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When I woke, the smell of grass licked with frost overcame my senses, and with it, tiny goosebumps raised along my arms. I crawled out of the space, eyes immediately catching sight of Orios hunched over the dwindling fire with a piece of meat rotating on a stick. He lifted his gaze and smiled—the type of cheerful grin that met his eyes—and gestured to the meat.

"Just finished up your breakfast."

I approached and took a seat opposite him, accepting the pork after he skewered it on a stick. It was a bit gamey, but overall, it wasn't half bad—especially since we had little to prepare it with. My focus drifted beyond Orios and to the stretches of meadows that tucked between rolling hills. A shudder shocked down my spine, and again, I swore I could already sense the tang of that poison.

"I was thinking," Orios said between chews, "about the story you told me yesterday. That dragon—was it the reason you had to destroy... well, destroy everything?"

I blinked, swallowing my food hard before curtly nodding. I wasn't intending to be short with him, but revisiting those days was harder than I could have ever anticipated. I spent a century in hiding—and, it had hardly been ten since I created this new life for myself—so the thought of my failures coming to bite shook me to my core.

"Want to know the funniest thing about it?" I murmured. When he leaned in, brows furrowed, I closed my eyes. "I almost didn't bring her back with me to my home. I would have let her cohabitate with the rest..."

Orios' eyes widened. "Do you regret your choice?"

I grinned—one that didn't meet my eyes and was coated in the thickest layer of bitterness—before nodding again. "Maybe I do, but, I doubt the consequences of letting her breed offspring would have been any better."

When I opened my eyes and gazed upon the half-eaten pork, I scowled and set it down. Suddenly, I wasn't hungry. Orios didn't respond, and instead, kept his gaze on me like I was a piece of art to be studied... admired. It made my stomach churn.

If Orios was blind to who I was—if he believed my given name was Venysa, a commoner turned royal mercenary—then perhaps I would entertain him for longer than one night. Perhaps I would create a life with him... pretend to be wowed by his magic... pretend to engage him like he was some god carved from our earth—but that wasn't an option.

And I still had to find a way to get myself away from him. To strip him from my yearnings, desires, and dreams. I had to simply cease, but it would be so much easier if he did it for me.

"I should have perished with my people," I mumbled after squashing a piece of ember in the grass.

The air thickened, and that thought hung between us like a line of silk covered in venom. When my gaze met him, I recoiled at the glower masked across those gentle eyes, at the frown curved into his lips, and at the rage that spewed from his mouth.

It was calm and cool, but deadly cold. "If you ever say that to me again," he whispered, "I will never forgive you."

I blinked and nodded, but the thought was already engraved in my heart. After a hitched breath, I realized I could keep pushing him like that. Slowly break his heart, mend it into the wickedest form of hatred, chew it up a little, and then spit it on the ground.

Yes. That was how I would save him from my past. I'd have to do everything in my power to make him loathe me.

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We hadn't stayed longer than necessary by that campfire. The silence was neverending, and his eyes wandered everywhere that I wasn't. I couldn't blame him, but in the same breath, I thought he was overreacting.

Something told me he would hate himself, too, if he made the most selfish choice of his life and had to spend a century trying to find a way to forget it. He never would understand, though—not in the way I understood it.

I kept my gaze on the ground. He kept his forward. Our feet crunched against the icy grass, and when I finally looked to the sky above, I saw thunderclouds looming forward. We had to hurry, or else we'd be caught in the freezing rains. I hastened my pace, not caring much if Orios was directly by my side or not.

I knew we were close. My head waved into a migraine, vision blurring in and out until I was forced to close my eyes just as I approached the crag that overlooked the field of zhanzinite. The man was still there—eternally sleeping in his own puddle of blood—but the skin had rotted away completely at his calves, face, and arms. Raw zhanzinite was corrosive, even to those who were immune to the other sorts of effects...

Orios loosed a breath after catching up. His eyes scanned the rows and rows of minerals before finally looking at me. His cold and angry eyes turned solicitous and sympathetic. "I'll be right back," he assured.

I pinched my nose and nodded, watching as he descended carefully to approach the zhanzinite. He walked without fear—but, when he neared the decaying body, he winced and my heart sank.

Seers had this untapped power to see into people's lives—their past, their present, and their future. They were the best truth-tellers, but when taught well, they were the nastiest liars. Unfortunately, their power did not stop with the deceased.

In fact, from what I understood, the dead spilled their secrets like a drunkard with their finger chopped off. If that guard was close enough to Terren to earn his scorn, I could only imagine what unspoken truths he held.

Orios continued onward. He approached the largest growth of zhanzinite, unsheathed his combat knife, and started smacking it with all his might. It was sturdy, but slowly, it chipped away until a crack shot through one of the branches. He gripped it with both hands, placed a foot on the base, and yanked so hard that he fell backward. With him came a shard of zhanzinite.

He yowled out in laughter and jumped to his feet, waving it in the air like a victory medal. I grinned and watched him scramble to put it in his bag to relieve his skin from the certain sting it caused.

Just as he cinched the bag shut, the ground shuddered.

Orios stilled, looking left and right repeatedly until the world cracked at the edge of the fields. A gaping hole formed, one that had zhanzinite stalagmites shooting from the ground like spears of my demise. I screamed for him to come, for him to run toward the overhang I stood on helplessly, but before he could make it halfway the ground formed another crack that divided us.

My heart shattered.

I cursed, and then my bones ached. Wings extended from my back, yowls of agony escaping before I hoisted myself into the air and soared toward him. He was stumbling backward from the divide that raced after him.

"Take my hand!" I yelled, stretching my hand toward him as tears stung my eyes. The stalagmites of zhanzinite were growing rapidly now, as if they sensed my presence—like omniscient beings crafted from the world—and before his fingers could intertwine with mine, I had to shift away from one of the spears.

This time, he grabbed my hand the second I offered it and I lifted us further into the air. But, something yanked us back... something unyieldingly strong and unnatural. I shifted my gaze below, watching as he thrashed his feet against a skeletal creature that crawled from the void. It was impossibly strong and exposed its teeth—some missing, others as brittle as ash. The hollows of its eyes, though there was no direction to them, stared into me like a ghoul.

In those pits, I saw my past.

In that darkness, I heard my failures whispering back to me.

In a moment of weakness, I let Orios slip through my fingers.

Time slowed as I watched him fall with his back toward the endless void, eyes widening when he realized what was happening. I held my breath, watching those stalagmites inch closer and closer—as if to close the gap—before lunging toward him. My left wing snagged onto one of the zhanzinite spears and I yelped, thrashing away and letting myself fall toward him before the skeleton could yank him further down.

My fingers burned. I reached one hand out, grasping at the strands of his tunic, with my other pointing a single finger at the skeleton.

Then, it crumbled to ash and fell down the abyss.

It was quick—not even a flickering gaze of regret clouding my eyes as I watched the being cease. It was no longer human... it was undead. It did not deserve to walk free. It deserved my magic.

I latched my fingers around him finally, screaming as my wing twitched and burned from the cut. Looking to the sky, I watched the hues of dark blues, grays, and blacks blend together into darkness. The type of darkness that consumed me, and did everything it could to lull me to sleep.

The second we cleared the abyss, I flew to the crag and collapsed onto it. Orios rolled away to the grassy meadows in front of us, and I slid with my face dragging against the rough stone. As those shadows consumed my mind, and I drifted away from this place, I felt the gentle patter of rain upon my back.

I turned cold.