We continued up the street in the same drunken act. Nerina and Peleus sang as we went. Parthenia loosed a false laugh, her arm laced around Tafari’s stiff form. We climbed the gentle rise of the hill, turning southeasterly toward the city walls and the cliffs beneath them. Within a few blocks, the turn of the street carried us out of the guard’s view.

I dropped my arm from Cadmus’ shoulder and straightened, taking in the land’s lay. This road was narrower than the crowded Sun Street below. Buildings rose from the fog blanketing the street around us as if they floated atop a bed of clouds. But these structures were a far cry from the rows of taverns and bawdy houses we’d left behind. Fine clothiers, bookstores, and banks lined the street, interspersed here and there with elegant townhouses, closed off behind tall wrought-iron gates. A few lights flickered in the windows of homes, but the shops were closed and dark, the street empty.

I turned to my friends. They’d all shed their drunken languidness, and traded it for the poised steel they’d been trained to since childhood. Lightning brightened the horizon and their faces all turned up, to where the flash of light revealed a giant’s fist thrusting toward the stormy sky—the tower.

“Looks like it’s a street or two over from us,” Parthenia said, her features distorting like a wax figurine out too long in the sun. We all watched round blue eyes narrow to green cat slits as the whore’s gravity-defying breasts shrunk to fit Parthenia’s slight form.

Peleus shivered. “I will never get used to that.”

But Tafari’s dark eyes were focused on her with a quiet intensity. His large, dark hand reached up to caress a red-orange curl. “It is good to see your face again, qalbi.”

Even in the darkness, Parthenia’s blush was clear.

“Whatever a qalbi is,” Peleus said, wide-eyed, “I think I want one.”

I slid him a bland smile. “It is a one lover kind of thing, brother. As in one lover, forever.”

“Oh.” His nose wrinkled. “Never mind, then.”

Nerina rolled her eyes. “You’re disgusting.”

Peleus coughed, raising his middle finger as his hand lifted to cover his mouth.

Behind Nerina, Dacian’s yellow eyes flashed. “Want to lose that finger?”

Nerina shot a troubled glance towards Dacian, then turned to me. I looked away, the familiar guilt a lead weight in my gut.

Cadmus had ignored the entire conversation, his eyes on the tower. “Parthenia?”

She turned to the scholar, an orange brow cocked.

“You can change your form,” he began, “but can you can your form’s . . . well . . . sex?”

Tafari’s nostrils flared. He looked between Parthenia and Cadmus as if the latter had just suggested his qalbi parade down the street naked.

Parthenia smiled a wicked grin, her cat eyes gleaming in the dark.

She explained it quickly—how she needed a moment to study her mark, to see their face and body, the various expressions they wore before she could successfully complete what she called a Mirror.

So Parthenia again donned the whore’s face.

“It’d help if I had a partner. No madam worth her salt would ever send one of her working girls out completely alone.”

All eyes turned to Nerina, who was glowering. “Oh, no. Don’t even think it.”

But after a bit of fussing and eye-rolling, Nerina let her cloak fall from her sun-kissed shoulders. She didn’t fight Parthenia as the Alban went to work, pulling the white shirt Nerina wore open wider at the neck and loosening the tight knot she kept her hair in so that chestnut locks drifted down in a straight, gleaming curtain. Beside me, Dacian watched, every muscle in his large frame tense.

Just as Parthenia finished turning Nerina into a suitable companion for a lady of the night, it started to rain. The wind picked up and lightning brightened the sky, thunder cracking violent and close.

We moved silently down a shadowed alley; the rain pelting us in fat, hard drops as we hunted for Parthenia’s mark.

We didn’t have to search far. The alley twisted and curved, branching off in several directions. Laughter filtered down the widest way. We followed the sound until the alley opened into a small square. A fountain stood in its center, several shops opening onto the cobbled way.

We clung to the shadows, watching as three Imperials rushed to take cover from the storm beneath the canvas awning outside a bakery.

Parthenia took a breath, gave Nerina one last appraising look, then squared her shoulders and hooked her arm through the other female’s. They marched out into the rain. As soon as they entered the square, both their movements changed. Measured steps became hip-swaying glides.

The smallest among the Imperials elbowed the one beside him in the ribs, gesturing with a point of his chin to the approaching ladies. The third male stayed leaning against the shopfront, a flask to his lips.

