker. "This terrible realm is full of terrible people, and it knows you. It hates you. Your chaos pulls thin here. I can feel the weakness in you from across the dirt."

"I will not die."

Theron gave him a look of pure irritation, so familiar and alive that it almost undid him.

"I will transfer the chaos," Theron said. "Onto someone capable of holding it."

"Areilycus."

"If he survives, yes."

"And if he dies?"

"Then I find another vessel."

Malach stared at him, waiting for some qualification that did not come. If Areilycus dies. If the boy fails. If the son breaks. Then another vessel. Another body. Another sacred necessity fed into the machine.

"And then what?" Malach asked.

Theron's mouth tightened. "And then the chaos is contained."

"And then what?"

"Then the realms stabilize."

"And then what?"

"Then there is peace."

Malach stepped closer, until he could see the dirt clinging to Mags's lashes, the blood at her temple, the infinitesimal tremor that was not hers alone. "And the vessel?"

Theron's eyes flickered.

"There would be protections."

"Answer me."

"They would be contained."

"Used."

"Alive," Theron snapped. "Which is more than chaos left loose would allow most of them to be."

Malach shut his eyes for a moment.

When he opened them, Theron had gone very still, as if bracing for the next blow.

"And you?" Malach asked. "What do you do after you hand your death to someone else?" 

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, after. The thing you never think about because survival has been your only thought for so long. What do you do after you stop dying?" 

For the first time in all the years Malach had known him, he saw something like blankness in him. A man arriving at the edge of the map he had spent centuries drawing and discovering he had never imagined the country beyond it.

"I rule," Theron said finally.

Malach's laugh was quiet and devastating. "Of course."

"I rule," Theron repeated, more sharply now, "I maintain the realms. I correct what needs correcting. I keep chaos contained. I keep the dead sorted, the monsters fed, the bridges sealed, the fireflies watching."

"And me?"

Malach felt suddenly foolish, but he did not take it back.

"And me?" he repeated. "Where am I in this peace of yours?"

Theron looked genuinely confused by the need to say it. "With me."

The answer was immediate. "With me," he said again, and something in the borrowed voice roughened. "You and I will rule."

Malach's breath caught.

"You and I?"

Theron frowned as if Malach had misunderstood something obvious. "It has always been you and I."

For a moment, the entire broken forest above them receded. No Zora screaming. No Milada chasing. No Salacia bargaining. No Covaxani chanting for bread. Only the dark hollow, the smell of earth, Mags's borrowed body trembling under the strain, and Theron looking at him with the bewildered impatience of a man who had never once realized that a truth left unspoken long enough could become indistinguishable from a vicious lie.

Malach almost laughed.

Almost wept.

Almost crossed the space between them and put his mouth on Mags's bloodied brow because the body was wrong but Theron was inside it, burning, arrogant, terrified, impossible.

Instead he said, "That is not an answer to whether you love me."

Theron's face closed. Malach nodded once, as if he had expected nothing else.

Then the earth above them shook.

Zora's claws tore deeper into the fracture, sending roots and stones crashing down. Mags's body jolted, and Theron's spirit slipped again, a pale flame shuddering half out of her skin. He bit back a cry with someone else's teeth.

Malach reached for him before pride could stop him.

Theron caught his wrist.

For a second the contact bridged everything wrong: the borrowed flesh, the missing chaos, the old rules, the unanswered question. Theron's grip was weak in Mags's body, almost human. Malach felt it and understood, with sick clarity, that this was what Theron feared more than death.

Needing with no power behind it.

"Mal," Theron said, "Come home." 

Above, the dragon screamed again.

Below, the god and the dead man held each other in the dirt, while the borrowed body tried to expel a soul that had crossed a forbidden realm for love it could not name.

Malach's voice, when it came, was very quiet.

"I can't." 

*** 

Kin came back to consciousness with Cleomara's knee in his ribs.

