Walking through the castle, Nelys leading, I realized just how labyrinthine the place was. The stone walls seemed to be in good shape, but most of the rest of the place was empty. The little that remained seemed either recent or decayed, and much of it had been torn up.

Like I’d suspected, not everyone had been out in the fight, and I saw a fair few corpses and bloodstains on the way. Joisse pulled close to me, and I pulled my tail loosely around her as we walked in silence.

The worst part of it all was that what we passed just seemed… normal. Aside from some innocuous-looking iconography of Dhias, we passed bunk rooms, sitting rooms, and even a kitchen area. We walked above a dining room at one point, mismatched chairs all tucked in under the table.

In the moment, it had been easy to forget that each of these people still led lives outside of their power-hungry cult. How many could have walked a different path?

That was a useless question now. They were all dead.

And I had to hold remorse in my mind lest it slip away. It felt like forcing a splinter deeper under my skin, and I worried the feeling could fester.

Compassion. Mercy.

An excess of either would do more harm to me and my family than good. I was no longer the self-hating demon bent on a penitent life without volition. I had a war to fight. The feeling was sobering, like jumping through the ice into a frozen pond.

I needed power—soft power, too. And I wouldn’t get that by continuing to travel. Somewhere, like what Lilly had with Sandmeadow, I needed a base of power. The noble title for Astrye was open, and King Carvalon was going to want to grant it to me. He’d said as much when we’d met, that he’d grant it to someone who saved the region. I tried not to think about how or how much he might have known about what was going on here.

The title was a leash to be certain, but as I ran my tongue over the teeth in my mouth, I realized I could bite through it if need be. Metaphorically, of course. The bigger issue was that Astrye wasn’t my homeland. Close as it was, the mountains divided a lot more than the land itself.

I don’t even speak Lupael.

But my presence would rebuff Mordwell even as it drew Astrye deeper into the conflict. The region would already have fallen if it wasn’t for me and my friends.

All this hurt to think about. I needed time, and I needed to talk things out with both whatever community leaders remained and Seyari. Speaking of Seyari…

I looked down, and my three-quarters-angel fiancée looked up at me, meeting my gaze with a genuine smile.

I had a wedding to plan as well. Perhaps that could work in my favor toward making Astrye my home? Linthel was… well, not the same. The city in my memory was gone; time assured me of that much. Truthfully, I didn’t think I could settle there. I also didn’t want King Carvalon that close, or to tie myself, a demon, that closely with Edath’s seat of power.

Carvalon’s idea was good, damnit.

Thunk.

My head bent back, my horns putting two solid dents in the doorframe I hadn’t noticed. The dark, old wood was barely above eye-level—I really was getting even taller.

Reflexively, I ducked into the room, and saw Kartania leaning over a table covered in a mess of papers, her shoulders were twitching as she quickly leafed through them. Many of them were partially burned, and Taava was grumbling an improvised song while sifting through the room’s fireplace.

At the back, two windows, tall and relatively wide for the castle, let in the later afternoon light. Other than the table, and two chairs, the room was in disarray. Once an office, and perhaps a bedroom before that, the room was now neither. Ashes, scorch marks, and broken chairs were scattered around while damaged and fallen bookcases huddled against the walls. From the center of the rather tall ceiling, a metal chandelier hung sideways from a single chain, and only three stubby candles clung to their holders.

With an idle thought, I flicked my finger and lit them. Kartania tensed immediately, looking up from the papers she’d been studying intently with an icy expression that melted the moment she saw me and the others.

“Zarenna. Glad you’re finally here. Seyari, too.” She gestured to the table. “Get reading—most of this is junk, but we might find something in time to track Mordwell down.”

“I’ll search the rest of the room!” Nelys volunteered, jogging over to a fallen bookshelf.

Joisse slipped out from under my arm and followed them, and the pair lifted the battered wood as Seyari and I reached the table.

“Anywhere’s fine!” Kartania said, urgently. “Just go fast. I want to leave tonight—and we can have you scout from the sky. Maybe burn some marks for the ground troops to follow and—”

“Kartania.” Seyari said curtly. “Stop.”

Tania snapped her head to Seyari. “But we can catch him. He’s just tipped his hand and we can finally bring Mordwell to justice. Go! Read!”

Seyari shook her head. “No. We can’t. He left days ago and took the best guides in the town with him.”

“Zarenna’s fast, though!” My sister talked faster and faster. “And neither of us really fought, so we’re all in good shape. There’s plenty of food for rations still stored in the castle if what I’ve read is to be believed.”

