I don’t know if it’s my blood-fed Crimson abilities, the intoxicating nature of my Umbra or something else—but Maljha doesn’t argue with me. Just dips their head in a shallow bow and turns on their heel to lead the way. Retracing our steps almost all the way back to the Shifter wing, my cousin comes to a stop before an iron door sealed with an elaborate latch.

“It’s not a dungeon,” they reiterate as we start down the narrow hall. Even with half the guards staying behind, it’s crowded. “This is a place to keep people of our own who have…trouble with control. And only until they regain it.”

There’s just one small lantern at the corridor’s very end, an empty chair sitting directly beneath it. Thick wooden doors line the walls, paneled with iron—each with a barred hatch set into the upper half. Someone or something hidden behind one of them unleashes a sound unlike anything I’ve heard before. Something between a howl and a scream. Behind one, an unseen occupant begins to scratch frantically at the wood, while another shrieks something in Avdayari.

Maljha narrows their eyes. “Spirits damn it all, where’s Ketry?”

Confusion, fear and rage swarm the air like stinging bees. I wrap my arms around myself compulsively…but of course it does nothing to ward off the onslaught. Spirits like luminous red orbs drift up and down the hall, occasionally passing through a door or wall and disappearing from sight. One brushes past me, and for a moment the agitation and turmoil—both in myself and in the air—are all sucked away, leaving behind an emotional vacuum. A cold sort of peace.

But heartbeats later it’s gone, and everything floods back. Someone on the other side of a door to our left throws themselves against it as we pass, and through the hatch I catch a glimpse of needle sharp quills and wild, uncomprehending eyes. An orb floats through the door and the Shifter goes still, their growls sputtering out.

“I smell blood like honey and lightning,” calls a voice from behind the door just ahead and to the right. “Blood unlike any I’ve ever—is that a Stormstruck?” Pale fingers emerge from between the bars and wrap around them. As we approach, a gaunt, golden-eyed face presses itself to the cold metal.

“Let me have a sip! Just a sip!” Snaking their hands through the bars, they reach for me, clawing at the air. “Just a sip! Just a fucking sip! Please!” I jump back as they bash their head against the bars. “Please! Please! Please!”

“Get a hold of yourself!” Hisses Maljha, unleashing a fresh wave of calming influence. A heartbeat later it intensifies as Lore comes to their aid. An orb floats slowly our way. Just as its nullifying influence drifts into the Reaper’s cell, the door we’d come in through bangs open and a frazzled-looking Crimson woman tumbles in.

“Sorry, sorry,” she says as Maljha whirls to fix their glare on her. “Bathroom break.”

The other Crimsons relax as Ketry extends her power throughout the not-dungeon. My cousin sighs, and much of the noise subsides.

But the scratching continues.

“How is he?” They ask.

“Who do you—oh,” The woman’s eyes go wide as she follows Maljha’s sideways gaze to me.

“Our guest. Of course. Well, the good news is, he’s stopped gnawing on his own legs.”

Maljha massages their forehead with one elegant hand. “And the bad?”

“No change in form. None whatsoever.”

Fresh Umbra crackles across my skin, and Ketry gasps—taking a stumbling step backwards and nearly tripping into the chair.

I take a deep breath.

No thoughts but darkness. No feelings but calm.

“Which cell?”

Her hand shaking slightly, the Crimson attendant indicates the last of the cells to our left.

The door with all the scratching.

Approaching, I reach for the handle even as I peer through the bars, straining for a glimpse of him and seeing only the upper walls of his cell. But my fumbling fingers find a latch held shut by a heavy lock. The scratching intensifies, joined a heartbeat later by a bizarre keening sound.

“Leon?”

The whine builds into a frustrated, yowling roar.

“Unlock it!” I call back to Ketry. “Please. Quickly!”

“I—I don’t thi….I mean yes, Highness!”

Stepping to the side to make way for Ketry as she fumbles with the keys at her belt, I hug myself tighter. Even with the help of the Crimsons, I’m struggling to hold back my emotions.

