The homestead, nestled in a valley between gelubor-covered hills adorned with flowers, had once been a haven of beauty. Outside the palisade, a frozen pond mirrored the sunlight, a rare sight of tranquility in the vicious wilds of Southern Volqor. Zyryxa saw holes in the ice where homesteaders taught their children to fish, smelled the bouquets of flowers once gathered by lovers, and imagined the children splashing in the pond during the summer melts. The pride of the retired dragon warriors—lovers and broodmates—was palpable in every corner of this place they’d built from dreams and bare hands. Her heart ached, knowing the last story, the last song, the last embrace had been shared here before it was burnt away in one terrible night.

Zyryxa clenched her jaw and tightened her grip on her mother’s axe until her knuckles turned white as snow. The images of killing faceless Fire Tribe invaders burned in her mind. She imagined their hacked up remains left to freeze, entombed in ice for all eternity. These monsters would never see their homes again; she would make sure of it. First, she would find Lexyn, so they could right the wrongs together.

Scanning the tracks around the homestead—thousands of them, including signs of the heatscale drakes that razed the homestead and melted much of the snow into slush and puddles—she whispered, “Where did you go, Lexyn?”

A crash from the burnt huts signaled Pelzyq rummaging through them. Zyryxa tried to ignore him, but dread kept her keenly attuned to his search.

She examined the point where Lexyn’s trail from the hill to the homestead ended, studying the deep claw prints left by her drake boots in the snow, indicating she had waited here for some time. Then her trail disappeared. The pattern of Dryxl’s prints brought a lump to her throat. The darkscale had put up a struggle outside the gate, judging by the claw indents that dragged across the snow. Dryxl did not willingly enter the homestead, and Lexyn was likely mounted on him.

“Do you see the darkscale?” Zyryxa called.

Pelzyq looked up, his face somber. He shook his head and returned to rummaging through the debris.

Zyryxa followed the Dryxl’s tracks into the homestead, her mind heavy with memories of the past year. He had been her only companion, their bond forged as they cuddled together for warmth and safety on countless nights. Yet, she’d been asleep, when he needed her to protect him. She wished she’d been more alert against the white wyrm and hadn’t put Lexyn in a position where she sought help. Each scrape Dryxl left behind as his feet dragged through the homestead felt claws piercing her pride.

Toward the center of the homestead, Dryxl’s tracks were spaced apart in his usual walking stride with no scraping or dragging. Something had soothed a fire-fearing drake dragged in a burning homestead, surrounded by blood-soaked snow and slush. Zyryxa doubted Lexyn could assert that calm over him; she herself certainly couldn’t.

Zyryxa followed the tracks out of the homestead, where the Fire Tribe and their heatscales made their exodus. She found no evidence of where Lexyn might have dismounted, been thrown, or dragged off the drake. These signs could have been lost in the slush, or perhaps she was carried. Zyryxa broadened her search beyond Dryxl’s tracks, seeking any indication that Lexyn left the homestead through this gate. The fear of missing a crucial clue or discovering the dreaded truth haunted her thoughts with each step.

She puzzled over the clues, trying to arrange the pieces into a coherent story. Lexyn had watched from the hilltop, then descended and waited outside of the southwestern gate. Dryxl was dragged into the homestead, soothed, and eventually followed the raiders through the northeastern gate. Further from Dryxl’s tracks, someone put up a formidable resistance, leaving behind broken teeth and blue blood. However, there was no clear connection from the struggle to Dryxl’s path that confirmed it was Lexyn. Most of the human prints were larger and wider than Zyryxa’s, likely belonging to men, with at least eight distinct tracks she could isolate. She found three sets of smaller prints, probably women, each with signs that they were pushed or pulled at varying points. None of the smaller prints left behind claw marks, indicating that they weren’t wearing Lexyn’s drake boots. Either Lexyn never dismounted, lost her boots, was carried, or never went through the northeast gate.

