
THE SENTRY

BOOK ONE OF THE NOVAN CHRONICLES

#

Cover Art by Jozef Boža

To every person who helped make this book possible.
Table of Contents

26 September: Keira

26 September: Westrey

26 September: Cassatia

Ten Years Ago: Cassatia

26 September: Keira

Two Years Ago: Keira

26 September: Cassatia

Four Days Ago: Keira

Seventeen Months Ago: Westrey

1 October: Keira

Seventeen Months Ago: Westrey

1 October: Westrey

1 October: Keira

Two Years Ago: Keira

1 October: Cassatia

Two Years Ago: Keira

2 October: Cassatia

3 October: Westrey

3 October: Keira

Two Years Ago: Keira

3 October: Cassatia

3 October: Westrey

3 October: Cassatia

Four Months Ago: Cassatia

3 October: Keira

Two Years Ago: Keira

3 October: Westrey

3 October: Keira

Seventeen Months Ago: Keira

3 October: Cassatia

Seventeen Months Ago: Cassatia

3 October: Cassatia

Four Months Ago: Cassatia

4 October: Westrey

4 October: Keira

4 October: Cassatia

4 October: Westrey

Ten Years Ago: Keira

4 October: Keira

4 October: Cassatia

4 October: Westrey

5 October: Cassatia

5 October: Keira

5 October: Westrey

5 October: Cassatia

6 October: Keira

6 October: Westrey

6 October: Cassatia

6 October: Westrey

6 October: Keira

6 October: Cassatia

6 October: Westrey

6 October: Keira

6 October: Cassatia

# 26 September: Keira

Fifteen minutes in Boston, and I can already see why we let the Wardens have it.

Sure, the city has big buildings and a good baseball team, but it's also chock-full of loud, obnoxious people with terrible accents. Cars and taxis honk their way down the streets with reckless abandon, squeezing their way into curbside gaps in the road that really should not be classified as "parking spots." The noise, the chaos, the weird hair—it's enough to give anyone a headache.

But perhaps I'm a little biased. Growing up in the middle of a forest in northern Idaho has left me without much of a liking for Sen cities. And it's difficult to appreciate the appeal of the city that doubles as the Wardens' North American headquarters—a city where a disturbingly high percentage of the population secretly wants to kill me.

Well, they'd want to kill me if they knew I was here. They should know, since I crossed the Appalachian Line this morning. But I haven't seen any angry men chasing after me with fireballs yet, which means that the ice-glass pendant I'm wearing is actually doing its job.

"Hey." Some kid—college-aged, I'd guess—shuffles up to my side. He's got a cigarette drooping from his mouth, black claw earrings reaching down to his shoulders, and a shock of long, bright pink hair. Definitely not a Warden; he's a Sen, an everyday average Joe. "Nice tattoo." He points to the blue design inked into the underside of my arm: two arrows crossed under a snowflake. My Sentry mark.

I pull my coat sleeve down over the mark, cursing myself for my carelessness. That symbol is not something I want to go around showing off—someone who actually understands what it means could have seen it. "Thanks."

"Where'd you get it?" Pink Hair wonders. His arms, I notice, are covered in tattoos, wolves and snakes and dragons. Maybe he's looking for another.

I shrug. "Some place out West." That much is true; I was given my Sentry mark in the barren cactus-land known as the Sonoran Desert, where the Sentry trials are held.

"Ah," he says, "so you're a tourist, then." He spits out his cigarette and grins.

"Yep." That's one word for it. _Invader_ probably fits my current situation a little better, though. I glance quickly over my shoulder, checking once again to make sure there's no one coming after me.

Pink Hair opens his mouth to ask me something else—about my weird eyes, probably, or my hobolike appearance—but I abruptly duck into the Starbucks at the end of the block and worm my way through crowds of fake-blond teenagers to the girls' bathroom in the back. Luckily, my Sen pursuer isn't quite creepy enough to follow me in there.

I slump back against the wall, letting out a sigh. Another bad thing about Boston: nosy city boys. __

The bathroom is empty, so I take the chance to freshen myself up a little. I need to look at least somewhat presentable if I'm going to be meeting the Chief Warden. And I don't think I've ever looked more disgusting in my life, at least not since the end of the Sentry trials. The grimy bathroom mirror reveals sunken eyes, a nest of filthy dark hair, and a fresh pair of zits emerging on my brow. Ugh.

What I really need is a good meal and a nap. My arms are sore as hell; it took me almost four full days of flying to get here from New Fauske. And despite my multiple high-calorie pit stops along the way, there's nothing that can make you hungrier than a long flight.

I wash the grime of the trip off my face, scrubbing determinedly at my new zits, and do my best to untangle the mess atop my head. Then I take stock of my supplies: a wallet with some cash and a debit card, my phone, an aura detector on silent, Cass's pendant around my neck. I'm used to having to hide the pendant under my clothes, but here I can wear it as openly as I want. The Wardens won't know what it is.

Once I'm satisfied, I leave the bathroom and pick up a coffee and slice of pound cake from the Starbucks to silence my stomach and hopefully wake me up a little. I return to the streets and pull out my phone to check the address of my destination. Still three blocks away.

One milk mustache and McDonald's bathroom trip later, I stand before the entrance to Warden headquarters. The building, like everything else in big Sen cities, is about twenty stories too tall. Above a double set of fancy revolving doors is a simple flame—minimalist, black against steel—and the words _IGNACIO CORPORATION_ right below. In the Sen world, Ignacio is a multinational pharmaceutical company filled with greedy soul-sucking businessmen; in the Novan world, it's a front for the activities of greedy soul-sucking Wardens.

_This is it,_ I say to myself, balling my hands up into fists to stop their shaking. No turning back now. I close my eyes, take one last breath of freedom, and push my way inside.

The lobby is big and open, dotted with fake plants and armchairs. The revolving doors filter out most of the city noise, leaving the lobby ambiance muted and quiet after my time out on the streets.

A young woman sits behind a desk off to the side. Unlike Pink Hair, she immediately strikes me as a Warden. I've never actually seen one, of course, but I spent hours studying pictures during the Sentry trials, and I've had the basic characteristics etched into my brain since before I could walk: dark hair, tanned skin, bright eyes, lots of muscles. This woman has all four. She's dressed in black, too, which means she has to be an infidel. Nixa's followers don't wear black, ever.

The probably-Warden woman smiles when she sees me, but the expression is forced. "Good evening," she says. "How can I help you?"

I can't move. This is a Warden—a fire-breathing, Sen-killing _Warden_. If she figures out what I am, she'll gun me down on the spot.

Swallowing, I force myself over to her desk. _This is for Cass,_ I remind myself. "I'm looking for Fenella Shirey."

The woman doesn't look surprised at my request. She takes in my pale skin, my strange silver eyes, and her fake smile tightens. "Elevators are over there." She points across the lobby to a trio of them. "Take the middle one."

"Thank you." I shoot a fake smile right back at her and follow her finger to the lifts. The middle elevator opens its doors for me as soon as I press the button to call for it.

It's not hard to figure out how to get down to the Warden lair from there. Below all the elevator's floor buttons is one with a little flame emblazoned over it. "Obvious much?" I mutter. The Nixans plaster their snowflake over everything that's theirs, too, but they have Old Magic to hide their stuff from the Senex, unlike these people. Some curious Sen could easily find his way down to Warden headquarters if the receptionist didn't stop him. Then again, the Wardens aren't known for having reservations about killing off curious Senex.

I press the button. The elevator shudders, then begins to descend. I close my eyes and attempt unsuccessfully to steady my breaths.

I go down and down and down, asking myself eventually how far underground this place could possibly be. Maybe the Wardens have set up camp at the center of the Earth—seven-thousand-degree temperatures wouldn't bother the fire-people.

"Please scan your finger for identification," a voice instructs from the ether. I jump at least two feet in the air and almost go bird. _Chill out, Keira._ _Since when have you been scared of automated voices?_

A scanner slides out above the button panel just as the elevator finally grinds to a halt. I assume that I have to swipe my finger before the doors will open.

And this is the part where everyone finds out about the shifter intruder.

Swallowing back the bile rising in my throat, I press a finger to the scanner until it beeps. "Fingerprint not identified," the voice informs me. "Please hold for security services."

The wall to my right flickers to digital life, and suddenly there are two Warden boys about my age glaring accusingly into the lift. They look pretty much the same to me; one boy's hair is longer and the other's is curlier, but both are dark and olive-skinned like the receptionist. They're surrounded by screens showing different nooks and crannies of Warden headquarters—a quick glance up reveals a tiny camera above my head that I hadn't noticed before. _Oops._ It's never good to overlook a camera.

"We got a heads-up from lobby security about you," the curly-haired boy growls. "You don't look like a Warden."

No use beating around the bush. "I'm not."

"Allies aren't allowed in headquarters without special permission." _Really?_ I find myself thinking, despite the direness of my situation. The Nixans' allies come into New Fauske all the time; Duke Fenris even holds balls __ for them. I know, because in my eight years as her maidservant I helped Cass prepare for about a zillion of them.

"Well, good," I say, "because I'm not one of your allies."

I can practically see the alarms going off behind the Wardens' eyes. It would be funny if I didn't have to fear for my life.

"What are you, then?" Curly Hair breathes, quiet and intense. His eyes are chocolate-brown, the same color as Delphi's. _Don't you dare think about Delphi right now, Keira._ "A Sen?"

I shake my head, roll up my coat sleeve, and hold my right arm up to the camera. "Do Senex have silver eyes?"

The boys stare and gape at the Sentry mark for a second before making a break for the door, leaving me looking into an empty security room. "Idiots." I could be the diversion for a Sentry invasion of their headquarters, and they've just left their security room unattended. I, unfortunately, am _not_ the diversion for a Sentry invasion force, but still.

I wait, pace, pray to Nixa. _"Stay calm,"_ Caphian always said, _"and you'll be okay."_ I take out my phone, find that they've somehow got reception down here, and mouth along to Auto-Tuned pop trash on YouTube for a few minutes—anything to distract me from the fact that I'm trapped in an underground elevator surrounded by Wardens. Then I throw down the phone and wait some more.

"For the love of the Goddess," I sigh, "someone get me the hell out of here."

And that's when the doors finally slide open. 

# 26 September: Westrey

The Sentry girl is slouched in a corner of the lobby-access elevator, legs crossed and brows raised. I grit my teeth. She looks entirely comfortable sitting in the middle of enemy camp, and I don't like it.

Basil stands at my side, his shoulders squared, looking as serious as someone like Basil could possibly look. Behind us are the two guards we'd called for when we found the Sentry in our elevator. Their arms are crossed, their muscles bulging under blood-red sleeves of tattoos. But the girl doesn't seem to be fazed.

_She's putting on a show,_ I tell myself. _She's probably scared to death._

"Get her out of there," one of the guards grunts at me and Baz. We do, grabbing her arms and hauling her up and out as forcefully as possible. She doesn't resist.

"Are you taking me to Fenella?" she wonders. Her voice is strong, steady.

We are, but she doesn't need to know that. "What's your name?"

"Keira."

"Serasul?" Basil asks.

She rolls her eyes. "What else? I just showed you my Sentry mark, didn't I?"

_Smartass._ "How about you keep your mouth shut, all right? We're already more than happy to burn you down to a crisp." She gives me a look of fake surprise; my grip tightens around her arm. "Let's go." Baz and I pull her down the hall, the two guards at our backs.

Our bunker isn't the most cozy of places—it's all fine edges and steel doors, artificial lights and obsessively-scrubbed white tiles. Shifters are used to castles and Shade camps; Keira Serasul should be awestruck by the influx of twenty-first century down here. But she's not—her sterling-silver eyes are fixed on my face, studying me.

"Aren't you going to tell me your name?" she asks as we near the end of the hall. "I don't want to have to call you Curly Hair."

"Wes," I tell her through my teeth.

"And yours?" she asks Baz.

"Basil."

She wrinkles her nose. "What, like the plant?"

" _Bah_ -sil," he corrects. "The British way." I shoot him a look over her head. _Stop talking to her._

We take an elevator up to the third floor of the bunker and bring the Sentry right up to the entrance of the Chief Warden's office. Fenella, who'd been expecting us, slides open her door after a single knock, her mouth pressed into a thin taut line.

"You can go," she tells the guards behind us, dismissing them with a quick nod of her head; her eyes are glued to Keira, sizing her up as she stands frozen between me and Basil.

Fenella Shirey, commander of all the Warden forces of the continent, is nothing if not imposing. She is tall and built, with sharp bones and harsh features. Her eyebrows are pierced with pointed studs and have been plucked to be thin as razorblades. The dress she wears is cut to show off her tightly-muscled biceps, and her hair, black and streaked with red, ripples across her shoulders like tongues of fire.

Keira, by contrast, is a good half a head shorter, with greasy dark hair and bags blackening the skin under her eyes. Her tiny frame is hidden beneath a thick gray coat, over which gleams a necklace with an ice pyramid for a pendant.

The ice pendant is not surprising: the Nixans are the ice-people, and the shifters are their closest allies. The Nixans have other allies, too—Shades and Sylvans on this side of the Atlantic, and _llyrsi_ in the East—but the shifters are the ones they make into Sentries, the ones they send to do all their dirty work. It's the shifters that were responsible for the Massacre of Alexandria last year.

My stomach tightens. I dig my nails into Keira's arm, deep, but she doesn't flinch.

"So," Fenella muses, finally breaking the silence, "a single Sentry, strutting into my bunker." She signals for us to enter her office. I've never been inside before, but Fenella's office is easily the least interesting facet of the last few minutes. It's bland and beige-walled, windowless like every other room in the bunker, with a big glass desk covered in files and maps watched over by a mini phoenix statue.

"Show me," she orders, motioning for me and Basil to step aside.

Keira smiles. "I'd be honored." And, in about the amount of time it would take to blink, she shifts from disheveled teenage girl into some kind of raptor—sleek and red-feathered, with the same silver eyes she'd had before.

Bird-Keira glances around for a few seconds, craning her neck and stretching her wings, before changing back, as smoothly and effortlessly as her first shift. I can't help but be intrigued. I'd never seen a shifter change shape before; then again, I'd never seen a shifter at all until today.

Fenella disappears into a side room branching off from her office and returns with a heavy chain over her shoulder. "I've already called an emergency council meeting." She points to Baz and me. "One of you will need to be chained to her."

Baz nudges me forward; I shove him right back. Neither one of us volunteers.

"Wes," Fenella says. I resist the urge to roll my eyes. _Of course._ The Chief Warden knows me as a parentless boy with a missing sister, and Basil as the only son of her head liaison. Of course she'd pick me to lug around the shifter.

_"Sorry,"_ Baz mouths. I shake my head.

Fenella secures one of the chain cuffs around my wrist and hands me the key. It's warm in my hand—it must be made of fire-iron. I pocket it with a smirk. Fenella shackles Keira as well, leaving the two of us connected by six or seven feet of metal links. Then she goes on to check the Sentry for weapons, pulling a Solas phone, wallet, and aura detector from her coat pockets. The wallet she returns after a quick inspection, but she holds on to the phone and detector.

"Try changing shape now," Fenella suggests.

Keira looks down at her cuffed wrist, then back up at us. "I can't," she says quietly, narrowing her eyes.

Fenella smiles at her confusion. "Your Nixan priests may be the only ones with Old Magic," she says, "but the rest of us still have some tricks up our sleeves. It's a form chain—as long as it's locked around your wrist, it'll keep you from shifting."

Keira's mouth opens halfway; she closes it, shuts her eyes and balls up her fists, but still she can't shift. Fenella's smile stretches all the way up to her eyes.

"Did you know we had that thing?" Baz whispers in my ear. I shake my head; I wonder what other magical relics Fenella has hiding around her office.

Keira bites her lip and crosses her arms in defeat. "Okay, you win," she says. "I'm not going anywhere."

"Good." Fenella pulls two fire-guns out from underneath her desk and throws them to Baz and me. I catch mine between my palms and slip the hot steel weapon into the holder on my belt. "Time for the council meeting, then."

The four of us take another elevator ride back down a floor to the council room. I've been in this room before, but only a few times. It's big and circular, with twenty senior officers seated around a round table in the center like King Arthur's knights. Basil's dad—Cesil Kinscey, tall and stern and scarred—is among them; as soon as we enter, his eyes flit to me with an accusation I'm quite familiar with: _What have you gotten my son into this time, Doorstep?_ All the other officers' eyes go immediately to Keira.

"You brought her inside," one of them murmurs.

"She's not a threat," Fenella assures him, closing the council room door behind her and circling the table until she reaches her seat in the back. "She's alone."

"I don't understand," another says. "How did she get here, across the Appalachian Line?"

Keira steps forward, the chain jangling between us. "I wasn't stopped by anyone," she says simply. "That's how."

"Yes." Fenella's amber gaze sweeps across the officers before falling on one in particular. "I would like for you to answer that one, Sherah."

Sherah sits up and clears his throat, a little blush rising to his cheeks. I know him—he's friends with Basil's parents, and the supervisor for our border guards. "I have no more of an answer than you do," he assures Fenella. "No shifter registered on the aura detectors at any of our border stations."

"Nothing showed up on the detector in the security office, either," Basil adds tentatively.

Fenella nods to Keira. "Would you care to explain, then, how you've come to have no aura?"

Keira shrugs. "Maybe you should find yourselves some new detectors. I have an aura; you just saw me shift a few minutes ago."

"That doesn't matter," one of the officers, a gray-haired old man, rasps. "What is a Sentry doing here in our headquarters?"

Keira purses her lips, lifts her chin. "I'm not a Sentry anymore," she corrects him. "I defected. I want to help you fight the Nixans."

The room goes pin-drop quiet at that. Several of the officers shift in their seats, and Fenella's eyes narrow into slits. "No shifter has defected to our side since the Nixan War began," she says.

No one alive knows exactly when the war began, but it was sometime back when the Romans were still around, and it's never let up since. Even today, while the Senex fuss over drilling rights and deficits, the Nixans and Wardens and their allies are locked in a silent battle for world domination. If you look at the right maps—Novan ones—the whole planet is either Nixan or Warden land, except for India and Antarctica and a tiny piece of Ireland. Ireland and India are where the neutral Novans live—the avians and _jnani_ —and even the Nixans haven't bothered to worry about Antarctica.

"Then I could be extra useful," Keira says. "When was the last time a Warden crossed the Appalachians and survived?" More silence. "I lived in New Fauske for ten years; I know everything there is to know about the Nixans and Sentries. I know Fenris Loraveire's favorite kind of wine and what kinds of movies Caphian likes to go see when he's off-duty." The names she gives send needles down my spine. Fenris Loraveire is Nixan nobility, and Caphian is the sadistic commander of his Sentries. Both names are profanity to Wardens.

Basil's dad leans forward, turning so that the thick scar down his cheek shines in the dim light. The sight of it reminds me of the Massacre; a new wave of hatred for the shifter standing next to me turns my stomach. "A Sentry would be a significant asset," he says, "but only a loyal one. How do we know the Nixans haven't sent her to study our bunker and return to New Fauske with all our secrets?" His question sends a low murmur rolling around the table.

Fenella raises a hand for silence. "For now she is attached by form chain to Westrey Dorsan, and unable to shift. If the council allows her to stay, she will remain chained to him until our meeting next month, when we can reevaluate."

_What?_ I never agreed to that. I open my mouth to protest, but Fenella silences me with a glare from across the room. "That's an order." Basil shoots me a pitying look; I dig my heel into his toes in response. "You may keep the fire-gun I gave you and use it on her if necessary."

Fenella and the council go on to discuss logistics and arrangements, but I can no longer pay any attention. Anger heats my insides until the tips of my fingers are on fire. Of all the Wardens in the Boston bunker, I am the one stuck with the shifter. And only because I happened to be on security duty when she showed up, and because Fenella wouldn't dare piss off one of her officers by giving her to Basil. It isn't fair.

I really hope the council votes to blow her brains out.