We stayed back, rain saturating our cloaks and dripping cold rivulets down our backs as two eager males rushed to invite the ladies to share the cover of the awning. The third offered Nerina a drink from his flask. She threw it back with ease, laughing at words we couldn’t hear. But Parthenia . . . she had clearly found her mark. She circled the male in the center, the smallest of the three, who stood only a few inches taller than Parthenia’s own diminutive height. She ran a hand across his squat shoulders, smiling at him so he would smile in return. He reached for her and she danced away; her borrowed lips dipping in a sensual pout. She spoke low words that he answered with a sensual chuckle.

Then Parthenia glanced over her shoulder, dipping her chin slightly. The signal.

I gathered my power. After weeks pent up beneath my skin, it begged for release. With hardly a thought, it flowed from my fingers in a torrent. Cold, dark mist, invisible in the night’s rainy fog, rolled from my body.

Nerina sensed it. She pulled the spy into the safety of the rain-drenched square.

The three males moved to follow.

None of them made it a single step.

The shortest one—Parthenia’s mark—went down first. It wasn’t a surprise. His size alone proved he was human. The other two held enough divinity to cling to life, though the one with a flask dropped like a felled tree. The third went to a knee, a hand uselessly grabbing at his chest. His mouth gaped—a fish trying to breathe on land.

So fast her movements were a blur to even my eyes, Nerina pulled her dagger from the hidden sheath between her legs and dragged it across the male’s throat in a single, smooth motion. Blood cascaded. The rain collecting in the space between the square’s cobbles turned black in the darkness.

We left the shelter of the alley and joined them among the fallen. Dacian bent to finish the one still breathing. “Leave him,” I said. Already, there had been too much death. There was likely to be more before the night was over.

He shrugged. Eyes moving over every inch of Nerina, he sheathed his blade.

Cadmus began removing the short male’s armor. Parthenia stood over him, her eyes studying every inch of the dead Imperial’s body.

I turned away and went to work on the male Nerina had ended. That strange dance her features did when she changed . . . There were only so many times I could stomach it in one day. I yanked the boots off his feet. “What luck,” I said as Parthenia’s form shimmered and shifted in my peripheral vision. “These are just my size.”

Peleus pulled off the still breathing male’s pair and grumbled, “Damn. How does someone this large have feet this small?”

Nerina, who was busy cleaning her dagger on the hem of her white shirt, chuckled. “What do you think the Bloodlust is about? I’ve always thought the Dorians were compensating for something.”

Cadmus freed one of the dead human’s arms from his cuirass. “That,” he said with a puff of breath, “is a complete myth. Personality, height, foot size… None of those correlate to the size of… that particular organ. However, there is a scholar in Megaris who claims that a correlation exists between the length of a male’s index finger and his peni—”

“Okay!” Nerina barked. “We get it.”

Peleus stretched a hand out in front of his face, squinting as he wiggled his fingers and turned them this way and that. “Ha!” he said with a wide grin. “I have longer fingers than any of you!”

Cadmus choked on a laugh. He coughed, and Dacian gave him a few hard pats across the back. “If your sister had allowed me to finish,” he managed between gulping, red-faced breaths, “I could have saved you some embarrassment, my friend. A shorter index finger equals a longer…”—he glanced cautiously in Nerina’s direction—“you know.”

Nerina threw her head back, a hand going to her mouth just in time to muffle a great, cackling laugh.

Peleus scowled. Silently, he yanked his own boots off and shoved his feet into the stolen pair.

Soon, Peleus, Parthenia, and I were all dressed in Imperial armor. I looked up towards the tower’s looming shadow, little more than a lighter shade of black against the night. My stomach clenched tight.

Dacian clapped a hand on my arm. “If this goes according to plan, you’ll have her before the hour’s done.”

I nodded, but behind him, Nerina went stiff. The knot in my stomach turned sour.

“Alright,” Parthenia said, and it was an effort not to gape as her high lilt came from beneath the human’s short beard. “How do I look?”

Cadmus was the only one of us who seemed completely unfazed. “A little short. The armor doesn’t fit quite right, but no one will notice in the dark.”

I nodded my agreement. “Now,” I said, looking to Parthenia and Tafari and each of my Seven. “Let’s do what we do best. Time to show these Dorian pricks what we’re made of.”