I picked up a few papers at random and walked slowly over to Tania’s side of the table. I remembered years ago, my sister’s panic at how she struggled to learn sewing. When she was five. Kartania was used to all her plans succeeding, and I could tell from her wide eyes that missing Mordwell here was not going to be acceptable. Worse than that, I felt my sister’s anger starting to spill over from whatever invisible box she usually kept it in.

“It snowed twice since he left, Kartania, and with the wind in the mountains there’ll be no trail. You know this,” Seyari rebutted again.

“No! You’re wrong!” Kartania raised her voice, but the pitch danced up and down. “Just help me look and we’ll find something! We’ll leave tonight and easily catch their larger group!”

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

I glanced at Taava whose song had stopped. Joisse and Nelys were both sneaking glances our way.

“He’s gone, Kartania.” Seyari said, a hint of anger creeping into her voice and her emotions both. “Do you know how much I want this, too? We’ll find him—but we have to be smart about it.”

“Smart?” Kartania practically squeaked. “Smart?!”

I reached my sister and set the papers down before wrapping both my left arms around her. She jerked, staring up at me with blue eyes that shimmered in the dim light of the candles I’d lit.

“But…” she stuttered. “But we—all this time. All these years. Across a damned continent, I—I—”

I said nothing and pulled her into a hug, looking over at Seyari. My fiancée met my gaze with hard eyes and sighed before sitting heavily in the better-looking of the two chairs.

“No…” Kartania whimpered. “I can’t… This wasn’t…”

My sister started hiccupping, and for a moment I saw her younger self in my arms instead of the hard woman she’d become. Dhias, what pain has she endured alone all this time?

I pulled Tania even closer, and this time she leaned into me. Her words faded into hiccups as she tried desperately not to cry, not to lose her composure any further.

Finally, I whispered. “It’s okay, Sis. I’m here.”

The dam burst, and my sister broke down into tears in my arms. I held her while the others searched the room, and while Seyari combed through the papers and the few books left behind. Her expression grew more and more grim as she read, and her fury rose even as I pulled slowly at Tania’s, helping my sister to rest.

Not confident in the last chair’s structural integrity, I sat both of us on the ground, warming us against the chill of the old stone with my magic as the candles from the chandelier dripped wax onto the old table.

Eventually, Tania’s breathing slowed, and she fell asleep in my arms. As she did, she finally seemed to relax, her shoulders loosening fully. Seyari was still going through papers and books, while Nelys, Taava, and Joisse had started a game of cards in the far corner of the room, near the now-closed door. All the bookshelves had been placed back upright, and the broken debris of the other furniture had been stacked neatly into a pile. Outside, the sun was dipping behind the mountain, casting the room in shadow.

Not long after Tania finally fell asleep, Seyari was squinting at a burned corner of paper when her eyes went wide. She looked down at me, my head and shoulders sticking up above the table from my position on the floor, and exhaled in a quiet hiss.

“I found something,” she said softly. “Something big.”

“A way to track Mordwell?” I asked, hopeful in my sleeping sister’s place.

Seyari shook her head. “No, the opposite. I found how Mordwell tracked us.”

I blinked. “Oh! I knew we’d suspected that, but, I’d honestly forgotten in all this mess.”

“I hadn’t. He… he has one of my feathers.”

“Could we heal your wings with it?” I asked before my tired mind could filter the statement out.

Seyari’s breath hitched. “No, Zarenna. Like I said, nothing can bring my wings back. I’m not a demon: I can’t regrow limbs, and you know I’m not going to take a contract either, both for risk and principle.”

Behind her, Joisse perked up, turning her head Seyari’s way with wide, curious eyes. Immediately, I got to thinking. Could my daughter’s—our daughter’s—magic aid Seyari? Could the demonic aspect combined with healing magic regrow lost limbs? Or would it make things worse?

Seyari continued, “What my feather can do, however, is be used to track us. It’s not easy, and the enchantment would have had to be done by a master of the craft. Potentially Mordwell himself.”

“He’s a master enchanter?”

Seyari shrugged. “He was good at it decades ago, and he probably hasn’t gotten any worse.”

“That makes him more dangerous than we thought. Why hasn’t he been outfitting his people with enchantments then?”

Seyari looked at me blankly. “He did, Zarenna. Before you tore through here, everyone’s weapons and armor were enchanted.”

I blinked. “Oh.”