Once every question and opinion has been brought to the table, the officers debate amongst themselves for a couple of minutes, arguing over Keira's fate. I glance over at her, a few feet off to my right. She stands still and poised, but I notice beads of sweat collecting on her brow, and her eyes are raised in what must be a silent prayer to Nixa, the goddess that all the Nixan allies drool over.

Finally, Fenella motions for the discussion to end. "Those in favor of allowing the shifter to remain, provided that she is tethered to a Warden at all times?" Twelve hands shoot up in response. _Damn it._

Keira lets out a soft sigh, too quiet for anyone but me to hear.

"It's decided, then," Fenella says. "The shifter will live here in the bunker with us. Tomorrow she will meet with the council and myself and provide us with the information we request. I will make an announcement tonight authorizing any Warden who finds her unchained to shoot her down immediately." She looks to Keira, who gives her a simple shrug in response.

The Chief Warden ends the meeting and the council files out, giving my new prisoner a wide berth. I wait with Basil and Keira until everyone else is gone so that I can talk to Fenella about her decision to stick me with the Sentry. Keira shouldn't be my problem; _I_ didn't vote to let her stay in the bunker.

Fenella slinks back around the abandoned table to speak with us. "Put out your fingers," Basil hisses. They're still on fire. I wipe the flames off on my jeans like they're grease stains.

Fenella stops right in front of me, frowning slightly. "You aren't very happy about this, are you?"

Well, at least she's being point-blank about it. "I just think there might be someone better." _Like you, maybe?_ "I'm only seventeen. I mean, I'm flattered, of course, but I don't know how to deal with a Sentry."

Fenella tilts her head to the side. "You've taken your Warden's vows, haven't you? You've had a decade's worth of training. Surely you're qualified enough to handle an unarmed shifter girl." Keira makes a face at me, a smug little smile twisting her lips. I really, _really_ wish the council had voted to blow her brains out.

"But what about school? And my job?" I can't walk around Boston with a girl chained to my side—I don't think the Sen police would be sympathetic to the situation. "I can't just pretend to be sick for a whole month."

"You can," Fenella says. "One of our doctors will figure it out. And Basil can cover your work shifts, can't he?" She lifts her chin to indicate Baz beside me.

I glance over; he shakes his head vigorously. _Too bad._ If I'm going to be stuck with Keira for four weeks, at least I won't be alone in the suffering. "I guess so." Baz gives me a look that says _I'm going to kill you for this_. __

"Excellent." Fenella's attention returns to Keira. "You can show her around tonight. Dinner bell will be in about twenty minutes, and she can sleep with you in your room." She hands me Keira's Solas phone. "I'll leave you in charge of this. If anyone calls, you tell a senior officer immediately, understand?"

I slip the phone into my pocket, the one with the fire-iron key. "Yeah."

Fenella nods, and her voice goes unusually soft. "I'm trusting you, Westrey. You have always been a strong and loyal Warden, in spite of everything that happened with your sister. I have faith in you."

I want to tell Fenella that she's wrong—what happened to Freya makes me one of the least suitable Wardens to babysit a Sentry. But praise from the Chief Warden is hard to come by, especially for someone like me, and I know that Fenella isn't going to change her mind now. So I take the compliment and let her leave without protest.

"No way," Baz says once she's gone. "You have a six-hour shift after school next Tuesday. That's insane; I'm not covering that for you."

"It's either that," I say, rattling the chain locked to my wrist, "or the shifter. I'm willing to trade."

" _The shifter_ is not a nameless commodity," Keira butts in.

Baz pretends to consider the offer. "Have it your way," he says. "I'll stick with the extra time at Starbucks."

"You'd pick coffee over a pretty girl?" Keira says incredulously. "What kind of teenage boy are you?"

"A smart one," I reply. Basil snorts; I spin around and yank on the form chain as hard as I can. "Come on, shifter—we're going for a walk."

# 26 September: Cassatia

Being Nixan nobility certainly has its ups and downs.

You get all the precious stones and fancy dresses the world has to offer, but you can't be caught dead with a cell phone. You get to live in a castle the size of Switzerland, but you can't set foot outside without an armed escort. You're waited on hand and foot by groveling servants, but you're not allowed a single friend.

Well, I guess I've kind of broken that last rule.

It's a beautiful New Fauske Saturday evening, one I'd like to spend outside skating figure-eights across the frozen pond behind the castle or running around in the snow with Rhody or jealously watching Keira fly loop-de-loops above my head. Instead I must spend it locked in my room, sawing away at my violin on _Winter Hymn No. 6_. It's a piece that was composed by one of my great-great-uncles back when Hitler was still alive, and my music tutor wants me to have it down to memory by tomorrow.

Violin practice was a lot more fun when Keira was my maidservant. She liked to listen to me play, even if she'd never say so, and I never turned down an opportunity to show off to her. Now I only play because my father would kill me if I stopped.

Someone knocks hesitantly on my door. "Come in," I call, cutting the music off abruptly and setting down my bow.

In steps Phoebe, dressed in a servant's frock with her golden locks pulled back behind her shoulders. She's been my maidservant ever since Keira left for the Sentry trials a couple years ago.

Phoebe bows her head and curtsies, which I suppose is a bit of an improvement. At least I've gotten her to stop calling me _my lady_ all the time.

"What is it, Phoebe?"

"I'm sorry, miss—Diana wanted me to remind you that your dinner with the duke is at six."

_Damn it_. I have dinner with my father every Saturday, but somehow I'd still managed to forget about it. "What time is it now?"

"About five-thirty." Phoebe eyes me uncertainly. "Do you want me to help you prepare?"

I wave her off. "No, that's all right. I can get ready myself." Knowing better than to argue, she ducks out of the room with another quick curtsy.

I slump back against my bed with a sigh. "For the love of the Goddess." Our Saturday dinners are about the only time I see my father and brother, but I'm starting to think that once a week is once too often. The older I get, the stricter my father gets. _Don't wear your hair like that._ _Hold your chin up higher. Your clothes are too tight._ Maybe I should've let Phoebe help me dress, if only so that I could have someone else to blame for whatever he finds wrong with me today.

I play for a few more minutes, working out the kinks in a particularly difficult section of the hymn, then return my violin to its case so I can pretty myself up. From my closet—itself about as big as a bedroom should be—I pick out a pleated skirt and a blouse that I hope will help bring out the blue in my eyes. I fasten a gold chain around my neck, too; I always make sure to wear a necklace whenever I dress up for anything. If my neck is bare, my father will ask why I'm not wearing my mother's pendant, and I don't have an acceptable answer to that question. _"I gave it to my secret shifter friend"_ probably wouldn't go over too well with him.

I slip on some shoes and make my way up three floors' worth of spiraling stairs to the reception room in the castle's east tower, where I'm supposed to meet my father after he's through with his weekly conference. For the comfort of the duke's delegates, the upper east tower is one of the warmest parts of the castle, "warmest" meaning "above freezing." The conference room where they're meeting is one floor up; the staircase leading up to it lies behind a heavy stone door, guarded now by two Sentries standing at attention. Both of them acknowledge my entrance with deep bows.

The walls of the reception room are circled by a giant gilded tapestry depicting the coming of Nixa twenty-two hundred years ago: the Goddess herself, woven deftly into the fabric, tall and regal in a snow-white dress; little Nixans, her chosen people, kneeling before her; a phoenix hanging limp between the jaws of Katyri, Nixa's winged wolf. The reception table has already been prepared for our meal—a large plate of gingersnaps has been placed in the middle, and three ornate silver chairs have been set out at one end of it. My little brother Aren is already in his place, his arms folded tightly and his legs dangling neatly beneath him. In the chair across from his—my chair—there sits a white puffball of a dog. I sigh.

"I tried to get him to move," Aren says apologetically.

"Down, Rhody," I order, snapping my fingers and pointing to the ground. The dog gives me an annoyed look before jumping underneath the table.

I brush the fur off my seat, adjust my skirt, sit down, cross my legs at the ankles, and hold myself up as straight as I can. I take a cookie between two fingers and nibble on it as daintily as possible.

Aren and I don't talk—we hardly ever do. I snack, and he watches.

After a good five minutes of waiting, the guarded stone door is drawn back and the Sentries step aside with bows. A long train of councilmen files out, led by Professor Fayeren, chancellor of the Royal Academy. He side-eyes me as he passes my seat on his way out of the reception room; I turn away guiltily, blushing.

After the councilmen come the delegates for the Nixan allies—Caphian for the shifters, of course, and a Sylvan and Shade. I never bothered to learn the names of the last two; other than Caphian, the delegates change each month so that every Shade camp and Sylvan village can be represented at some point or another. This month's Sylvan is a bear-sized thirty-something man with weeds and twigs laced through his hair, and the Shade is a tallish woman with Shade-purple locks and combat boots.

The Nixans have four Novan orders as allies—the shifters, the Sylvans and Shades, and the _llyrsi_ , who don't live in our province. Each of them has been allied with us for centuries; the Shades, the only Novans native to this continent, were our last addition nearly five hundred years ago. Our agreement with them is pretty simple: they provide us with whatever we need—food from the Sylvans, guards and soldiers from the shifters, money from the _llyrsi_ , everything else from the Shades—and in return, we grant them protection from the Wardens and places to live away from Sen eyes. Nixan priests can use Old Magic to hide huge tracts of land from the Senex—New Fauske, for example, sits in the middle of Nal Ferris State Forest, which would be only a pinprick on any Sen's map of Idaho but is in fact big enough to hold ninety-nine percent of the American Nixan population, enormous castle included.

The duke Fenris Loraveire—my father—follows out the ally delegates, with the High Priestess Evana hanging from his arm. Bile rises in my throat at the sight of them pressed together; I have to swallow to keep it down.

Evana is, I've always thought, the most beautiful woman in New Fauske. She looks like every other Nixan—light blonde hair, pale skin, blue eyes—but she wears the coloring better than anyone else I've seen. She is dressed in the fine white silk that all of Nixa's priests have to wear, and the fabric clings to her figure in a way that highlights her hips and curves unfairly well.

"I have to leave you," my father says to her, clearing his throat and wiping away his half-smile. "My children are waiting." He glances down and fiddles with the bond-ring around his finger.

"Of course, Fenris," the Priestess says, slipping her arm out of his. I smirk; Evana is one of the only people who can get away with calling my father by his first name. She curtsies to the three of us before exiting after the rest of the party with a graceful whirl of fabric. Underneath her intricate bun of hair, I catch the gleam of a thin scar etched into the nape of her neck, marking where the ice-glass stone she uses to channel Old Magic was inserted. Nixan healers can heal any scar, of course, but the priests and priestesses like to keep their ice-glass scars intact as a point of pride.

The duke takes his seat at the head of the table, nodding to Aren and me in turn. He doesn't comment on my clothes, thank the Goddess, or the fact that I didn't put up my hair. Good—I try to avoid getting on his bad side whenever possible.

My father rules over the entirety of the Western Province of Nixa's Kingdom, which stretches from Canada and Alaska all the way down to the Panama Canal, minus the strip of land east of the Appalachian Line where the Wardens live. That means that it's easily within his power to ship me off to Nunavut for a month if he's angry with me. Or he could throw me in the torture chamber downstairs with his infidel captives. Either way, he holds a great deal more power over me than a father should over his daughter.

The outer door creaks open, and a trio of young shifter servants files in with our dinner plates. I inspect the contents dubiously—cod fish, baked beans, mashed potatoes. Nothing that I'd pick myself if I'd had the choice. Luckily I'd finished off my secret box of Teddy Grahams earlier and had a good amount of the gingersnaps before, so I don't have much of an appetite. Maybe I can sneak some of the fish out to give to Keira when we meet tonight.

"How has your schooling been going?" Fenris asks, his gaze swiveling between me and my brother.

"Okay," says Aren quietly, cutting into his food. "I finished my last algebra book."

"Excellent." Our father's eyes settle on me next, and I shrug. When it comes to school, I do as well as I need to avoid punishment and not much more.

Rhody paws at my foot from under the table. I rub my sole down his flank, digging my toes into his fur playfully. He runs his tongue up the length of my shin until it's sticky with dog saliva.

"Cassatia," Fenris says, "stop playing with the dog."

"Sorry." I extricate my toes from Rhody's fur and pull away my leg.

"I didn't get that dog for you to fool around with during dinner," he reminds me sternly.

"I know." He got me Rhody to keep me from messing with his hunting dogs, actually. He was given to me as a puppy for my thirteenth birthday, supposedly as a reward for mastering the violin part of _Avasol's Concerto_.

My father strokes the little white beard he's been growing out, studying me. "I have something important to ask you today, Cassatia," he says eventually. "I've been invited to celebrate Arrival Day in Svalbard with our king and queen, and I would like for you to accompany me."

I drop my fork. It clatters onto my plate, loud enough to make Aren jump.

"You want me __ to come to Svalbard with you?" I've never even left the state of Idaho before. And _Svalbard_....

"I do." He clears his throat. "You are the heir to this province, and you are almost eighteen; it's about time you visited the seat of our kingdom."

_Svalbard_. All the way up in the Arctic. Even Keira hasn't been there.

I fight to keep my voice even. "I'd love to go with you, Father."

"Do I get to come?" Aren asks.

"Not this time."

Any normal thirteen-year-old boy would've thrown a fit over that, but my little brother only nods and returns to his meal. He's gotten used to being left out, I guess.

"We'll leave Friday morning, and you will allow your maid to help you prepare. That's an order, Cassatia."

"Of course." Rhody noses at my leg impatiently, demanding my attention. I agree with him—I want to get out of here before I get too excited and lose my ladylike façade. "Can I be excused?"

He looks at my plate. "You didn't touch your food."

"No," I say truthfully. "But I really need to practice my violin."

He sighs, waving his hand at me airily. "All right. We'll talk later. You can go practice."

"Thank you." I stand, curtsy a little, and leave with Rhody. Only when I am outside and descending the stairs, skirting apologetic servants and ducking under the arms of window-scrubbers, do I allow myself to smile.

Svalbard. I'm going to Svalbard. I'm going to see Austfonna Castle and meet the king and queen and prince. I'm going to ride in a plane and see the ocean and fly over foreign countries.

But best of all: after years and years of her putting up with my problems and complaints and profound ennui, I finally, _finally_ have something exciting to talk with Keira about tonight. She'll be relieved as hell. __

# Ten Years Ago: Cassatia

I hadn't expected my new maidservant to be so _young_.

The shifter girl stood, arms folded neatly behind her back, at my father's side, looking into my room with wide silver eyes. She'd probably never seen a room like mine before—as big as a Sen house, cold enough to turn your breaths into clouds, with a canopy bed and snowflake-speckled curtains framing the windows. Most people probably have never seen a room like mine before.

"This is Keira," my father said. He pushed her forward into the room.

Keira the shifter gave a clumsy curtsy. "Pleased to meet you, princess."

"I'm not a princess," I corrected her quickly. "I'm a lady."

"Yes—and you will address her as _my lady_ ," my father told her.

"I'm sorry, my lady," she said, looking me right in the eyes. I stepped back in surprise; shifters never made eye contact with Nixans, except for maybe Caphian.

"She's my new servant?" I asked, not quite ready to believe it. Keira didn't look any older than me—younger, maybe. Leah, my last servant, was eight years older.

"Unless you want a different one." My father pressed Keira forward another couple steps. "The ceremony begins at six-thirty. I expect you at the castle doors half an hour before." He dipped his head to us and turned to leave; both me and the shifter girl curtsied to his back.

"What ceremony, my lady?" Keira asked once he was gone. She folded her arms over her chest, shivering. The jacket she was wearing didn't look warm enough for New Fauske.

"The graduation ceremony for the Academy." I wished I could go to Professor Fayeren's Academy—I was old enough to. But my father had hired private tutors for my schooling instead so I wouldn't be around other Nixans my age too much.

Keira was my age, though. But she was just a shifter, so it was okay.

"Why do you have to go to it, my lady?"

"I just have to stand with my father," I replied. "And you don't really have to call me _my lady_." Leah always did, but it sounded strange coming from another seven-year-old.

"Oh." Keira looked relieved. "Do I call you Cassatia, then?"

"Or Cass." My mother had always called me Cass.

"Okay," Keira said. "I like it."

We stood facing each other in silence for a minute before I realized that Keira wasn't planning on doing anything. "Aren't you going to get me ready for the ceremony?"

"Oh," Keira said. "I have to dress you, don't I?" I nodded.

She ran back into my closet and came out with two dresses—one green and one pink. "Which one do you like?"

I narrowed my eyes—Leah had never asked me what dress I liked. She'd never asked me much at all. "The green one."

"Okay." She threw the pink dress on the ground and kicked it off to the side. Leah had never done anything like that, either. "Do I need to take your clothes off? Diana said I did."

_Yes._ I shook my head. "I can do it myself."

Keira helped me into the dress once I was out of my day clothes and tied a clumsy bow to fasten it around my waist.

"How long have you been here?" I asked. She couldn't have had much training with Diana, the retired Sentry who took care of all the castle shifters.

"Only a week," she said. "My eyes just turned."

"They're pretty eyes," I told her, looking at them in the mirror above my vanity table. "I wish I had silver eyes."

"I wish I was a Nixan lady," Keira said. "Maybe we can trade."

I shook my head. "You don't get to have any friends if you're a lady. It's no fun."

"I could be your friend," she offered, fingering my hair. "Do you want me to give you a braid? I'm good at braids."

I nodded. "But you can't be my friend. My father won't let you." I couldn't have Nixan friends, much less shifter friends.

"Well, that's too bad. I don't have any friends here either." As Keira pulled my hair back behind my shoulders, I caught the glint of a gold watch around her wrist. I hadn't ever seen a shifter wearing gold before.

"Where did you get that watch?"

"Oh." She glanced down at it. "My foster mom gave it to me before I left. It's not real gold, though."

"Was she nice?" It didn't matter for Keira either way; shifters never got to see their foster parents after their eyes turned.

"Nicer than your dad." Keira finished with the braid and stepped back. "There. Do you like it?"

I ran a hand down the braid, feeling its bumps and twists. "Yeah. Thank you."

"You're welcome." She searched through the jewelry laid out on my vanity table and held a sparkly diamond necklace up to her neck like she was imagining herself with it on. She hesitated for a second, then fastened it around my neck instead. "I think it's cool that you're a Nixan. There aren't any Nixans in Skalten."

I shrugged. "Shifters are cooler," I said. "Have you ever shifted before?"

She shook her head. "I told you, my eyes just turned." She shivered. "I wish I could shift into something warm, though. I have goose bumps in here."

"It doesn't feel cold to me." It never did. "Do you want a better coat?"

"A coat?"

"I'll get you one." I went back into my closet and found a mink fur coat hanging up behind all the skirts and dresses, dark brown like Keira's hair.

"I can't take that," Keira said, backing away, when I showed it to her. "I'd get in trouble."

"You can say it's yours," I told her. "I don't need it. I only have to wear coats when my dad takes me on trips."

Shyly she took the coat and wrapped herself up in it, burying her face in the fur. "It's very warm," she murmured. "Thank you." Quietly she added, "I really wish we could be friends."

The castle bells began to toll, chiming six times. "I have to go." I should have been downstairs already—my father would be mad.

I was halfway out the door when Keira called, "Wait!"

Shifters weren't allowed to tell Nixan ladies to _wait_. The duke wouldn't want me to listen to her; he'd want me to report her, probably, for being such a bad maidservant.

I turned around. "What?"

Keira held up a pair of emerald-studded heels. "Don't you need shoes?"

# 26 September: Keira

Wes drags me through the squeaky-clean halls of the Warden bunker like human cargo, making sure to give everyone we come across plenty of time to gawk and glare and occasionally poke. I almost snap the finger off of a little kid who tries to touch my eye.

Basil follows after us for a while before running off with some other Warden guys. Once he's gone, I make a halfhearted attempt to strike up conversation with my captor.

"So, you go to school? Sen kid school?"

"Yeah."

"And you work at Starbucks?"

"Do you think that's funny?"

"No—just asking. I love Starbucks. I stopped by one right before I came here, actually. Wonder if it was—"

"Shut up."

