The sun sank, turning the green chill of the forest to a dusky purple. Maeva saw her breath fog before her eyes and felt the knight’s hand grow cold in hers. When she lost sight of his tangled black hair in the dark, she came back to herself long enough to question where they were going. Maeva hadn’t meant to follow the knight halfway down the mountain, but it seemed that was where he led her.

The weight of what she’d done caught up to her. She’d slipped a skin, a dead one, in plain sight of an Unfinished. A gross misuse of power. Not even when faced with death on the battlefield had Maeva ever pulled from the Greater Curses. A mage would rather die than give up the secrets of the Great Dome.

But the witch stole death from me.

Wherever the knight took her, they would want to know who she was. If she told the truth, they might bind her hands and break her fingers. The prisoners ransomed at the end of the last war had come home missing pieces of their tongues, or with deep scars in their cheeks from the gags the Ammarish made for them out of iron.

This knight might even dispatch her himself. He kept hold of his sword while he held onto her hand. Maeva wrapped her own around the hilt of the stolen crescent, still tucked into her belt. She tugged at his arm.

“Stop.” It was not quite a command.

The knight let go of her. They stood panting beside one another for a tense second. Maeva flinched when his hands moved, but kept her hands still. With one long sweep of his arms, he pulled the wolf pelt from his shoulders and wrapped it around hers.

“Your teeth are chattering,” he said.

Maeva touched her aching jaw. She thought she’d broken the habit of grinding her teeth long ago while still a novice at the Dome: A mage does not wear their thoughts. She resisted the urge to thank him — it was her pelt, after all — and took her hand off the hilt of the crescent blade. A deep breath calmed her nerves. The air was cool and fresh with the metallic scent of running water nearby.

I should cleanse myself, she thought. The bear had claimed at least two lives while she wore its skin. Maeva bore the burden of seeing their shades on to the afterlife with a night of prayer and fasting. But what do I do about him…?

“I told you I would see you again. Eva.” The knight smiled at her, one side of his mouth parting to reveal his teeth. On any other face, it might have seemed threatening. On his, it charmed like a perfectly shaped flower opening to the sunlight.

Maeva looked away. Seers studied beauty so that they could look past it. She knew that Ammarish features, from the jewel color of their eyes to the perfect symmetry of their cheekbones, all came from the Era of Epoch when Ammar had been Nymaut’s pleasure colony. This knight was descended from powerful mages and pretty concubines. Was it any wonder he had a good smile?

“Ma-eva,” she corrected. From the way that he stood with his hips angled toward her, she knew he didn’t plan to leave on his own. Maeva didn’t have the strength to send him off again with a spell.

“Stay here,” the knight commanded. “I’ll build us a fire.”

Her breath left her a ragged laugh. She hoped he was better at building fires than he was at avoiding fights. While the knight poked the underbrush with his sword, looking for sticks, Maeva set about the more practical task of figuring out where they were. She looked up at the sky and sought out the first stars emerging from the line where purple turned to blue. Somewhere overhead was the Scorpion, constellation of the winter months, whose tail pointed south. Maeva searched for it using the curve of the stolen crescent to line up the stars, as if she were a novice mage taking her first lessons in Seeing.

Am I even fit for this work anymore? The blade in her hand shook and she lowered her arms to compose herself. While she breathed calm into her fingers, the knight returned. He dropped an armful of kindling on the ground beside her and crouched down to sift through it. Maeva watched his hands while he arranged sticks, admiring the shape of them. Again, she found herself trying to guess his age.

He started the fire with a few good strikes from a starter rock and patiently fed the embers more tinder. When an orange flame blossomed, he switched to feeding it kindling. Maeva spread the wolf pelt on the ground and settled herself to sit beside him. Maybe thirty-two?

The orange glow made her feel cheery in spite of herself. It had been a long time since she had bothered to make her own fire. Some part of her believed that she’d forfeited the rights to such primal comforts. If she couldn't die from the cold, she didn’t deserve to be warm.

Now the knight put his arm around her shoulder. “Your teeth are still chattering.”

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Maeva flexed her jaw. She lifted the crescent away from the knight’s ribs and held it up for him to see. His eyes widened. “You told me I would see you again? Well, remember, I told you: you’ll catch your death out here.”

He took his arm off her. Maeva set down the crescent. She slid into another old habit learned beneath the Dome — she made all her criticisms into questions. “Just what were you thinking? Running around in the place where you caught this knife the first time? Wearing a brightly colored coat, wearing fine boots, and not even bothering to cover your tracks?”

The knight gave her another maddening grin, one that made Maeva think that he rarely thought matters through at all. “Maybe I wanted you to find me.”

