We settled in for the night at a campsite far enough from the road we wouldn’t be seen. Camping like this served two purposes: one was that we wouldn’t be visible from the road in case anyone wanted to try their hand at a little opportunistic nighttime thievery, and the other was that I could stretch out all my arms without risking an incident.

We were only a day and out of town, but already we’d climbed into forested foothills dressed in snow and smelling of cold pine. It all felt familiar. Pleasant, despite the nighttime chill.

I didn’t mind at all taking watch with Joisse for the whole night as she poked at her dinner. She was still getting used to the concept of eating again, having spent most of her time feeding on anger and ambient magic. The young wrath demon also couldn’t sleep well—I figured at least part of the reason was how she reverted her transformation when she slept. Sleeping hadn’t really been something she’d done much of before her contract with me.

“Your human transformation is a lot better than mine was after the same amount of practice.” I poked the embers of our fire with my tail tip. “It was more than two years before I could do anything other than a fragile glamour.”

“Really?” Joisse picked her head up from staring into the fire, her red eyes glowing a little in the dim light.

Nailed it. “Yeah, really.”

“Oh.” She lowered her head again. “Thanks. I guess. F-for everything else too—not just the compliment.”

Maybe not. “What’s on your mind?” I asked directly.

Joisse bit her lip in thought and looked over our campsite. We had nice, new tents for everyone, and the horses slept next to the wagon under a covering tied between two trees.

“All this,” Joisse finally said. “I just—I feel like I don’t deserve it. I’m just some demon you found. I tried to kill you, Zarenna. And I killed a lot of other people.”

“I know.”

“That’s it?” Joisse snapped, barely restraining her sudden anger. “Just an ‘I know?’”

I shrugged all four shoulders, rolling them a little. “What do you want me to say? Is there a magic phrase that would make you feel better in an instant? If there was, would you even believe it if I said it right now?”

Joisse kicked at the fire, scattering embers and bits of wood off into the snow. “Why are you like this!”

“I dunno, really,” I answered honestly. “I blame a good friend of mine who helped me out the same way.”

“Seyari?” Joisse grumbled.

I shook my head. “No, not Seyari. She helped me immensely, but it was my best friend for all my childhood—my only friend in all honesty—who saved me.”

“Who?” Joisse asked, suddenly curious.

“A wonderful girl named Abigail Hunter.” I couldn’t help myself, and I felt a tear roll down my cheek.

“What happened?” Joisse asked, her anger suddenly vanishing.

I sniffed. “A lot, really. She gave her soul for me—died forever to give me this life I now have.”

“Oh…” Joisse cast her gaze back down at the scattered embers.

I breathed a little life into them with my magic and we watched the glow. “But it’s not all doom and gloom, really. I have a lot of happy memories with her growing up.”

“D-did you love her?” Joisse asked, glancing at Seyari’s tent.

“I did.” I nodded. “Some of her last words to me were: ‘Don’t forget me, but don’t you dare get stuck on me either.’” I imitated her voice as best I could.

“I wish I could have met her,” Joisse said softly.

“I could tell you about her—if you’d like. I don’t want to make this about me though—it’s you I’m trying to help.”

Joisse laughed softly—not quite a giggle. “I think I’d like that. It’s a long way until morning.”

“I will then—but before I do, there was one thing I wanted to ask you.”

“Hmm?” Joisse kept her eyes on the embers.

“What do you want to do once you’ve mastered your fury? You don’t need to answer now or ever—and it doesn’t need to involve me. I’m just curious is all.”

“My future, huh…” she lifted her eyes and looked up into the void-black darkness of the clouded night sky. “I… I guess I can give it some thought.”

“Thanks,” I nodded and picked my tail up out of the snow, resting it around both of us to be closer to the lingering warmth of the fire.

To my surprise, Joisse pulled my tail over her legs.

I snorted trying to hold in a laugh.

She glared at me. “What? Your tail’s warm.”

“S-sorry. It’s fine. Really.”

Joisse pouted.

“I can start with how Abby and I met if you’d like?” I offered, trying to move things along.

