“Elrya’s bright tits,” Doneil muttered. “This is fantastic.”

Grit scraped under Catrin’s boot. She grimaced, resisting the urge to skewer him with a look at his words and instead focus on her footing. Gods, she’d never been up this high before, not on a mountain this open, anyway. The enormous amount of space behind her was trying to suck her in—as if it wanted to pluck her right off the mountain and send her reeling back.

Temdin, she hadn’t realized heights were an issue for her. But clinging to a patch of scraggy rock, well aware of the several hundred-foot fall that filled most of the space at her back and side, really put some things into perspective for her.

They’d made it thus far, though. And the glamour was holding.

She let out a breath and glanced ahead. The fey—Caracel, he was called—led the way, his steps as sure and graceful as if he’d been born a unicorn. Calm, quiet, smooth, as if the marble his body was sculpted from carried into his mannerisms. Though blood and dirt smudged his skin and clothes, he still looked the part of a living statue, or a descended god.

Then again, some of her magic was derived from the fey. Kodanh was as old as the glacier, and although for all intents and purposes he was a deity, he was still fey first.

The line between fey and deity blurred after the first thousand years of life, she suspected.

Caracel, she thought, might only be in his first hundred, maybe two. He had more maturity than she’d expect for a younger fey, and his glamour was strong and holding well over all of them.

She shivered at the reminder. That was another thing—his glamour. She’d been doing magic for nearly her entire life—ten hells, half her rnari training was founded in it!—but she’d never come close to how Caracel used it. It was like breathing to him, or a first language. It had taken him all of ten seconds to weave it across all four of them, and, as far as she could tell, cost him almost nothing to maintain. At least, it didn’t seem to. He was easily outpacing the rest of them.

Every so often, the glamour’s magic would prick at her skin.

She hated it.

The glamour also, worryingly, didn’t seem to block scent as well as she’d thought. They’d passed several demons near the trail earlier—flyers, by the look of their leathery wings, sitting stoop-backed in nests that reeked of ammonia—and they’d all lifted their heads and grown agitated, sniffing the air to catch the origin of the scent.

They’d moved on before the things could do more than a sniff or five, but she could see that causing problems for them later if they ran into hellhounds.

Still, it was better than nothing. Much better.

A scrape of a boot snapped her attention toward the back of the group. A sheen of sweat coated Matteo’s face and arms, enough that its smell touched her nose. His firearm was tucked away into his belt, the red light off, which she took to mean it was in its dormant mode.

He’d certainly been wary of the demons. The weapon had come out immediately upon sight, but Doneil had been hasty to wave it down, press a finger to his lips, and motion for him to creep by. He’d complied, but his normally neutral expression had shifted to concern and concentration until they were well past, his head turning back to keep track of the nests.

Smart, that one. She felt bad bringing him along. This wasn’t his fight, not even remotely. He had zero reason to be here.

But they’d explained, best as they could, where they were going, and presented him with the option to stay behind, and he’d given them a resolute ‘no’ on that, and solid ‘yes’ to the mountain.

Just what kind of soldier was he? Half the guards she knew at Pemberlin would have taken that, or at least balked.

Fuck us. We’re a ragtag group.

If they ran into the demon lord, they might manage to escape—he’d likely be laughing too hard to try and keep them.

They passed another hump in the ridgeline, and the small fissure Caracel had pointed out for them came into view. Her shoulders relaxed down as they turned inward around a wedge of rock and the sudden, sheer drop on one side vanished from sight.

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Soon, a different type of tension prickled at her. She slid her gaze up to the crevasse, watching it loom closer.

Gods, this is really happening.

It was surreal. Just days ago, she had been training with Severn Treng on the dusty gravel of Pemberlin’s front drive. Doneil had been braiding patterns into dough. The atmosphere had been light, lazy. Spring had been in the air, the first buds on the trees, the cold impression of winter only lingering in the shadows of the forest and the higher altitudes.

Now, it was like the world would never be the same.

But… she wasn’t afraid. She should be afraid. Infiltrating a demonic fortress was not a safe activity, and there was a good chance that one or more of them would die in there.

She let out another breath, trying to read the shiver that kept fluttering through her nerves. Adrenaline? Anticipation, too.

