Within the small room I’d unwittingly made a tomb, I sat on my brother’s deathbed and held one of the last remnants of my family. For the first time in my life, I could see him. See the delicate, almost translucent skin that trapped his flesh. See what thin hair remained on his head. See the cloud that had settled within his eyes. See that I held a corpse. But I cradled Mael in my arms anyway.

The night had been long. By the time dawn peered through the window of Mael’s room, I’d already died a dozen times. My husband, father, and commander was dead. My son and comrade robbed of life. The guards I’d known for years slaughtered like cattle. The family that was me flickering in my skull; both dead and alive. Their beings squirmed through the cogs of my mind, undergirding each thought. Yet unless I inhabited one of the brief moments where their machinations lost all subtlety, they were invisible to me. Just as a person cannot see the brain in their skull or the heart in their chest, so too could I not see the stitching of my being.

Everyone would be safe, in me. I’d endured decades of combat, violence, and the fall of a god. I’d endured my own death. I could endure the world, for them.

But in this world, I was the last of the Vanes. My father was dead. My mother – having left behind the curse that stole the musculature of Mael’s body – was dead. My brother – with his small smiles and countless fragile reassurances – was dead. All that remained were my children.

Sash. Dash. And foolish, foolish Orvi.

“How’d you know this whole thing was gonna work, Gale?” came a voice beside me.

I looked to Val. The person that’d killed my family. Killed me. Fear fuelled a familiar, relentless rage that rose into an inferno whenever her image entered my sight. But there were still uses for one such as her.

“What, specifically?”

She snorted. “Enn, for one. You an’ th’ lady figured the kid was somewhere in th’ Heartlands. How’d you know Enn’d flush him out?”

I turned my palm back to Mael, and the mortal flesh that had bound him. “There was only one place in the Heartlands he could go. With the famine, only Spires would offer sustenance and company.”

The swordswoman whistled. “Gods-damn, Gale. That’s why you had me breakin’ trade twixt Heltia an’ Baylar?”

“One of the reasons,” I muttered. “You know there were other interests at play.”

“Playin’ both sides,” she surmised. “But you settled on ol’ Gaia downstairs.” An amused breath left her mouth. “Still. Pretty thin plan.”

“I know.”

“He coulda died.”

It was my turn to scoff.

“What’s so funny, huh?” the Jackal demanded. “You wanna share, clever man?”

Man? Oh. “The idea of a creature like him dying is absurd.”

A vicious laugh began her retort. “Them tablets really scrambled your brain, didn’t they? Everything dies, even – as we’ve all found – gods. What’s gonna save you?”

I shook my head wearily. “The Raven didn’t plan. It couldn’t. Its blood pointed its eyes towards what was, instead of what could be.”

“You’ve got that same blood in you,” she noted.

“I’ve also got Gaia. And you. To make plans when I cannot, and guide me when I slip.”

I heard the smirk in her voice. “The Raven had enough power t’make plannin’ irrelevant. An’ it died.”

“The death of god is a fragile thing,” I said.

I-

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-asked, “What’s th’ plan?”

Vin raised a skeletal hand to his sallow face and rubbed two fingers along the bridge of his nose. “Nothing overly complex.”

“Unlike you,” I joked, trying to stop my hand from shaking before Maddie noticed. I failed, and when she closed a hand around my shivering palm without comment another round of tears threatened to spring from my eyes. How’d Vin said all that stuff before without feeling like a damned fool?

He probably had. The thought made me feel a little less humiliated.

“Complexity won’t work,” he began to explain.

Maddie turned away from me slightly to get a better look at him, but still kept one arm around my back. I noticed several soft, downy orange hairs on the back of her neck and felt myself flush. Then I dug my nails into my palms. My childish outburst earlier had rattled me, when I needed to pull myself together. If I didn’t focus, we were going to die.

“Both Gale and the Jackal are extremely volatile,” Vin continued. “They’re not reasonable actors.”

“This ain’t some Divinity,” I told him. “We don’t need no Faces t’act, here.”

His sunken eyes squinted at me from deep within their sockets. “No, I mean… Any prediction I make had a higher chance of being wrong than right. A complicated plan won’t survive contact with them.

“But,” he continued, “we do know a few things about them. Namely, that Gale seems to have some sort of fixation towards me. Likely due to the fact I’m a Ravenblood.”

I swallowed. “Uh, Vin- “

“Which means that- “

“Vin.”

“Kit,” he snapped, “you can speak me when I’m done.”

I licked my lips. “I needa tell you somethin’.”

Something foul entered the lines of his face. “No. You don’t.”

“Gale’s not jus’ Gale. There’s…” The right words escaped me. What was the best way to tell someone that a ghost of a loved one possessed the person they had to kill? “…someone else in there, too. It’s- “

“Don’t,” he interrupted. He raised one arm towards me and inhaled a shuddering breath. “Please, just don’t.”

I quietened.