“Sure.” Joisse smiled—a fragile-looking expression on her. “She came up to you didn’t she.”

“Oh yeah she did,” I giggled. “But there’s even more to it than that…”

Late in the night, until the first rays of dawn poked through, I shared stories with Joisse. By morning, I’d heard of her own life before the war—and her idiot brother whom she loved dearly. She reminded me of, well, myself when I was younger: a teenager and an adult technically, but someone who was forced to grow up too fast.

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I also learned of Joisse’s relative illiteracy—something I knew I needed to address as soon as possible.

Seyari monopolized me as her personal heater during breakfast. Without me, she said, the tent was unbearably cold. It wasn’t until we were almost finished breaking camp that she brought up Joisse.

“You know, Renna,” she said, glancing at the demon who was currently winning a snowball fight against Nelys and Taava. “I didn’t think you’d adopt so soon.”

I flushed dark crimson. “S-she’s nearly an adult though—and that’s not counting the years since the war! She’s her own person—”

Seyari quirked one eyebrow. “And?”

Joisse didn’t understand why I was flustered the rest of the day.

***

On the third day of travel, after ascending a well-settled valley, we entered another hilly, remote stretch of the main road. What struck me was how small and sparse the trees were. Half-walls and piles of stone emerged out of the snow like gravestones. The ruins didn’t look like a village.

Joisse saw me looking and tapped my shoulder. “Forts. Early on, Ordia pushed pretty far in places, and it was in spots like this where they got stopped. Lured in, I was told.” She gave a sad, furtive glance to the remains of a hastily-built tower. “It’s all so awful.”

“Yeah, it is,” I agreed. My eyes caught a tree growing up through the stones. “Nature moves on, though.”

“I wish people did…” mumbled Joisse.

“Me too,” Seyari said knowingly, surprising both of us. “Did you really think I wouldn’t hear you two whispering.” She looked out over the ruined fort, not speaking.

We stayed quiet until deeper in the woods, past the old stones, where we came upon a covered wagon with a broken wheel. A man was bent over the clearly broken wheel, worrying away at it while a bored-looking driver sat at the front. The horses looked bored too, oddly.

“Do you need any help?” I shouted, almost reflexively.

The man looked up and smiled.

Seyari, meanwhile, narrowed her eyes and urged the horses to pass the downed wagon faster, drifting closer to the side of the road opposite the wagon, where a steep, tree-lined hill rose up into the lightly falling snow.

“What gives?” I asked her.

“Did you see that wheel?” my fiancée hissed. “This is a well graded road! There’s no way—”

“Look out!” Joisse shouted, the second word turning into a roar.

A mass of furious wrath demon shoved Seyari off the wagon just before a rain of pyrite-colored wind blades blew through the front of the wagon. Even with my own reaction time, I was scarcely able to move Joisse herself—in full demon form—out of the way in time.

Our horses were slaughtered in an instant, reduced to a red mist and a rain of viscera. Scores of cuts burst open along my two right arms and my back, although the magic didn’t score as deeply as I would have imagined. Instead, the sharp stinging pain was accompanied by a vaguely familiar warmth.

Demonic-aspected mana.

I hit the ground with Seyari and Joisse and we rolled through bloody snow until we bounced off a tree, my spear and shield flying free. Behind us, our wagon jerked into a half flip, spilling our belongings everywhere and tossing Taava and Nelys free.

I leapt to my feet and dashed for them. I need to protect the others.

I made it to Nelys before they hit the ground. Even in surprise, they had half-corrected their fall into a roll and they landed in my arms with a “whoomph” of air. Nearby, off the road in deeper snow, Taava landed with a curse in a plume of powdered snow.

“Where?!” Seyari shouted behind me, feet crunching snow as she stood up.

“The hill!” Joisse growled in response, dashing away before Seyari could get a word in.

I saw Taava staggering upright right as a crossbow bolt from the wagon’s driver—her eyes glowing, but dull—flew through the air straight for the kazzel.

