We set out just after dawn. The morning air was still frigid, and so Irina wore my coat. All she’d escaped in was her nightdress and soft slippers, so she had greater need of a coat than I did. Even so, I shivered as I walked. I didn’t know if it was from the cold or my body trembling in exhaustion.

As we’d flown over the river in our escape, we decided to follow it back to our camp. My biggest problem was making it up the waterfall. There was a climbable slope beside it, but one needed the strength to do so. My heart fluttered like a bird’s wings, my body felt heavy as lead. The blood-loss had claimed all of my energy. I was already breathing hard from the walk. Short of being carried, I wasn’t making it even a tenth of the way up the slope.

The bond wavered, and I felt a trickle of Andiya’s magic flow into me. When I turned towards her with a wordless question, she sent, “Don’t slow us down.”

With Andiya’s magic, my strength returned. I used tree trunks to support myself and heaved my way up the slope. At the top, Andiya patted me on the shoulder mockingly as I panted.

“Don’t give me reason to take it away,” she shot in an echo of my words from last night.

It was easier to find the camp than we thought it would be. A trail of smoke curled up above the treeline leading us right to it. The Crows had picked everything clean, leaving only husks and ash. All our food, our tools, our maps and our clothing were gone. What remained was singed, unusable. We combed through for anything that might help. Andiya managed to find a pair of too-big boots for Irina buried under a collapsed tent, and I found a pair of leather gloves. Irina uncovered a metal canteen, and we quickly downed the water that remained. With soot-blackened fingers and heavy souls, we sat down to rest.

Irina detailed what she remembered from Seylas’s route. There was a town called Zhyla we’d been meant to pass and re-supply at, just north against the main branch of the river. With any luck, we could follow the planned route and regroup with any of our party who might have done the same. Even if we didn’t have any money, there might be those in the town willing to help us. Not a guaranteed success, but the best chance we had.

A strange pattern on a nearby tree caught my eye. It was a handprint burned into the bark then slashed through the centre with a rough cut.

“Yulia,” I gasped, and sprinted over to it. I touched the bark. Cold. “She left this for me. It’s Artem’s hand and her sword. It’s a signal we came up with years ago in case we were ever separated. Yulia left this to tell me she’s alive.”

“A note and location would have been better,” said Andiya.

“Yulia and I are soldiers. We’d never leave anything that could be understood by a potential threat. But now we know that at least one person on our side escaped the attack. It’s even more likely now that Shokarov’s group is unharmed somewhere out there.”

“Shokarov’s team was following Seylas’s original route,” said Irina. “They may have already reached Zhyla.”

“Then we’re wasting time.” I nodded towards the river. “Daylight won’t last forever.”

That tiny sign had slapped me awake. Yulia. I could find her, if we moved fast enough. I wouldn’t lose my best friend to this madness.

We made decent time along the river. Every so often, Andiya’s magic trickled into me. I couldn’t believe how normal I already felt. Healing so fast felt almost perverse. Even my forearm had the dark scabs of a week old wound, and not the dampness of an open sore. I peeked at Andiya’s wounds, and hers had barely closed. She was splitting her magic between us, and I was getting the lion’s share.

Andiya snatched Irina and I and shoved us under a cover of thick shrubs. We knew better than to voice a complaint.

A minute later, a mounted Crow rode by. She dropped from her horse not a few feet away. I held my breath. Crows never travelled alone. Where was her pack?

The Crow sipped from the river, her back to us. The princes drew her knife, and I grasped her wrist in a warning. The Crow didn’t know we were here. Just wait. She would move on.

“There shouldn’t be Crows this far west,” I sent Andiya. “Especially in crown-owned woods. Their appearance isn’t good. It might mean they’re testing the boundaries of the archon. We leave their lands alone because so far we’ve been able to coexist peacefully. But if they push too far out … the crown will be forced to intercede.”

“And that’s bad, I’m assuming.”

“The Novoski have truces with dozens of independent clans, provided they meet certain requirements. Keeping to strict boundaries, for example. If the crown wages war on the Crows, it may end up breaking the peace of other clans. Normally, we’d be able to handle it. But if we are on the verge of a greater conflict, as Irina believes, then we’d be fighting two wars we are ill-prepared for.”

The Crow stretched lazily and hopped back on her horse. We waited for her to put some distance between us before coming out from the bushes.

“We should pick up our pace,” said Irina. “I have a bad feeling.”

Spent to the bone, we reached Zhyla near nightfall, and we stopped just at the edge of town.

“Creators,” I whispered.

Zhyla was half-torn to shreds. Something had blown through and left devastation in its wake.

It likely had once been a beautiful old town. What buildings remained were of wattle-and-daub and lattice, slightly wonky from age, bunched together among winding roads of cobblestone. Now, townspeople sorted through fallen buildings and dragged rubble into messy piles. Roughly two thirds of Zhyla’s structures remained standing, most with smashed windows and burn scars on their walls and rooftops. On the nearly-cleared streets, vendors distributed food to exhausted workers.

No one looked at us as we slid into the bustle. Andiya’s demonic features drew a few passing glances, but the sight of her collar tattoo had gazes moving on quickly with disinterest. Bonded were uncommon among civilians, and exorbitantly expensive, but it wasn’t surprising to see them pass through on occasion. Without our military uniforms, we looked like any anonymous travellers on our way to the seaports.

“Keep your mouth shut here,” I sent Andiya. “We can’t draw any attention.”

She nodded without a hint of argument.

“Excuse me, stranger,” said an older woman with a touch to my hand. Her greying hair was done up in a messy bun, soot covered her apron, and exhaustion pulled at her mouth. “But might we use your bonded to help?”