For a moment, he did the sensible thing and stayed still. The world above them was still breaking in small, ugly increments. Pebbles slipped down the walls. Roots trembled overhead. Somewhere in the distance, muffled by layers of earth and stone, the sea dragon screamed again, and the sound moved through the ground rather than the air. 

Cleo was already awake. She had braced one hand against the wall of the pit and the other against his chest, not tenderly, not even practically. 

"Get off me," he said.

She looked down at him, hair half out of its braids, face streaked with dirt, eyes bright with fury. "I was thrown into you."

"And yet the experience remains unpleasant."

She shoved herself away from him with enough force to make his ribs complain, then staggered upright in the narrow underground pocket. The fall had dropped them into a slanted chamber beneath the forest floor, a cramped place of damp stone, roots, and broken clay. The ceiling above them had sealed badly, leaving only a jagged seam of moonlight several body-lengths overhead. Too high to reach. Too unstable to climb without bringing half the forest down on their skulls.

Kin pushed himself up and checked his body in the brisk, impersonal way sailors learned after storms. Ribs bruised, not broken. Left wrist sore. Shoulder scraped raw. Pride severely injured. 

He would live. 

Cleo had already turned her back on him and was pressing both hands to the wall of tangled roots.

"Don't exhaust yourself," Kin said. "I'm sure the dirt will surrender once it realizes how important you are."

"Shut up."

The roots twitched under her palms.

For one instant, Kin thought she might actually do it. The wall shifted. Fine soil trickled down. A few thin roots uncurled from the packed earth and reached toward her fingers like cautious animals. Cleo inhaled, shoulders easing as if she had felt something answer.

Then the roots snapped back into place.

The wall hardened.

Cleo stared.

Kin enjoyed that more than he should have. "Problem?"

She ignored him and tried again. This time she pressed harder, fingers sinking into the damp soil between roots. The air took on a green, raw smell, like crushed stems. A strand of ivy buried in the wall lifted, curled around her wrist, and then recoiled so sharply it left a red line across her skin.

Cleo jerked back. "What the fuck?"

Kin leaned against the opposite wall and wiped dirt from his mouth. "That sounded like a problem."

"My magic worked outside." She said it less to him than to the wall, which seemed wise. The wall probably cared more. "I opened the barrier. I covered our tracks. The forest listened."

"Maybe the forest got to know you better."

She turned on him. "Meaning?"

"Meaning it changed its mind."

"That is not how magic works."

Kin barked a laugh. "It is here."

"No. Magic obeys its wielder."

"On whatever obedient little star nursery you crawled out of, maybe."

Cleo's eyes narrowed dangerously.

Kin did not feel careful. He felt bruised, furious, and recently enlightened in a way that had stripped him of patience. 

"Kaen never used magic much," he said. "Not in front of me. Not the way you lot do, waving your hands around and expecting the world to heel. He said magic here was alive."

Cleo gave him a look of pure disgust. "That is idiotic."

"Probably. He was drunk when he said it."

Cleo turned away again, jaw tight, and began examining the wall with more caution. Kin watched her fingers move over the roots, not commanding now, searching. She was angry enough to hide fear well, but not well enough. Each time the earth refused her, something in her shoulders tightened. She was not used to being ignored by living things.

Good, Kin thought. Everyone should experience that at least once.

"Magic on Kaen helps when it wants to," he continued. "That's how he explained it. Badly, mind you. He preferred pretending to be human. Cards, wine, cheap beds, worse music. He'd rather lose money to a dockhand than summon useful rain." 

She turned slowly. "What good is advice of a man in love?" 

Kin smiled, but it had no warmth in it. "Yes. I love him. I'm not in denial about it." Cleo looked away first, and Kin realized then that he had struck something. He studied her properly. She was younger than she acted, or older than she looked, or maybe both in that obnoxious immortal way. Fine-boned, sharp-mouthed, dressed like someone who had never had to mend clothes because servants and magic both existed. But the minute Lasicus had cried out after the fall, her face had changed. A person did not look like that for a brother unless something had gone badly wrong in the naming of the bond.

