Maeva listened to the deep, even breathing of the village girls and set it to the pace of the footsteps passing by outside the window. When she gauged the timing right, Maeva got up from the floor without a sound. The window gave her little trouble, but the drop to ground outside wrenched a grunt from her. She stayed crouched on the fresh-fallen snow, listening for whether or not a watchman would rush toward her. When no one came, she pushed to her feet and pulled the wolf pelt up around her head. The snow fell in a steady drift that would hide her well when she moved slowly.

With one hand she felt along the timber wall until she came to where she’d scratched a mark. Nath’s argument with the other three men had been easy enough to hear without Gossip. What she’d hope to catch with her spell was what other evil words had been spoken beneath that roof. She set her hand against the word she’d carved onto the sagging wall and recalled the echo of their voices. When she was sure she could picture the exact timber and pitch, she spoke the spell aloud:

“Where.”

The Sight spidered out under her hand, fanning in many directions. The gift offered every possible answer it could without shades of meaning. Such a vague spell was next to useless in the hands of a novice. One might see a bloody knife on a table and not know whether it portended murder or a steak dinner. Or perhaps the name of a child would appear and the questioner couldn’t know whether it was the name of one just born or who had yet to be. Only with two decades of study and a lifetime of Seeing what others could not helped Maeva shape the Where to the what.

She searched for Nath’s traitor among the visions. In her mind’s eye, Maeva saw green grass spread across an empty meadow, then the shadow of the Saint’s Steps reflected in a lake. A long line of black pines stretched endlessly from a rocky cliff by a blue-green sea all the way to the stream where Nath had first kissed her. Something watched them from the trees. Maeva pushed the Sight to follow it through the underbrush like a scurrying animal. Something on the ground caught her eye — a flash of red and green like the colors of Nath’s tabard. She Saw those same colors in a banner atop a tent. It flapped against the sky while a lopsided shadow walked out of the flap with something under one arm.

Maeva held the vision as long as she could, searching the shadow for a face. Her eyes watered and frost stung the tears as she pressed the Sight deeper.

The vision changed. Now instead of the man, she saw a tree full of hanged men dangling from its branches. Maeva’s whole body rocked with the sudden flare of vision. It was not the first time she’d Seen this.

Violent memory overtook her spell. Her nose filled with the phantom scent of myrrh cast onto fire. Her stomach turned and her knees were wet from where she knelt in a Sight Pool, babbling. She’d been only fifteen, a novice fresh up the steps. She’d had no business there the night of a dark moon, searching for a vision. But she’d been young and foolish. A child of Nymaut, born at the shrine, dreamed of making a name for themself.

And she had. That first, most powerful vision became the Fell Star Prophecy, the first to foretell the birth of the death-witch. All across the world, echoes of her vision reached other Seers, other prophets. Her words had been copied down and Spoken at the watchtowers from one end of the world to the other, copied even in the Emperor’s hand.

You spoke the words, Sininen — carve them if you believe them.

Maeva stood in the snow, shaking. Her back burned and stung as if the death-witch’s hand lay against the marks. She could not remember how he’d carved them onto her. Only waking weeks later, face-down on a bed in the sallus while a frightened healer salted the wounds against evil. She put her hands on her knees and leaned over, sickened. Maeva knew now that her spell at the Sight Pool hadn’t failed. She’d sought Nath’s traitor and found instead a piece of her death-witch prophecy. This was the first step on the path toward redemption.

“Eva.”

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Nath appeared at the window above her head, as if summoned by her thoughts. She looked up into his worried face and before she could speak, he put one long leg out over the sil. Startled, she watched him jump down to land beside her in the snow. He reached for her and pulled her against him, wrapping them both in the blanket he wore about his shoulders like a cloak.

“You’ll catch your death out here.” Maeva’s teeth chattered, but not from cold. She pressed against him, seeking comfort from the horror of her vision. His arms went around her back, sending a fresh prickle through the scars.

“Are you leaving?” Nath’s hands tightened across her shoulders. He crushed her so close she could feel the seams of his breeches through her clothes. She shifted in his arms, flattening her belly against the hard ridge of his hip.

“Not until I find your traitor,” she answered. Maeva risked a look up into his face to drink in the dark look she found there. With a pang she realized that he really had believed she planned to run off. “He’s in this camp. He knows, as the rest of them do, that you mean to go to Thornhaven. When you ride out in a few hours, he may try to change course and use the snow as an excuse.”

Nath’s scowl softened and he loosened his grip on her back. “Ride beside me.”

“And how will that look? Do Ammarish knights make a habit of letting their paramours hold their shields for them?” She said it lightly, but Maeva’s stomach slipped on the greasy feeling the words gave her. Ammar forbade its women from battlefields, and she was not his lover.

Nath exhaled through his nose like a horse snorting its rage. His hands had strayed lower on her back to where her spine pulled in toward her buttocks. She could feel the thickening desire between his legs pressed hard against her belly.

Maeva held Nath’s gaze while she slid her hand between them. His eyes widened and the flesh hardened further beneath the layers of armor. With her palm pressed against him, she guessed to which side he dressed his cock and moved her hand there in one long, deliberate stroke.

He groaned and leaned his head down toward her. “Eva…”

She avoided his mouth, though she craved to kiss him again. She wrapped one hand around the back of his head, tangling her fingers in his hair while she whispered into his ear.

“You want me to stay with you? I said that I would.” Her hand went to where the laces strained. She tugged at them with expert fingers and wormed her hand inside the soft leather. All the while, she kept on whispering to him.

“But what would these men say if they saw you like this? With me?” Her hand slipped past the heated tangle of the hair between his legs to find the hardened shaft. She stroked it with her fingertips, feeling it stiffen. His breath, hot on her neck, caught and he rolled his hips against her hand.

“What will those little girls asleep up there tell their mothers?” She let her lips brush against his ear. “All of them believe they are safe tonight, but you and I know that it’s not true. Just you and I stand between them and a stick doll thrown in a pit. Do you understand what that means, Nath?”

Maeva let go and stepped back. Cold air swept between them. She stood back, still and composed beneath her pelt of wolf fur. Nath panted, half-finished beneath a sheen of sweet with his pants undone. She watched his face through flurries of snow, and waited for the lesson to strike home while she spoke a spell to seal it:

“You and I can’t do this until they are safe.”

Nath’s eyes widened. He’d fought a spell of hers off once before by saying something ridiculous and gallant — I will see you again — but not when weakened by unslaked desire. Part of her wanted him to fail this test of faith. Throw her to the snowy ground and pull off all her clothes. Then she could pretend that she’d been wrong about him, wrong about her prophecy — and that tree of hanging bodies might not be real.

Yet if it were real, and Nath’s destiny was to face the death-witch, then Maeva’s duty now was to do all that she could to make him ready. Nath would need to master every inch of himself even to face his own traitor. What other purpose could his attraction to her have, if not to meet his own destiny?

And if this is enough to deter him, then he’s better off dallying with village girls, Maeva thought.

She watched Nath’s face. A thousand shades of anger flickered across it, and beneath it, something Maeva could not place. Something that almost looked like guilt. At last, he turned from her, cursing beneath his breath. She watched Nath shrug the thick blanket up around his shoulders and stalk off toward the side of the house.

Before he’d gone even three feet from her, he turned back, and said, “Thornhaven. They have beds at Thornhaven.”