I waited anxiously in our room for Andiya, pacing back and forth. The moon was high above, bright enough to illuminate the meticulously maintained orchards beside the manor. With how empty the main house was, no one had noticed Andiya vanishing into the rows of apple and pear trees. Now all I could do was wait.

The bond felt strained, like an elastic being stretched the further Andiya went. “Where are you now?” I asked.

“Outskirts of town. No one’s seen me yet.”

Her voice carried, as though she shouted it at me from across a road.

“You move fast.”

“Almost like magic,” she replied dryly.

I curled up in my bed, the covers over my shoulder. I hated being so weak. I should have gone with Andiya. What if she missed something I might have caught? What if that was the difference between Yulia being saved and Yulia—

I shut out the alternative. But it wouldn’t go.

“You said you worry for Khalid. How do you get your mind off of it?”

At the flash of pain that roared up the bond, I knew I’d asked the wrong question.

“I do not.” Her voice was a low burn of fury, and it reminded me of when we’d first met. “But you do not talk of Khalid. Not you, who damned us. My bonding is one thing, but Khalid’s is a different beast. I am chained; he is dead. I will not discuss my friend with his murderer.”

“I hoped … he would be wherever Yulia is. So you could see him again, as you wanted.”

“Why do you think I agreed to this fool’s errand?” Her mind thrust me back like a shove. “Now. Enough of him unless it is to tell me where he went.”

Andiya went silent for far too long. I was anxious for an update, but I didn’t want to press her. Instead, I edged my mind closer and closer to hers in the hopes of catching some stray thought.

What I found were flashes, images. A dark forest. Moss-covered rocks. Scarlet hair on my arm as I pulled myself up a low crag. The soft, whispered sounds of my clothing as I drifted silently between the trees.

The world through Andiya’s eyes.

I leapt closer, and found my mind in her body. I could feel the bark under my fingers, smell the earthy woods; I felt myself—Andiya—sigh against a cool night breeze.

I—she—reached the camp. The sign Yulia had left us was right there. I—Andiya, I had to keep our minds apart—placed her own hand on Artem’s print.

Magic hummed under her skin. I felt a tug, like a string tied to my stomach, turning Andiya southeast.

“What do you think you’re doing?” demanded Andiya.

“Just waiting in my room,” I replied, then tried not to curse when I realised she’d said that aloud.

Displeasure rolled through her, and I backed away. Once I was out of her mind, Andiya snapped my access shut.

“Never do that without my permission.”

“I didn’t mean to—”

“Never, Rozin. You will swear it right now or I turn around.”

“Fine. I swear. I really do. I just wanted to help.”

“Then get a map and show me what lies southeast of this camp.”

I quickly pulled on a coat and snuck out of my room. The manor was eerily still at this hour, far emptier than any house I’d seen. There were no servants about, no guards patrolling the halls, no children sleepily wandering to the kitchen for a snack. Winterwood was lonely but for me and the statues by the stairs, their limbs cast in deep shadow. I slipped into the library and shut the door behind me, careful not to make a sound.

“Any reason you didn’t track Artem with that trick when we first found the camp?” I asked.

“Because you'd have stupidly decided to go after them.”

“Of course I would have!”

“While I understand your dedication to your Yulia, we would have perished in the woods in our state. We needed rest, supplies. More than half of our damn blood.”

“Had more than half,” I grumbled. I found a map rolled up in a tall shelf. I lit a lantern and unfurled it, poring over the area around Zhyla. “There’s a lot to the southeast. Some small villages, crown woods, the hill clan lands … Mount Anfang, the borders with Etvia and Azherbal. How far should I be looking?”

“I can’t tell. I’m not a trained tracker. A general direction is the best I can determine.”

“You seem trained in very little, for a royal guard.”

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“Look who’s talking.”

I thought the logical paths through as Andiya searched the camp for anything we might have missed before. “They couldn’t have reached Etvia or Azherbal yet. They’d need winged mounts to get that far so quickly. Yulia has no reason to head for Mount Anfang. She knows the Shrikes are more likely to work Artem in the mines than they are to provide any aid. So she’s either in a nearby town, the woods, or the Crows took her to their lands. Which, given the scarf, seems the most likely. If she’s there, we’re going to get her back.”

“So you’re going to unleash a High Order on this unsuspecting hill tribe, is that right?”

“If they don’t give her back, then yes.”

“You should be concerned that I approve wholeheartedly of this plan.” With a teasing tone, she added “You may not have made a bad malikh.”

“Malikh?”

“What we call ourselves, what you call a daemon. Or did you think we referred to ourselves with the same insult your people so unimaginatively bestowed upon us? Daemon. ‘Spawn of hell,’ really?”

“So you aren’t?”

Her snicker rang in my head. “I can think of a few of my friends who deserve the title, but no. We are children born of this earth, as you are.”

This was the information that Irina and the Canavar sought so desperately. To peer behind the veil; to discover the secrets of our history that only the daemons remembered. And here Andiya was, joking about world-turning revelations as though they were common knowledge.

“So what do you call a High Order?” I asked.

“We recognize only three divisions among our people. Humans like to classify us: Bestial, Sensor, Animator, Brute, High Order, Elemental of Ice, Fire, Earth, Wind, Wood … the list goes on for a mile. We view each other only by the strength of our connection with nature’s magic. We are all malikh, the ‘magic born,’ but some among us are more. I am malikhari, a ‘magic blessed.’ And there are the most powerful of us all, those we call malikhaten, the ‘magic crowned.’ Our royalty, those who rule by might.”