Kin pushed himself off the wall. "Where's the feeling boy?"

Her head snapped toward him. "Don't call him that."

"Las, then."

"Do not call him that either."

"Do I need to submit names for approval or can we move on?"

Cleo's nostrils flared. "He fell somewhere else."

"Is that what has you so rattled?"

"I am not rattled."

"Sure. You always look like you're about to claw your own face off when calm."

Cleo returned to the wall. "I'm trying to get us out."

"No, you're trying to get to him."

"And?"

The captain shrugged. "It's a little too intimate." 

Kin should have stopped. He had built a life out of not stopping.

"Maybe customs are different where you come from," he said, "but on Kaen we don't fuck family."

Later, he would claim the punch came out of nowhere. 

She hit him.

Not with magic. Not with roots, vines, or whatever green nonsense she had been trying to summon. She crossed the pit and punched him square in the jaw like a dockworker. 

Kin staggered back into the wall, laughed because it hurt, and tasted blood. "Las and I are not real siblings."

Kin wiped his lower lip with his thumb. "Real is doing a lot of work there."

"We were raised together. We function as family. That doesn't mean Theron made us from the same flesh, or the same line, or whatever provincial rulebook you are dragging behind you." 

"Function as family," Kin repeated. "That sounds like family." She stepped back before he could say anything else and returned to the wall as if the conversation had become too filthy to continue.

Kin let her have the retreat. For now.

She pressed one palm to the roots again. Nothing.

She scraped dirt away with her fingers and found another thread of living root under the stone. When she touched it, the root shivered, then stiffened in refusal.

"Why doesn't this world recognize me?" she demanded.

Kin's attention sharpened. "What?"

"Theron warned me that my and Lasicus's power would not be perfect here," she said, frustration burning through every word. "But it worked earlier." 

Kin stared at her, then laughed once because he could not help it.

Cleo looked ready to hit him again. "What is funny?"

"How can it not recognize you?" he asked. "This is the cradle world."

"So?"

"So everything comes from here."

"No," she said at once. "Theron's children do not."

Kin looked at her.

Cleo's confidence faltered by a fraction, but she lifted her chin and pushed forward anyway. "Me, Lasicus, Milada, Areilycus. We were born from Theron's power."

"No, you weren't."

Cleo stared at him. "Excuse me?"

"You weren't born from his power."

"You know what a dead sea god told you between drinks."

"And you know what Theron told you while raising you to be an errand girl?" Kin stepped closer, anger beginning to move under his ribs. Not the hot, loud kind. Something colder. Something that had started on the cliffs when he understood Kaen was dead and the continent did not belong to gods unless mortals kept agreeing it did. "Chaos can restore life. It can twist it. It can drag a soul back wrong and shove it into a body. It can birth realms, maybe. Keep stars where they are supposed to be. Rot forests. Heal wounds. Make monsters."

Cleo's face had gone very still.

"But it cannot create something from nothing," Kin said. "Kaen told me that. Gorgo, your father's sister, said the same once, before she started threatening to remove my liver, now that I think back on it. There has to be a body, a pattern, a soul, a blueprint. Something. Chaos doesn't invent life. It steals from what already exists and rearranges the furniture."

Cleo's breathing had changed.

"All you Theron's pups," he said, "are just Kaen's stolen subjects."

Cleo launched herself at him.

This time she did not punch him. The earth did.

The wall behind Kin bucked so hard it threw him sideways. Roots lashed out from the packed soil, not fully under Cleo's control but answering the violence in her. One wrapped around his ankle and yanked. He hit the ground, shoulder first, then rolled before another root could pin his wrist. Dirt fell in heavy clumps from the ceiling. The whole pit groaned.

Cleo stood in the center of it, shaking with rage.

The roots moved toward her now.

"All you Theron's pups," he said, "are just Kaen's stolen subjects."

Cleo launched herself at him.

This time she did not punch him. The earth did.