And that's the end of our conversation.

I'm doing my best to play it cool now that the Wardens have decided not to kill me. Sure, I'm still trapped in a bunker with a bunch of my worst enemies, but at least no one's pointing a gun at me.

The ring of a bell screeches through the bunker like a fire alarm; at its signal, Wes pulls me after him up via elevator to the dining hall on the fourth floor. It's enormous and infested with Wardens, every single one of them wearing black and almost every single one staring at me like they had in the hallways. Word travels fast here, apparently. I'm already a celebrity.

Wes throws me a tray and takes me through a serving line, where an army of glowering lunch ladies fills the tray up with potatoes and chicken and a tiny milk carton. He then brings me over to one of the big cafeteria-type tables in the back, where Basil and the Wardens he went off with earlier are sitting. As soon as I set down my tray, an intercom crackles on and Fenella's voice informs the bunker of the arrival of a shifter on the premises. It's pretty much unnecessary at this point, I would think, but it does add to the pairs of eyes I feel crawling up my back.

"Tough luck, Doorstep," one of the Wardens—a burly guy with bad acne—says sympathetically. "How long do you have the shifter for?"

"Doorstep?" I ask Wes.

He ignores me, of course. "Till the next council meeting," he tells the other Warden, "so a month, basically."

"I can't believe Fenella's letting her stay here," another one of the boys says, shaking his head. "She'll probably go on a killing spree while we're all asleep."

"Well, I was considering it," I say, examining my fingers.

"She can't," Wes growls. He jangles the chain connecting us. "This thing keeps her from shifting. She's stuck with me."

_And I'm no happier about it than you are,_ I want to say.

The food isn't half bad, but that's probably just because I'm starving. I scarf it down as quickly as possible so we can get out of here. Wes, unfortunately, is perfectly fine taking his time. We spend the better part of an hour in the dining hall, and the staring and gawking don't let up for one second of it.

After dinner we go up to floor seven, where Wes's room is. It's the top floor of the bunker, still at least five hundred feet below subway level.

We turn down a few halls before Wes stops at a door marked with some pretentious Latin inscription. He shoulders it open and flicks on a light to reveal a little square room occupied by a single unmade bed and a keyboard shoved against the wall. Socks and dirty boxers litter the ground, and the floor—tiled like everywhere else here—looks like it hasn't been cleaned in months.

Yep. Definitely a boy's room.

"So you live in here by yourself?" I ask, feeling the walls. "Seems pretty lonely to me."

"You do when you don't have a family."

"Why don't you have a family?"

Wes narrows his eyes at me as if debating whether or not to answer. "I never had parents—not that I knew, at least—and my twin sister was taken captive in the Massacre of Alexandria."

_Fantastic._ One more thing to add to Wes's hatred of me.

"Well," I say, truthfully, "I didn't have anything to do with the Massacre." Though most of the Sentries that Caphian took to Alexandria had been from my sector, he'd picked the experienced ones, not the Sentries fresh out of trials.

Before the Massacre, things had been going pretty well between the Nixans and Wardens on this side of the globe. Aside from a few little border skirmishes, everything had been peaceful for a good fifteen-year stretch. Unfortunately, a small gang of Warden vigilantes decided to shake things up last April, when they crossed the Appalachian Line armed with machine guns. The Sentry border guards mowed them down before they could do any harm, and the Line-crossers had nothing to do with the actual Warden leaders in Boston, but Fenris is the kind of guy who'd take any excuse to go after the Wardens. He sent Caph off with a huge Sentry team across the border to attack a dustie-Warden conference in Virginia, our first major attack on the Wardens since before the turn of the century. We killed a whole lot of dusties and fire-people—hence the _massacre_ part of the name—and took a couple of the youngest back to New Fauske as captives. And, of course, one of the captives just so happens to be the twin sister of my new Warden friend.

Wes pulls from his pocket the key to our cuffs, removes his own and refastens it around one of the legs of his bed. "I don't care what Fenella wants; I'm not sleeping with this thing on my arm."

"Can I take mine off, too? I think it's cutting off my circulation." Wes scowls at me in response.

He leaves his new fire-gun next to the key on a little table by his bed, inviting me to make a go for one of them. I won't; I'm not an idiot. Fire-iron would burn the flesh off my hand just as fast as actual fire.

"Turn around so I can change." Wes extricates a pair of pajama pants from underneath his covers. I roll my eyes and squat down with my back to the bed while he strips down to his underwear.

Once he's in his pajamas, showing off a semi-defined six-pack, Wes runs off to brush his teeth and leaves me alone in his room. Probably not the best idea, but whatever.

I plop down onto Wes's bed with a sigh and slip off my coat, letting it dangle by a sleeve from the form chain. It's not unbearably hot in the bunker, but the warmth of the coat has left my neck and armpits sticky and gross with sweat. Or maybe it's just stress sweat from nearly being condemned to death earlier; there's really no way of knowing.

It's Saturday night, I realize: the night I always meet up with Cass. If she doesn't know I'm gone yet—she probably doesn't—she'll be finding out pretty soon. Saturday night means that I only have ten days left to steal Ferignis and get back to New Fauske. And yet here I sit, chained to the bed of a pissy Warden infidel.

_You better not be mad at me, Cass,_ I think, wishing more than ever that we could mind-link like Sentries, _because I only came out here to save your spoiled little ass. I could have died today, and it would've been all your fault._ I finger the pendant around my neck and bite my lip, thinking about Cass waiting for me up in a tower back in Idaho.

Wes spends a good half hour in the bathroom before traipsing back in. When I hear his footsteps approaching, I get up from the bed and return to where I stood before beside it. "Didn't move a muscle," I tell him proudly.

He _mmm_ s in reply. "Wish you had."

"Am I really that repulsive?" I wonder, crossing my arms. "I came here to help you. Why have you already decided that you hate me?"

Wes narrows his eyes. "I think the council should have voted to kill you."

Well, that's never nice to hear. "Do you think I'm a spy?"

"I don't know. But I know that something's up with you. You have no aura, and you walked right into our headquarters with nothing to protect you, and I'm pretty sure you were praying to Nixa during the council meeting."

"What, is that not allowed?" _Bad answer, Keira._

Wes raises his eyebrows at me. "So you're a Nixa-worshipper who wants to help us fight the Nixa-worshippers."

"It's more complicated than that," I say. "Look, I don't know about the aura thing, but I came here because I want to help you guys put Duke Fenris in the ground. I hate him more than I've ever hated any Warden."

"Why?"

"He's ruined a ton of people's lives, mine included, and I think he should pay for it." It's not really much of a lie.

Wes snorts. "Yeah, well, he's screwed up mine pretty bad too."

"You see? I'm on your side. _The enemy of my enemy is my friend_ , right?"

"That's a Sen proverb."

"So what? You Wardens are into Sen stuff, aren't you?"

"You know what? I'm going to sleep now." Wes flicks off the lights, and the room instantly goes pitch-black. "And don't you dare keep me up. I'm used to sleeping alone."

"So I'm sleeping on the floor, then?"

"That's right."

The floor is hard and cold and not meant for sleeping on. I know as soon as I lie down that I'll be waking up to stiff muscles and backaches. I manage to bundle up the coat I have hanging from the form chain and use it as a pillow, my cheek squashed up against the wallet left inside one of its pockets.

I shouldn't be able to fall asleep; not like this, a few feet away from someone who would give anything to run a knife through me and without the little mind-link voices in my head that I have grown disturbingly accustomed to. But I haven't had a chance like this to rest in days, and there comes a time when your body decides that it can find sleep even in the infernal pits of hell if you give it the opportunity.

Ten more days, I think, wrapping a hand around Cass's pendant. Then my eyes close, and I'm out cold faster than the world's best shifter could shift.

# Two Years Ago: Keira

"You look beautiful," I told Cass as I smoothed out the sides of her dress. She really did—the lavender gown I'd picked out fell perfectly down her figure, and the braided bun I'd given her was probably my best yet.

"I don't care how I look," Cass snapped. "Not today."

"You should. You have that Sylvan ball thing tonight."

"And you might be dead before it's over."

I tried for a smile. "I don't think they kill us off _that_ fast at the Sentry trials. I'd have to be pretty bad."

"Don't be funny," Cass growled. "How can you be funny right now?"

"I don't know," I admitted. Internally I was fighting just to keep myself together. I'd been dreading the day that I'd have to leave for the Sentry trials ever since I was old enough to know about them.

Cass swallowed, examining the two of us together in her mirror—a lady in a gown and a terrified teen girl in tattered jeans. "I have something I want to give you," she said. "Before you go." She dug around through a box of her most valuable jewelry and pulled out an old necklace with a pendant I knew all too well.

I gawked at it. "Cass, that's your mother's. It's _ice-glass_." The rarest, most powerful, least-understood type of stone in the world.

Cass nodded. "The city priests gave it to my mother when she first got sick. They told her the ice-glass would bring Nixa's blessing to her, give her strength and help take away her pain. She always said that it helped her; maybe it'll help you, too."

"I can't be wearing an ice-glass pendant around, Cass," I said. "It's illegal for anyone who's not a priest. Maybe they made an exception for your mom and you, but they definitely wouldn't for a random shifter girl." Only Nixan priests could actually channel Old Magic through ice-glass, but the rest of us were still not allowed to own any of it.

"Then hide it," said Cass. "Just take it, please. For me."

I nodded. Cass ducked behind me and fastened the clasp around my neck, just like I'd done thousands of times before for her. I tucked the pendant under my shirt and coat, leaving only the chain of the necklace visible.

Cass squeezed my shoulders, looking me right in the eyes. "You have to promise me you'll make it through, and come back to New Fauske after." Her lips trembled a little as she spoke.

"I promise." I couldn't really promise anything, even with a special ice-glass pendant, but I had to sound confident for Cass. "I'll be back here in two months, ready to offer my condolences to the unfortunate seven-year-old picked to take care of you."

Cass snorted, a tiny bit of amusement seeping back into her eyes. "I already told my father I won't have a seven-year-old maidservant again. All his servants are only a year away from trials. He gets a new one every summer."

I shrugged. "Either way, she has my sympathies. You aren't exactly low-maintenance, you know." Cass cuffed me on the ear in reply.

"Keira." A ginger shifter girl named Nessa rapped on Cass's doorframe to get my attention. "The carriages are leaving in five minutes."

I checked my watch—she was right. Five minutes till seven. "I'll be there," I promised. Nessa curtsied to Cass and ran off as fast as she could.

I hesitated, my hand hovering over the watch, before undoing its strap and holding it out to Cass. "Here. Take this."

She shook her head. "I can't. It's your mom's."

"Yeah, exactly. You gave me your mom's pendant, so I'm giving you my mom's watch. An eye for an eye." I waved the watch in front of her face.

"I can't wear it, though," she said, stepping back. "My father would kill me."

"You don't have to wear it," I insisted. "Just keep it with you. I won't need it at the Sentry trials." I laid it flat against her palm. "Its cheapness shouldn't rub off on you too much if you keep it hidden away."

Cass ran her fingers across the watch face. "Thank you." She looked up at me, and I saw that her eyes were full of tears.

"Don't you dare start crying, Cassatia Loraveire," I fake-scolded. "You'll mess up your makeup. I spent half an hour on that."

"Screw my makeup." She wiped away the tears, smudging the mascara I'd applied so delicately to her lashes. "This might be the last time I ever see you."

"I told you, I'll be back in two months. No need to be so melodramatic. I'm not going to kiss you goodbye or anything."

"Can I get a hug, at least?" She held out her arms.

I stepped into her embrace and squeezed her back tightly. "Whatever you want." Cass buried her face in my shoulder, her skin cool as ice against mine. _She's taller than me now,_ I realized. We'd always been the same height growing up.

"Just be careful, all right?" she murmured. "Don't do anything too stupid."

"All right." When we broke off the hug, her makeup looked even worse than before. I wished I had time to fix it. "But I really do have to go now. This isn't something I can be late for." Cass nodded, biting her lip.

Rhody barked at me from where he lay curled up on Cass's pillows. "Bye to you too, mutt," I called, reaching for my suitcase. "Try not to get too much hair on the bed, okay? Cass's next servant might not be as tolerant as me." Rhody cocked his head and made a little growly noise at me.

Cass had to give me another hug before she'd let me leave. "If you aren't here in this exact spot two months from now, I'll hunt down your rotting corpse myself and burn you to ashes like a Warden infidel. And I'll take my pendant back from your undeserving shifter neck."

"I'll be sure to keep that in mind," I told her, giving her one last tiny half-smile. "Goodbye, Cass. See you in two months." 

# 26 September: Cassatia

I open the access hatch at the top of the north tower, as always, a few minutes before midnight. Keira arrives early too sometimes; tonight she doesn't, which means that I get a few minutes to myself at the top of the world.

I lean out over the tower parapets, draping the coat I brought for Keira across the smooth marble stones. Up here, I have a bird's-eye view of New Fauske. The night sky is cloudless, and the full moon hanging low above the trees gives off enough light to see the city below: the Great Temple and Royal Academy flanking the castle, the skating pond, the little Nixan shops and homes stretching away in all directions, the Sentry guard towers marking the city borders far out in the distance. And all of it is covered in an eternal layer of thin, dry snow. New Fauske is beautiful, for sure—I just wish I were allowed to leave it more often.

Beneath my feet, I hear the faint chime of the castle bells: twelve rings. "Late," I mutter. I turn my eyes up to the sky, looking for one of Keira's bird shifts to come swooping in overhead—a kite or an owl or a little sparrow. As soon as she's here, I'll have to open the access hatch so we can head down to the room below before she shifts. I wish we could stay out here, but there's always the risk of off-duty Sentries or shifter servants flying around and seeing us, the daughter of Duke Fenris and a Sentry girl together on top of a tower in the middle of the night. And there's not much I could say to explain that kind of thing away.

Keira and I have met here every Saturday night since she became a Sentry. No one has their rooms in this tower, and there are no guards stationed near it, so for the most part we can be as loud as we want without having to worry. Sometimes I've even brought up my violin.

I drum my fingers against the parapets, sighing. Time ticks on, minute by minute by minute, and still no Keira. She's been late before, but never like this.

A rock settles in my stomach, growing larger the longer I wait. _Was she sent on an emergency patrol?_ Maybe another Shade camp decided to revolt and Keira was sent out without warning. The last time that happened, she came back nearly dead.

I glance down; a layer of ice has spread from my fingertips across the marble of the parapets. I grab my coat before it slips off and wave away the ice. It vanishes as quickly and silently as it appeared.

I'm being stupid. Keira must have fallen asleep without setting an alarm. Or maybe she had a late-night guard shift she couldn't get out of. _Or maybe she forgot._

"I actually had something to tell you about this time," I murmur. "Of course this has to be the night you decide not to come."

I wait until one before heading back down to my room. Keira will probably be at my window tomorrow morning with some elaborate excuse for not showing up, and I'll have to think up a suitable punishment for making me lose half a night of sleep for nothing.

# 

# Four Days Ago: Keira

I was off-duty, propped up in my bed in the communal Sentry ward and messing around on my phone like a normal teenage girl, when a voice wormed its way into my head. _"Hey, Keira?"_

It was Salene, my best Sentry friend. _"What is it?"_ I asked back through the mind-link.

"I just ran into the duke."

I smirked. _"What an honor."_

"He wants to see you in his throne room. Now."

I sat up, clicking off my phone. _"You're kidding."_

_"I'm not. Evana's with him, and they looked_ pissed _."_

I climbed out of bed and threw on a coat, my heart pounding. A few other Sentries hanging around the ward shot me confused looks, meaning that my sudden apprehension had leaked up to my face. The duke asking to see a Sentry other than Caphian wasn't exactly typical, and couldn't mean anything good. _"Is this something I need to get dressed up for, you think?"_

"I think it's more of a get-your-ass-in-there-as-fast-as-possible kind of thing."

_"Gotcha."_ I grabbed some shoes, zipped up my coat, and ran downstairs as fast as if there were a charging Warden army behind me.

❄🔥❄

Duke Fenris was not on his throne, a towering golden seat that gleamed imposingly from the back of the entrance hall; he stood instead at the base of the marble steps that led up to it, flanked by Evana the High Priestess. Salene had been right: both of them looked pissed, with crossed arms and tight lips. _Uh-oh._ Had I done something? Something really, really __ bad? Or....

Nope. I was not going to jump to conclusions like that. _Stay calm._

Finding it impossible to manage a curtsy, I gave a little bow to the duke instead. "Your Grace."

"Keira Serasul." Fenris spat out my name like a profanity—not a good sign. I swallowed, and forced my feet to make the trek up to him and Evana. By this point, my heart was beating so loudly that all of New Fauske could probably hear it.

As soon as I was within reach, Fenris grabbed me by the shoulders and yanked the zipper down my coat. He snuck a hand under the neck of my shirt; my body went instantly numb, my thoughts jumbling themselves into an incoherent mess like: _Oh no oh no oh no oh Goddess please Nixa no not this please no_.

Fenris pulled Cass's pendant out from under my shirt and turned it over in his hands, studying it. I stood frozen, watching him helplessly.

Sometimes, unfortunately, you do jump to the correct conclusion.

"Well." Fenris released the pendant and turned to the Priestess. "You were right. This was Elise's necklace; now, it is supposed to be my daughter's." When his eyes returned to me, cold and hard and even angrier, I nearly fainted.

"I kept that hidden for years," I blurted out. "How did you know?"

"The priests and priestesses of Nixa can sense the presence of Old Magic," Evana replied. "I sensed your necklace when I ran into you leaving yesterday's prayer service."

"Did you steal this?" Fenris asked, grabbing the pendant again. I nodded, for Cass's sake.

But Evana quickly laughed off my lie. "If she'd stolen the necklace, Cassatia would have reported it missing." Evana stepped closer to me and leaned in until I could feel her breath on my cheek. "The shifter didn't steal it. It was a gift, for a friend." Her lips curled up in a beautiful, sinister snarl. "It is illegal for a Sentry to possess an artifact of Old Magic. And befriending a Nixan lady is little better."

"You were Cassatia's old maidservant," the duke growled. "I remember it. I should have known better than to trust my daughter with another little girl for a servant."

At this point, the room was legitimately spinning around me, and my throat had all but closed up. "What are you going to do to me?" I managed to choke out. Kill me? Torture me, maybe? Toss me in the Warden-dustie holding cell?

"I am going to give you a final chance to prove your loyalty to the kingdom," Fenris said.

I almost fainted again, this time from relief. _Thank the Goddess._

"As you know, when I took my title, I drank from Nixa's spring and received the Goddess's blessing, like every king and queen and duke before me. And through me, as with all my predecessors, the Goddess has blessed the province under my rule for as long as I should live." I nodded; my head might be spinning on hamster wheels, but every five-year-old shifter knew that much.

"But there are forms of magic other than Nixa's." Fenris unfolded a sheet of paper from his pocket and handed it to me. It was a picture of a big black sword, sloppily drawn and spattered with blood. Its name had been scrawled underneath it: _Ferignis_.

"Have you heard of this?" Fenris asked. I nodded. Caphian had told all of his Sentries about Ferignis forever ago, warning us of how screwed we'd all be if the Wardens ever managed to get it into New Fauske.

"It was a gift from the Indian _jnani_ , given to Fenella Shirey as a reward for her Wardens' help in holding back our forces when we attempted to enter India twenty years ago. We've extracted our information about it from our infidel captives; it's being kept somewhere in Fenella's Boston bunker, and if my source is correct, plunging this sword through my heart would reverse the blessing of Nixa's spring and throw an irreversible curse over the whole province." He snatched back the picture, crumpled it up and threw it aside. I gulped, guessing now at what he wanted from me. "I am giving you until the day Cassatia turns eighteen to retrieve Ferignis and bring it here, where we can destroy it once and for all."

October sixth. "That's fourteen days," I calculated, my stomach dropping.

"Yes," the duke confirmed. "That should be more than enough time."

"Okay," I said shakily. "So you want me to smuggle a magic sword out of the Wardens' headquarters. And if I can't, I'm assuming you'll have me killed?"

