In a heartbeat of stillness, Ashes absorbed the scene around her as a tableau frozen in time. She stood in the reeds, water barely covering her feet and the corpse of a Vithtak soldier mashing grasses and cattails beneath him. Kestrel stood somewhere behind her left shoulder.

Across a narrow stretch of open water, the other Vithtak dead soaked a patch of drier land with their spilled blood. Daness and Charak and Meleri stood in a tight huddle, the latter two with knives in their hands. Moss stood a few steps back from Daness and stared toward Ashes.

We did it. We survived.

A trembling shook not just Ashes’s hands but also her heart. Caught up still in the wave of sheer power which had just surged through her, she wanted more than ever to do what she ought to have done years ago.

Find the crown. Wield it.

She had only to tell Moss, to make her listen. Ashes imagined the moment anew, for the first time believing that she’d always had the power to make Moss listen. Moss would deny and she would chide and she might even shout.

But she will stand beside me. She always would have.

Ashes stared across the thin strip of water at Moss and allowed a smile to curl one corner of her mouth.

At the edge of her vision, Ashes registered movement—Arrold, who’d begun arcing toward the tied person on the ground near the dead Vithtak officer, continued his approach more directly. Water darkened his leggings up to his knees as he waded ashore.

The Meres-folk who’d been fighting the Vithtak remained as still as Ashes, heads turning and gazes shifting as they surveyed the battle site. Seven spear-wielders stood in a loose formation to the right of where Moss and the others were. Ashes thought another two archers might remain in the trees even further to her right, where the water swirled through exposed roots.

Twenty years before, when the northern portion of The Wandering Tears had been Leriand and Ashes had actually been schooled in such things, many kingdoms had been united under the high king but often in name only, as squabbles and sometimes armed conflict between them all had never truly ceased.

Despite being united in theory, the tribes had continued to wear their own colors and emblems. Tribes to the south had never declared fealty to the high king at all, but their prideful displays of individual colors and squabbles and conflicts had been no less prevalent than in the north.

They were in unfamiliar territory here. Ashes wasn’t sure they’d even reached the Tears themselves or if they wandered further to the west of them. In any event, she hadn’t ventured this far north since she and Moss had fled Lechat Leriand in their youth. She couldn’t imagine the tribes had continued to bicker amongst themselves, not with Vithtak incursions to unite them.

But Ashes’s gaze picked out the streamers of white moss wound around their waists and the black feathers which dangled from their belts and hair, and she couldn’t recall what, if anything, she’d ever heard of such a tribe.

“What just happened?” Kestrel’s breathless question came from Ashes’s left shoulder. “Did we really just do that?”

Across the way, Daness’s tense pose relaxed. Her shoulders eased. Charak and Meleri lowered their raised knives. Charak turned to Meleri and grinned.

Arrold sloshed across the boggy ground and past the dead Vithtak officer. He crouched beside the person who’d been tied and now wriggled and tried to lift his head from the ground.

To Ashes’s right, a shout went out. The inflection was such that she didn’t understand the words.

But she understood the tone. Her pulse, only beginning to calm, immediately pounded once more.

Ashes had no chance to shout a warning or even think what she might have said. Two arrows whistled across her field of vision, little more than a blur. Black fletching sprouted from Arrold’s throat, both arrows sinking into nearly the same spot. His body toppled backward from the impact.

And that was it. Arrold simply fell over and ceased to move.

The stillness which had begun settling into Ashes’s heart shattered.

We should never have stopped here.

They should never have been here to begin with.

The spear-wielders wearing white moss and black feathers surged toward Daness and Charak and Meleri. Startled cries echoed and blood flowed.

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Bodies fell. Charak vanished from sight, lost in the tall grasses and surge of attackers, and then Daness. Meleri twisted and dodged as if in some manic dance, her shrieks mingling with the sound of arrows slicing the air and the silent scream rising inside Ashes’s mind.

A splash.

Close.

A lone spear-wielder waded into the water and advanced toward Ashes.

“Run! Ashes!” More splashing. Moss’s voice shuddered closer, coming from a different direction. “Go now!”

In her head, Ashes was twelve again, frightened and with no idea what to do.

Moss’s body was there, moving between Ashes and danger.

As always.

Moss reached out with both hands. One shoved against Ashes’s shoulder, the other to Ashes’s side. Kestrel, out of sight, grunted.

Ashes was twelve years old and helpless.

But I’m not either. Not anymore.

Across the water, Meleri’s shrieking warbled higher and then cut off. Her dancing ceased, and her body vanished within the same huddle of attackers which had murdered Daness and Charak.

Ashes stumbled a step back. Mud slipped beneath her foot. But she didn’t run. She caught herself and stood up straight.

And I will not run.