“Okay.” His mismatched eyes fluttered as he shook his hands. “Okay. What I’m saying is that I’ll take Gale. Distract him. I’ll be in far less danger than anyone else interacting with him. Meanwhile, Kit will fight the Jackal, with Ronnie and Taja backing her up.” He locked eyes with the giant Strain and the far smaller teenager. “Don’t engage directly unless Kit truly needs help. She’s the only one that matches the Jackal’s skill.”

Taja nodded, however Ronnie flexed both hands in careful, deliberate patterns I couldn’t decipher. The night still held onto some shadows, and they kept the giant’s hands vague.

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Vin saw what I didn’t. “The Jackal’s too quick,” he replied to Ronnie. “If you miss, then its counter-swing will either kill or maim you. You’ll be leaving Kit and Taja to face it alone.”

“It?” I asked.

“Her counter-swing,” he corrected. “The point is, when you’re done all of you’ll wrap back around and assist me with Gale. I need all of you alive for that, understand?”

His sunken gaze was locked on Ronnie. Begrudgingly, the Strain nodded.

Maddie chirped from beside me. “What about me?”

“You’ll be with them,” Vin stated quickly, “overseeing everything that’s happening.”

“What does that mean?” she asked.

“Kit will be engaged, Ronnie’s mute, and Taja’s too…” The Ravenblood’s mouth opened wordlessly for several moments. “…quiet to give orders. You’ll stand back and keep everyone notified if the situation changes.”

Maddie’s nose wrinkled; the stuff spewing from Vin’s mouth reeked of Oxdung. A blanket of mud thrown to conceal the fact he didn’t want to put our young Head in danger.

“I can’t help?”

“You’re also,” he said slowly, as if she were a child, “on communications.” The kindly expression was immensely disturbing on his emaciated face.

She looked to me for support, and I shrugged. “I don’t know, Maddie, sounds pretty reasonable t’me.” The image of Maddie within arm’s length of my Mother set my guts churning.

Maddie grumbled, but eventually detached from me to allow Vin to walk her through the usage of some bloodtech device which would apparently allow her to send simple messages to him via its twin. I rubbed my knuckles in her absence. The scars across them ached.

While they were doing so, Ronnie signed something to him. My mouth worked as I tried to remember what the two distinct gestures meant.

“What about you?” I eventually translated.

Vin glanced up, a quizzical expression on his face.

Ronnie shook their head, and I reformed my translation. “Who’s helpin’ you?”

He waved an arm. “I’ll be fine.”

I scoffed.

He turned on me. “Gale doesn’t want to kill me.”

“Oh, sure. Gale’s jus’ gonna ‘save’ you,” I drawled, both hands curling into rabbit ears. “I’m sure that’s real different.”

“If it comes to that,” he stated, careful to enunciate each syllable perfectly, “I have a plan for Gale.”

“And what is that plan?”

He turned away.

“What’s the plan, Vin?”

“It will work.” He paused. “However, I can’t risk telling you.”

“You’re jokin’,” I stated flatly. The scars across my knuckles ached. “Here? Now?”

“Gale finished removing my Foxblood today. He might be listening.”

Ronnie gave several rapid signs, but I spoke over the top of them. “Why’d you bloody well tell us the other stuff?”

“Because there’s nothing he can do to stop the plan,” Vin snapped. “It’s too simple. The only thing they can possibly do is stay together, and I will separate Gale from the Jackal. There’s nothing that can be done to prevent that. But he can stop this element, and as you cannot possibly help me with it there’s no point in risking telling you.”

Maddie frowned. “That’s a poor excuse,” she stated tersely.

“It’s the only excuse you’re getting,” he said softly. “Now-

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“-I still don’t get it,” Val mused over my shoulder.

The arms I kept around my brother’s body tightened. “Get what?”

“You hiss some sweet words an’ get th’ Albrights t’get House Baylar t’get th’ Ox t’smash Spires.” Val laughed disbelievingly. “I’ve seen runes less complicated.”

“The only complicated part was Enn,” I stated bluntly. “Everything else was outside my influence.”

“You hitched a ride on their cart, huh?”

I did not dignify her answer with a response.

“So you spook our poor little Ravenblood outta Spires,” she drawled. “How you figure he’s gonna end up here?”

“Going south means running into House Baylar’s lines,” I stated tersely. “Flanking the Heartlands to the east and west are House Leyden and House Esfaria – the former having a hand in his mother’s death and the latter in destroying his home. And running too far north brings him back to Baylarian territory.”

Val scoffed. “Man like him could bloody well live in th’ woods, if he wanted to.”

My releasing one hand from Mael was accompanied by a sudden sense of loss. The sensation of his emaciated body against my skin fled, leaving behind only air. Yet unlike yesterday, I had another means of filling the gap. I turned one of my eyes onto the Jackal and saw the mocking grin slapped across her scarred face shift into something more uncomfortable.

We stared at one another. She licked her lips. Finally, I answered.

“He would have companions,” I slowly explained. “Who, exactly, I did not know. But he would have them, and they would need to survive.”