The wall behind Kin bucked so hard it threw him sideways. Roots lashed out from the packed soil, not fully under Cleo's control but answering the violence in her. One wrapped around his ankle and yanked. He hit the ground, shoulder first, then rolled before another root could pin his wrist. Dirt fell in heavy clumps from the ceiling. The whole pit groaned.

Cleo stood in the center of it, shaking with rage.

The roots moved toward her now.

Kin shoved himself onto one elbow and stared.

"Well," he said, breathless. "There it is."

She spun toward him. "What?"

"The angrier you get, the more it responds."

"I am not angry."

The wall split another inch.

Kin looked at it, then back at her.

Cleo's hands curled. Around her, roots pressed outward from the walls, widening hairline cracks. The pit breathed damp soil and old green life. Somewhere in the rock, water began to drip. Not much, just enough to turn dust into mud.

She looked at the roots as if they had betrayed her by arriving late.

Kin pushed himself upright more carefully this time. "Kaen said magic here had preferences. Maybe it doesn't care about your bloodline or your title or whatever story Theron sold you. Maybe it cares whether you mean it."

"I always mean it."

"No." Kin held her gaze. "This rage, it came from your soul, not Theron's commands, didn't it?" 

For a second, he thought she might tear the whole pit apart with him inside it. Her face went white around the mouth. Her eyes shone with something too violent to be tears and too raw to be simple anger.

"You don't know anything about me," she said.

"I know you love him."

Her expression changed.

"Las," Kin clarified, quieter now. "I know you love him, and I know you're terrified that if you admit what kind of love it is, the whole shape of your life stops making sense."

Cleo looked away.

The pit settled around them. The roots did not retreat.

Kin leaned back against the wall, suddenly tired. "Believe me, I know the type."

She laughed once, sharp and brittle. "Yes. You and your dead god."

"Not dead enough, unfortunately."

Her gaze cut to him. "He can feel everything. Every room, every person, every hidden thing they think they've buried. It hurts him. He doesn't say how much, but I know. When he was little, he used to hide under tables during court functions because everyone's hunger and resentment and worship made him sick. Theron would tell him to master it. Milada tried to comfort him. Ari tried to make him laugh. I was the only one who knew how to make people leave him alone."

The admission came out like it had been dragged from her by the roots themselves.

Kin listened without interrupting.

Cleo swallowed. "So yes, I protect him. If that offends your provincial moral structure, choke on it."

Kin lifted both hands. "I'm not saying it because I think you're evil."

"How generous."

"I'm saying it because if Las can make a crowd panic or sleep or love or obey, then sooner or later everyone who loves him is going to convince themselves they're the only one who should decide when he uses it."

Above them, something heavy moved across the ground. Loose dirt rained down through the moonlit seam. Cleo looked up sharply. "Maybe," Kin replied. "Or the dragon. Or Salacia. Or my crew. Or your sister. Or a tree deciding we've been spiritually educational enough and should die."

"Milada is not my sister."

"You all keep saying things like that right before doing deranged family business."

Cleo gave him a tired, filthy look.

"You are very irritating."

"I've been told it's part of my appeal."

"By Kaen?"

"Mostly by bartenders refusing me service."

Cleo glanced back at the wall. The roots were still there, half-open, listening. Her anger had called them.

"What do I do?" she asked. The question surprised him.

She hated that too. "Don't look so pleased. I'm asking because you knew something useful, not because I respect you."

"Understood."

"Well?"

Kin looked at the roots, then at her. "Why can't you love Las openly?" 

She exhaled through her teeth.

He stepped closer to the wall and touched one of the roots with two fingers. It did not respond to him except by being damp and root-like, which was honestly the level of magic he preferred.

Cleo stared at the roots.

Kin watched her wrestle with herself, which was much more entertaining than watching her wrestle the wall. Her pride did not go quietly. It went clawing, spitting, and making threats on the way down.