"No," Fenris said, waving a hand at me. "You wouldn't be worth the effort to track down. If you fail to get me Ferignis, I will reveal my daughter's misdeeds to the province. She broke one of our most sacred laws in giving you that necklace; she'll be exiled from New Fauske. She'll lose all claim to the duchy, and she'll never see you again."

My breath turned sour in my throat. "You can't punish her for this."

"I can," Fenris assured me. "My daughter has willingly degraded our name—she deserves punishment just as much as you do. Aren would make a much more suitable heir to my title; I've always thought that."

I knew that Fenris wasn't bluffing—he meant what he said about Cass. He really would send her into exile, somewhere she'd be lonely and miserable for the rest of her life, if I didn't bring him the sword.

I sure as hell wasn't going to let that happen. I'd never exactly considered myself to be a selfless person, but Cass was my weak spot. I would take a thousand bullets for her, figuratively and probably literally too.

I bit my lip and nodded to Fenris, balling my hands into fists. "All right," I said, "I'll do it."

"Good decision." Evana fished through my coat pockets until she found my phone. She held it out for me to enter my password; I did, and she stepped back to type a slew of information into it before handing it back with an aura detector. "I've added the address of Ignacio's headquarters to your phone," she said. "And enabled a tracker so we'll know where you are."

"And how exactly do you expect me to cross the Line without being gunned down?"

"The ice-glass will hide your aura," Evana said. "Old Magic has an aura of its own, stronger than any order's. Since you've already tainted that necklace, you might as well keep it."

I wanted to pinch myself. _This has to be a dream._ But it wasn't—it was something I'd been fearing for years, even before Cass gave me the pendant and I left for the Sentry trials. Ever since I decided that it was okay to befriend a Nixan lady, I'd known this was going to happen, somewhere in the deep dark recesses of my mind. And now, Cass and I were both going to get our just deserts.

"Fourteen days," Fenris said. "You'd better get going."

Two minutes later I was out of the castle, on my way to Boston.

# Seventeen Months Ago: Westrey

"I can't believe how unfair this is," I said, crossing my arms.

Freya gave me a crooked smile. "Aw, come on, Wes. It's not going to be a vacation." She brushed past one of the fake trees lining the bunker's lobby to press herself into my side. "Guarding dustie-Warden conferences is a thankless, dangerous job."

I smirked. "Yeah, that's why they're giving it to someone who just took their Warden's vows. Our sixteenth birthday was five days ago." At least, the day the council chose for our sixteenth birthday was five days ago.

"Well, you wouldn't want to come anyway," Freya said. "You'd have to miss three days of school, and I know how much you'd hate that."

"He would," Basil confirmed, coming up behind me and throwing an arm across my shoulders. "He'd miss his piano lessons."

"Oh, shut up," I said, shying away from him.

"Ready, Freya?" Basil's mother emerged from the lobby-access elevator at the head of a group of Wardens attending the conference. His father trailed behind, deep in conversation with one of his friends from the council. Cesil Kinscey was the Principal Liaison for the Warden allies in North America, so he was required to attend all the dustie, vamp and aquine conferences. He was one of Fenella's top-ranking officers, and he absolutely hated both me and my sister.

"Yeah," Freya called back. "I'm coming." I could hear a bit of nervousness seeping into her voice—no matter how cool she tried to play it, this was Freya's first real assignment as a Warden, and she was determined not to screw it up. I gave her shoulder a slight squeeze in spite of myself.

In response, she spun around and wrapped her arms around me in a too-tight hug. I stiffened. "You know how I feel about PDA."

"I know." She kissed me on the forehead and patted my cheek. I scowled back at her.

Freya moved on to Baz, giving him an even bigger hug that he pompously reciprocated. "Keep my brother out of trouble, okay?"

"Will do," he replied solemnly. I rolled my eyes.

"Freya," one of the councilmen prompted.

"Coming!" Freya blew kisses to her friends Liesel and Naira, who'd come to see her off, winked at Baz, and scampered over to the departing group. Her raven hair swayed behind her, the red and gold feathers she'd braided into it dancing between its waves. The wingtip of her secret phoenix tattoo poked out from underneath her spaghetti strap. I smiled to myself, shaking my head.

"Your sister's gotten kind of hot, you know," Basil whispered in my ear.

I pursed my lips. "I really don't need to hear about it."

"Suit yourself." He slapped me on the back, hard enough to make me _oof_. __ "Come on; we've got to go cram for that psych test first period."

I nodded and followed Baz away as Freya's procession slipped out of the lobby and onto the streets. I gave her one small wave as she passed through the revolving doors, which she acknowledged with a nod and a peace sign, and then she was gone.

It was the last time I ever saw her.

# 1 October: Keira

My first four days in Warden HQ are a whole lot of nothing.

Wes doesn't have to go to school or work thanks to me, and he doesn't have to sign up for any Warden duties until the weekend, which means that the two of us get to sleep in every day. I meet with Fenella and the Warden council a couple of times and shirk my way through their questions about New Fauske. They know very little about the Loraveires and their province, so it's pretty easy. I feed Fenella some useless intel about the Sylvan villages and sector boundaries and tell her a little about the duke and his family, but don't bring up my time as Cass's maidservant. I describe all nine of my animal shifts for the council and talk a bit about the Sentry trials, but I neglect to mention the secret Sentry mind-link that connects us. I assure the council that I know nothing about the workings of Old Magic, which is mostly true. They know vaguely that it's channeled through ice-glass, but none of them seem to recognize the pendant hanging around my neck, so I'm not too worried. All in all, I do a pretty good job of keeping the Wardens in the dark about anything that could possibly help them out.

Since I'm probably the first Sentry ever to set foot in this bunker, I do my best to learn what I can about the place and its Nixa-hating inhabitants. I learn the layout of the headquarters piece by piece, making mental notes about the floor plans and the location of stairwells and elevators. I learn the dining hall mealtimes—breakfast at six-thirty on weekdays and eight on weekends, lunch at twelve and dinner at seven—and also learn that the Wardens prefer to get their meals aboveground, where there is much better food to be found. I learn through overheard whispers about the Sen that the Wardens shot down last month after he saw someone playing with fire on the side of the road, and about the Wardens' recent troubles with their vamp and dustie allies.

But most of all, despite a complete lack of interest in his affairs, I learn about Westrey Dorsan. Everyone wants to meet his new pet shifter, of course, so Wes always has people around him, but I soon figure out who he likes and who he hates and who he doesn't know at all. He has a few come-and-go friends—Sess, Keven, Blaise—but Basil's around the most. He's the one who meets up with Wes every day after school to give him the work he missed and catch him up on life in the Sen world.

The Wardens wear black so often that I decide it must be an unspoken rule here to piss off the Nixan goddess in any way possible. And it isn't long before I'm expected to get in on the black craze. On my third day in the bunker, I find a new all-black outfit folded up amongst the nest of sheets that is Wes's bed. It's a girl's outfit—leggings, a slim little jacket and a tank top—so I know it's for me.

Wes studies my face as I examine the outfit, searching for a reaction. I don't give him one. "Finally, something else to wear. Looks like my size, too."

Disappointed, he passes me over to the first girl he can find and orders me to change. I follow the girl into the nearest bathroom and obey without a word. It is, admittedly, nice to get rid of my old clothes, which are much better suited for New Fauske temperatures than for a bunker of fire-people.

I shouldn't feel bad about wearing black. I have to—the outfit was sent to test my loyalty to the Wardens. It doesn't mean anything if I don't have a choice.

And all this time the days tick by, leaving me with less and less time to get Ferignis to New Fauske. There's an armory on the bunker's fourth floor, guarded day and night by two Wardens, where I'm sure the sword is kept, but Wes never takes me inside. And I wouldn't dare bring it up to him without good reason; there's no way to ask about a room full of secret weapons without sounding suspicious. So I let the days pass until I have only six left, not an inch closer to the _jnani_ sword than I was when I first got here.

❄🔥❄

I lean back against the bunker library's grand piano, thumbing through a stack of Wes's school books. "I don't get it," I say, inspecting one called _1984_. "Why are you reading a book about stuff that happened thirty years ago? That doesn't even count as history."

Wes doesn't look up from his piece—he's playing something classical-sounding, something he has to practice for school. "It's not about stuff that happened thirty years ago. It's about stuff that someone from the forties thought would happen thirty years ago." He rolls his eyes a little. "And someone who grew up in a medieval castle has no right to talk about what counts as _history_ for the rest of the world."

I sniff. "Sen school sounds weird. Why do you have to go anyway?"

"So I can get a good job one day." He finishes his piece with a protracted low note, finally getting up from the piano. "Working for Ignacio, maybe, as a lawyer or businessman or something, or for the bunker and Fenella." He disentangles the form chain from around his piano bench, allowing me a little bit more of a leash. "You see, unlike the Nixans, we don't leech everything off our allies' slave labor. We __ actually work for our money."

"By pretending to be Senex." I lean forward, resting my elbows on the edge of the piano. "Don't they all think you're kind of strange? I mean, you're always dressed in black, and you all have weird Novan names, and you live in a bunker underground."

"We wear different clothes outside," Wes sighs. "And no one knows we live in a bunker. According to the state, my name is Weston Darcy and I live in a group home out in the suburbs."

"So all your Sen buddies know you're a poor orphan boy."

"I'm not an orphan," Wes says. "I just never knew my parents. There's a difference."

"Oh." I decide not to ask, mostly because I don't care enough to. "Well, if it makes you feel any better, I never knew my parents, either. I was taken from them a week after I was born, like all shifters."

Wes doesn't respond, instead turning to stare vaguely through the glass wall that separates the piano room from the library at large. Unlike the rest of the bunker, which looks and occasionally smells like a hospital ward, the library is nice and cozy, with carpeted floors and fancy wooden bookshelves circling a giant cylinder of a room that goes down deep into the ground. Chairs and sofas are set out at intervals, on which Wardens lie back and read and drink coffee. And interspersed throughout the shelves are little glass-doored rooms like this one, game rooms and private study rooms and Nixa knows what else.

"My sister loved this place," Wes murmurs, mostly to himself. "We used to come in here all the time when we were little, and run around and piss off everyone trying to get work done. And sometimes we'd sneak in late after all the lights were out and play hide-and-seek." He refers to his sister in the past tense; he's done that before, too. Like she isn't still alive—or like he doesn't _know_ she's still alive.

Maybe he doesn't.

I sit up. "You know, Wes," I say, as casually as I can, "the Nixans didn't kill your sister."

That certainly gets his attention. He goes stiff, turning slowly back to me with his brow creased into deep wrinkles. "What did you say?"

_Wow._ So he really had thought she was dead. __ "The Warden and dustie that were taken from the Massacre are still alive. Duke Fenris is holding them prisoner in his castle."

The color drains from Wes's face, faster than if he'd had a vamp sucking on him. "Seriously," I say. "I haven't seen them, but I know they're okay." It's their information on Ferignis that got me sent here in the first place. I don't know anything about the infidel prisoners—I've never been picked to go inside their holding cell. But I'm pretty sure they're both still alive; one of them is, at least. "Fenris is still trying to squeeze information on you guys out of them."

Wes's hands convulse. "You're lying," he growls. "Freya and Quincey were taken over a year ago. The Nixans would've killed them by now."

"They're too valuable to be killed," I say. "They're one of the Nixans' only links to the Wardens."

"Stop screwing with me," Wes says through his teeth. "You're not funny."

"I'm not screwing with you," I insist. "They aren't dead." There's nothing more frustrating than when you tell someone the truth and they refuse to believe you. Whatever; it'll do no good for me to continue pissing off Wes. I've got more important things to worry about—stealing a sword, for instance—than not-dead twin sisters.

The meal bell rings, its shrill screech ricocheting off the walls. "It's dinnertime already?" I feel like we just ate lunch.

"No," Wes mutters, "it's Thursday."

"And that's important because...?"

"Wardens have combat training on Thursdays." He straightens up, forces the tremor out of his words. "We should go. I'll get in trouble if we're late."

And he starts for the library door, leaving me no choice but to follow. I sigh as I feel the tightened form chain biting into my arm, and pull myself up to leave.

❄🔥❄

The training room that Wes brings me to is on the sixth floor of the bunker, and it's about as big as the dining hall. A cursory glance is enough to tell me that _training room_ really means _learning-how-to-kill-Sentries room_. Posters lining the padded walls detail the best methods for wing clipping, and a museum-esque display in a rear corner holds inaccurate models of Sentry bows behind what I presume to be bulletproof glass. There are black-knives and torch-spears and fire-guns spread around the room, too, all just an arm's reach away from the nearest hormonal Warden teen.

I can't say I feel all that comfortable in here.

There are already a good fifty kids in the room, all about Wes's age, and a muscular guy in his thirties who waits in front of them. When he sees us, he comes over with a look in his eyes that sets my nerves on edge.

"Who's that?" I ask, jerking my chin towards him.

"Perrin," Wes says. "One of our trainers."

"I thought I had Basil tell you to get here five minutes early, Wes," Perrin says, raising an eyebrow at him.

"Sorry," Wes mutters, not sounding the least bit regretful.

"Never mind. I just wanted to see the shifter before our class today." He examines me clinically, scratching his stubbly chin. "She will be useful," he says. "Maybe I'll see if you can bring her back next week to demonstrate for another class."

"Demonstrate?" I don't like the sound of that.

"Yes. A combat demonstration, to give my class some real experience with Sentries." He turns back to Wes. "Unchain her," he orders.

_What?_ "Sir—" Wes protests. It's strangely satisfying to hear him call someone _sir_.

"It's okay. She won't be able to get out."

Reluctantly, Wes takes out his fire-iron key and removes my cuff.

It feels great to get that Nixa-forsaken metal off my skin. I massage my wrist, rubbed raw from constant chafing. I know the cuff will be back on before I know it, but hopefully my skin will have time to heal a little first.

"Come with me." Perrin leads me away from Wes and over to the other end of the room, where the rest of the class waits. Wes follows after him and takes his spot next to Basil.

_Great._ Now I get to stand and be stared at some more. I'd like to say I've gotten used to it by now, but it's not easy to accustom yourself to being treated like a zoo animal all of a sudden.

"We have a unique opportunity before us today," Perrin says. "We have the chance to study a Nixan Sentry firsthand." _Study._ I decide that I don't like this guy, even if he did let me take off my cuff for a little while.

Perrin circles around me, slow and deliberate like a shark checking out its next meal. "Now shift," he directs.

I really wish I had an elephant shift in my repertoire, just for the shock value. But I don't, so I instead opt for my wolf shift, big and black and badass.

Changing form takes only a fraction of a second. I feel the shift ripple through my bones and muscles and force me onto all fours. My ears are yanked up to the top of my head, and the colors go dull in my eyes. And just like that, I'm a wolf.

"Wow," one of the Warden trainees breathes. I give a big yawn to show off my new set of teeth, complete with inch-long canines. A couple of the closest kids jump back onto the toes of their friends; even Wes and Basil look fazed.

"Human to animal, faster than you can blink." Perrin's voice is different in my ears now, louder and clearer. I can smell the ham-and-cheese sandwich he ate for lunch on his breath. "A shifter's ability to change is one of her greatest assets in combat. But shifters also are trained to fight in their human forms." He clasps his hands together excitedly. "Let's see if one of you can take her on without the shifting." Perrin motions for me to change back, and I do, getting back on my feet as gracefully as possible. "Who wants to be the first to try?"

Wes steps forward. No one looks surprised, least of all me.

"Excellent." Perrin backs away, allowing Wes to get closer. The two of us size each other up at arm's length. Wes looks pissed—he _always_ looks pissed. Our talk earlier probably didn't do anything to help with that. "This will be strictly hand-to-hand. No weapons, no shifting, and no fire, Wes. Fight until I call it off."

I'm used to combat, though I know Wes must be too if he goes to these training classes once a week. But I have an advantage: I feel Cass's pendant growing warm around my neck the way it always does when I'm about to fight, lending me its strength, and suddenly I feel twice as strong and twice as ready. _I got this._

Wes lunges forward, his hands wrapping around my neck, but I kick him in the chest before he gets a good grip and chop down hard on his clavicle. He staggers, and before he can regain his balance I grab his shoulders, spin him around, and slam him into the wall behind us. The wall padding softens the impact, but now I have him trapped. I press my knee into his stomach; he struggles, grunting and thrashing, but I don't budge. I aim a blow at his face and connect just below his left eye. He swings at my head—I duck, twisting around to get a good kick at his crotch. His legs buckle, and he slips to the ground with a yelp. I crouch down over him and pummel the side of his head, again and again and again....

"Stop!" Perrin calls.

I don't want to. I _really_ don't want to. But the pendant is starting to cool and my knuckles are starting to ache, so I listen.

Wes gives a soft moan, turning his head towards me; he has blood oozing from his nose and the corner of his lip. I don't help him up—he wouldn't want me to anyway—but I back off to give him some room.

I turn back to the rest of the trainees. All of them have wide eyes, dropped jaws, mouths shaped like _O_ 's.

"That was, what, about a minute?" I ask innocently. Wes shoots me his worst glare yet as he returns to stand with Basil. One of his other friends hands him a bag of ice for his battle wounds, which I find ironic.

"Yeah, about that," Perrin confirms, biting his lip. I wonder if he's changed his mind about having me come in to demonstrate for other classes. Hopefully I won't be here this time next week anyway.

"I can beat that." I pull back my hair, crack my knuckles, and peer into the midst of the Warden class with the most convincing grin I can manage. "So, who's next?"

This time, no one moves. 

# Seventeen Months Ago: Westrey

Two days after my sister left for the dustie conference, I was called down to the principal's office during chemistry class.

_What happened now?_ was my first thought. The last time I'd been sent to the principal's office was for questioning after Freya and her friends convinced some freshman kid to pull the school's fire alarm. But now Freya was four hundred miles away, and neither Baz nor Freya's friend Naira has been called out of class with me.

When I got to the office, Fenella Shirey herself was waiting at the front desk, dressed in blue jeans and a Red Sox shirt.

_Jesus Christ._ I froze in the doorway and stared, my mouth hanging open.

"Do you have all your books with you?" Fenella asked, her expression unreadable.

I glanced back at my bag. "Uh, yeah."

"Good. I'm taking you out for your dentist appointment."

_What?_ "Oh, right. Okay."

I followed her out of the building, heart pounding. The Chief Warden wouldn't have paid a personal visit to Samuel Adams High School unless something really serious had happened involving me. To the best of my knowledge, she didn't actually chauffeur Warden teens to the dentist.

My thoughts immediately jumped to Freya. Something had gone wrong at the conference, maybe. She hadn't responded to my texts from earlier in the day, but I'd just assumed that she was busy. I swallowed, pushing the thought away.

Fenella led me over to a slick black car and opened the passenger door for me. I climbed in obediently, waiting silently until she was inside and all the doors had been closed.

"Is something wrong?" I asked. My voice was choked and shaky, but I hardly noticed.

Fenella cranked on the engine, not looking at me. "I'm taking you back to the bunker. We'll talk there."

"Could we talk now, please?" The bunker was fifteen minutes away, and my palms were already starting to sweat.

Fenella clenched her jaw. "The others are all back in the council room."

"Others? What are you talking about?"

"All right; fine. We can talk now." Fenella turned off the ignition. "There was an attack on the Alexandria conference this morning."

_Oh, God._ My body went so cold that I couldn't have summoned fire if I tried. "What happened?"

"Well," Fenella said, "it was a Sentry attack. I assume it was provoked by the Wardens who trespassed on their land recently. The Sentries crossed the Appalachian Line with a fleet of jet planes at about eight, and we quickly assembled a response force of Wardens and allies in the area, but they outnumbered us two to one. It was almost—"

"What happened to Freya?" I interrupted.

Fenella turned to look me in the eye, and for once her gaze was soft. "The Sentries went for prisoners first—the two youngest at the conference, I believe. The first was a ten-year-old dustie boy living near our auxiliary compound in DC." She paused, but I already knew what she was going to say next. "The second was your sister."