Her ensuing question was more guarded. “…How d’you figure?”

“The Lizardblooded are difficult to change. Oxbloods anger quickly. Kani’s ilk seek constant stimulus. And the Ravenblooded need company.”

“Why?”

My patience broke. “I do not know, Valorie; whether it is a fundamental aspect of the blood or merely a manifestation of such a trait is a mystery barely gleaned from wordless slates older than human memory; I do. Not. Know.” My head turned to face her, lips peeled in a furious grimace. “Do you want to know what I do know?”

Though my body had been almost emptied of Oxblood, its departure had left behind a mind that had spent half a century running through the tracks its veins had set. Despite the dereliction of my veins, those tracks remained. It was all too easy to step back onto them.

My tone dripped with controlled violence. “I know you deliberately concealed my brother’s death from me. I know you killed Gast, despite me explicitly telling you not to. I know your actions have antagonised their group badly enough that they will seek to kill us.”

Her lips drew back: not into the sneer that so often twisted her face but a far rawer snarl. “My daughter’ll- “

“Your daughter?” I thundered. “Is this the one you chained in the middle of an encampment until she could perform the precise movements you demanded of her? The one who you forced to perform sword drills until her hands bled? The one you constantly disparage? That one?”

She remained silent.

“The only thing that prevented Kit from killing you was her timidity.”

“My daughter’s not- “

I laughed at her. “Then why are you not dead, Valorie? Because Kit has both the means and the justification to sever your head from your body.”

“Justification? I’ve given her everything- “

“And now you have taken away one of her closest friends. You have,” I rumbled, “hurt my son.”

“Friends?” the Jackal scoffed. “People like us don’t have friends.”

It was a surprise to find that comment, despite confirming everything I’d ever suspected about our relationship, still burned. From a twitch at the corner of her mouth, I found that Val immediately regretted her indiscretion.

“Perhaps,” I acknowledged with a slow nod. “But believing your daughter to be ‘like us’ is a bold assumption.”

Her face tightened. “I raised her.”

“And now she will kill you.”

“Fine,” she snapped. “I messed up, killin’ the cow. An’ you messed up, killin’ them diplomats. So what’s the plan fer keepin’ Kit’s sword outta o’ our throats, boss-man?”

“The plan?” I let out a small laugh. “To prevent them from killing us? I’ve no plan for that.”

I slowly lowered Mael back onto his bed, then drew myself to my full height. It still felt off to me – the unwieldy physique I’d acquired – yet despite its relatively diminuitive height I filled it well enough to drive the Jackal back a step. She eyed me, one hand on the hilt of her blade, as I turned to her.

“My plan,” I said, “is to save my son from himself.”

I-

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-was the first to climb back into the observatory. Kit, Maleen, Ronnie, and Taja would follow soon, but until then, I was alone.

So I was the only one in the observatory when the monster appeared.

It stood in the centre of a panel of glass dawn had yet to reach. Hanging against the lingering darkness of night stood its tall, emaciated body, capped by a ravaged face studded with two shadowed eyes. Onyx veins twisted beneath its skin, pulsing to the rhythm of the beat in my ears. Oily blood soaked through the bandages wrapping its arms. The beautiful clothes hanging limply over its form seemed a half-hearted veneer.

Despite most its meat being stripped away, the broadness of its frame still held the same promise of the thing that had killed me. Who had stabbed me on the end of its blade; impaled me on the tip of a speartree; allowed my body to be crushed beneath the earth; broken my skull for a mere step; watched me as I died.

It craned its head towards me, one brown eye and one black. For once, I did not look away from the reflection. I allowed my eyes to bore into it. To see the other end of those deaths: myself. The thing that I’d become. That I’d always been, beneath the flesh layered over my veins. Ravenblood.

The Ravenkin of the Wastes would slowly be hunted by House Esfaria. Some would’ve eaten vast amounts of the Raven’s rotting corpse, but with only small lizards and insects to feed them the blood would be empty; impotent. The monster hunters would easily slay the Ravenkin. They would leave the blood to turn to dust in the wind.

With House Esfaria having likely fulfilled their promise to hunt every single Ravenkin that had eaten Avri’s corpse, only four Ravenblooded remained in existence. If Jackson kept Sash and Dash away from death, theirs would never manifest. But it was too late for Gale. Its death was already a certainty.

Kit had whined and moaned regarding my ‘secret plan’. I couldn’t tell them what it was. They would stop me, and my goal was too important to let that happen. No Ravenblood would escape this place.

The plan for ending it was not complex.

If I killed him, I would guard its divinity as it faded into nothing. Then I would find a quiet place to die.

If it defeated me, I would not die – I could not, at the hands of a Ravenblood. Instead, I would leverage the decade of experience I had over it. I would tear the jaws of its mind open and pour myself into its body. Once inside, I would break our flesh and our soul. I would kill us.

There were only two ways a battle between Ravenbloods could go.

Either way, I’d win.

Either way, I’d lose.