Finally, she placed both palms against the earth. "Theron does not like affection," she said, grinding her teeth so hard Kin thought she would leave there toothless. "There is no law against love. And he thinks we don't see him bringing Malach to his chambers, walking the halls side by side, giggling into wine glasses and caressing each other's hair. But we do."

The pit was quiet.

Then the wall softened.

"We don't know any of his realms. No one even knows where the bridge is. But we endure and we do our job. And all I want to do is to love openly. All Milada wants to do is to love openly. But whenever I touch Las's hand, whenever Milada gives Areilycus a glance, so full of longing, so full of love, Theron invents a punishment. Sometimes, his directive is aimed at Milada and me. It's so much worse when Las and Ari are punished." 

Soil loosened around the roots. The crack above widened by the width of a hand. Cool air moved through the chamber, carrying with it the distant sound of the woods.

Kin looked at Cleo. "And how does that make you feel?" 

Cleo opened her eyes. "Helpless." 

Kinsley grinned, bloody-mouthed and bruised. 

*** 

"Is he dead?" a woman asked.

"No," said another. "Dead people don't look that offended."

Lasicus blinked.

Four women had fallen with him. He knew them only as fragments from the chase: hard faces, sea coats, weapons made for killing things bigger than men. Now, close and trapped, they became painfully specific.

The tallest one, Talla, had caught him by the back of his coat during the fall and now sat against a root wall with blood running from her nose, looking furious enough to cauterize herself by spite alone. Ven, younger and wiry, was already checking her knives, laying each one in a neat row on the mud

Heraldine, broad-shouldered and grey at the temples, had one arm wrapped around her own ribs and the other hand pressed to the forehead of a freckled woman whose name Lasicus did not know. The freckled woman was breathing too fast.

Too fast.

Too loud.

Her fear opened inside him before he could stop it.

It came with salt, darkness, the memory of drowning, a child's voice calling from somewhere she could not reach. Lasicus flinched so violently that Talla noticed.

"Pretty boy," she said. "You about to vomit?"

"I don't know yet," Lasicus answered honestly.

Ven snorted. "At least he's self-aware."

"I do not like enclosed spaces," Lasicus said, because the statement felt important and factual. "I also do not like open spaces. Most spaces are poorly designed."

For one second, all four women stared at him.

Then Heraldine laughed, winced, and pressed harder against her ribs. "Oh, I like him."

"You like injured animals," Talla said.

"He is an injured animal."

"I am not an animal," Lasicus said.

The freckled woman's breath hitched again. The panic in her rose like water under a door. Lasicus turned toward it on instinct, toward the easiest problem in the crater, the emotion most willing to answer. He reached without moving his hand. Just a little. Just enough to soften the edge.

The freckled woman stopped shaking.

Talla's knife was at his throat before he finished the breath.

"Do not do that," she said.

Lasicus froze.

"I was helping."

"Who asked you to help? The captain told us about your wickedness. You worship the Great Demon, just like those forest people." 

He opened his mouth.

Closed it.

Cleo told him when to reach and when to stop. Theron told him what purpose his gifts served. Ari smiled at him and called him gentle, which was kind but not always accurate. Milada looked worried whenever his power hurt him and angry whenever anyone else tried to use it.

No one had ever put a blade under his chin and said, with absolute clarity, that help required permission.

Lasicus swallowed carefully against the knife. 

Talla held his gaze a moment longer, then lowered the blade.

The freckled woman, calmer now but pale, looked at him with suspicion instead of gratitude. That hurt more than he expected. It also, horribly, made sense.

"I am sorry," he said.

Talla tucked the knife back into her belt. "Good. Now learn fast, because we're trapped and I don't have time to raise you."

Ven leaned over the freckled woman. "Miri, can you breathe?"

Miri nodded, embarrassed now that she had been seen afraid. "I'm fine."

"You are not fine," Lasicus said before he could stop himself.

All four women looked at him again.

He made himself continue. "Your breathing is too quick. Your left wrist is fractured. You are thinking of someone named Lio, who is young, perhaps your child or brother, and you are afraid you will die underground before you see him again."