No thoughts but darkness. No feelings but calm.

The frantic Crimson’s hands tremble so violently as she works at the lock that I’m about to ready to rip the keys from her grasp and open the cursed thing myself.

As I’m stepping up to do exactly that, there’s a heavy click. The door flies open. Ketry yelps and leaps backwards as something huge and black surges out into the corridor. A beast like a jaguar-lion, but almost twice the size. The creature issues a low growl even as I put up a hand to forestall the bristling guards, and I start to pick out reptilian qualities in its shadowy form. Dark scales flecked in gold gleaming along its flanks, an elongated, tapered face. Then its sinuous body turns from the others and its ice-blue eyes fix on me. His eyes.

I drop to my knees. The beast that is Leon bares his teeth, and then he pounces. The guards move to defend me, but hesitate as I shout not to hurt him. In the next heartbeat I’m falling back, hard, only just managing not to smack my head against the cold stone of the floor. I’m trapped, pinned, and the teeth are all I see. I squeeze my eyes shut just as something warm and wet and gritty scrapes across my cheek, lapping up the first of my tears.

“Leon,” I choke out. “Oh spirits, Leon. I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.” I reach up, tangle my fingers into his mane and sob. Scarlet Umbra flares around me. Chaos erupts. The other not-prisoners shout and howl and beat at their doors and plead as the three Crimsons fight to maintain control—of themselves and everyone else.

As the turmoil begins to die down and I drag myself to my feet, Leon circles me protectively. Lore wheels forward to offer what looks like another of her rose-sigil handkerchiefs, and the Shifter hisses at her.

Ketry swallows, hands twisting together. “Well, if you’re all done for now, shall we put hi—“

“No. He’ll have his own suite, near mine.” I cut in, turning to Maljha. “I can do that, right?”

They grimace even as they nod.

“I’m sure you’ll find you can.”

“I’ll accompany you when you’re with him,” offers Lore. “To help you maintain control. Your flares aren’t exactly good for his condition. If he loses it and hurts you—”

“There are guards to protect me,” I cut in. “I can protect me. As for control, I’ve got that covered too.”

“You may have Crimson abilities with enough of our blood, but you don’t know how to use them yet.“

“I’ll figure it out. Maljha can help.”

“Quite honestly, the mere fact that your friend isn’t eating your head right now is proof of incredible control on his part, in spite of his state,” observes my cousin. “But yes, I can teach you.”

With that settled, I breathe in deep and silently repeat my mantra. But this time, rather than containing the darkness and calm that I envision within myself, I use the gifts of Lore’s blood and let it flow outward. The reach of my borrowed power is limited, but it’s enough. The last few flashes of rogue Umbra fizzle out. Leon blinks slowly and begins to purr.

For a moment, I think of E.J, and what all this could mean for us. If I prove a good enough student in Crimson ways, we may never have to worry about either of us hurting the other ever again. We could just be. We could…

A shiver runs down my spine, and I force my thoughts back to blankness. I miss her so much I could scream…and if I let her face linger too long in my mind, I just might.

~*~

The next two days pass in a blur of new faces, shared meals and discussions—all with Leon at my side, his form unchanging. By the end of breakfast on the first day, King Ejirad had summoned home his Circlemates and other notables traveling and living away from court. By the end of lunch, he’d called for the convening of a war council with representatives from Skyr’s allied territories to address the threat of the Sixth. And by dinner’s end, he’d appointed a task-force to address the plight of my captured friends.

As for myself, I’ve now met nearly everyone at court and memorized the names of perhaps five of them. And tonight…tonight is my Dedication. Of course, I still don’t have any idea what exactly the Dedication ritual even is or what it does, and absolutely no one has been willing to tell me.

“You aren’t supposed to know until you’ve done it,” huffs Maljha after I ask them for what must be the fifth or sixth time. “The experience must be unfettered by expectations.”

“I still don’t understand why Leon can’t have his tonight, too.”

“He must be himself first. His human self. Now put this on.” Pressing what looks like a gray dressing robe into my hands, they turn to leave.