_No._ My hands clenched compulsively. I pictured Freya, bound and gagged, dragged off into a jet by a couple of bloody Sentries, thrashing and screaming the entire time.

"We're going to rescue her, right?" I asked quietly.

"We can't, Wes." A crease appeared between Fenella's eyebrows. "We can't cross the Line—she was taken as retribution for the last time Wardens crossed the Line."

"We're going to leave her there, you mean. Leave her with the Sentries to be tortured and killed." My hands lit up. "It's your fault she was even there. You never should've let a sixteen-year-old be a conference guard."

"I'm sorry, Wes," Fenella murmured. "If I had any idea—"

"You did." The fire climbed up my arms. "You were worried the Nixans would attack after those idiots crossed the Line last month. You should've known."

"Put out your hands, Wes," Fenella said. "We're in a Sen school parking lot. Someone could see."

"I don't care," I growled. "My sister's been captured by Sentries, and you won't even try to rescue her. I don't give a rat's ass if someone sees my hands."

"You're not thinking clearly. You're blinded by your anger." Fenella turned on the car again and pulled out of the parking lot. "I'm taking you back to headquarters, okay?"

I ignored her. "This is all because of our parents, isn't it? You still blame me and Freya for who they are, sixteen years later. You don't care about either of us."

"You're wrong, Wes," Fenella said calmly. "This has absolutely nothing to do with that."

"I don't think so. If we had parents in the bunker, there's no way they'd let you get away with leaving Freya to die. She never had anyone, just me. She was all I had—she's all I'll ever have. And I'll never get to see her again."

As I spoke, going on and on and on, the car's temperature dropped back down to normal, and the flames licking my arms finally petered out. A wave of nausea swept over me. "I think I'm going to be sick," I whispered.

"I'll pull over," Fenella said quickly. She pulled into an empty spot outside a corner café, and I wrenched open the door and stumbled out with bile rising in my throat.

I crouched over the nearest storm drain, throwing up my insides. Fenella peered out from the open passenger door, looking as concerned as the Chief Warden could possibly look for a child she barely knew. A couple of boys sitting outside the café laughed at me. "Someone had too much to drink last night," one of them called.

I barely heard him. Freya's screams echoed through my head, drowning out everything else.

"They won't get away with this," I whispered to myself. "I won't let them." I'd taken my Warden's vows the week before on my sixteenth birthday—lifelong vows of duty and allegiance. And as I knelt over that storm drain, letting each wave of bile course through my body while Fenella looked on and the Sen boys laughed, I added another vow to my list. As long as Freya was alive, I'd find a way to save her from the Nixans. She didn't have anyone else—no special connections, no parents in the council like Baz—but she had me, and that was enough. I would make it enough. __

# 1 October: Westrey

I don't speak to Keira for the rest of the day. I don't speak to anyone at all, really.

The news of my sixty-second fight with the Sentry girl managed to spread all across the bunker before our training class even let out. Walking through the halls after, the youngest Wardens leap back in fright at Keira's advance; the rest shake their heads at me, smirking and laughing and curling their lips. I'm used to negative attention, of course, but usually it's over something completely out of my control. This is different—this time it's all my fault.

I wear the signs of my failure on my face, in the smarting bruises that frame my nose and dot my jaw. My back aches, too, and my left ear is ringing. I wish I could go see one of the bunker's doctors and get checked out, but that would require explaining the situation behind my beating to them.

Keira, for her part, doesn't push the subject, though I do catch a smug gleam in her eyes whenever a scared little kid scurries out of her way.

I skip dinner—Keira looks at me questioningly when the meal bell rings but doesn't ask—and head back to my room early, wanting more than anything to be alone so I can wallow in my embarrassment away from judgmental eyes.

Of course, once I've freed myself of the form chain and climbed into bed, I find it impossible to sleep. Not because of the pain; I've slept off plenty of combat training injuries before; but because of my shame in its source, and because of a little knot of something that has twisted its way into my gut.

I lean over my bed and stare down at the girl beneath it, already sound asleep on the hard metal floor. She is tiny, little-boned—I have at least thirty pounds on her. How did she manage to finish me off like that? She definitely doesn't look like she could beat me in a fight, sans shifting at least.

The door to my room suddenly swings open, letting in a flash of blinding light from the hallway. I sit up with a gasp and reach for the fire-gun by my bed, aiming it at the figure on my threshold.

Basil steps in, laughing away the gun. "Come on, Wes. I'm not _that_ intimidating."

I lower the gun with a soft exhale and toss it back onto my bedside table beside the key to the form chain. "Sorry. Spending five days with a Sentry girl chained to you tends to make you a little paranoid."

Baz snorts and plops down on the bed beside me, leaving the door cracked to let in some light. "You didn't wet yourself, did you?" I punch him in the arm, glaring. He grins.

"What are you doing here?" I ask. "Come to check on the shifter?"

"I came to check on your battle scars, actually." I punch him again; he holds up his hands. "Okay, I get it, touchy subject." I groan, rolling my eyes and leaning back against the wall.

"Jesus." Baz looks around my room. "Somehow I keep forgetting how tiny and lonely this place is." He twirls a finger through his shaggy hair. "If my dad wasn't such an asshole, I would've asked if you could move into my family's place. Now that Freya's been gone for so long, it's depressing that you have to live here all by yourself."

The knot tightens around my gut. "You know," I say, "she might not be gone, actually."

Basil's grin is gone in an instant. "What do you mean?"

I look down again at Keira, somehow still asleep despite all the noise we've made; the light from the cracked door has lit up half her face, and she looks deceptively young and angelic. "Before training today, Keira told me that Freya and Quincey are still alive, locked up in Fenris's castle."

"That's crazy, Wes" Baz says quietly. I turn back to him, my heart sinking when I see the disbelief etched into his face. "She's just trying to mess with your head."

"I know." I clench my pillow, gathering up its folds into my fist. "But what if she wasn't? What if Freya's __ still alive, being tortured by the Nixans while we just sit here?" I bite my lip. "The day I found out she was taken, I promised myself I'd save her, as long as she was still alive."

"Trust me, I know," Baz says. "You spent months obsessing over how to get her back. I was there. I swear you went weeks without eating."

"And then I gave up—I decided she must be dead. Everyone said she was, and I forced myself to accept it, eventually. But now I'm hearing she isn't from someone who was in New Fauske only last week."

"A _Sentry_ who was in New Fauske only last week," Basil corrects me. "Her word isn't enough for anyone to go risking their lives over. She has zero proof—don't tell me you actually believe her."

"I don't," I insist. "But still, I can't get it out of my head. I can't sleep because of it."

Baz rolls his eyes. "Of course you can't sleep—it's not even nine o'clock yet."

"That's not the point." I set my jaw. "If there were any proof, even the tiniest bit, that Freya's still alive, I'd cross the Line myself and go after her. I was too scared to when she was first taken, but I'm sure as hell not scared anymore."

"That's good to hear," a voice says from beneath us. "Because I've got your proof."

Baz and I turn in unison to find Keira rising to her feet in the light of the cracked door, a smile lifting her cheeks. "What if I could get your sister on the phone with you?" she asks. "Would that be enough?" 

# 1 October: Keira

The Warden boys look even more startled than they did when they found me in their elevator.

I stretch my chain as far as it will go so I can flick on the lights, leaving all three of us blind for a second, and kick shut the door.

"You were listening to us?" Wes demands, his voice an octave higher than usual.

"Of course I was. No one actually goes to sleep at eight-thirty." I try to bite back my smile, but I can't. After five days of zero progress, I now know exactly how I'm going to get Ferignis back to Duke Fenris. All it will take is a little bit of emotional manipulation.

"You never answered my question," I say. "Would talking to your sister on the phone be enough to convince you that she's still alive?"

"How do you plan on talking to her?"

"I have a friend in the castle," I explain, thinking on my feet and fighting to keep some resemblance of a poker face. "Arion. He's on our side."

" _Our_ side," Wes repeats doubtfully.

I ignore him. "He has access to the cell where they're keeping the infidel prisoners. If you give me my phone back, you can talk to her."

"There are no numbers in that phone," Wes says. "I checked."

"Of course not," I say. "What if it got stolen? I have all my contacts memorized."

Wes climbs out of bed to stand face-to-face with me, his eyes searching mine. He pulls out my phone, slowly. "You're telling me your friend can get to my sister?"

The loud beeping of a ringtone keeps me from replying. Basil pulls his cell from his pocket. "Damn it," he mutters, "it's my dad. I better get this."

Wes lets him with a frustrated jerk of the chin, and I avail myself of the interruption to reopen the Sentry mind-link I had so resolutely shut myself off from the day I left New Fauske.

Instantly, thoughts from all over the continent bombard my brain— _"Need an extra guard at the Juneau post," "Algery's missed quota again,"_ that kind of thing—thoughts sent through the public link for every Sentry to hear. I tune them out as best I can; there's only one Sentry I need to worry about.

Caph finds me before I can find him. _"Where the hell are you?"_ he demands, his thought aimed directly at me outside of the public link.

_"In the Warden bunker,"_ I tell him. _"The headquarters in Boston. Fenris and Evana sent me, but I'm not allowed to talk about it."_

Silence. Then: _"Is there something you need me to do for you?"_

"Yes—I need you to put me on the phone with one of the prisoners in the holding cell."

"Hey." Wes's voice jolts me back to my immediate surroundings. He's wiggling my Solas phone in front of my face; I hadn't even noticed. "Don't you need this?"

I look to Basil—he's finished talking with his dad, his phone shoved back in his pocket.

"Thank you." I take the phone and type in Caphian's number as he feeds it to me.

"Speaker phone," Wes says as it begins to ring. I click on the speaker obediently.

"Hello?" Caphian's voice, a little strained, asks from the phone.

"Are you off-duty, Arion?" I ask.

"Yes," he replies, not missing a beat with the name change. "Do you need something?"

I drop my voice down to a level I judge to be appropriate for a clandestine conversation. "I need to speak with one of the prisoners. The Warden girl." I look at Wes. "I'm with someone who needs to hear from her."

"Hold on," Caph says, his voice hushed as well. We hear a bit of static as he walks, then indecipherable low voices.

"He doesn't sound like a teenager to me," Basil says dubiously.

"I never said he was."

More static, a _beep_ , and then a shaky girl's voice: "What is this?"

Wes snatches the phone from my hand. "Freya," he breathes. "Is that you? It's Wes."

"Wes." There's a soft _thud_ on the other end of the line, followed by a scuffling noise—she dropped Caph's phone, I'd guess, and had to pick it back up. "Oh, my God, Wes."

Basil leans over the phone. "Freya, where are they keeping you?" Wes demands.

"Some little room in Fenris's castle," she breathes. "Somewhere they can beat the shit out of Quincey and me without anyone hearing." Wes clenches my phone so tight I'm afraid it will shatter to pieces. "What is this, Wes—what's going on? They don't have you too, do they?"

"No," Wes says. "I'm sorry, Freya, I—I'll get you out of there. I promise."

_"Hit her on the head and hang up,"_ I tell Caphian.

A loud crashing noise and a startled yell crackle from the phone, followed by garbled background noise. "Freya!" Wes yells. Then there's silence; the line's been disconnected.

Wes drops my phone, his eyes bright with anger—for a second, I'm worried that he'll catch fire. "They're torturing her," he breathes. "We have to get her out of there, Baz. I __ have to, at least."

"Hey, I'm in too," Basil says. "Of course I am." He hesitates for a second, then says, "You do know what's gonna happen if we cross the Line, right?"

"I don't care what happens," Wes growls. "To us, or to anyone. I can't let her stay there; you know that." He swivels his head back around to me. "You have to come too, shifter, since you know the castle."

"Only if I get something out of it," I say.

"I knew there'd be a catch to this," Basil mutters.

I shut off the mind-link again, leaving myself with the requisite peace and quiet to get what I want from the situation. This is the part where I find out if my plan will actually work. "I came here because I want Duke Fenris dead," I say. "If we're going to New Fauske to get your sister, we're going to take care of that, too."

"Kill Duke Fenris?" Wes says dryly. "And what, start World War Three with his daughter?"

"Not if we kill him with a super-magic _jnani_ sword that curses the whole province." I allow for a second's pause. "Ferignis, I think it's called?"

Both Wes and Basil go visibly tense at the name. "How did you know about that?" Basil asks.

I decide not to give them the actual answer, in case it curbs Wes's wellspring of familial devotion for his sister. "The _jnani_ are bigger blabbermouths than you'd think," I say instead.

The two Wardens look at each other for a good long minute. "How are you planning to do this, exactly?" Basil asks carefully.

"If you can get the sword and get us across the Line," I say, "I'll buy us an audience with Fenris, no questions asked. Trust me."

Wes snorts. "The hell we will."

"Well, that's my condition," I say. "If you want to get your sister back, you don't have a choice."

The Warden boys have a little bit of a stare-off that ends with Wes giving a relenting nod. "All right. We'll do it." _Yes yes yes yes yes._ I try my best to keep the victory off my face. "We might not be permanently exiled from Boston for crossing the Line if we manage to kill the duke and curse New Fauske while we're at it. And smuggling out the sword won't be too hard."

"It's the most heavily-guarded hunk of metal in the bunker," Basil says.

Wes slides a laptop out from under his bed and turns it on. "Not if we're the ones guarding it."

He pulls up a sign-up list on his computer for a bunch of different Warden duties, each of them lumped into time slots. I perch myself on the edge of his bed and watch over his shoulder as he scrolls through it. "Okay," he says. "The one-to-three a.m. shift Saturday morning is open for security office duty and guarding the armory."

"Wonder why that is," Basil says. Wes clicks on the open security office slots and types in _Westrey Dorsan_ and _Basil Kinscey_. Then he clicks into the armory slots and types the names in again, for the exact same hours.

"Does no one check this thing?" I wonder.

"Not closely," Wes says. He exits out and pulls up another roster, this one listing locations instead of duties under one-week time intervals. It's a register for Appalachian Line guards.

Wes scrolls down a little, stopping abruptly and pointing to the pair of names next to Norfolk, Connecticut: _Naira Mase_ and _Chael Kyrie_. "They're still together, right?"

"Well, they're spending a week alone in the woods with each other," Basil points out.

"All right," Wes says. "We'll pass through their station, then."

Someone knocks on Wes's door; the three of us perk up immediately, and Wes slams shut his laptop. "Come in," he calls.

A middle-aged woman cracks open the door and sticks her head inside. "What is it, Darya?" Basil asks.

"Your mother wanted me to tell you to get back to your room and finish your homework," Darya says.

"Tell her I'll be there in a minute," Basil sighs. She nods, shutting the door again.

"With all the crap they do all day, you'd think my mom and dad wouldn't have time for helicopter parenting," Basil mutters, standing up and stretching.

"All right," Wes says, looking to his friend. "You go back to your room and figure out a way to steal your dad's keycard so we can get into the armory." Then he turns to me. "The two of us are gonna spend tomorrow looking at torch-spears. Then we'll grab the sword and be out of here by the end of the night. Deal?"

"Sounds good." I give him a genuine smile, feeling quite pleased with myself. One little phone call, and now I've got two oblivious Warden boys doing my job for me. I'll be back in New Fauske with the sword in no time.

This is going to be easier than I thought. 

# Two Years Ago: Keira

The convoy of carriages clopped to a halt behind a run-down train station five minutes outside the boundaries of New Fauske. It was basically a big wooden platform, a holding pen for all the city's shifters who'd turned fifteen within the past year. All the lucky new victims of the Sentry trials.

The wait for the train was long and awkward. Most of New Fauske's shifters had a clique of friends they knew pretty well because they'd spent the last ten years working together—cooking in the castle, cleaning up the streets, renovating Nixan homes—while I'd done nothing but sleep and sometimes eat with the other shifters in the castle. I wound up standing off to the side with my hands in my pockets, leaning against my suitcase. The sun and warmth were nice, at least. There wasn't a whole lot of sun and warmth inside the city gates, even though it was the middle of July.

Finally the train came out from among the trees; I hadn't even heard it approach. It slid into the station, smooth and silent as a snake. It was painted blue and white and looked to be newly-minted. Apparently Sentry candidates got first-class accommodations.

Hopefully I'll be getting two rides out of this thing.

The car doors slid open in tandem, and a mad rush to get inside ensued. I waited until the shoving and stampeding had settled down, valuing an intact body over the first choice of seat, before I left my corner and pushed my way forward into one of the cars, squeezing between two guys twice my size to get through the doors.

Inside the train resembled a fancy airplane cabin, with carpeted floors and tiny windows. Two cushy leather seats waited on either side of the aisle. The car was mostly full—this had to be one of the train's last stops before Arizona—but I managed to find an empty aisle seat towards the back.

The boy with the window seat helped me to stuff my suitcase into the storage compartment over our heads. "Thanks," I said, plopping down beside him.

"No problem." He flashed me a grin and held out his hand. "I'm Delphi."

"Keira." I shook the hand and examined the shifter attached to it. He had an elvish-looking face, with dirty-blond hair and dark brown eyes. And his teeth were the whitest I'd ever seen.

"So, you're a New Fauskian," he said. "What's it like in Nixanville?"

"Like living in the Middle Ages," I said truthfully. "I was the maidservant for a Nixan, actually. Lady Cassatia." The _was_ sounded weird on my tongue.

"No way—Cassatia Loraveire?" Delphi asked, gaping at me. "The daughter of the duke?"

"Yep."

"What did you have to do?" he wondered.

"Nothing too bad," I said with a shrug. "I just had to keep her room clean, wash her clothes, make sure she always looked pretty; that kind of stuff."

"But didn't you have to dress her and everything?"

I shrugged again, smirking a little. "Sometimes, but that was easy. Nixan ladies only ever wear skirts and dresses—without layers, of course, because they have to show off to everyone that they're immune to cold."

Delphi grinned. "You should see a Sen city," he told me. The train gave a little jolt forward, and we began to slither away from the station and back into the woods, coasting over the tracks. "A real city, with electricity and cars and no maidservants."

"New Fauske has electricity," I protested. Other than running water, electricity was just about the only convenience of the modern world the Nixans had adopted, mostly so they wouldn't have to use fire anymore. And even then, only a few homes and rooms in the city castle were actually hooked up to the electric grid. "And I lived in Skalten before my eyes turned. My foster parents brought me into Minneapolis all the time." I leaned back in my seat, feeling the train buzzing silently under my feet. "Where are you from, anyway?"

"Sector Seven," he replied. "A little Shade camp outside Montreal."

"Really?" I looked at him from the corners of my eyes. "Can you speak French, then?"

" _Oui_."

"Cass tried teaching me French once, but I was hopeless." I closed my eyes for a second, smiling at the memory. "Like, _really_ hopeless. I think I'm doomed to be monolingual."

Delphi shook his head. "That's amazing. You got language lessons from the heir to the Western Province."

The train pulled out of Nal Ferris, the state forest New Fauske was nestled in, and we emerged from the trees into relative civilization. As Delphi and I watched out the window, a pair of women came down the aisle with a cart and began to pass out bagged lunches. I sifted bracingly through mine's contents: a turkey sandwich, an apple, a juice box, a bag of chips. Not too bad.

"Damn it." Delphi held up his apple and made a face. "I hate green apples."

I hated green apples too, but I was feeling strangely charitable, so I offered him my own sweet-looking red one. "Wanna trade?"

"I'd love to." We swapped apples, and I sunk my teeth into the green one, scrunching up my nose against the bitterness.

The two of us ate in silence for a while. The sandwich was okay, just cold and a bit dry. Delphi gobbled up his in about two bites, which either meant that he was really hungry or a typical teenage boy. Probably both.

"What're you staring at?" he asked eventually.

I turned away quickly; I hadn't realized I'd been staring at all. "Just...your eyes," I lied. "I've never seen a shifter with eyes that dark."

He snorted. "Yeah, well, if they were any darker I'd be a _faedra_."

I choked on my sandwich. _Faedra_ s were shifters whose eyes had turned black, the color associated with evil and Wardens and forsaking Nixa. If one was found, their foster parents were supposed to throw them out into the woods to die. "Shit. I guess you're right."

