They found some food in one of the stores—beans of some sort, according to the picture—and a nearby house had a wood pile they scavenged. They looked and smelled strange, cooking like mud in the metal pot they’d found, and had a strangely sweet taste that stuck to her tongue.

Doneil had been fascinated. He and Karel were examining the other cans they’d found, speculating about them in low voices.

She’d taken to swordwork, running through the drills and footwork Treng had given her.

Every time she went past the Portal Seed, her runes burned with ice.

Kodanh was restless.

She didn’t blame him. She was restless, too.

The ice lizard could speak, but he didn’t often bother. He worked more like sentient woodcraft, relying on shared images and ideas. She’d given him as much explanation about the situation as she could, iterating it in darts and snippets at first, prioritizing in case they lost the connection again. Then, when the connection stayed relatively predictable, they’d had a more deeper mental… well, not a conversation. One didn’t so much converse with Kodanh so much as think concepts and questions at him, but their back and forth felt like a discussion to her.

Now, they were both waiting.

Matteo intrigued him. The discovery of another world—possibly multiple other worlds—intrigued him.

Like her, he wanted the gate pathways fixed.

She ran through another form, honing her concentration to the practice. The sun had sunk below the mountains some time ago, but twilight lingered in the sky, painting the the town in muted, cool tones and smeared shadows. The temperature had dropped, turning the marsh’s wet air cold. As the sun had set, some of the town’s lighting had switched on. The streetlights, most attached to the powerline support poles she’d been wondering about earlier, cast a ghostly white onto the roads and sidewalks below. Other lights, most in storefront windows, shone in a variety of colors. The ones in the nearby garden were small, looking like tiny stars inside a bush. To her left, the fire danced. Cool air mixed with the taste of sweetness and smoke on her tongue.

Doneil and Karel were still by it, though they’d moved on from discussing the cans. Prince Nales and Matteo sat with their backs to it, focused on the Portal Seed.

In the growing darkness, the disturbance in the air was more obvious. Tiny lines drawn like tight silk, glowing a faint, pure white.

They reminded her of Kodanh. The cold brightness of his ice.

The runes in her shoulder burned again as she crossed back into his range. His presence connected with hers, the bank of his available power rippling within her reach. Like walking out into the winter sunlight and seeing an entire lake ready to pour down over you.

She stepped through the rest of the form and he vanished again.

Her muscles were starting to ache.

That was fine. Good, even. Proof she needed the practice.

It was coming easier, at least.

Ten more forms. Ten more, and she’d quit for the night. She needed to patrol anyway.

“Catrin?” Doneil’s voice broke through her thoughts. “Do you sense that?”

She glanced over. Doneil stared somewhere to the left of Matteo. She followed his gaze into the distance, off the side of the displaced piece of his world and into the less distinct shapes of the marsh.

The sides of one of the mountains stretched up, furred with the dark texture of its trees. She stretched her senses out. As before, the woodcraft responded sluggishly, giving her only fragments of the picture.

Silence fell around the fire. By now, everyone had turned their attention out onto the marsh.

Then, Matteo stiffened—and something launched out of the water.

Catrin leapt toward it, sword swinging, before she’d even had the chance to process what she was seeing. Her woodcraft was screaming at her, all instincts saying to put herself and the weapon between the prince and whatever that thing was.

The scene flew by in a blur of firelight and deep twilight shade. She swung the sword back, chambering it, jumped over Nales, and swung.

She and the sword slammed into the creature, knocking it off balance. Blood spurted over her hands. It bellowed, a shriek of pain—then the sword hit something with a distinct clank.

A second later, she was airborne again.

She and the creature fell off the side of the displaced world and into the cold waters of the marsh.

She lost the sword. A jerk took it out of her hands, the creature's body bumping into hers. The water churned. Darkness, cold. The rnari blades were already in her hands, stabbing out. Water flooded her mouth, her nose. She lashed out, landed a hit, and something lashed back, slamming a kick toward her that half-missed. Her abdomen caught the edge of it, the solid bone of a turning leg and the thickness of the water transforming the action into more of a shove. A hock, like the leg of a thick horse.

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She tried to slice a blade into it, but the water slowed her, too.

For a moment, she thrashed in the water, trying to gain a hit. Then she realized she was alone.

Nothing but dim, muddy water surrounded her. The creature, whatever it was, had left her range of senses.

Her brows furrowed as she squinted into the water.

Then, a whole lot of clues slammed together in her mind.

Kelpie. She’d been fighting a kelpie.

It wouldn’t be done with them. With her in the water—its water, she now realized—it’d go for the others.

She returned her blades to their sheaths and swam upward, breaking the surface with a gasp.

“Catrin!”

At the edge of the broken roadway, backlit by the fire, all four of her companions gaped at her. Beside them, the Portal Seed glowed like the outline of a fractal.

She sucked in a breath.

“Nix!” she shouted up. “It’s a nix!”

Doneil shouted, pointing to the left. “Look out!”

