My consciousness fluttered in and out. Gentle hands lifted me onto soft fur, and then wind tore at my hair. Green and blue and grown swirled in my vision. I glimpsed a dark forest canopy, a jagged coast, a line of sharp white cliffs. Stern voices argued in the daemon tongue. Among their words was only one I understood—Andiya.

They knew her. So where were they taking us? Where did they take deserters? Where did they take humans?

We touched down on dark stone, the rasp of the sea crashing just below. I forced myself to stay upright, to keep my eyes open. Grey arms pitched me forward to stand. I put my weight on a bare-chested daemon man as we walked. We were against the ocean waves, spray and foam splashing in a mist over a low stone wall. A pair of winged daemons picked Andiya up and rushed her inside an archway of blue and orange tiles.

The daemon supporting me spoke. “Zhenkai?”

I only shook my head. I didn’t know what he’d said.

“Arbrais? Go-ah? Étviais? Novoski? Tjerda—”

“Novoski!” I ground out. “Novoski. Please—Andiya was stabbed with iron. She needs magic.”

“Iron kills magic,” the daemon replied. His accent was rough, guttural, as if his tongue had never used our language before.

The daemon walked us through the archway. We were on the grounds of a sprawling, low complex. Covered walkways of black stone bordered lush, tropical courtyards, the floors and archways accented with bursts of intricately painted tiles in orange, white, and pale blue. Pillars wrapped in blooming vines held up obsidian-tiled roofs with gold etching, their eaves dripping with flowers. The complex’s tiles were painted with imagery I knew well: vines, scimitars, stags, ruby blossoms, delicate leaves. The same pattern that I’d once seen painted on Andiya’s skin, the one now tattooed on my own arm in gold. We followed a roofed path, passing buildings dedicated to different luxuries: open-air baths, a library with lattice windows, a smoking lounge, a tearoom of pouffes and palm fronds, and vacant bedrooms bedecked in brocade, silks, and piles of pillows. Every room was a wonder of delicate tiles, the motif spreading across walls, ceilings, pathways, pillars, arches. I didn’t need to ask where we were. This was a place fit only for a queen.

The pain in my chest began to dull. Were they healing Andiya?

“I want to see her,” I choked out.

The daemon sighed sharply, but didn’t respond. He lifted me up a winding staircase. Only a few floors up, we reached a long hall in a layout that couldn’t be mistaken. Rows of cells, each with an open wall of thick bronze bars, sat empty.

The daemon lowered me onto a small bed in one of the cells. It wasn’t some miserable dungeon, but instead a simple room with modest furnishings and an adjoining bathing closet. The tile motif continued even here, my ceiling a spiral of vines, spears, and moonbeams. A small window opened to the sea, my view of the palace complex obscured by the swaying jungle trees of its courtyards.

The cell door clanged shut. “You shall wait,” said the daemon. I got a good look at him. He was grey-skinned and winged just like Khalid, his eyes the same black void. This daemon wore a belt of heavy gold medals, a skirt of studded leather strips, and a layer of embroidered violet silk beneath it. A blade hilt peeked out from the column of his spine, its chest strap sewn with leaping stags.

“You’re a High Order?” I asked. Like Andiya, he could speak the human languages. “A malikhari.”

“General Verahai,” he said. “Commander of the Kaeltan forces and of the Royal Guard.”

“Rozin Kain. Eon of the Canavar.”

He gave me a chilling, hateful look. His eyes flicked to the gold bonding tattoo peeking from my sleeve. “And why has a human brought us a Mathaszai?”

“I don’t even know what that is.”

His eyes narrowed. “Her name. Andiya Mathaszai. Daughter of the Faithless. Known deserter to the Royal Guard.”

“She …” a lance of Andiya’s pain stole the breath from my chest. The situation was bitterly familiar. “She brought me here. To speak with your queens. Sir.”

“Of her own will?”

“Yes. Sir.”

General Verahai gave me one last look, then left. I stumbled to the cell bars.

“Wait! Wait—will you help her? Will she live?”

He paused in his step. “Will she live?”

“Yes. Please, if you know—”

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“Not we?” he said, more to himself than to me, and vanished down the stairs.

I fell back heavily on the bed. My eyes closed, mind reaching out. But Andiya was only a wall of pain and smoke, impossible to read. I pressed against her mind, hoping she could feel my presence. I would stay there as long as it took, keeping watch over the smoke that I prayed would not fade away.

*

As the sun set, a servant opened my cell door. He never once looked at me, wholly unconcerned as he laid a glass dish of fresh fruits, cured meats, and rich cheeses on my little desk table. He had no need to be careful around me, I realised, no need to chain me or order me against the wall. I was a human without the ability to bond. I had as much chance of fleeing as a turtle did escaping a wine bottle.

The bars clanged shut, and I was alone again. I ate slowly, listening to Andiya’s mind. She was in so much pain, but I couldn’t feel it anymore. Was she blocking it? Were the doctors—if that’s what they were—sparing me?

I slept fitfully, tossing all night.

I woke with a start at a servant in my room. My heart squeezed, and I was across the room, back to the wall, in a second.