Miri went white.

Talla's hand went back toward her knife.

Lasicus lifted both hands. "I did not search. It is loud."

Heraldine studied him more carefully now. "You can hear all that?"

"Feel," he corrected. Ven made a face. "That sounds miserable."

"It is."

Above them, Zora screamed again. The sound passed through the ground. Miri curled around her broken wrist. Ven grabbed her knives. Heraldine swore. Talla looked up, assessing the seam of sky and the unstable roots.

"We need a way out," Talla said.

"There is no climb," Ven said. "Walls are too soft. If we dig upward, the whole thing comes down."

"Then sideways."

"Sideways to where?"

Talla looked at Lasicus. "Can you do anything useful?"

He hesitated.

That was the kind of question Cleo would never ask because Cleo would already have decided the answer. He looked around at the women in the crater, at their injuries, their fear, their practical impatience. None of them wanted to worship him. None of them wanted to admire him. At least one of them wanted to slap him. 

It was, strangely, calming.

"Sometimes," he said. "People leave emotional residue in the places they pass through. Fear is sticky. Love is worse. Grief stains everything. If I can separate them, I might sense where the others fell."

Ven lifted a brow. "Love is worse?"

"Yes."

"Tragic."

"Usually."

Talla crouched in front of him. "Can you do it without touching us?"

"Yes."

"Can you do it without changing what we feel?"

Lasicus looked at her. "I don't know."

He looked down at his hands. They were shaking. He pressed thumb to forefinger, thumb to middle, thumb to ring, thumb to little. Once. Twice. The sequence helped. Not enough, but some.

"I can observe," he said slowly. "But if one of you panics, I may react before thinking. I am used to reacting. I should not, but I might."

Talla nodded as if that were simply another weather hazard. "Then say it out loud when it happens. Don't hide it."

"That is all?"

"That is plenty."

Miri gave a shaky laugh. "Captain Kin would have told him to do it and then yelled afterward."

"Captain Kin is gifted in many ways. Communication is not one of them," Heraldine said. 

He closed his eyes.

The crater vanished. The first layer was easy: the women around him, bright with pain and fear and irritation. Talla's fear was controlled, packed tight into useful shapes. Ven's fear ran quick and sharp, always looking for exits, angles, things to cut. Heraldine's fear sat low in her ribs beside her injury and concerned itself mostly with the others. Miri's fear was open and heavy, but she was fighting it now, angry at herself for having been seen. 

Lasicus nearly recoiled. 

Cleo was there, somewhere to the west and below, a blade of panic wrapped in rage. She was thinking of him so loudly that it struck his chest. 

Kin was with her, all bruised pride, grief, and a new hard thing that felt like a door being bolted. Milada and Salacia were lower, to the south, Milada's fear compressed into purpose, Salacia's amusement flashing brighter.

Malach was farthest away and closest at once, a hollow full of longing, anger, and something so devoted it hurt Lasicus just thinking about it.

And above all of them, Zora.

Lasicus gasped.

Talla caught his shoulder but did not shake him. "What?"

"She is not a beast," he said. 

The women went quiet. "How did I never … feel it before?"

Zora's agony rolled through him in waves. Need. Heat. Metal under skin. Roots in the mouth. A hand that smelled like scorched fairy-root. "She is looking for someone," Lasicus said. 

"The Demon?" Ven asked.

"Yes. No." He pressed both hands to his chest, trying to keep the feeling from cracking him open. "Her body is looking for Theron. Something else is looking for her mother." The women of the Lioness were not sentimental. 

Their tenderness had calluses. It knew how to gut fish, fire arrows, bury husbands, cut rope from a drowning sailor's throat. But the word mother moved through each and single one of them. 

Talla's voice went careful. "Can you find the mother?" "No. Not from here. The memory is old. Damaged." He opened his eyes, throat tight. "But she exists."

Ven looked upward, toward the dragon shaking the forest apart. "Does she know?"

"I don't think so."