“Yeah. ‘Oh’ is right. You’re stronger than you know.”

“But a greater demon almost brought me down!” I protested. “They had magic crystals that got inside me and started growing and tearing everything apart.”

Seyari cursed softly. “Dead?”

I nodded.

“Good. That’s a rare sort of magic—and it’s really good at killing things that regenerate. Problem is that humans don’t really ever have an affinity for it.”

“Wait… was that demon supposed to kill me? Why put them after all the other people?”

“To get you in close with your guard down. That magic doesn’t have the longest range and takes a ton of mana to sustain.”

“Then why not kill me on the pass with you all?”

“The same reason, Zarenna.” Seyari chided. “Or… maybe worse. It could just be that they didn’t want to risk the asset, or you noticing them at the same time as Lorelei and attacking from the air.”

“Or…” I started softly. “Or they don’t fully control Lorelei. She seemed to be fighting it.”

Seyari gave me a pitying look. “Renna…”

“I know. When the time comes, I’ll kill her—again.”

“The first time wasn’t your fault—it was an accident.”

“That hardly makes it better.”

Seyari sighed again, staring down at the piece of paper. “At least we know that Mordwell can track me. And he doesn’t know that we know, but he has to assume we might.”

“So if you go with us, he’ll know where you are and steer clear?” I guessed. “Can we use that to our advantage.”

Seyari nodded. “Yeah, we can.”

“How soon?”

“Not immediately. We’ll need a stronger force—more people. And we’ll need a good idea of what Mordwell’s force is and what he’s up to.”

“We should stay in Astrye then.”

“Probably.”

“I could become Marchioness.”

Seyari opened her mouth and closed it again, thinking. “You could… but the wedding might be enough.”

“Are you still okay to do it? We won’t be able to get many guests over the pass. I assumed we’d get married in Linthel—send invitations out and all that.”

“Do we even have many friends who will come?”

“Sey!” I gestured to my daughter and to our two other friends in the corner. My poor daughter looked to be losing the card game, but she wore a big smile anyway. “Not just them, but what about Bourick and Brynna! Drin and Tren and Firalex? Salvador and Inva and Aretan, too—if we can reach them. Heck, I’d invite Torrez as well. And you know Lilly is going to show up no matter what, but I would also like Isidore and Mereneth to come too.”

Seyari blinked, counting. “That’s… a fair few people actually. Over a dozen.”

“We have friends, Sey. And we’re going to make even more.” I felt myself smiling sharply.

Seyari’s face froze for a moment before she returned the gesture. “You make it seem so menacing, Zarenna.”

“Sovereign of Friendship?”

“That’s bad, even for you.”

I stuck my forked tongue out at her. “How much do you have left to read?”

“Not a lot. Why?”

“We need to find a place for the night.”

Seyari looked around the room. “This looks cozy enough.” She pointed to the corner behind me. “And I think your sister already brought all our gear up here.”

I glanced behind me and noticed all our packs tucked into a corner that’d been previously obscured by debris. “Sey, this place is full of death. There are dead bodies all over downstairs.”

“We can clean those out.”

“Why can’t we just find an inn in town?”

“I want us to be here and ready in case any scouts visit or return.”

“I… shit. That’s a good point,” I conceded. “Fine. But we’re taking all the bodies out of the courtyard, too. And I still think this place might end up cursed or something.”

“Zarenna, is the fort where you met your sister ‘cursed?’”

“Well, I guess not.”

“Then it’ll be fine. Besides… a family staying here will do the place some good.”

I couldn’t help but smile again at Seyari’s mention of ‘family.’ “Okay, you win. I’ll stop protesting. What will we do with the bodies, though?”

“Burn them,” Seyari replied easily. “The ground’s frozen, and I don’t think the townsfolk will want a hundred graves to remind them of the cult that held their region hostage.”

“Let’s see what they want.”

“Didn’t you just say you’d stop protesting, Renna?”

“Sey! That was about staying here, not about burial practices.” In my arms, Kartania stirred, and I lowered my voice again. “Although I guess most of the cult probably shouldn’t have the right to a proper burial…” My sister relaxed again and I gave a quiet sigh of relief.

“Right,” Seyari said, lowering her own voice. “We’ve all had a long day, so let’s set up in this room. We even have a fireplace for a fire.”

I nodded, then gestured down to where Tania was sleeping. “Set up someplace for me to lay her down comfortably, and then I’ll help.”

Seyari smiled. “You’re a good sister, Renna.”

I blushed.