She was drowning, but drowning had an end.

Her mind had cracked wide open. Feelings ran through her like water through a sieve, fierce and white hot.

She was slipping. She clung on as best she could. Her body wouldn’t listen. Nothing listened—only she did, and she heard a high ringing note of pain, echoing, echoing. She couldn’t remember who she was. She couldn’t remember very much of anything. She wasn’t thinking, just biting down. The white-haired lady was her enemy. Ruyi would not lose to her. She knew that much, at least.

She saw a face in the haze. Gao. Wrinkled, somber, staring down at her. Ruyi didn’t understand. What had she done to make Gao sad? She had tried so hard…

Gao shook her head. She turned her back on her.

No, Ruyi wanted to scream. Please! I’m sorry. I’ll be better! Don’t go—don’t—

But Gao left her, and she was alone again.

She was so sad she nearly gave in.

She didn’t know what was happening. She didn’t know why. She was so cold…

She was leaning against the moth-ridden steps of the servants’ quarters, and it was so dark she couldn’t see the road behind, and the moon, half-shrouded in clouds, stared down at her with silent indifference.

It would be so easy to let go. So easy, like falling asleep…

But that was what they wanted, wasn’t it?

If she fell asleep, they won. They put the hurt inside her. They wanted to make her sleep.

It was the white-haired lady, yes, but it was Gao. Gao, who’d given up on her just like Father. They all left her in the end.

She would not give them what they wanted.

A spike of pain went through her belly, so sharp it nearly swept her away. But she clung on.

There was nothing inside her anymore. There was only space for hurt; she felt nothing else. But now, rising, where everything else had left her, she felt something new.

When the rest of her was scraped away she found she could still hate.

So she kept living.

***

Gaia wasn’t sure what to write.

It was a letter of apology, to be sure. There was so much to apologize for. She wished she had more time.

It was also a letter of farewell. The last words you wrote to someone felt like they had weight, but Gaia had nothing special to say. So she gave her daughter what she knew. She told them the routes to escape the Palace unnoticed. She told her to make for Octavius’s tribe, since he despised Marcus—he might shield her and Gaia’s grandson. She told them that all flames burn out. They would do without her—hadn’t they done well enough, all these years?

She hoped that with Marcus’s operation and the chaos that followed they’d have some time to get away. It was, as all her hopes seemed these days, a vain hope. Marcus would know. Marcus would see to them, more than likely. She’d consigned three innocents to death in a day.

She was not certain what madness took her hand. Still, she signed, “With love, Nana.”

She gave the letter to her own Sevencolor Raven; she wouldn’t trust the Cult’s messengers. The bird, so large its talons could hardly fit on her arm, took the letter. With a flutter of wings it soared against the steel rafters, its feathers darkening to gray to match the steel. Then it was out against the open sky, lightening, a slip of blue. It was gone.

“Mistress?”

A human, one of the Cultists. A bald tattooed one of early Core, the one Cassius called Han. Only humans used such honorifics; Demons had no use for them.

“May I ask who that letter is for?” His tone was polite enough. But his hand was creeping to the hilt at his waist.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

Gaia relieved him of his head.

***

It was dark and there were screams.

Not Ruyi’s screams. She couldn’t scream anymore; her throat made the motions but there was no sound.

There was blood. Not Ruyi’s blood. She’d run out of blood. Others’ blood.

A face, Gao’s face, swimming through the murk.

Then the burning snake’s head was cut off.

It was swimming inside her. Then there was a scream, a high-pitched lady’s scream, and the rest of the snake was gone, gone back to the Other Place. It took the hurt with it—the greater hurt. The smaller hurt was inside her, and it wouldn’t go away.

“Can you stand?” Gao’s face. The old lady looked sad and scared. Ruyi just stared at her.

“Girl, can you—”

She lunged for Gao’s throat.

Something huge rammed her side and she went over growling. She landed unevenly—on three huge black limbs, and one small, human arm. As she skid her claws left a trail of dirty ice.

She snarled, lunging again. Iron closed around her throat; prongs dug into her muscled neck. Not iron—a claw.

A crow’s claw.

Gao’s legs had transformed, puffed with muscle, and one foot held her by the throat. She slashed, and screamed, and tried biting, but with how it held her she couldn’t sink in her teeth.

“I understand,” said Gao. “But there’s no time—”

Ruyi opened her mouth and a blizzard screamed out. The claw released. She landed gagging on all four feet.