The first scenario seemed preposterous. Lexyn wouldn’t have been left mounted by the raiders, nor did Zyryxa believe she would pursue them alone. The second and the third possibilities were plausible but impossible to confirm without tracking the Fire Tribe. Lastly, if Lexyn never left the northeast gate, Pelzyq would find her remains in the homestead, or she didn’t go through the southwest gate with Dryxl.

Zyryxa circled the blackened palisade, retracing Lexyn’s steps back to the southwest gate from the hillside. Instead of entering the homestead, Zyryxa searched the exterior, hoping Lexyn had fled. Hundreds of human footprints, many preceding the raid, frustrated Zyryxa’s attempts to identify Lexyn’s trail. She sought prints smaller than her own with claw indents. Yet, as wind blew snow off the frozen pond and over the tracks, it became clear that the claw indents could’ve filled in if they weren’t gouged. If Lexyn was sneaking away or sprinting, they’d be gone.

Adjusted her strategy, Zyryxa reasoned that Lexyn wouldn’t have gone uphill where travel was hard, and her visibility high. If Lexyn were wise, which she was, she would have crept across the frozen pond and sought cover in the gelubor on its far side.

Zyryxa dashed around the pond, scanning the ground for prints leading into the gelubor. Each step without finding fresh tracks fueled her anxiety. A hundred yards from the gate and nearly to the forest, she found a trail with drops of blue blood frozen atop the snow beside them. On closer inspection, there were two sets of footprints, one of them a size that could have been Lexyn’s. This girl wasn’t one to abandon somebody in suffering. Could she have gone down to the homestead to rescue someone, helped them to the forest, and tended to them while Dryxl covered her retreat?

Hope burgeoning in her, Zyryxa called Lexyn’s name, scanning for movement in the trees. The gelubor remained placid, sunlight reflecting off the crystalline leaves.

“Find something?” Pelzyq hollered from the edge of the homestead.

“Maybe!”

Pelzyq rushed across the pond and slipped on the ice, landing hard on his ass. Zyryxa covered her mouth to keep from laughing, the spectacle momentarily pushing away her fears that these tracks didn’t belong to Lexyn.

“Anything?” she asked, needing reassurance that Lexyn was alive.

Pelzyq shook his head. “She wasn’t among the dead.”

“You’re certain?”

“Her necklace would’ve survived the flames.”

Zyryxa suppressed the urge to hug this cretin. Lexyn never took off her silver necklace, and she doubted these men who’d dragged at least three women away with them would’ve bothered with the necklace and not the beautiful girl it belonged to. Lexyn was alive, and for that, Zyryxa smiled broadly at Pelzyq.

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“Thank you, Pelzyq.”

He cocked his head in surprise, then scowled. “Pelzyq did it for Little Mouse. He pays his debt to her, makes passion to both of you, leaves you in tears, and then beats you to Riverwatch.”

“Every time I start to feel a sliver of respect for you, you remind me who you are.”

Pelzyq’s gaze scoured her body. “Did you find something or not?”

Zyryxa gestured to the tracks flowing into the gelubor. “Dryxl was captured by the Fire Tribe, but I think Lexyn helped someone escape.”

Pelzyq rushed after the tracks without any sense of discretion and shouted Lexyn’s name loud enough to be heard over the next hill. Zyryxa raced after him, glimpsing movement within the trees as they broke the edge of the white forest.

“Stay where you are,” a man’s voice growled.

Pelzyq readied his axe while Zyryxa set her hand on her throwing axe. A stocky man with pale skin and balding blue hair stepped through a gap in the white trees, sporting a nasty cut on his shoulder. When his gaze touched Zyryxa, his eyes widened with recognition. “Who are you?”

“The Great Pelzyq,” Pelzyq said, “and my beautiful companion is—

“Zyryxa,” she interjected. “Zyryxa the Greater than Pelzyq. And you are?”

“Bax,” he said humorlessly. He gestured toward the homestead across the pond. “That’s what’s left of my home. If you came seeking hospitality, we’re all out of it.”