"My parents brought me to a priestess after my eyes turned, just to make sure." Delphi raised his eyebrows at me. "I like your eyes, though. Silver—that's pretty rare."

"Not for a shifter."

"Well, the Senex will think it's rare. They'll love you."

"Why?"

He shrugged. "Rare is good. Exotic, or something. Senex love that kind of stuff."

The corner of my mouth twitched. "I don't understand them."

"Well, you'll have to if you want to be a Sentry. You can't just hang out in New Fauske all the time with the Nixans. You have to be able to blend in with normal people."

"I have plenty of time to worry about that," I said. Assuming I survived the trials, of course.

"I can help you," Delphi offered. "I'll give you Sen-world lessons." He tapped the compartment over our heads. "I've got nine different Sen books in my suitcase, plus a cell phone. I can teach you tons with just that."

I really, _really_ should have just said _"no."_ I needed to spend the next two months training and trying to survive, not hanging out with some Canadian shifter boy whose head I could very well need to chop off one day. But his almost- _faedra_ eyes and ultra-white smile were making my heart beat inexplicably fast, wiping every last morsel of logical reasoning from my mind. And I'd never been very good at saying _"no"_ to something I wanted. __

"Sounds good," I told him instead. "You think we could start now?"

# 1 October: Cassatia

At the toll of the eleven o'clock castle bells, I tear off my sheets and slide out of bed. Rhody, curled into a ball on the pillow beside mine, wakes with a start at the sudden movement and yips at me.

"Shh," I warn him, drawing up my bed skirt and feeling around underneath it for my flashlight. I keep all my forbidden relics from Keira hidden under my bed—my secret stash of Sen snacks, a set of _Harry Potter_ books, Keira's watch—where I never have to worry about their discovery. Phoebe's the only one who ever goes sifting around my room, and I've told her multiple times not to clean under my bed.

My hand closes around the flashlight; I wiggle it out and click it on, filling the moonlit room with its artificial beam of light. Rhody leaps down from my bed and follows me to the door.

"Go back to sleep," I tell him. He plops down stubbornly at my feet, blocking the door.

I roll my eyes. "Fine. But you have to stay quiet, all right?" I clamp my fingers together above his head in the gesture I taught him for _quiet_. He blinks.

I nudge him aside and tease open the door, wincing as it creaks. I'm always nervous when I sneak out, but tonight is different. I've never gotten in trouble for roaming the castle before, but I've also never crossed all the way over to where the Sentry ward is.

I am leaving for Svalbard tomorrow, and I haven't seen Keira in almost two weeks. There haven't been any emergency patrols sent out to the Shade camps recently—I checked—and even the longest supply patrols don't last more than a week. I have no idea where she is, and I can't leave New Fauske without at least trying to find out what happened to her.

The only place left I can think to look in is Caphian's office, tucked away somewhere in the Sentry ward. He always knows where all his Sentries are, at least the ones in this sector—he must keep some kind of records.

I lead Rhody on tiptoe down the Hall of Lords, where massive ice sculptures stud the walls at even intervals, each one a model of one of the past dukes of the Western Province. The first sculpture is of Avasol Loraveire, my long-dead ancestor who first claimed the continent for the Nixans in the fifteen-hundreds, and the last is of my father, proud and regal with a snarling hunting dog at his side.

I've always thought the castle looks its most beautiful at night. No shifter servants running around, no Nixans twice my age bowing as I walk by—just me and Rhody and the moon. And dogs and celestial objects couldn't care less if I stand straight or keep my chin up or walk like a lady.

We reach a corridor that spans the width of the castle, with silver railings over which the entrance hall can be seen thirty feet below—my father's throne, the doors to the healers' infirmary and the infidel prisoners' cell, and four Sentry guards, two standing at each entrance to the castle. They shouldn't be able to see me as long as I stay underneath the railing, and quiet; I click off my flashlight and pick up Rhody, just to be safe, slinking forward with my head ducked down. Rhody gnaws at my arm and struggles with all his twenty-seven pounds of might, but I don't let him down until I've turned into the hall leading to the Sentry ward, reliably out of the sight of the Sentry door guards.

"You walk too loud," I hiss to him. "Phoebe needs to cut off your claws." He wags his tail in reply.

The entrance to the Sentry ward is guarded by sculptures of two Katyri wolves, their wings spread and teeth bared. In the dark, with the beam of my flashlight glinting off their icy pelts, they look almost alive, ready to spring into action to protect their ward from trespassers. I take a breath to steel myself.

_You've come this far, Cass,_ I think. _You can't wimp out now._

I step past the ice wolves with Rhody, leaving them to watch my back.

It's warmer inside the ward thanks to the dozens of little heating vents implanted in its walls. Giant arched windows above my head let in the moonlight, bathing everything in silver. I can see decently enough without the flashlight now, but I leave it on anyway.

Small beds framed with white wood protrude from the walls, some made up, some with sheets disturbed, some holding sleeping Sentries. I flash my beam around the beds a little, on the off-chance that I find Keira sound asleep in one of them. I don't, which is both relieving and not.

Some Sentries are awake, typing on forbidden phones or messing around with their friends. A young-looking couple are making out under one of the windows, inconsiderately loud. The awake Sentries notice me, of course; they stare when I shine my beam on them, some quickly hiding their twenty-first century technology, and one girl stands to give me a flustered curtsy. "What can I do for you, my lady?"

"I'm looking for Caphian's office," I tell her, knowing she won't ask questions.

"It's down the hall and to the left, my lady," she says, indicating with an outstretched arm. "But I don't think he's in there now."

"That's all right," I say, relieved. "Thank you."

"I can go with you if you want," she offers.

I shake my head. "You don't need to." I pat my leg to draw Rhody back to my side—he'd gone off to investigate one of the Sentry beds—and follow the girl's directions to the office.

I find it at the end of the left branch off the hall, just as she'd promised. It's small, but well-kept. A large window takes up most of one wall, framed by a pair of heavy blue curtains. A desk circled by golden candleholders is backed up against the far wall, and a small stone altar stands opposite the window, a miniature version of the one in the castle's prayer room. Beside the altar is a bookshelf, with books and files and folders stacked up in it.

I begin digging through the folders, finding maps of the Novan world, old battle plans, and compiled information on different Warden leaders, but no records on Sentries or patrols.

Behind me, Rhody gives a low growl. "Quiet," I snap, shining my flashlight at him. He doesn't notice; his ears are drawn back, his tail down. He growls again.

"I'll have to shut the door if you keep that up." I don't want to—Caphian's office door looks heavy, and would probably make a louder and more suspicious noise than Rhody's growling if I closed it.

Giving up on the bookshelf, I check behind the altar. Here there are a few common prayers, for luck and strength and victory in battle, but still no Sentry records.

Rhody follows up his next growl with a throaty bark. " _Quiet_ , Rhody!" I repeat. "What is it with you today? I thought you were supposed to be smart."

"I would listen to your dog, my lady," a voice says from just outside. I jump, the prayers flying from my hands.

Caphian steps into his office, armed with a flashlight of his own. The moonlight from outside his window falls slanted onto his face, accentuating his scars and his piercing blue eyes. "To what do I owe the pleasure of this visit?" His tone is playful—amused, even—but still I find myself shrinking back against the altar. Just like the ice wolves, Caphian looks scarier at night.

"I was looking for something," I say, my voice shaking. Caph raises an eyebrow, prompting me to elaborate. I gulp. "You know Keira, right? The Sentry who used to be my maidservant? I need to know where she is." His brow doesn't lower; I purse my lips, trying not to stutter. "We're leaving for Svalbard City tomorrow, and I have a question about how she used to do my hair. I want my new maid to style it the same way for our Arrival Day celebration there." It's a petty excuse, but a sadly plausible one for a Nixan lady.

Caphian gives a sheepish smile. "You won't find any information on her in here." He points to his head. "I keep track of my Sentries through our mind-link."

Of course; I should've known. _Stupid mind-link._ "Could you tell me where she is, then?" I try my best not to sound anything more than mildly curious.

"Afraid not, my lady." He sighs. "She isn't here, or on patrol—she's on a confidential mission for your father. She's cut herself off from the mind-link, and I've got no specifics on her location."

_A mission?_ "So you have no idea what she's doing?" Desperation leaks into my voice.

"I'm sure she's fine," Caphian says quickly. "She's only seventeen, and alone—the duke wouldn't send her on anything too dangerous or important." But something in his voice tells me that the situation is unusual, that Sentries aren't usually sent away on missions that he knows nothing about. Sweat begins to break out on my temples.

But I have to keep my cool, for the sake of both of us. _Just breathe, Cass._ "Okay. Well...that's too bad. I guess I'll just have to see what Phoebe can do."

Caphian nods, sliding his hands into his pockets with another sigh. "I'd recommend trying to get some sleep," he says. "You won't be getting any tomorrow night."

"Yes—I will," I promise. I whistle for Rhody, leading him around Caphian and out of the office. I pause on the threshold, hesitating, before turning back to Caph. "I'd really appreciate it if you didn't tell my father I was here," I say.

The corner of Caphian's mouth twitches. "My lips are sealed," he assures me. He gives a deep bow. "Sleep well, my lady."

"Thank you." I nod to him, try for a smile, then turn back around and let Rhody lead me through the Sentry ward. I click off my flashlight as we begin to pass by beds again, balling up my hands in my nightgown to keep them from shaking.

"Where are you, Keira?" I whisper. "And what does my dad want with you?"

I have an awful, awful feeling that it has something to do with me. 

# Two Years Ago: Keira

We arrived at our venue for the Sentry trials at about three in the morning. As soon as the train slid to a stop, the majority of its occupants leapt to their feet and scrambled for the doors. My suitcase was knocked to the ground in the chaos, and Delphi's almost landed on my head when I stood up myself.

"I think your bag wants me dead," I told him.

He shrugged. "One less shifter to worry about, then." _Nixa, please stop me from laughing every time this guy says something stupid like that._

Outside on the station platform, I was confronted with a thick wall of heat. Dry, gross desert heat. In the middle of the night.

"Is it always like this?" I heard someone ask.

"No. It's worse when the sun's out," someone else replied.

_Wonderful._ I was not used to heat at all. There was a layer of snow on the ground in New Fauske all year long.

I rolled up my sleeves. Diana had packed all the castle shifters lots of cool clothes for the trials, but I was still wearing the long sleeves and pants I put on that morning in New Fauske.

A Sentry pushed his way to the front of the crowd. "Follow me," he called, holding up a hand. "Calmly, please."

From the station, a trail of lampposts lit the way down a winding path to the Sentry trial building—the Sonoran building, it was called. The building was low and flat, with a big overhang shading the entranceway and wings branching off of either side. The Sentry mark was carved above the doors—a pair of arrows making an _X_ underneath the Nixan snowflake.

"Welcome to your new home," the Sentry leading us said, yanking open one of the doors and ushering us inside.

We were taken down a hall to a large gym room, where a couple thousand plastic chairs had been set out before a big blank screen. There were more Sentries inside already, sitting in nice comfy chairs beside the screen. _The coaches._

I took a seat towards the front of the room, three rows back from the screen. Delphi sat next to me, a choice that immediately sent a great swarm of wasps buzzing around my stomach.

One of the Sentries up front rose to his feet as soon as everyone had sat down. He was tall and lean, but with arms that bulged with muscles. He'd brushed back his long golden hair, exposing the scar that ran across his temple. I'd seen him a few times before with Cass—Caphian, commander of the Sentries of the Western Province. He'd held that title for ten years, ever since he orchestrated the successful Battle of the Vindhyas at the age of twenty-one. He supposedly had thirteen shifts, much more than the usual eight or nine, and one of them was a king cobra. That was even more unusual—most shifters only had warm-blooded forms, birds and mammals. So Caph's alleged cobra shift was doubly badass.

Everyone went quiet immediately, the decibel level in the room dropping from one-fifty to zero in an instant. Even narcissistic fifteen-year-old shifters had respect for Caphian Serasul.

"I'd like to welcome our new batch of candidates to the Sentry trials," he began, pausing for a bit of scattered applause. "Over the next two months, all of you will be put through a series of rigorous tests and exercises meant to shape you into this province's newest Sentries. You will be stretched to your breaking point, and well past it. Your abilities, courage, and determination will be put through the wringer. You will be pushed harder than you have ever been pushed before."

Well, that sounded like fun. Delphi wiggled his eyebrows at me; I gave him a tight smile.

"Those of you with the strength to make it through will be branded with the Sentry mark and take on the name Serasul, the name of the ancient shifter who became the Nixans' first Sentry. Unfortunately," he said, tapping the screen, "there are fourteen hundred of you in this room, and we only have five hundred twelve openings for Sentries across the province this year. Only the very best of you will make it." The screen lit up, displaying a giant map of North America divided into eleven sectors. The area east of the Appalachians—Warden turf—had been grayed out.

My eyes flitted over to Sector One, the sector that covered the Pacific Northwest: the capital sector, where New Fauske was. Below the sector name was the number _238_.

Two hundred and thirty-eight Sentries needed in New Fauske, almost half the number of Sentries needed total. It made sense; in addition to the supply patrols that every sector had to send out to the Sylvans and Shades, the Sector One Sentries had a nice slice of the Pacific border to watch, as well as two thousand New Fauske guard towers that needed to be manned at all hours of the day. _238._

I needed to be one of those.

"Do you want to go back to your old sector?" Delphi whispered to me.

I nodded. "Where do you want to go? Back to Quebec?"

He shrugged. "I just don't want to be sent off to Greenland. Or the Yukon. Anywhere south of that is fine."

"My lieutenant Asreil will remain here to supervise your training," Caphian continued, nodding to the auburn-haired man sitting next to him. "I will return to New Fauske in the morning, and come back in two months to see those of you who have proven yourselves worthy of the title of Nixan Sentry." He gaze swept the room, slowly like he was sizing each of us up individually. "Good luck to you all, and may the Goddess bless your days." He dipped his head to us, and his audience burst into enthusiastic applause.

As he turned to leave, I promised myself that I would still be around to see him when he came back.

# 2 October: Cassatia

"My lady." A hand shakes my shoulder gingerly. "My lady, please—you have to wake up."

I yawn, blinking open my eyes. Phoebe is standing over me; she backs away quickly when she sees that I'm awake. "I'm sorry, my lady—Cassatia—but Diana said I had to get you up to prepare for your trip." She looks as jumpy as always, like she'd run away screaming if I so much as lifted a finger. If Phoebe is so afraid of me, a seventeen-year-old who can't even dress herself, she won't stand a chance at the Sentry trials next year.

"It's all right," I mumble, pushing myself up with my elbows and accidentally kicking Rhody as I try to stretch my legs. It's light out already; Phoebe has pulled back my curtains to let the sunlight stream in through my windows, probably in a failed attempt to wake me naturally. "Did I miss the prayer service?"

"You did, miss—it's eight-thirty now."

_Eight-thirty._ I slept decently, then. I'm surprised I was able to after my trip to Caphian's office last night. A feeling of guilt twists my stomach into knots: Keira is probably off risking her life somewhere, and here I am sleeping in.

"Are you all right?" Phoebe asks, looking down at me concernedly.

I force out a breath. "Yeah," I tell her, "I'm fine." I can't think about Keira—it will only make things worse. Still, that's a whole lot easier said than done.

"Your father wanted you to try on some dresses before we leave," Phoebe mumbles, refusing to meet my eyes. "For the Arrival Day ball tomorrow night."

_Don't I have enough dresses already?_ I have an entire closetful of the frilly things; they're pretty much all I'm allowed to wear.

But the five gowns Phoebe shows me splayed out beside my bed look more expensive and intricate than anything in my closet. All of them are long and fine, with tiny jewels sewn into their fabrics. And they're all white—the color of the Goddess, usually only worn by Nixa's priests.

I guess I have to step my attire up a notch if I'm going to be in the presence of the Nixan king.

"I have to try all of them on?" I ask. Phoebe nods, her cheeks red.

"All right." I step up to my mirror, holding back a groan at the sight of the stringy-haired girl staring back at me. "Let's get started, then."

I pull off my nightgown before Phoebe can do it for me and allow her to help me with the dresses. Each of them, I can tell, has been custom-made for me; they all fall perfectly around my figure and reach just a hair off the ground. The fifth one is my favorite—it's a mermaid dress, hugging tightly at my waist and flaring out past my knees, with little diamonds embedded in the top and skirt.

"I like this one," I tell Phoebe, spinning around and craning my neck to get a view of it from the back.

"You look beautiful, my lady," Phoebe murmurs, brushing my hair back behind my shoulders.

"Can I see?" a man's voice asks. Phoebe yelps in surprise. I whip around to find my father standing in the doorway, watching us.

"Your Grace," Phoebe whispers, curtsying deeply.

"Father," I say, giving a little curtsy myself. "You want to see my dress?" I try to cover up my surprise—my dad has never cared before about what I wear, as long as I look nice.

"Yes." He walks around me in a slow circle, scratching his bearded chin. "The king's Arrival Day ball is one of the most esteemed events in all of Nixa's Kingdom. You must look exquisite." He takes a second to think, then nods to Phoebe over my shoulder. "Pack up the dress," he orders, "and clean her up. We'll be leaving in half an hour."

"Yes, Your Grace," Phoebe says with another curtsy. The duke leaves, my eyes following him out the door. _What did you do with Keira?_ I want to ask him, but I know I never could.

Phoebe helps me out of the dress and into a much simpler one, light green and just a little above my knees. She fixes up my hair and dabs on makeup until I can no longer see the bags under my reflection's eyes. When she is done, I put on a pearl necklace and heels, say goodbye to Rhody and ensure Diana has assigned someone to look after him, and leave for the castle doors with Phoebe in tow.

The entrance guards draw open the doors when we reach them, letting in a cool breath of New Fauskian air that makes Phoebe shiver. My father is waiting for us on the outer steps along with his manservant, Caphian, and Evana. Our carriage is parked behind them, with a Sentry in the coachman's seat and two large alabaster horses—Virgo and Taurus—swishing their tails impatiently. They're Katyran horses—descendants of Katyri the Great Wolf, blessed with Nixa's magic. They live as long as humans, and their blood is an essential ingredient in _draugr_ potion, the deadliest poison known to man. They're extremely rare; Virgo and Taurus are the only two we have in New Fauske.

"Are you ready, Cassatia?" my father asks, holding an arm out to me.

I nod, and obediently wrap my arm around his to descend the castle steps. The rest of our party follows behind, Evana hanging from Caphian's elbow and hoisting up her long dress to keep from tripping. There are Nixans crowded around the front of the castle, some only feet away from the carriage, waiting eagerly to see us depart.

My father helps me into the carriage before taking his seat opposite me. Evana sits beside him, and the shifters change into birds to fly out over our heads. The carriage is nice and comfortable, with downy seats and huge windows, but I'd rather be outside, breathing in the fresh air before our flight.

My father signals to the Sentry driver; she urges the horses forward, and the carriage lurches into motion. The Nixans around us part hastily, giving the horses a wide berth. The carriage spins to face the city gates and clatters over New Fauske's plowed cobblestone streets towards them. The waiting Nixans smile and bow as we pass them—I wave back vaguely for a minute, then manage to forget all about them. I'm used to having hundreds of eyes set on me at once.

I turn to my father. "We won't have to speak Norwegian in Svalbard, will we?" I can speak a little Norwegian, along with Old Norse and French and German, but I'd much rather stick to English.

Fenris shakes his head. "English is the language of the court," he replies. "You should know that." I blush.

"I hope that you at least know the proper forms of address for the royal family," he says.

"Of course," I say tiredly. "The king and queen are _Your Majesty_ , the prince is _Your Highness_."

Evana cups her hand over my father's. "She will be fine, Fenris. Your daughter knows all she needs to know." Her fingers rub against my father's bond-ring, tugging at it like they want to pry it off.