Bitter darkness welled up within her. Ashes opened her arms and let it flow through.

The spear-wielder in front of Moss reared back his weapon with one hand. Shadow rose from the water, roped itself in writhing spirals around his body, and closed like a clenched fist.

Gasping, he fell backward, as if the weight of the pulled-back weapon had become too much for him. Like the Vithtak soldier before him, he withered and shrank and simply fell dead.

Moss was staring at Ashes, her eyes wide and her mouth twisted somewhere between anger and confusion. A black-fletched arrow sprouted from behind her shoulder.

No.

Moss grunted, hunched, and lunged toward Ashes. Reaching this time with both hands, she forcibly turned Ashes around and shoved her again.

“Run,” Moss gasped.

Kestrel stood in front of Ashes, now, her mouth open and her eyes wide. Her gaze shifted to Ashes and Moss. Like a dreamer waking to find a nightmare real, she stumbled another backward step and then turned to run ahead of the other two.

Behind them, a shout went up. More splashing arose—much more, fast and coming closer.

Moss’s hand gripped Ashes’s shoulder, hard enough to hurt, and propelled her forward.

A thump. A second thump. A gasp.

Moss’s grip loosened. Her fingers slid away.

No!

Ashes twisted, nearly tripping herself, to look back.

Moss fell into the reeds, her arms stretched toward Ashes. A second arrow bristled from her neck. A thrown spear tipped to the side and fell, bloodied and angling as its weight pulled the haft toward the ground even though the point remained in Moss’s side.

Moss’s body splashed into the shallows. Her hands twitched and then slackened.

The tide of bitter blackness within Ashes swelled, its edges sharp and inky, its sound roaring like a storm in her ears. Somewhere deep inside it, she felt a mindless, shrieking agony and knew that must be her true self.

But the power which arose inside Ashes drew a protective shell around that self. This new self stood inside her body, and its hot agony cooled into an icy fury. A single small but clear bell chimed, like a victory clarion.

A cluster of spear-wielders ran toward Ashes, some in and some out of the water but all clustered just behind the one who stood across Moss’s body from Ashes, his spear hand empty and clenched into a fist.

Blackness boiled inside Ashes. She threw open her arms and back her head and let it burst from her body. Darkness flowed into and around her pursuers, hardened like ice, and exploded.

Fragments of frozen shadow pierced their bodies in thousands of tiny shards. A fine mist of blood blossomed over the water. Screams began but just as quickly fell silent.

Their bodies fell, a half dozen splashes into the same water which held Moss’s body. Crimson tendrils spiraled from their bodies into the gray-green algae scumming the water’s surface.

Behind Ashes, a voice rose and fell in a cadence that might be prayer or maybe spell. The words meant nothing to Ashes, but she knew they came from Kestrel.

In the trees, one archer lifted a nocked arrow. As his fellows fell, he faltered and lowered the bow.

Ashes stalked toward him, stepping around the bodies crowding out the reeds and raising the water’s level. Beneath her feet, a sense of bitter darkness spread like seeking roots. It burrowed through the mud and writhed up the tree trunk and coiled around the archer.

His bow fell through the air and splashed into the water below. His lifeless body followed it.

Something flashed in her vision—an arrow, Ashes knew without time to see it clearly. It would strike her.

It did strike her. Its point pierced her shoulder, and she felt it against her bone. But there was no pain. A moment later, the arrow itself softened and then dissolved, dissipating into nothing more substantial than smoke.

Her steps never faltered. Ashes strode through the water and toward the tree where the last surviving archer crouched.

The archer lowered her bow. She clambered down from the tree. As her feet entered the water, she turned her back to Ashes and ran, in long, slogging steps through water and muck.

Behind Ashes, everything had gone quiet. She could no longer hear Kestrel. She heard nothing but a buzzing like flies and a heavy silence like a shroud.

Darkness flowed out from her. Ashes felt it grab hold of the fleeing archer’s ankles and flow freezing into the woman’s bones, turning them to dust. The archer faltered and fell to her knees. Ashes felt the power dry the blood flowing through the woman’s veins. Her lungs seized and hardened.

The archer pitched forward. Water splashed up from the fall of the body.

Ashes felt the woman’s heart stop.

Ashes stopped walking. Shadow extended out in all directions around her. She sensed life, small and cold specks of fish and reptiles and dots of insects and birds. A larger golden glimmer of warmth emanated from behind her, in the direction of the patch of land where her fellow survivors had died—Kestrel, some distant part of her mind that was still Ashes realized, and perhaps the tied-up stranger.

Everyone else was dead.

Including Moss.

Ashes had just killed eight people, single-handedly. She had no way to discern her own wishes from that of whatever power currently occupied her, but she felt quite certain that if the opportunity had presented itself, she could have killed many, many more.

And maybe she still would.