The servant cocked their head at me curiously. They were tall and thin, their skin like birch bark and their hair like autumn leaves. Similar to daemon in Barje Vos, but far softer. No claws, no fangs. Deliberate and slow. Delicate panels of red voile wrapped their body, trailing behind as they continued working. They laid out a set of clean, silken clothes on my bed.

I took a deep, steadying breath. This daemon was not the same. Their hair was made of oak leaves, rustling gently as they moved, and peppered with tiny blossoms like goldenrod. They stood at barely half the height of the daemon from Barje Vos. This did not seem at all like the predator I knew.

“What’s your name?” I asked.

They blinked at me.

I pressed a hand to my chest. “Rozin.”

Their eyes brightened, and a smile of small, spiky teeth lit their face. They imitated my motion and spoke a series of wind-flute sounds. They bowed and left, silent as a deer through trees.

I ate and laid on my bed. I tried reading one of the books on the desk, but they were all in the daemon tongue, a mess of sigils I’d never seen. So I simply stared from my window and listened to Andiya, whispering at that smoke, begging her to wake up.

For the first time in too long, I was truly alone.

I hated it. I hated waiting here, clueless, without Andiya teasing me, or growling in my head, or spitting insults at me that I knew she only half-meant. I hated not being able to ask her who these daemons were, what they’d do to her, how she felt seeing them again. I missed everything about her. I’d rather be arguing with her every day than be in this silence forever.

The bond vanished.

I shot up. Hollow emptiness left a hole where Andiya had been. The hard knot at the back of my mind was simply, utterly gone. The silence was crushing.

I ran to the cell bars and began shouting, screaming, slamming my hands on the door. The servant came running over, eyes wide.

“What happened to Andiya?” I demanded.

The servant gave me a blank look.

“Verahai,” I said. “Get General Verahai.” When the servant cringed nervously, I slammed the bars. “VERAHAI!”

The servant ran off.

I paced, trying to breathe. Gone. How was she just gone? Was she alive? Dead? Had she died, and the daemons used some magic to spare me? I gripped my hair. She couldn’t be dead. I’d pray to every Creator, scream into the heavens until they answered me. I took Death’s small quartz star from my pocket and held it close. Please. Please, Death, Judgement, whomever might still be listening. You’d spared Andiya once, you could spare her again—Creators, let her be alive—

“What is the meaning of this?” demanded a disgruntled Verahai, hands clasped behind his back.

I was against the bars in a blink. “I lost Andiya—the bond is gone—is she alive? What’s happening? Why can’t I see her?”

General Verahai’s wings rustled in irritation. “You cannot see her, human, because I do not allow it.”

“But she’s alive?”

“She is.”

I sagged against the bars.

“Humans are not to enter our lands,” said Verahai. “Andiya Mathaszai broke a sacred law in bringing you here. I demand to know why.”

“We’re here to petition the queens for help. The human lands are at war.” I shook my head. I hardly cared about that right now. “Please. How is she?”

“What should that matter to you?”

My heart ached. I knew my answer. I’d known it for a long time.

“I love her.”

General Verahai stilled. His eyes appraised me head to toe, a frown curling his brow. “So you do,” he said flatly. He unbolted the door. “Come with me.”

I followed him down to the main floor, where we passed by courtiers in bright, lavish formal dress. A woman with twisting, diamond-like ram horns wore a chiton of sheer white lace, her ears adorned with heavy jewels. One woman wore a cerulean gown that wavered like a flowing river, another a robe of dark panels that shimmered like a metallic hummingbird. One man puffed clouds of rainbow smoke from a long pipe. A courtier in bright, reptilian orange lounged on a sun bed. His eyes were a solid emerald, edge to edge, his brow and cheekbones lined with serpentine scales.

“I give you your Mathaszai,” said Verahai. “In her rightful place: among the court of El By Sea.”

We passed through a towering arch of pale tiles and entered a cavernous hall. Potted ferns arched over piles of pillows. Two streams flowed in depressions, winding around the hall in the pattern of a lotus. Reclining courtiers on piles of pillows took no notice of us, smoking and whispering and laughing with their hands covering their teeth.

A small group chatted quietly on the other side of the hall, glittering under a shaft of light.

“Andiya!” I shouted.

The hall silenced. She turned, eyes wide. Andiya looked every part a member of this court. They’d given her new clothes of deep scarlet, two rich ribbons of silk that flowed down her body and cinched at her waist by a sash of gold. Her hair fell down her back in gentle waves, a halo of pearls woven around her forehead. And painted on her skin, as they had been when I’d met her, golden patterns crawled up her arms, her side, her thighs, across her ribcage. A gold collar of etched runes hid the bonding tattoo on her neck.

I tried to run for her, but Verahai’s hand fell on my shoulder. My mind searched for Andiya, but she just wasn’t there anymore.

Andiya’s eyes turned cold. She turned away, and the hall’s low chatter started again.

I waited. She never looked back, as if she’d never seen me at all. My eyes stung as if I’d been slapped.

“You are not the first to love a Mathaszai and suffer for it,” said Verahai. He led me away, and when he took me back to my cell, I didn’t say a word in argument.