“We’re injured,” I replied quickly. “Attacked by Crows on the road. We won’t be of much use.”

The woman’s face fell. “You, as well?”

“When did the Crows attack Zhyla?”

“Three days ago. Scores of them. They ran in, destroyed our lives, and left. Took as much as they could carry with them.”

“Have you informed the crown?”

“We sent riders. They haven’t returned yet.”

“And have you had any travellers since? We were separated from our party during the attack.”

“We have, but they aren’t here anymore. We’ve sent them all down the way to Winterwood Hall. Our lady is offering shelter there.” The woman looked mournfully at the sorry state of us. “You may want to take advantage of the lady’s hospitality.”

Andiya nudged my mind, and I caught her staring at a group trying to clear heavy wooden beams from what looked like was once a Follower shrine. “They’re not strong enough. I am. Tell them you’ll help.”

“Don’t give us away.”

“I won’t.”

I relayed Andiya’s message, but omitted whose offer it really was. The woman’s shoulders dropped in relief. She introduced us to some of the townspeople, and I pretended to direct Andiya to the wreckage.

“Thank you, …?” said a young man.

“Yulia,” I replied. “And my bonded, Artem.”

I hoped the name would mean something to him, that he might question two travellers and bonded with the same names, but he accepted the bluff and moved on. My name, officially an Eon with a High Order, was too dangerous right now. I couldn’t afford for the wrong ears to hear it.

Irina and I rested while Andiya used her strength to lift what the townspeople could not. I would have joined her, if I’d had the energy. The first woman we’d met, who told me her name was Idrizi, brought us a simple meal of bread, salted beef, and pickled vegetables. Idrizi pushed it into my reluctant hands with the words, “Friends do not pay.”

I felt twinges of pain as Andiya exerted herself and pulled at her still-healing wounds. But I never saw her falter or give any sign she could feel it. She pushed aside heavy beams, dragged furniture out from piles of brick, and used small bursts of fire to chop through twisted door frames. She never revealed her true power, nor did anything any Fire Elemental couldn’t do. When she’d cleared several structures, I waved my hand in facsimile of control and spoke to her mind, telling her to come eat. The other townspeople followed the smell of a hard-earned meal and sat with us on makeshift dining tables of salvaged wood and the few unbroken chairs.

“Thank you for taking the time to help us,” a man said to me, and I was puzzled for a brief second. Andiya had worked, not me. But I remembered she was not supposed to have any voice, nor will of her own. A second man thanked me, and then another, and another, and one clapped me on the back like an old friend. I grew increasingly more uncomfortable with each word, even if Andiya gave no reaction. She ate her food in silence behind me, away from the main table, expression impassive.

“You did a good thing for them,” I sent. “They don’t know any different.”

“I know. I didn’t do it for the praise.”

“Then why did you?”

Andiya’s temper flared in insult. “Do I need justification for kindness? It’s not my fault none is shown to me in return.”

I let it drop, and Andiya stabbed at her dinner with a little more force than necessary.

Idrizi came to take my empty plate. “My son will lead you to Winterwood Hall. He’s over by the horses with your friend.”

Idrizi’s son was a slim teenager with curly dark hair. We rode behind him on borrowed mounts over a wide stone road. Each stone was perfectly shaped like a laurel, each leaf interlocking so intricately they seemed one.

“Elven road,” Idrizi’s son explained. “Runs from the coast to Dirnhall.”

I’d ridden a few elven roads in my lifetime. They spider-webbed across the continent, made before humans had ever settled these lands. This road stretched all the way to Os Tjerjik, and I wouldn’t say it was even among the longest. They never wore down, never chipped or shifted. The elvhen were magical beings, much like the daemons. Some of what they’d built remained.

“Makes you think, doesn’t it Yulia?” asked Irina.

“About what?”

“Well, whatever the elvhen did for the Creators to destroy them. If it was sin, as the Etvian temples say, or weakness, as they think in Os Tjerjik, or pride, as I’ve heard from Tianji.”

I felt a hint of puzzlement from Andiya before she hid it from me.

“Many of those in Azherbal say it was the daemons,” I said. “We believe that the elvhen freed the daemons from hell to serve them, and that the daemons were too powerful for them to contain. In other words, the Azherbali believe that the elvhen’s end was their greed.”

Irina smiled. “So we all damn the elvhen for what we abhor most. Perhaps a better scholar than I would be able to make truth from our stories.”

Idrizi’s son was watching Irina suspiciously. Her manner of speaking was not something you were likely to come across in distant towns like Zhyla, nor did it match at all with her hunter’s disguise.

“We may struggle to find a scholar better than a pupil from Academi Volobirsk,” I said quickly. I rode closer to Idrizi’s son. “My friend likes to be modest. She studied there for nearly three years!”

And Idrizi’s son did indeed seem impressed, even if Irina looked as though the very thought of stepping into that institution was lunacy. For her, it was. Academi Volobirsk was a university in Novosk’s capitol. It was well known for opening its doors to the public, provided one could pay a small fee. As such, it was exactly the sort of place the nobility avoided at all costs, yet was dream of many common people to attend. No one would suspect a person of rank to have studied there—much less a princess.

“The mayor’s daughter tried to join the Academi last year,” said Izridi’s son. “But she came back quick. Turns out you need to be able to read first.”

We exited the trees and turned onto a wide dirt path, at the end of which rose a handsome stone manor wreathed by apple orchards. It looked generations old, the walls coated in creeping ivy. Light spilled from the small lattice windows, casting the grounds in a warm glow.

“Winterwood Hall,” said Idrizi’s son. “Seat of House Ilyin.”

After he’d taken the horses on his way, Irina spat, “Shit.”