“So, for example, the Kaeltan queens are stronger than you?”

“Not necessarily. If I were to challenge a queen for the throne and win, then I would be a malikhaten as well. The divisions among my people are far more blurred than the royalty like to admit.”

“And what determines a daemon’s—a malikh’s—power?”

“Blood, mostly. But it is possible for a malikh’s power to grow or wane over time. Some have been known to lose their power completely.”

“How?”

“Oh, Rozin. We both know I’m not telling you that.”

“Fair. I wouldn’t either.” Andiya went quiet, but I didn’t have any patience. The quieter she was, the more I thought of Yulia’s fate. “Hold on. You called me malikh. The lowest of the three.”

“I did. Am I sensing insult, Rozin? Not that I called you a daemon, but that I called you weak?”

“You might be.”

“Wait. Look at this.”

Her mind opened, and I looked through her eyes. They were tracks in the forest floor. Heavy boots, and from the tread pattern, military. I’d had the same boots. Two tracks, from the looks of it.

“Follow,” I said.

She flicked her hand, and a tiny ball of flame bobbed over the tracks. As she walked, more sprung up to light her path.

Faraway voices echoed. I strained to make them out.

“What are they saying?” I asked.

“Who?”

“The voices. You can’t hear?”

Andiya stood silent and listened to the woods. The voices were definitely there.

“Nothing.”

I understood just in time. I extinguished my lamp and dropped down behind a heavy desk just as two people entered the library. The voices hadn’t been in Andiya’s ears. They’d been in mine.

I split my consciousness between the library and Andiya’s mind. An icy headache instantly began behind my eyes.

“Seal the door,” said an unfamiliar male voice. I peeked carefully around the corner. In the moonlight through the window stood a tall, handsome young man with half-tied gold hair. He wore fine leather armour and a riding cloak washed like a grey and pink sunrise, and from under it peeked a wyrwood prosthetic hand that glowed faintly with constellations of runes. On his shoulder perched a cat-like daemon. It was beige and white, four-pawed and tailed, but with the face and wings of a barn owl. I knew exactly who the man was. Lady Ilyin’s son, the one who had a Sensor—and who had lost an arm in service to the Canavar.

“What news?” asked the second person. Lady Ilyin. She pressed her hand to a round porcelain tile beside the door, and a flash of magic pulsed from it. I cringed. A soul-lock. It would only open for whoever had sealed it, meaning I was trapped in the library until Lady Ilyin unlocked the door.

“It should reach the common people by tomorrow evening, the next day at the latest. We must brace ourselves for the inevitable outcome.”

“Out with it, Damian. What is so important that you felt the need to drag me out of bed?”

Andiya slid silently through the trees. The bond felt so taut that I couldn’t see how she could possibly go any further. Pain blossomed in my chest as the bond fought back.

Damian took his mother’s hands. “How ready are the soldiers?”

“Sufficiently, if need be. We are still gathering banners. But we have the forces to defend Winterwood.”

“And to attack?”

Andiya paused, feeling the wind. “A daemon,” she sent. Her voice was near impossible to hear. “There’s one nearby.”

“What kind?”

“Don’t know.”

“We don’t have the support to attack the Canavar,” said Lady Ilyin. “Maybe if I can win over the Shrike girl, we might have the numbers. But we’d be crushed in a month’s time without them.”

I didn’t even dare to breathe. Attack the Canavar.

“Are you hearing this?” I shot at Andiya.

The forest floor dropped off to a sharp hill. Andiya picked her way down, feet hardly on the ground. She gathered her magic in anticipation.

“I think it’s a bonded.”

“Forget about that for a second! Get in my mind, you need to hear this too—”

“The time is now, mother. The princess is dead.”

My heart skipped. But I’d seen Irina not hours ago, when I’d bid her goodnight. What had Damian done? How could I have left her alone—

“She fell from her chambers, straight off the Korongorod. Prince Maxsim saw it.”

Lady Ilyin gaped in shock, then let out a massive “Ha!” She smacked Damian playfully on the shoulder. “Fell, they think? Jumped, more like! I even told that Shrike the princess would follow in her father’s footsteps. Though I did not expect to be proven right so quickly.”

I shouted at Andiya with all my strength. “Listen! Something’s wrong on the Korongorod. They’re saying the princess killed herself!”

But Andiya was too far, concentrated too hard on forcing onwards against the bond. Not paying attention.

A blaze of agony shot through my heart. Andiya stood motionless in a small clearing, the moon brightening the waving grass. At the other side was a young, terrified Canavar soldier and an uncloaked bonded. They were both ratty, their clothes torn and stained with old blood, but I recognized them instantly. As did Andiya.

Rafiq and Khalid.

“Andiya, listen to—”

She slammed me out of her mind with brutal force, splitting open my headache like a knife through my eyes. I saw white and gasped. My palms smacked on the floor.

“Andiya! Andiya! LISTEN TO ME!”

The library was too quiet again. My vision cleared, and I came face to face with Lady Ilyin and her son.

Damian lowered to one knee, fixing me with a look that did not need words to be a threat. His owl-cat daemon screeched.

“Sarangerel tells me you have a bonded. Where is it?”