The room was moss and stone and the ground was strewn with bodies. A single arm of light reached down from the middle of the domed ceiling, pointing at the altar, gesturing toward the murky corners; it was hard to tell how big the space was. Half of it was now pale with frost. The ground nearest her was slashed with sheets of ice.

Above, Gao hovered. Behind her two great wings unfurled, a cloak of shadows crackling with arcs of white-yellow.

“Listen!” Gao cried.

There was a wail, too high and flat to be human. A siren’s wail, and, trembling the ceiling, the sound of footsteps.

“There is nothing you can do to me,” said Gao. “That they will not do too. I am going to go outside. I am going to go left. You’ll go right. Follow the stairs up—it should be laid out logically. This was a stadium, once, and we are in its bowels. Do you understand?”

Ruyi was wondering how high she could leap. Maybe if she launched off the wall she could snatch the bird by the throat, bring it down to her level, and there she could do what she needed.

“Do you understand?”

She didn’t need the wall. Her legs took her to Gao so fast the old crow seemed shocked. Still she wasn’t fast enough—Gao wheeled out the way and she flailed out a desperate claw. It caught, raked four bloody streaks through feather and flesh, and Gao went spiraling, crying out in pain. Where she’d struck the wing was dead, the skin blackened, claimed by frostbite.

They landed and Ruyi was on her. Her jaw unhinged—

—she was on the floor, spasming, as a gasping Gao loomed over her.

“Heavens,” the old lady whispered. “This, at mid-Core?”

Ruyi tried turning. Her tail lashed back and forth; she tried to swing herself over, but her limbs were all locked out. Something jittery ran through her. She couldn’t move. All she could do was stare, and she must have made her feelings known since Gao flinched at her gaze.

“I am not asking you to forgive me,” said Gao. “I am asking you to save yourself.”

I hate you, Ruyi wanted to say, but she couldn’t move her mouth.

Gao looked like she wanted to say more, but she stilled. The rumbling wasn’t in the ceiling anymore. It was at their feet.

The first demon that burst into the chamber was so huge it ripped the portcullis clean off its hinges. An elephant demon. It shucked the portcullis off its scythes for tusks and charged.

Gao was there in a blink. She sank her claws into its leathery sides and lightning played across the surface, rippled through its body and it toppled, crushing a boar-demon which had just cleared the gap. But more leapt over. Things like jackals and bears and eagles, and behind them, things like men—like Marcus had been.

Ruyi smelled blood in the air. Then the hunger struck.

There was a hole in her. One arm was still human. Splotches of her legs were too, as were her back, her head. She needed to be whole. Before she knew what she was doing she had rammed that boar demon into the wall. Chunks of stone crumbled around her, a chunk of it broke off her skull, but she didn’t care. She sank her fangs into the thing’s throat as it thrashed and roared, but she put her weight on it, put her ice into it, and its muscles, its veins, froze inside of its body. She squeezed the blood out of it and into her open mouth.

There was something where her core should be. A new space. The tingly joyous energy she took from the boar went there. It tried blasting her with fire but it was no use. It was merely Feral; it hardly tickled.

The skin around her arm began to crust over with black.

But it wasn’t enough. The boar was dried and brittle, shrunk to half its size, the water in its eyes frozen to hard balls. You would never believe it had once been a living breathing thing. Still more prey poured through the wall.

Ruyi set to them with desperate abandon as somewhere high above, a second alarm began to wail.

***

“What did you do?!” Cassius had never seen Marcus half so angry.

His face was a knot of angry lines, cast gold in the pan of Cassius’s scrying glass. He was close enough now they could speak—if they coughed up a ridiculous sum to power the contraption.

Marcus insisted on it. Today, nothing could go wrong.

Then, before the sun had so much as risen, something had.

“What did Gaia do,” Cassius corrected. He raised a weak finger, put up a placating smile. “Not to worry—we’ll sort it out! It’s but a bump in the road—”

“You said something. You did something. You introduced a complication.”

“I… may have prodded her.”

Marcus cursed.

“You’re overreacting,” said Cassius breezily. “We’ve so much massed power here we could afford ten such mishaps. I’ve sent in a quarter of our invasion force—it’s more than enough to corral them. We’ll strap the girl back on the altar, re-establish the bond. It’ll take a few more hours, sure, but they were always meant to be the finisher—”

Then the second alarm went up.

Frowning, Cassius strode over and peered over the lip of the stadium. He blinked.

“Well!” he said, smiling. “Isn’t this convenient? We meant to smoke out the Imperial Guard. But it seems they’ve saved us the trouble. They’ve come to us.”