She snapped her head around just in time to see a wake arrowing toward her. She spun in its direction, hands going to her blades.

It pulled her down again.

Cold darkness closed over her, shutting out the light and air and sound of the surface. Gritty, bitter-tasting water filled her mouth. She lashed out with her blade and found only reeds. They tangled around her wrist and arm, binding her loosely. Her other hand punched into soft mud.

As the rest of her sank into it, she realized the beast had taken her to the bottom.

She twisted and kicked out against the mud, trying to head for the surface again.

A presence appeared above her and struck her back down.

This time, the hoof thudded hard into her breastplate, making the mercari glow. Air burst from her mouth in a stream of bubbles. She clamped her mouth shut, teeth gritting together against the pain. Eyes stinging from the muddy water, she squinted frantically at the water as the mercari’s light began to fade, grasping at her woodcraft. Above the water, it had been fragmented. Now?

She might as well have shoved her head into the mud for all the good it did.

She kicked out again, launching for that vague presence in the water.

This time, it laughed at her.

You make such fine prey, rnari, his voice said into her head. The others weren’t nearly this much fun.

A part of her mind paused at that.

Others? He’d been killing other people?

Maybe that was why they couldn’t find anyone.

She thought she heard something. A splash. Someone else diving into the water.

Then, the presence above her shifted. Changed.

A face swam out of the darkness to her right. Angular, with a pale, cloudy hardness that reminded her of marble, the young man’s eyes reflected an eerie shine in the fading gold light of the mercari. A grin split his mouth as he looked her up and down, triumph in every dip and angle of his body. Blood flowed from a cut in his side. Where she’d struck his horse-form with the sword, most likely.

It didn’t look like it had done much damage.

As he closed in, she let herself sink into mud, raising her blades in front of her and crouching like a coiled up snake.

His grin widened.

Slowly, he sank into the mud, as well. Just out of range.

All I have to do is wait, he told her.

And all you have to do is come a little closer.

Somehow, she suspected his mind-speak was one way.

His next words confirmed it.

You must be dying for air, right now. His grin broadened, eyes dancing. Go on. Try for the surface. Maybe you can out-swim me.

He was right. She was dying for air. The burning in her lungs had spread to every desperate part of her body, every cell and instinct she had screaming at her to get to the surface now.

He wanted her to try. It would be fun for him.

Predators loved the chase.

No. She couldn’t out-swim him. Unless someone managed to distract him, her only hope lay in him getting close enough for her to stab one of her blades into his neck.

If I make it out of this alive, I’m going to practice fighting underwater.

Ignoring the desperation of her body, she stared him down. Then, tilting her head—one predator to another—she lifted one of her eyebrows, looked him up and down as if she weren’t impressed, and made a ‘come here’ gesture with her fingers.

His grin widened. He didn’t speak into her head this time, but every pale muscle of his body had bunched in excited anticipation. He was glowing, she realized. Pale, like a specter, casting a faint illumination into the waters around him. He lifted slightly, eyes locked on hers, and shifted forward—

A disturbance broke the muddy darkness to the right. He jerked his head, suddenly focused, then leapt straight up.

She glanced up just in time to see another pale figure surge through the water above, moving fast.

Another voice, different from the last, spoke in her head.

Run.

Karel.

She launched upward, kicking frantically for the surface.

How deep was this place? Not very—this was a marsh, not a lake. She put one of her blades between her teeth, biting down into the hilt. Everything in her was screaming for air, to gasp, draw breath. Darkness tunneled the edges of her vision. Not from the water, this time. Black spots. Lack of oxygen.

Gods, where was the light? Was she even swimming in the right direction?

She had no idea, but she was getting weaker.

Fuck!

Her body felt like it was made of lead. She couldn’t feel half of it. The cold had seeped in, numbing her flesh. The black spots crowded her vision now. But, up above…

Was that light?

She felt something pull in the water. Then, a body hit her out of nowhere, moving fast.

Karel?

The voice came back.

It was a good try, little warrior, but you are mine, now.

Not Karel.

She tried to strike out, to stick one of her blades in, but he just laughed. The water ripped them both away a few seconds later, the current too strong for her faltering limbs. He was swimming fast, carrying her, his powerful body undulating like a dolphin. Her head lolled weakly against his shoulder. Darkness crowded in.

Everything was so cold.

Oh no. Not yet. He laughed in her mind again, triumphant. Limbs shifted where he held her. For a moment, he slowed. Paused. He cradled her like a lover, one arm behind her back, the other pushing its fingers into her hair, pulling her head back to look at her.

Come on, sweetheart. Give me a kiss.

She wondered what he’d done to Karel. Had they fought? Was he dead?

Gods. She couldn’t even move.

Everything was cold. So cold. Burning. Like her bones had turned to ice.

Her mind moved thickly. Pain. In her shoulder.

She tasted blood. Like copper and rust on her tongue. And ice.

Ice.

Ice.

Her runes were burning.

As the nix tipped her cold lips to his, Kodanh sank into her mind and took a bite.