Zyryxa let her hand fall off her throwing axe. “All we seek is our friend Lexyn.”

Pelzyq strode to Bax, towering over him. “She’s a pretty little woman with hair so dark its like the night sky.”

“Once we reunite with her,” Zyryxa added, “we will deliver Qoryxa’s judgment to the ones who attacked your homestead.”

Bax frowned. “We’ve seen no one like your friend.”

“We?” Zyryxa asked.

A woman marked by the white dragon emerged from behind a thick gelubor, a babe in one arm and a spear in the other. A little blue-haired girl clung to the back of her furs.

“This is what remains of our family,” Bax said, putting his arm around the fair woman. “Our husband was killed and our two wives were taken. The other children…” Bax swallowed, his eyes going vacant. “Sorry about your friend. I hope she is well, wherever she is.”

Zyryxa lowered her gaze, the sight of their grief pressing sharply on her own. She tried not to imagine the pain Lexyn was in right now, or how scared she must be. Her hands closed into fists as she determined her course. “If your wives are still alive, Lexyn is probably with them. I will bring them home to you.”

“Are you certain you saw nobody else with them?” Pelzyq asked.

“Just that divinedamned warrior woman,” Bax’s wife said, trembling, her knuckles whitening as she clenched her spear.

“Warrior woman?” Zyryxa asked, dread filling her and like smoke.

“Natazia,” Bax said. “She was on her way to the Pridefort to seek the Ice Champion’s approval to initiate the Rite of the Dragon Warrior. Her brood’s the reason we think the Fire Tribe found our valley.”

“How do you know your other wives and this Natazia survived?” Pelzyq asked.

Bax’s face twisted with disgust. “I listened as Striqa called my name while we hid. I watched as the flames illuminated Valqa, bound at wrist and ankle, a leash cinched around her neck. I did nothing when Natazia shrieked for them to kill her, thrashing against her restraints every step of the way until they were gone.”

“I’m sorry,” Zyryxa said, understanding the sense of powerlessness he felt, her nightmares overrun by similar scenes of her mother.

“You’re forgetting about the one that rode the black drake.”

Zyryxa perked up, lifting her eyes from the ground. The little girl had spoken. She couldn’t have been more than five years old. “Lexyn rode a black drake.”

“Tell us what you saw!” Pelzyq demanded, the girl’s parents quickly stepping between him and the girl.

The little girl sobbed, clinging to Bax. Her parents tried to soothe her to no avail. “Anniqa and I didn’t see this person,” Bax said, scowling at Pelzyq.

“May I?” Zyryxa asked, kneeling in front of them with her hand outstretched toward the girl.

Bax and Anniqa shared a knowing look, nodded, and stepped aside. “You can trust her, Xana,” Anniqa said.

Zyryxa offered her hand to the little girl. She took it. Zyryxa smiled at her. “You’re very pretty, Xana.”

Xana smiled back at her. “Thank you,” she said shyly.

“My friend and I defeated a white wyrm up in the hills and—

“You killed Old Frosty!”

Zyryxa nodded, grateful for the girl’s enthusiasm. “We did. But me and this scary guy were hurt and my sister Lexyn came to your home last night looking for help. I miss her very much.”

“I miss my sister too,” Xana said, tears slipping down her cheeks. “I miss home.”

Zyryxa brushed the Xana’s face, tears forming in her eyes. “I know, sweetie. It is alright to feel sad, or even scared. I feel the same right now, but I’m going to be brave for my sister and I’m going to make sure the evil men that attacked your family hurt nobody else ever again.”

“And you’ll bring back my other moms?”

Zyryxa nodded.

“It’s okay,” Anniqa said. “Tell her what you saw.”

“Momma was carrying me away from our home and,” her voice broke, “I was watching our home burn.” She sobbed. “The lady on the black drake looked right at me and I…”

Zyryxa squeezed her hand gently. “What did she look like?”

“She was far away. All I remember was she had a big sword and…” the girl cried.