Snarling, I spun, slapping the projectile out of the air with my tail. Nelys grunted in my arms, the speed of my spin too much for them. I set them down and they stumbled up, turning to run just as I felt the tingle of a powerful spell wash over the area.

A voice rang out in my mind.

“How dare you defy your master! Cease this struggle at once!”

The magic crashed over me like a wave, then dragged me under like a riptide.

I fought back against the compulsion, the way I knew best.

Familiar, comfortable wrath boiled up and over, my magic searing away the invader’s pathetic attempt at control. Around me, more easily than ever before, I sensed my friends.

My fiancée and my… new friend (absolutely not my adopted daughter—no way) were in a fight with a group on the hill, the half-angel and the raging wrath demon already pressuring the one who’d killed our horses. A few dozen meters away, all I could catch through the trees were flashes of red, green, white, and gold: Joisse’s scarlet skin and the others’ magic.

The other wrath demon’s anger was a simple matter to stoke—her fury was already strong enough that with the thread linking us it only took a simple nudge to shake her free.

Seyari’s anger, cold, hard, and old flared up steadily, burning this cretin’s control away moments later.

Taava was more distant. More difficult. Her unsure fury took coaxing to stoke. For now, she remained under, off in the powder snow.

Nelys, however, Nelys had no fury—not yet. My power scrabbled and clawed for purchase, but slid off.

To my mounting horror, Nelys turned toward the cart, and from it emerged a vaguely familiar kind of demon.

Like Astrodach and the demon Erik summoned, she was a stretched clay doll emulating a human shape—although she had three long, sharp tails behind her. She had violet hair, pale white skin, and a wardrobe that spoke of wealth. Her violet eyes were squarely on me.

“My,” the voice rang in my head, “to think you would be so weak. Why is it that you of all demons were granted a sovereign title?”

I took a step toward her, bright flames hissing from my mouth. Somewhere behind me, my ears barely caught Taava rushing off for cover as the spell on her broke. Another bolt fired at her over my shoulder, magicked tip missing me by centimeters, and Taava by not much more.

“I have her now,” the demon said into my thoughts. “Attack me and she’ll never wake up.”

She?

My confusion must have shown, and the demon smiled cruelly, sighing melodramatically. “What it would be to be oneself, unfettered. What it would be to escape the crushing weights of expectation and obligation.”

I felt it. A seed of anger in Nelys. A simple, casual thing put up in response to the demon violating their self. I stoked that seed, and like a pinecone in a forest fire, it burst open—showering the fertile soil with fury.

Nelys screamed, so unlike themselves, and in an impressive display of speed threw a knife at the demonic woman’s head. For a moment when the spell broke, she was stunned, and the knife caught her squarely, sending her stumbling back from surprise.

It didn’t matter whether the thrown blade hurt her or not. Her spell was broken and I leapt at her.

“Run, Nelys!” I shouted before I dove in.

I hoped Nelys would heed my warning, but I couldn’t afford to even look to check.

The gangly demon twisted away, calling on some magic or another. Eyes glowing, my fire burned through her magic, incinerating whatever spell she’d tried. The snow in a wagon-sized radius around where we’d landed sublimated, heat radiating in waves off the newly-dry rocks.

The demon screamed as my fire seared into her. I grabbed her with all four arms, fully prepared to see how many pieces she’d tear into.

“Wait!” she hissed into my head. “If you kill me, then all those under my thrall will die. New demons for the upcoming war, Wrath. Hundreds of souls fractured on your conscience.”

I felt a magicked bolt hit me in the shoulder, but I didn’t care. Several pairs of footsteps ran toward me. More attackers—human this time.

“Will you die, or will you kill?”

I could call her bluff. From what I could hear Seyari and Joisse were still fighting on the hillside across the road. Taava and Nelys were away—I couldn’t hear fighting where they’d been.

I could call her bluff, and I might never even know whether she was telling the truth or not.

Magicked blades cut into me. Not particularly deeply as the swings were only human in strength, but I felt them. The demon under me gathered her magic again and I knew I had to make a decision—right now.