“Are you flirting with me, just now?” A ragged laugh escaped her lips. This bold idiot with his swinging fists and lopsided smile had a single-mindedness completely at odds with her own tangle of thoughts. “You’ve almost died twice in the last day. Is this what Ammar teaches its knights, to flirt with everything you meet in the woods? If I leave you on your own, would you seduce that tree over there?”

He turned to look at where she pointed. Maeva laughed again and reached up to touch his forehead. She wondered whether he might be feverish from the wound in his side. Something made his eyes seem especially bright in the glow from the fire.

The knight caught her wrist. The glow from the fire made his eyes seem especially bright. “Don’t leave. Come with me, instead.”

“I don’t even know your name.” Maeva clung to the old ways. If he was sincere, he would ask her three times — and give up something in return. She made herself look away. Yes, she admitted to herself. He was good-looking.

“Call me Nath,” he said. “And I want you to know… these aren’t fine boots. They were my brother’s old pair.”

“Nath,” Maeva repeated. It did not sound like any Ammarish name she knew. She’d pored over thousands in the Great Dome’s library. “So, you have a brother. Where is he?”

“Dead.” Nath let go of her wrist, and turned his head toward the fire.

They slid into an easy silence while the night deepened around them. Maeva watched more stars join the Scorpion, admiring how each connected and overlapped. The mages of the Dome spent their first years counting the brightest thousand, and mapping each to the fables of many lands that saw those same stars in their skies. The light of the heavens glared down at them all, whether or not they had a Dome with which to See them.

Beside her, Nath stirred, and reached for the pile of twigs at his feet. He took two and twisted them together, bending the ends to form the shape of a man with its arms lifted overhead. Nath started to speak again, his voice wandering.

“I had three brothers. Now it’s only me. Some said my family was cursed to lose all its sons. My mother says it’s because we don’t pray hard enough.”

He held up the figure for Maeva to see. She recognized the shape from the little effigies tucked into the belts of Ammarish knights. The “bad luck doll,” stick figures blackened with ash from the hearth, was supposed to take a man’s place in Hell when he died.

Nath tossed his onto the fire and lapsed back into silence. She watched the corners of his mouth turn down and the heavy brows pull close to his glittering eyes. She wondered whether the doll had been for him, or the brother whose boots he now wore.

She reached for his shoulder. The hard curve beneath her hand softened. This time he did not grasp her wrist but brushed it gently with his fingers.

“Lie back,” she told him.

Nath sighed and eased himself onto the ground, lying flat on his back. Maeva watched the rise and fall of his chest, looking for signs that he labored. After a moment, she reached for the hem of his tabard and pushed it up. Her bandage across his chest had come loose. A vivid bruise spread across his stomach, but the red seam of the wound she’d closed stayed shut.

“You should rest,” she told him.

But Nath kept his eyes open, watching her. He touched her hand again, a little firmer this time. His touch was both comforting and unsettling — like sharing the bear pelt with its shade. She let him draw her down beside him, but resisted the curl of his arm, turning her back to him.

“Where is your family?” Nath asked.

“Gone,” Maeva answered. She struggled to find the words to explain it. Mages had many mothers, many fathers, both brothers and sisters. But how could she explain losing every last one in a single night? “Not dead, just… Gone from me. I could walk to where they were and speak to them. But… they will not speak to me. It’s as if I am the one who died.”

But the witch stole death from her.

Maeva gritted her teeth. She didn’t realize that her whole body shook until Nath gathered her in his arms again, wrapping them across her chest to pull her back against him. She fought against the tide of grief and tried to resist the comfort of his touch. It had been so long since anybody had even grasped her hand in greeting that his embrace was almost too much to bear. With shaking fingers, she pulled the bag from her throat and opened it. The pieces pooled in her hand while she shook them free of the velvet. Slowly, without speaking, she arranged each piece in its place to form the shape of her holy crescent.

She could think of no other way to tell him what she was. Maeva knew that she had to, somehow. Whether he was very brave or simply stupid, it wasn’t fair for him to pledge his sword to her if he did not know that she’d once worn the blade of his enemies.

Nath pushed himself up on one elbow. She felt the tension of his belly and legs where they brushed against her side. Maeva turned onto her back to look up into his face.

“Beautiful,” he said.

Nath gazed down at her, not at her broken crescent. Maeva felt the knot of shame and grief in her mind pull tight. Like refusing the fire, she felt that she was no longer allowed the warmth she saw in his face. The stars beyond his shoulders glared down at her, their light glinting faintly on the shards beside her.

She lost sight of it when he leaned down to kiss her.