“Thank you, darling,” Zyryxa said, patting the girl’s shoulders. “You were very brave. I’m proud of you.”

Zyryxa stood up, more confused than ever. Lexyn’s sword was not large, but to a little girl witnessing her home burn, it might as well have been Qoryxa’s Kiss. Besides, every piece of the story indicated that there were no women among the Fire Tribe raiders. If Zyryxa somehow missed this person’s tracks, she would have pursued the homesteaders.

“Why would Lexyn chase them?” Pelzyq asked, a hint of emotion breaking into his deep voice.

Zyryxa gazed at him, trying to make sense of the new information. Lexyn must’ve went into the homestead to help any survivors after the Fire Tribe left. Dryxl resisted her at first, but Lexyn managed to calm him. Then, she pursued the Fire Tribe alone. Why? Why risk her life against impossible odds and leave Zyryxa behind?

“She wouldn’t dare attack them all,” Zyryxa said. “Maybe she followed them to see where they camped, then planned to double back for us. She could be on her way back here.”

“Or she could be captured,” Pelzyq said, clutching his axe. “Let’s go.”

“I’m coming,” Bax declared, his voice gruff. “I’m not about to send you two to your deaths when it’s my people they hurt.”

“Bax,” Anniqa said softly, her tone packed more meaning than a thousand words.

Bax took the baby in his arms and embraced Anniqa. He motioned for Xana to join them, hugging them all, knowing that this might be his last embrace. Zyryxa gave them their moment, Pelzyq was less courteous.

“Pelzyq will make sure your daddy comes home, little girl, after his axe cuts through the heads of any raider that even thought about laying a hand on Lexyn.”

The trees rustled. Zyryxa readied a throwing axe, Anniqa lifted her spear, Pelzyq raised his axe, and Bax positioned himself protectively in front of Xana. Zyrxl crooned happily and padded toward the intruder to lick her hand.

“I appreciate that, Pelzyq,” Lexyn said, a sly grin on her blessed face.

Zyryxa crashed into Lexyn, throwing her arms around her and squeezing with all her love. Tears of relief streamed down her face as she clung to her, never wanting to let go. Lexyn held her tightly, and for the first time since she woke up, Zyryxa felt warm.

“I’m sorry I made you worry,” Lexyn said.

“You’d only need to be sorry if you died on me,” Zyryxa said, clinging to her for dear life.

“Where’ve you been, Little Mouse?” Pelzyq asked.

“Around,” Lexyn replied. “I was heading back to the white wyrm when I heard someone call me by my actual name for once.”

“Pelzyq still owes you a day and a night until his debt is paid.”

Lexyn pulled back from Zyryxa and studied Pelzyq. “What’s that in your eye?”

Pelzyq folded his arms over his bare chest and turned away from them. “The Ice Princess demanded Pelzyq’s top, and the cold stings even the mighty Pelzyq.”

Lexyn’s gaze went from Zyryxa to Pelzyq, taking in their attire. “Why didn’t you give her the furs I made from the goora?”

I’m going to kill him, Zyryxa thought. I’m going to chop him up into tiny pieces and feed him to Zyrxl.

“The drake ate them,” Pelzyq said.

Zyrxl groaned in her defense, leering at Pelzyq with only slightly less fury than Zyryxa.

Lexyn chose not to challenge him any further. She inhaled deeply and smiled at Zyryxa. “I’m glad you’re both okay.”

Zyryxa’s anger melted away in the warmth of Lexyn’s smile. She’d find a way to get back at Pelzyq, but only in a manner Lexyn would approve. She couldn’t disappoint her with another vindictive outburst; every moment could be their last, and she wanted to cherish every smile between now and the end.

“What happened to you?” Pelzyq demanded.

Lexyn sighed. She sat beneath a gelubor, inhaled, exhaled, and repeated several times, her eyes drifting toward the ruins of Bax and Anniqa’s life. “Have I got a tale to tell you,” she began, glancing at Zyryxa, “of how we may have bitten off more than we can chew.”