Our carriage has reached the city gates; the Sentries in the watchtowers on either side bow and crank them open for us. The Katyran horses clop onto the well-trodden path beyond, and soon we've left New Fauske behind, with the watchtower Sentries aiming their bows into the woods ahead of us.

It's another half-mile, in which the snow-strewn ground gives way to stones and greens and rainbow-colored trees, before the carriage draws to a stop at the edge of a long strip of open field, where a little jet plane perches with its hatch doors hanging open. Now that we're away from New Fauske, we can trade in the horses for a more realistic means of international travel.

The coachwoman Sentry helps us out of the carriage and through a hatch into the plane cabin, plush and carpeted and air-conditioned. Caphian, Phoebe, and the manservant fly down and return to human form; Caphian nods to the coachwoman before climbing up into the front section of the plane where the pilot sits. The coachwoman spurs the Katyrans back towards New Fauske, and the shifter servants climb into the cabin with us, immediately slinking over to huddle together in a back corner.

I've never been in a plane before. I've been in a car, to visit nearby Shade camps and Sylvan villages with my father, but never a plane. This is the first time I'll be flying, like Keira gets to.

Keira.

I can't worry myself about her, not if my father already suspects something. He's given no indication of it, but there's still a chance that Caphian told him about my visit to his office last night; for Keira's sake, I have to come across as entirely unconcerned about anything but this trip.

I take a seat by one of the windows, buckling myself in. As soon as I do, the plane gives a low growl that vibrates the seats; I clench my armrests in surprise, my knuckles quickly turning white. The plane jerks forward, and suddenly we're rolling past the trees, bumping and jostling over the grass, faster and faster and faster until the nose of the plane tips upward and we leave the ground entirely. The plane scales the treetops just as we reach the end of the strip—over the buzzing and droning of the engine, I hear the crackling of leaves lashing against its hull. We climb higher and higher, until all of Nal Ferris is an indistinguishable mass of green below us. And finally we reach the clouds, slicing through them like wet, gray cotton candy. My eyes are glued to the window the entire time; I don't feel quite like a bird, quarantined in a temperature-controlled plane cabin, but being up in the air like this is nothing less than surreal.

"It will be a long day," my father warns from across the aisle. Evana, of course, is pressed up against his side. "With the time difference, we won't land until the morning of Arrival Day. To show proper regard for the Goddess, I expect you to sit your vigil for the entire flight."

"I will, Father," I promise. And really, with my stomach in knots over Keira and the clouds rolling beneath me like the hills of Nixa's homeland, I don't think I could fall asleep tonight if my life depended on it. 

# 3 October: Westrey

Baz and I meet up at the security office twenty minutes before the beginning of our shift, surprising the Wardens already on duty.

"I can't imagine why two teenage boys would be eager to start a Friday night guard shift," one of them says, "but it works for me."

"Why do you have backpacks?" the other wonders, narrowing his eyes. "You know you can't do your homework in here."

"Of course not," Basil assures him. "We just wanted an easy way to carry snacks." He points back to me. "Wes doesn't even have school right now; he's on permanent shifter watch duty."

"Ah." The man's eyes light up with recognition, and his upper lip curls. "It's Doorstep. Westrey Dorsan."

I bite my cheek. "That's me."

"Where's the shifter now?" his friend asks, sounding a little less offended by my existence.

"With a friend," I reply. "I didn't want to bring her in here, in case she tried to pull something."

"Smart," she says with a nod. "Well, you boys have fun down here. Don't fall asleep." She turns towards the door, tapping the other guard on the shoulder to get him to follow.

"We won't!" Basil calls after them. Once they're gone and we've shut the door, he asks, "Where is Keira, actually?"

"With Liesel," I say. "I asked her to meet us in front of the lobby elevator at one-twenty."

"How did you convince her to do that?"

"Twenty bucks," I sigh. "Did you get your dad's keycard?" Baz pulls it out and wiggles it in my face. Without the keycard, the two of us couldn't even get into the armory—only senior officers are allowed inside.

Propped up on the desk in front of us is the office's aura detector. Its circular screen is blank, showing no auras within its fifteen-mile radius. Our detectors are programmed to ignore the auras of Wardens and our allies, but Keira's should show up. If it ever reappears during our trip, we'll need to know right away. I grab the detector and stuff it into my belt.

"Have you talked to Naira about our visit to her station yet?" Basil asks.

I shake my head. "I texted her earlier, but she hasn't replied yet."

"She's still awake," Baz assures me. "She's probably busy with Chael."

"Probably. I just hope she gets her tongue out of his mouth sometime before we get to Norfolk."

"Not likely," Baz says.

My eyes fall on one of the security screens just to the left of us, displaying a frontal view of the armory with the camera focused right on Ferignis. My mouth goes dry at the sight of it.

"As soon as they look at the footage," Baz says, "they'll know exactly what we did, and we'll be in some serious shit. Even my dad won't be able to get us out of this one."

I take a breath. "Look, Baz, you really don't have to do this. Any of it. You don't have to put your ass on the line for me and Freya."

"I already told you, I'm coming," he says. "I just have some reservations, that's all. I mean, how do you even know Freya was the one on the other end of that phone line?"

"It was her," I insist. "The Nixans barely even have running water, Baz; they sure as hell don't have advanced voice modification technology. I know what my sister sounds like."

"Okay, fine, so it was Freya," Baz says, holding up his hands. "But if it really were so easy to take Ferignis and go kill the duke and curse the Nixans, don't you think Fenella would've sent someone to do it a long time ago?"

"We didn't have a Sentry with us a long time ago," I point out, though my stomach goes tight at his words. But my nervousness only makes me feel more defensive. "I'm serious, Baz—if you don't want to come with me, you don't have to. I'm not expecting it or anything."

"No, I'm coming," he repeats. "There's no way you could deal with that Sentry girl all by yourself. Plus," he adds, "I'm a hundred times the shot you are." He's right; not because I'm bad with a fire-gun, but because Basil somehow inherited the Annie Oakley gene.

My phone beeps—it's twelve fifty-seven. I smile grimly at Baz. He sighs, digging his fists into his pockets. "Let's go."

We leave the office unattended and take an elevator up to floor four, where the armory is. Guards stand on either side of its metal double doors with their hands behind their backs.

"Are you here for your shift?" the man on the right asks.

"Um, yeah," Baz says, clearing his throat. The guards don't seem to recognize either of us in the relative darkness, which can only be a good thing.

"All yours," one of them says, pressing a button on his phone to confirm we've showed up.

Baz and I take our places beside the doors until the guards vanish up the elevator. After quickly scouting out the floor to make sure no one else is walking around, Baz swipes his dad's card through the scanner built into the wall beside his post. With a quiet _beep_ , the metal doors slide open, revealing the armory behind them.

The lights are blinding inside; they aren't dimmed at night like the hall lights, probably for the benefit of the security cameras. There are knives and blades hanging from the walls and huge cases of fire-guns stacked all the way up to the roof, but the whole room looks like it's been set up around Ferignis—a sword encased in a thick glass box, propped up on its side, its metal so black it makes everything around it look brighter.

"Oh, God," I say. "We're really gonna do this."

"Yep." Baz and I step inside, the doors immediately sliding shut behind us. If we set off the alarms trying to steal the sword, they won't open again.

I unzip my backpack and pull out a torch-spear—one of the shorter ones, designed for kids to practice with. Hopefully it'll be similar enough in weight to the sword to fool the sensors in its box.

"Ready?" Baz asks. I nod.

He swipes his keycard again, this time through a scanner in the box's pedestal, and the front pane of glass sinks down to expose the sword. My heart leaps into my throat; the opening of the box alone, I know, sets off a flashing red light somewhere in the security office to call attention to it, though it shouldn't be noticed by anyone but the nonexistent guards stationed there.

I hold the torch-spear directly over the sword, my arm shaking. Baz reaches in and tentatively grabs the sword's hilt.

"All right," he says, "we'll only have a second. Ready?"

"Ready."

Baz hoists Ferignis up out of its holders; at the same moment I drop the torch-spear, and it falls neatly into the sword's place.

We wait for the tensest of moments. No alarms.

I sigh. "Jesus," Baz says, wiping his brow. He holds the sword down at his side, the tip of the blade an inch from the floor.

"Can I see it?" Baz hands the sword over to me without a word. I turn it over in my hands, studying it carefully. It has weight to it, but not enough to be hard to maneuver. There's an inscription in what looks like Hindi carved into the hilt: आग के साथ. The lights overhead glance off the blade like flames, red and orange and yellow. Holding it, I feel like it really could curse a kingdom of ice-people.

"Let's get out of here," I say.

"Don't need to tell me twice." Basil seals the glass box again and opens the armory doors; I tuck Ferignis into a sheath ripped off of one of the swords pinned to the wall and stuff it in my backpack, tying a black beanie hat of mine around its exposed hilt.

"It's one-twenty now," Basil tells me. "Let's hurry so Liesel doesn't get pissed." We run through the halls as fast as we can without causing a disturbance and take an elevator down to the first floor of the bunker, where the lobby-access elevator can be reached.

Sure enough, Liesel is waiting beside the elevator with Keira, looking tired and very clearly pissed. "This was not worth twenty bucks," she growls at me. "The shifter girl wouldn't let me sleep at all, and I'm supposed to take the SAT tomorrow."

"Yeah, she's annoying, I know." I unlock the form chain cuff from around Liesel's wrist and fasten it again to mine. "I'll give you more later, okay?" If there is a _later_ , that is.

"You better," Liesel says with a yawn. "Where're you going with her at two in the morning anyway?"

"Just out for a walk," I say. Basil rolls his eyes at me.

"If you get caught, Fenella's gonna blow a fuse," Liesel says, rubbing her eyes. "But I don't care enough to do anything about it. I'm going to sleep." She calls down an elevator and leaves for her room.

Keira swivels her gaze between the two of us; she, for one, is wide awake. "You got the sword, right?"

"Of course we got it." I pat my backpack. "Now we have to get out of the bunker before anyone realizes."

"Gotcha," Keira says, pressing the button for the lobby elevator. "I can't wait to breathe actual fresh air again."

"It's the middle of Boston," Baz points out. "I don't know about _actual fresh air_." The elevator doors slide open and the three of us climb inside, backpacks and chain and all. I press the top button, and we shoot upwards towards the surface, fast enough to make our ears pop.

My phone buzzes; I pull it from my pocket to find a text that reads: _What did you need to talk to me about?_

"Naira?" Baz asks. I nod.

"Be careful what you say to that girl," he warns.

I hesitate for a moment, then text back: _I need you to get your boyfriend really, really drunk_.

# 3 October: Keira

The receptionist behind the lobby desk is easy enough to deal with; he's half-asleep, and simply nods when Wes tells him we're going out for a walk. He doesn't even look up to see who we are.

It's cold outside—not New Fauske cold, but still cold enough to make me shiver. I pull my Warden-issued jacket more tightly around my shoulders, and Wes and Basil slip on jackets of their own.

Unlike in New Fauske, it's not really dark here at night. There are lights everywhere—in windows, on cars, lampposts planted every two feet. It's enough to hide half the stars in the sky. And Basil was right about the air—I'd forgotten, but it smells like smoke and trash and cat piss.

I really don't like Sen cities.

Even though it's one in the morning, there are a few people out and about, most of them talking quietly on phones. Several give our group funny looks as we pass them, probably due to the fact that I'm chained to the arm of a guy, but no one comes forward to help. These people have all seen stranger things, I guess.

"What would you do if someone came over here and tried to rescue me?" I ask.

"Take out our guns and tell them to back off," Wes replies without hesitation.

Wardens are assholes. "I appreciate your concern for the life and sanity of the Senex."

Wes turns back to look at me. "The only reason the Nixa-worshippers give a rat's ass about the Senex is because of the laws of your holy trilogy thing."

"Nixa's Trinity," I correct him.

"Whatever. If the Nixans didn't have some sacred law not to harm Senex, they'd be just as willing to off them as we are." I want to argue, but in all honestly I'm not a hundred percent sure he's wrong. Plus, I'm supposed to be on team Warden now, so going out of my way to defend the Nixans would not be the smartest of moves.

"You should probably take the chain off, though, Wes," Basil says. "Before we get on the subway at least."

"Then she'll be able to shift," Wes protests.

I spread my arms. "What do you think I'm going to do?" I ask. "There are two of you and one of me, and I'm a block away from your headquarters. Plus you have a magic sword and fire-guns."

"Fine," Wes says. "I'll do it. But you have to stay between me and Baz the whole time." He takes off both our cuffs, and obediently I move up to walk between the two of them, keeping Wes's upper arm in constant contact with mine.

We cross the street and descend into a subway station, boarding one of the last subways of the night. There are only a few scattered people inside our car, but all of them strike me as a little bit off: one woman is mumbling incoherently about taxes, and another looks to be stroking an invisible cat in her sleep. There's also an old man in one of the back seats who tries to wink at me; I ensure that we stay well away from him and the others by grabbing onto one of the poles in the middle of the car despite the empty seats all around us.

The subway starts with a jolt and carries us through narrow tunnels, twisting and turning like a graceless snake, until we're far enough out of the city to emerge aboveground. We stay on for a few more stops, then get out at a station beside a parking garage.

"Your car's all the way out here?" I ask as we set out for the garage, Wes refastening the chain around my arm as soon as the train is gone. "That seems awfully inconvenient."

"It's my parents' backup car," Basil explains. "They keep it out here in case the Wardens' garage is blown up or something. I take it out all the time, and they've never noticed." Good—that probably means there are no trackers hidden in it.

Basil leads me and Wes through the poorly-lit garage to a newish-looking car on the second floor. It's a blue Chevy Malibu that has probably never been anywhere near California. Basil unlocks it and climbs into the driver's seat; Wes takes shotgun, and thanks to the chain I have to awkwardly crawl over him and into the middle seat in the back.

Basil takes the car out of park, scans a card to get us out of the garage, and pulls out onto the road, setting his phone GPS for Norfolk, Connecticut. Wes takes a pack of peanuts from his backpack and stuffs it in one of the cup holders up front for him and Basil, decidedly out of my reach. _Whatever._ I'm not hungry anyway.

I lean back in my seat with a contented sigh, propping my feet up on the car console. I might be chained up and peanutless, but my Warden companions are mistaken if they think they're the ones calling the shots here. Wes and Basil have stolen me my sword, and now they're blindly chauffeuring me westward to safety—safety for me, at least.

For the first time in years, everything is working out the way I want it to. 

# Two Years Ago: Keira

The first day of Sentry trials, I was ripped awake by the unpleasant sound of a drumstick striking a cowbell.

"Wake up! Get up!" _Bing. Bing._ "Come on, girls, rise and shine!" _Bing. Bing. Bing._

I groaned, and blinked open my eyes to be confronted with an intense overhead light searing my retinas. I had to squint until my eyes adjusted.

"All of you, get up! You've got ten minutes!" The cowbell-wielding Sentry was marching between rows of beds, whacking her instrument with sadistic glee. "Check your cards and get to your first class!"

_Cards?_ I pulled myself up into a sitting position and found a blue card on a lanyard peeking out from the tangle of sheets between my feet. Looking around, I saw bedraggled frizzy-haired girls all around me picking up cards of their own: red, green, purple, all the colors of the rainbow.

I pulled the lanyard over my head and checked the back of the card, where my daily schedule had been printed. Ten classes, from seven in the morning to ten at night, with fifteen-minute breaks at one and seven for lunch and dinner.

"What is this?" the girl in the bed next to mine growled. "Navy SEAL camp?"

_This is going to be a long two months,_ I thought.

❄🔥❄

It was, in fact, a long two months.

I started off my mornings with shifting class, which I thought would be a total cakewalk until I saw its coach. On day one, once all the blue cards had lined up outside for their first-ever class, he emerged from behind a cactus as a man, leapt into the air as a cat, shifted into an eagle for a wingbeat, somersaulted in midair as a kestrel, dove down head-first as a raven, and landed neatly on two feet as a man again. He received quite a few dropped jaws for that stunt.

By the end of the week, he had us shifting mid-stride without losing balance. It was disorienting, changing size and shape and senses so quickly, but I got used to it soon enough. By the third week of the trials, everyone with the proper shifts could do the cat-bird-man thing we'd gawked at on the first day.

Next the blue cards had weapons training, where we learned to throw knives and shoot guns and use a Sentry bow. Then we moved into fitness and conditioning, which was basically just a bunch of running and push-ups and screaming coaches. After that we got to cool off by jumping into a pool kept at hypothermia-low temperatures for swimming instruction. That class ended up being one of my favorites: in it we learned to scuba dive and swim around as seals and dolphins, both of which seemed to me to be more fun than practical.

After lunch we had two classes in actual classrooms: one in which we studied the Wardens and their allies, and one where we studied North American geography. The Warden one was interesting—it included a real-life flamethrower demonstration—but the geography one mostly consisted of us looking at maps for an hour and a half every day.

Then we moved on to flying lessons: learning flips and dives and aerial acrobatics, the best ways to ride the wind, what kinds of bird shifts are best in what conditions. We practiced flying for speed and flying for distance, flying at low and high altitudes, flying with a headwind and a tailwind. Once a week we had to fly in the simulator room, an enormous indoor chamber where the flying coach had erected a fake forest and positioned sprinklers and fans to mimic wind and rain and snow, so that we could practice flying in conditions other than _barren desert wasteland_.

To cap off the day, we had three combat classes broken up by a quick dinner after the first. They proceeded in order from least dangerous to most. First was hand-to-hand combat; next was weapons-based, which involved sharp blades and lots of body pads; and last was shifting combat, where we were paired off and pitted against each other in the forms of sharp-fanged predatory carnivores. The combat coaches broke up the fights that got too nasty, but a lot of shifters came out of that class every night looking pretty banged up. There was an on-site infirmary for a reason, after all.

I had been skeptical about Cass's pendant actually conferring any sort of blessing upon me; I wore it just like I'd promised her, of course, but I figured that even if it had supernaturally blessed her dying mother, that wouldn't be transferring over to me. But I soon found that whenever I was tied up in a vicious fight or my lungs were aching from flying too long, the pendant would grow warm around my neck and take away my pain. I wasn't sure how real its effects were—the pain would always come right back as soon as the pendant cooled, just as bad as before—but like we all heard over and over again at the trials, half of everything is mental.

Asreil the lieutenant popped in to observe our class every once in a while, slinking around the fringes of our group like a wolf in search of prey. He picked out the weakest—the ones who couldn't shift fast enough, the ones without any bird forms, the ones who couldn't tell a vamp from a dustie—and sent them away to be disposed of. When Asreil showed up, every blue card suddenly became twice as competitive. The runs were longer, the flights were faster, the fights were fiercer. But you didn't have to be great to not get tapped out of the trials. You just had to be able to keep up with the crowd.

After the day's classes and lessons were over, we were sent back to our dorms—girls in one and boys in the other. For the first few nights I had to wait until midnight to take a shower. The girls' dorm bathroom was huge, but there were seven hundred of us and everyone seemed to need half an hour to clean and primp themselves up, at least for the first week or so. After that, the showers were used to wash off the sweat and blood of the day and not much else.

Delphi came over to the girls' dorm on the first night while I was waiting for a shower to open up. He was an orange card, so I didn't have the chance to see him during classes. He had a book tucked under his arm and a green apple in his hand.

"Thought you might want this," he said, tossing me the apple. "I saved it from dinner."

"Thanks." I caught it and threw it onto my bed.

"I brought you this, too." He held up his book and showed me the cover— _The Catcher in the Rye_. "It's about a sulky teenager who likes to whine about how awful his life is."

"So it's relatable, then."

"Exactly." He handed me the book and plopped down on my bed. "I expect you to read two chapters a night, no exceptions."

"So _I need to sleep so that I don't flunk out of the trials from exhaustion_ doesn't count as an exception?"

"Nope. You flunking out of the trials would be great for me, actually." I punched him, hard, in the chest; he laughed it off.

I did read two chapters of _The Catcher in the Rye_ a night, and Delphi quizzed me on them afterwards to make sure I wasn't lying. Once I finished it, we moved on to another Sen book, then another, until we ran out.