The pit trembled again. A section of root wall split, revealing a pocket of darkness sloping downward. Damp air breathed through it, carrying the smell of underground water and old stone.

Ven grabbed one of her knives and crawled close. "Tunnel."

Talla looked at Lasicus. "Did you do that?"

"No."

"Was it the forest?"

"I don't know."

"Is it going to eat us?"

"I don't know that either."

Ven peered into the gap. "I miss the sea. The sea only tries to kill you when Salacia sends it. Who sent this monster?"

Heraldine snorted, then hissed at the pain in her ribs.

Lasicus moved toward her before remembering the knife at his throat. He stopped with visible effort.

"I can make the pain smaller," he said. "Not remove it. I can calm the fear around it so your body stops tightening."

Heraldine studied him. "You asking this time?"

"Yes."

"Will it make me stupid?"

"No."

"Will it make me trust you?"

"No. Unless trust is already there."

"Good," she said. "Because it isn't. Do it."

He nodded, grateful for the bluntness, and reached gently this time. Heraldine's pain was physical, which he could not touch directly, but fear had gathered around it, bracing every muscle for the next breath. He eased only that. Heraldine exhaled, slow and surprised.

"Well," she said. "That's less awful."

Talla watched him closely. "That what they use you for?"

Lasicus withdrew his power and looked at his hands. "Among other things."

"Crowds?"

"Yes."

"Enemies?"

"Yes."

"Family?"

He thought of Cleo's hand on the back of his neck, guiding him through rooms. Cleo telling him where to stand, when to breathe, when to quiet someone, when to make fear soften into compliance. Cleo loving him so fiercely that he had mistaken the fierceness for proof that it could not also be use.

"Yes," he said.

Talla's face did not change, but her voice lost some of its edge. "That's a hard thing."

"No one has ever called it that."

"What do they call it?"

Lasicus shrugged. "I don't know. Duty." 

Talla nodded toward the tunnel. "Can you tell where it leads?"

Lasicus closed his eyes again and followed the emotional currents. The tunnel had no feelings of its own, but air moved through it from somewhere wider. He could feel Cleo's panic beyond it, stronger now. Kin's irritation tangled with hers. Not far.

"It leads toward Cleo," he said.

Ven grimaced. "That could be useful or deeply annoying."

"Both," Lasicus said.

All four women looked at him.

This time, he meant the humor.

Talla smiled first. Small, unwilling. "Maybe there's hope for you."

"I would prefer a rope."

"Hope is lighter to carry."

"That sounds like something people say when they have no rope."

Heraldine laughed again. "Definitely keeping him."

"No one is keeping me," Lasicus said, and then paused because he had said it too quickly, too sharply, from some place under the polite surface of himself.

Talla heard it.

She did him the courtesy of not softening too much.

"Good," she said. "Then walk yourself out."

She went first into the tunnel, knife between her teeth. Ven followed, then Miri with Heraldine helping her. Lasicus hesitated at the entrance, looking up once through the cracked seam of sky.

Somewhere above, Zora was still hurting.

Somewhere ahead, Cleo was trying to reach him.

For the first time in his life, those two truths did not arrange themselves automatically into an order of obedience.

He crawled into the dark after the women of the Lioness, carrying everyone's fear carefully, and for once, without changing it.

Talla smiled first. Small, unwilling. "Maybe there's hope for you." 

"No one is keeping me," Lasicus said, and then paused because he had said it too quickly, too sharply, from some place under the polite surface of himself. 

"Good," she said. "Then walk yourself out."

She went first into the tunnel, knife between her teeth. Ven followed, then Miri with Heraldine helping her. Lasicus hesitated at the entrance, looking up once through the cracked seam of sky.

Somewhere above, Zora was still hurting.

Somewhere ahead, Cleo was trying to reach him.

For the first time in his life, those two truths did not arrange themselves automatically into an order of obedience.

He crawled into the dark after the women of the Lioness, carrying everyone's fear carefully, and for once, without changing it.