“Er,” I hedge, lifting the flimsy thing and looking it over. “What do I put on under it?”

“Nothing. That’s just what you wear on your way to the ritual. During, you’ll be naked.”

“What?”

My cousin turns back to me, radiating exasperation.“What’s the problem? If you’ve truly been honing your Crimson abilities, you’ll have no need to feel embarrassed.”

“Then you have no need to be all…all…”

The Crimson raises an eyebrow. “Yes?”

“Nevermind, I don’t think I want to finish that thought. Just go,” I dismiss them, flapping my free hand in their general direction. As much as I complain about their attitude, though, it suits me much better than the awed deference they’d slipped into the first time they saw my Umbra flare.

“You’ll be able to get dressed again at ritual’s end, before the feast. Uncle’s had something made special for you.”

That said, they leave Leon and I to ourselves. Curled up in a corner, the Shifter yawns as I pad away to change into the robe. I’ve never taken issue with his seeing me naked before, but it feels…I don’t know…dismissive to just casually undress in front of him. As though he were an actual animal.

Before long, Maljha returns in the company of my father, Lore, a trio of royal guards, and Lady Jirada Jhao—one of the two people whose names I can actually remember. A Reaper and commander of my father’s battalion, her actual rank is an Avdayari word that doesn’t directly translate and which I haven’t quite learned how to say yet.

She also seems to have appointed herself as my personal mentor.

“Steady on, girl,” grates the older woman as Leon and I join the others in the hall, the hooves of the reinforced horse’s skeleton that supports her legless body scuffing at the stone. “It’s your Dedication, not your funeral.”

The lot of them close in around me, and together we make our way up to the crowded throneyard. A cheer rises from the celebrants as our procession makes its appearance. The throng parts, leaving a path open to the small leather tent that’s been erected at the center of it all. Our progress is agonizingly slow, and the trembling that started with my hands creeps its way down to my legs. As Maljha loops an arm through mine in support, they give it a subtle squeeze.

Finally coming within a few paces of the tent, the others stop short. My cousin releases me. “You can keep the robe on until after she leaves you alone,” they whisper. “Call for me when it’s over.”

Heart racing, breath held, hands shaking, I trip up to the tent, brush past its sigil-stitched entrance, and step into darkness inside.

“Welcome, daughter,” says a familiar voice as my eyes adjust. Ariko, my father’s Viridian Circle-mate, smiles gently, extending her hands to me. Apparently, in this world at least, most of the Joined see the children of those in their Circle as their own, in a way. Going from having no parents—as far as I was concerned—to having six has been overwhelming to the say the least.

But honestly, it’s kind of nice.

I reach out to her, returning her smile as I take comfort in the warmth of her presence. She squeezes her hands around mine, and a tingling sensation spreads through my flesh where it comes into contact with hers. As I feel something begin to form in my hands, a delicious aroma fills the tent. Savory, sweet, floral and earthy all at once. My mouth waters.

Then, without a word, Ariko releases her grip and steps around me, leaving the way I came in. Opening my cupped palms, I look down to find a mushroom growing between them. Inky black, glossy-wet, and very poisonous looking.

But oh spirits, that smell.

Before I realize I’d decided to eat it, the mushroom is sliding down my throat, flavor after incredible flavor dancing across my tongue even after its gone. Flavors that become colors, colors that become sounds. Suddenly, the texture of the robe on my skin is unbearable, overwhelming. I strip it off and let it fall away.

Strange shapes flow before my eyes, merging and twisting and parting again. One of them, radiant and pale, begins to grow—shoving all others to the periphery of my awareness. In its blossoming form, I see a hundred different things at once. What could be a moon, the silhouette of a rabbit, the graceful form of a doe bounding through a forest, a wave crashing against the shore.

“Ashwyn,” breathes an echoing voice, as quiet as a whisper, as loud as a storm. A voice that, though I’ve never heard it before in my life, I know.

“Ashwyn of Skyr. You are mine.”