But not fear.

She was surprisingly okay with the idea of infiltrating a demon’s lair. Excited, even.

I’ve trained for this. Maybe not this, specifically, but something like this. I was never meant to sit guard for a pompous prince—I was meant to kill.

A slight, leathery rustle grabbed her attention upward. The messy edge of a nest was visible over the ridge of rock that now blocked their right sides from the fall, and the jutting, naked form of one of the demon birds came into view. The smell of ammonia clotted her nose like a poison sting. She stared at it, taking in every curve and jut of it. Birds were already ugly without their feathers, but these had a grotesqueness that caught at the eye—part vulture and part southern cassowary, with a huge and pointed beak and claws fierce enough to cut stone.

The bird lifted its head and tilted it to the side, its eye flashing in the light from below.

She stared at it.

An awareness prickled across her skin in a wave. The mercari on her shoulder turned to ice. A low, rumbling sound came from deep in the earth below. Both Doneil and Matteo gave cries of alarm as the mountain began to shake.

Everything cracked open.

A shock wave slammed into them—it hit her chest, made the soft tissue between her ribs vibrate. She cried out a warning, put her hands up in defense as a bright light flashed across the ridge, burying deep into the earth. Magic crackled in the air like a storm cloud, grazing their skin with static.

Her ice runes stabbed into her shoulder with a sudden vengeance, burning with cold.

Ahead, Caracel looked back at her, wide-eyed.

“Catrin—the glamour!”

It was gone. Its absence crawled at her skin.

And, with that flash of light, they were completely exposed.

She cursed as a chorus of surprised squawks lifted off. Leathery wings rustled to life, claws scratching on rock as the birds took to the air.

A glance up told her they were headed for their group.

“Fuck!” she swore, casting an eye up to the crevasse. It wasn’t far, only a hundred feet up.

She made a snap decision.

“Go! Run!”

Ice burning in her shoulder, she switched back and dodged around Doneil. The first bird dove, razor-sharp claws aiming for Matteo.

She smashed into it, shoved it into the rock, and stabbed her blade into its rib cage.

Something hard turned it aside. Black blood spilled over her arm and shoulder, burning in the air, and the bird lifted off with a screech, wings beating furiously.

She yanked her knife out before it got stuck. Snarling, she stepped back as it flapped away, tracking it in the sky. Ice gathered in her arm. She pulled on her power, aimed with her mind, and—

Five red darts of light shot past her head and slammed into the bird, burning hot.

She jumped. It screamed. Its flight faltered. Blood spilt from its wing, enough that she could see some of it drop through the air.

Matteo stood a few paces away, his firearm aimed at the demon. The light on its side was glowing—the same red glow as the shots had been—and his eyes had that flash in them again.

Definitely not normal.

He fired again—another quick succession of red flashes—and the demon above screamed and fell.

To her left, the screeches of other demon birds ripped through the sky. Magic rippled in the air. The ice runes on her shoulder pulsed with cold in warning, filled with power.

They needed to get out of here.

She waved her blades at Matteo, then made a gesture to the crevasse.

“Go!”

The word might have been foreign to him, but he got the gist of it. Another bird came crashing over the rock next to them with a piercing squawk. She lunged forward, a hard slash of her blade slicing through its wing membrane. Warm blood splattered across her arms and chest, and an unearthly, pained keen blasted her ears.

She shoved it off, slashed at the next one—it braked and swooped hard to the front, narrowly avoiding its brethren’s fate—then she was rushing Doneil after Matteo and hustling them both up the steep slope.

A crackle of magic whistled by her. She jerked to the side just in time for another bird to explode on the rock some paces back, its chest ripping apart in a burst of glowing seams—fey magic, by its feel.

The entrance to the crevasse loomed closer. Fifty paces, give or take.

Behind them, the rustle of wings grew more numerous. When she looked back, the dark sky above them seemed to writhe, black shapes swooping and ducking like fish in an agitated school.

Her runes prickled with cold again. This time, a connection surfaced—and a familiar awareness.

Magic.

She didn’t question it. With a shout, she cut down at one darting bird, hacked it nearly in two, and scrambled her landing, blades clunking against the dirt.

When she landed, she grabbed onto the ice as hard as she could and pulled.