Delphi also took it upon himself to teach me about other bits of Sen pop culture: music, sports teams, celebrities, and whatever else teenagers were supposed to care about. He even lent me his Solas phone for a couple of nights. We talked about other things, too—Delphi told me about his Shade camp, where he'd worked as a furniture maker's assistant, and I told him about life in New Fauske. We complained about our coaches and swapped stories about our classes.

It was nice having another shifter to talk to for once. Neither of us knew any of the other shifter candidates very well—Delphi's camp had no other shifters in his year—so we wound up as friends pretty quickly. Some nights we stayed up talking so late that the girl sleeping next to me had to yell at us to shut up. I probably didn't get as much sleep as I should have, especially considering the demanding days, but at least I had Cass's pendant to keep me feeling my best.

Every day the dorm grew quieter and quieter, and more and more beds opened up. I tried not to think too much about what that meant.

But every night I made it back to my bed in one piece, and so did Delphi. The night before our final trial, the two of us snuck outside as birds after the outdoor lights had been shut off to look at the stars from the roof of the Sonoran building. I'd been stargazing with Cass before, but this was different. The sky was so open, one hundred percent clear of clouds and trees, going on and on and on. And Delphi knew the names and stories of all the constellations; the Shade he used to live with had a telescope, apparently. The entire time he talked, I was painfully conscious of his arm brushing mine, his knuckles pressed against my own.

"I think you should come to New Fauske after the trials," I said to him when he'd finished telling me everything he knew about Scorpius. "You'd like it there. You could speak French with my Nixan lady."

_"J'aimerais,"_ he replied.

My heart rate sped up, just the slightest. "What does that mean?"

"It means that New Fauske sounds a whole lot better than Greenland. Even if it is just as cold." His mouth twisted into a dry smirk. "That is, assuming both of us make it through tomorrow, of course."

I sighed. "Let's not talk about tomorrow."

"We should. What if we're paired together?"

"If we're paired together," I said, "you'll be dead in seconds."

Delphi gave a weak laugh. "Oh, it would take a few minutes at least." He turned to look me in the eyes, his lips tight. "You know, the other two provinces don't have a final trial. They let every candidate who makes it through all the classes become a Sentry."

I raised my eyebrows at him. "Guess we have too many shifter babies being born over here," I said. _And Fenris wants to make sure all his Sentries are willing to get blood on their hands,_ I added silently.

We spent another two hours up there, just us and the stars and Delphi's crazy stories about bears in the sky. We didn't mention the final trial again, but I found my thoughts drifting back to it every few minutes, whenever Delphi's stories started getting a little too long. Just one day from now, all the shifters asleep underneath us would either be dead or murderers.

I knew that it would be smart to go back to my dorm and try to get some rest. It was more important than ever for me to be well-rested. But Delphi and I didn't leave the roof until the wee hours of the morning, and even after we got back to our dorms I spent another hour awake in bed, begging Nixa and my body not to let me give in to sleep.

# 3 October: Cassatia

Our flight takes us up through Canada and over Greenland to Svalbard, steering completely clear of Warden territory. Flying over Warden land is just as dangerous as passing through it on foot; the last time some Nixans took a flight over southern Europe, their plane disappeared mysteriously over the Mediterranean.

For Novans, Europe is the most volatile and dangerous part of the world. Both Nixans and Wardens have their global headquarters here: ours with King Aknes in Svalbard City, and theirs with Gwen Revana, chief of the Chief Wardens, down in Rome. The borderlines here are always changing, with the Nixans pushing down from the north and the Wardens coming up from the southern countries. There's constant fighting all across the continent; fortunately, in our flight to Svalbard, we stay away from the mainland entirely.

Our plane lands on a strip of earth cleared of ice on Nordaustlandet, an island completely uninhabited by Senex. It's still dark out, probably just before sunrise, but the moon and starlight glancing off the icy ground is enough for me to see outside by. A large, gilded sleigh waits on the ice beside our landing strip, pulled by four Katyran horses. And behind the sleigh there is only ice, sky, and, far out, the silhouette of Austfonna Castle.

"Wow," I breathe. I'm used to snow and ice and castles, but not like this. Looking down at the scape from my plane window, it seems like we've landed on an alien planet.

One of the hatch doors yawns open—Caphian waits for us beneath, bundled up so that only his eyes are showing. My father and Evana get off first; Phoebe approaches me from the corner she'd spent the trip in, combs out my hair a little, and follows me off the plane, shivering. I should've given her one of the coats from my closet—the threadbare one she's wearing doesn't look anything near sufficient for a non-Nixan in Svalbard.

I take my father's arm, and he guides me around the plane to the sleigh. The Sentry in the coachman's seat, wrapped in as many layers as Caphian, dismounts and bows to our party, helping me, Evana and my father into the sleigh. Just like before, the shifters change into birds for the trip in, Phoebe becoming a red-beaked Arctic tern. At least she has a good bird shift for the cold.

The coachman turns the horses towards the castle silhouette, and with a flick of the reins he sends them charging forward, galloping over the ice as easily as if it were packed dirt. I drape my arm over the side of the sleigh and try to take it all in: the dry wind nipping at my face, the jagged shards of glacial ice flying past us, the tails of the Katyrans swishing back and forth in tandem, the trio of birds over our heads struggling to keep up in the wind. Even in the dark, everything I see is white, white, white. No wonder this is Nixa's holy land.

The gates to Svalbard City, manned by Sentries in watchtowers like New Fauske's, are wrenched open by their guards as we approach; behind them waits a massive crowd of Nixans and shifters who've abandoned their vigil-quiet homes to come greet us. They bow deeply as our sleigh flies past, ignoring the bits of ice and snow kicked up in the Katyrans' wake. Svalbard City is bigger than New Fauske—there are almost a hundred thousand Nixans here, and at least half of them have come out to see us, their bodies pressed together into winding trains that snake through the city.

The sleigh comes to a stop before the front entrance of Austfonna Castle. Giant sculptures of kings and priests lead up marble steps to the biggest, tallest set of double doors I've ever seen, tapering off into a snowflake-studded point at their top. The coachman Sentry helps us from the sleigh and guides us up the steps and through the doors, Caphian and the servants following behind.

The doors draw shut behind us, and the clamor of the city is cut off with a resounding _bang_. I scan the enormous foyer as the echoes die out; there seems to be no one else inside, just tall columns marching down to an empty silver throne.

The coachman, unraveling the scarf wrapped around his neck, shows us into a large marble banquet room, ringed by windows on three sides and a giant tapestry on the fourth. A long table set for fourteen fills the room, headed by a throne-like seat at the far end. Beside it stands the king, Aknes Heilagur himself, dipping his head to us as we enter. I gawk at him openly for a second—he looks just like he does in his pictures and paintings, bearded and lined with piercing blue eyes. The silver crown resting on his head sits as comfortably as if it had been implanted there. For me, it's like coming face-to-face with a celebrity.

" _Bow_ ," Caphian breathes in my ear. I do, holding the pose as long as I can.

"Welcome, Fenris," the king says. His voice is deep, rumbling like thunder: the voice of a king taught from birth how to speak like one. "I'm glad you made it in time for our sunrise feast."

"We are honored to be here, Your Majesty," my father says with another bow. "Thank you."

A slew of formal introductions follows: the king and queen, Aknes and Daphne Heilagur; their son, Prince Iven, my age; the king's High Priest and Sentry commander, Haizel and Adryen; Saffron Carasten, my mother's older brother, duke of the Eastern Province; his wife, the Duchess Apphia; the ally delegates, a Shade and Sylvan and _llyre_. Of the group, I've only ever met Duke Saffron before—he came to New Fauske when I was six to pay his last respects to my mother—but I know all except the delegates by name and face.

I am introduced last, by Caphian: "Lady Cassatia Loraveire, daughter of Fenris and Elise of the Western Province." I curtsy, trying for a smile.

"Your daughter has grown up nicely, Fenris," King Aknes remarks. I blush. "It's fortunate that she has been spared the stresses of warfare."

My father bows again in thanks, but this time he is noticeably stiffer. "Quite fortunate," he echoes. The fact that we've been involved in very little combat with the Wardens since my birth has always been a sore spot for my father.

"The sun is about to rise," Queen Daphne says, gesturing to the windows behind her. She's right: the horizon is starting to brighten, the stars fading away.

"Let's eat, then." The king snaps his fingers, and the banquet hall's back doors fly open, revealing servants with platters of food and bottles of white wine. The food is set out in the middle of the table, every glass is filled with wine, and then the servants leave, as quickly and quietly as they had come. Phoebe and my father's manservant follow them back to the kitchens; the rest of us take our seats. I want to sit beside the _llyre_ —I've only seen a _llyre_ once before, at a special ball in New Fauske—but he stays with the other delegates, so I take the seat between Evana and the prince instead.

I grab a chicken leg from the platter that's been placed right in front of me, and am about to bite into it when Evana lays a hand on my arm. "Wait," she says. "The High Priest has to speak first."

"Sorry," I mumble, putting down the chicken. The prince gives a little laugh beside me; I quickly duck my head, going red with embarrassment.

Haizel the High Priest rises from his seat and taps his glass to get our attention. "We feast here today to celebrate the sun rising on this year's Arrival Day—the day of the coming of Nixa," he begins. "On this day, twenty-two hundred and thirty-six years ago, the Goddess descended from her home in the sky atop the winged wolf Katyri to land amongst a village of farmers a thousand miles to our south, in the midst of the land we now call Norway."

" _Avtalte_ ," everyone says in unison.

"She proclaimed the villagers her chosen people, and bestowed upon them the gifts of ice and snow," Haizel continues. "She called them the Nixans, most blessed of the Novan orders, destined to join her in her homeland after death."

" _Avtalte_ ," everyone says again.

"She chose Anakei, the best and strongest of the villagers, and named him _Heilagur_ , the first king. She then went to Eira, the oldest of his sisters, and had her pledge her chastity and loyalty. And so she was made the first High Priestess, and Nixa gave to her the gift of Old Magic to use in her name."

" _Avtalte_."

"The villagers pledged their lives to the Goddess, and asked how they could best honor her," Haizel says. "In reply she gave them the laws of Nixa's Trinity: the first, to harm no Senex, and to use her Old Magic to hide from the Senex their gifts and nature; the second, to honor the laws of their king and the words of their priests; and the third, to spread her teachings and her Trinity to every order of Novans they encountered—the Novans blessed by her with their abilities, but yet unaware of her gift and graces."

" _Avtalte_ ," we reply.

"And so it is for her that we fight Nixa's War against those who refuse to see the goodness of the Goddess and adopt her Trinity, who condemn themselves to eternal damnation rather than accept their rightful place amongst us in Nixa's blessed homeland. And every year we celebrate the coming of the Goddess, and enjoy this sunrise feast in her holy name. We pray that she bless our days and aid us in our eternal mission to spread her words."

" _Avtalte_ ," we say, and Haizel returns to his seat, allowing the feast to begin. By now the sun has mounted the horizon, its light bouncing off the metal plates and wine glasses laid out before us.

The meal is good and filling; I eat until I can't hold down any more. After the feast is over and the servants have taken away the platters, everyone turns to each other to engage in polite conversation. I find myself instead studying the huge tapestry on the wall in front of me: it shows four trees, or rather iterations of the same tree in different seasons. At first it is a flowering spring tree, with a little towhead boy dangling from its branches. The next image is of the tree in summer, with a young couple laughing together under the shade of its dark green boughs. Next is a fall tree, its leaves red and brown and gold; an old man stands beside it, leaning against the trunk for support. The final tree is bare, covered in icicles and haphazard clumps of white. Underneath it is a gravestone, half-buried in the snow.

"One of my ancestors wove that tapestry," Prince Iven says beside me. "The first king to live in this castle, actually."

For the first time since I sat down, I turn to examine the prince. He looks as much like a prince as his father does a king: handsome, strong features, tidy vanilla locks, perfect teeth. He speaks his English with a trace of an accent, just enough to label him as foreign.

"It's beautiful, Your Highness," I say politely.

The prince laughs. "Call me Iven," he says. "And you don't need to lie. I have to put up with enough lying around here already."

I smile, relaxing my stiffened posture just a little. "I'm not lying," I say. "It is beautiful. Maybe a bit depressing, though."

He sighs. "What's more depressing is that those are the only four trees in all of Svalbard."

"I can believe that," I say, thinking back to the desolate sleigh ride to Svalbard City. "Do you ever get to leave here?"

"All the time," Iven replies. "I've been all over Europe—the Nixan parts, at least."

"Until this, I'd never left Idaho," I tell him. "My father never let me." I can't believe I'm sitting here, talking to the heir to the Nixan throne like a normal teenager.

"Then since you're here, you should make the most of it," Iven says. "I can show you around the island a little if you'd like."

"Oh." I bite my cheek. "I'd love to, but I probably need to go get ready for tonight." Even though the sun's just risen, it can take all day to prepare for the fanciest balls.

"Don't worry about that," Iven says. He stands, raising his voice to address his father. "If you don't mind, I'd like to take Cassatia on a tour of our home." The king dips his head.

"If my father's okay with it, everyone has to be okay with it." Iven offers me a hand. "What do you say?"

It's hard to refuse a prince. I take his hand and rise from my seat. "It's just Cass, by the way," I tell him.

" _Cass_ ," he repeats. "I like it. Less of a princess name." I laugh, grab the prince's arm, and let him lead me away, ready to see Svalbard for real. 

# 3 October: Westrey

"This place is boring," Keira announces as we drive through the streets of Norfolk. "Why couldn't we have gone through NYC or something?"

"That's kind of in the wrong direction," Basil points out.

"I've never even been to New York," I say. It's true—I've only ever left Boston to be a Line or coast guard, and there's an auxiliary compound in New York City that covers all the guard stations in the area.

"Seriously?" Keira says. "It's right under you."

"He did almost stow away on my family's trip to Miami, though," Basil tells her.

"Almost." Baz's phone starts to vibrate beside me on the console. I pick it up and check the screen. "It's your mom," I tell him, watching for his reaction.

He doesn't give much of one; just a little raise of his eyebrows as he yanks the car around a corner. "Can't believe it took them that long to figure out we'd run off with Ferignis."

"Well, it is the middle of the night." About four in the morning now. The streets of Norfolk are dark, lit only by the Malibu's headlights. There are hardly any cars out, which is good, because Basil's driving leaves much to be desired. My head nearly slams into the windshield every time he hits the brakes for a red light.

The phone stops, then immediately goes into another spasm of vibration, then another. "Jesus," Baz says. "She's nothing if not persistent."

I disable the phone's vibrator for him—a minute later, my backpack begins to buzz in the seat behind me. "Can you hand me my phone?" I ask Keira.

She unzips my bag and pulls it out, turning it over in her hands. "This looks like a brand-new iPhone," she says. "Aren't these supposed to be ridiculously expensive?"

"Not for Wardens," I reply. "We get all our tech for free."

"Damn." Keira tosses me the phone. "The _llyrsi_ literally run a technology company, and we still don't get free phones from Solas." Solas Technologies is the largest of the _llyrsi_ -owned mega-companies from which the Nixans get all their money, to build their castles and pay off their other allies. It's an essential part of the Nixan modern-day slavery system.

"Damn it," I hiss, sitting up.

"What?"

"I forgot to bring the Solas phone."

"You forgot my phone?" Keira's voice is strained; I twist around to look at her. Her face has gone pale with worry in the half-light.

"Why do you care?" I demand. "It's not like I would've given it back to you anyway."

"I know," Keira says quickly. "I'm just worried someone might try to call me, that's all." She turns away, clenching her fists in her lap. I narrow my eyes.

The GPS takes us away from the main stretch of town and into the woods, where the roads become thinner and curvier and bumpier. The guard station is another few miles out, a large, windowless wooden cottage overlooking a nice little pond. A low barbed-wire fence encircles it, and there's a prominent _NO TRESPASSING_ sign nailed to the door, visible even in the dark. We pull off the road and get out of the car.

"Nice job Sen-proofing this place," Keira snorts, stepping over the barbed wire. "What would you do if someone decided to trespass anyway? Kill them?"

"Probably," Baz says with a shrug.

Inside, the cottage is less of a rustic little lake house and more of a high-tech spy base. Giant monitors fill the room, each showing a little piece of the nearby woods and town, courtesy of hidden cameras placed all over. All the monitors have a little red button beside them; if pressed, the footage on the screen would be sent automatically back to the security office in headquarters. There's also an aura detector attached to the wall, boxed in by glass.

Naira Mase stands expectantly in front of the monitors, arms crossed over her chest. On a sofa in the corner of the cottage lies her boyfriend Chael, snoring loudly.

"He didn't see anything," she promises.

"Thank God," I say. "Thank you, Naira. So much."

"Did you get him drunk?" Basil asks. Naira points to the mostly-empty bottle of vodka on the table in front of Chael in reply.

"I'll finish it off once you guys are out of here, and delete the night's surveillance tapes," she says. "Then it'll look like we both missed you passing through. We'll get into trouble with the council, of course—a shitload of trouble."

Chael makes a loud pig snort of a noise; Naira leaves us quickly to check on him. "Jesus," she mutters, brushing back his hair. "I still can't believe I'm doing this for you mental cases."

"Not for us," I remind her. "For Freya. You were one of her best friends, Naira."

"You were secret phoenix tattoo buddies," Basil adds.

"And you really think you can get to her," Naira says.

I look to Keira. "Yes—we're going to try, at least."

Naira sighs, lowering herself to sit beside Chael. "I don't even want to think about what'll come out of this," she says. "But if there's a chance you can get Freya away from the Nixans, I'll do anything."

"There is," I assure her. "You won't regret this, Naira; I promise."

She _mmm_ s at us, taking a healthy swig of vodka.

While she self-inebriates, I drag Keira over to check the aura detector on the cottage wall. Like the one in my belt, it's been set to ignore the auras of all but the Nixans and their allies. If one of those auras were to appear, every Warden bunker and compound on the East Coast would be immediately alerted.

But the face of the detector is blank—Keira is still miraculously aura-free.

"Hey." Baz comes over and pulls my phone from my back pocket. "Your phone's flashing."

I take it from him to find a text from a number I don't recognize. I tap it to open the message:

Come back now. This is your only warning.

—Fenella

I stiffen, the words pounding in my ears. Our only warning.

"What?" Baz tilts the screen so he can see. "Oh." He takes out his own phone: eight missed calls and twenty-three texts. "My parents have been saying the same thing."

I sigh, clicking off my phone again. "This is insane. What the hell are we thinking, Baz? How can we get to New Fauske without anyone finding us?"

"I told you, I have a plan," Keira butts in, rattling the form chain. "If you guys get us through the mountains, I'll get us to New Fauske and back safe and sound."

"Problem is," Baz says, "it's a whole lot harder to trust a shifter when you're on shifter turf."

"Look, you can trust me," Keira insists. "I was telling the truth about Freya, wasn't I? I'm telling the truth about this too." She sets her sterling eyes on me, unwavering. "Can we get going now?"

I bite my cheek, wondering if this is all going to end up a huge, stupid mistake, with Baz and me in chains and Keira laughing at our painful gullibility. But Freya's still out there, and I'd never forgive myself if I didn't go after her, no matter what Keira has planned for us once we cross the Line. "All right," I sigh. "Let's get out of here."

We say goodbye to Naira, already wrapping herself around Chael on the sofa, and pile back into Basil's car, heading straight into the Nixan-Warden buffer zone of the Appalachian Mountains. A mile out from Naira's station, I send Fenella a reply: _Not without my sister_.

# 3 October: Cassatia

There are less Nixans milling around outside when we leave the castle than when we entered, but still more than enough to stop and bow and make everything awkward as the prince and I step out of the castle, arm in arm. I nod and wave and smile as best I can, and he does the same. We both know the drill: no talking with the commoner Nixans, but you always have to smile and wave.

"I'm surprised your father doesn't insist on having guards follow you around when you leave the castle," I mutter.

Iven smiles. "This is our holy land," he says. "Don't worry—there's no one around for miles who would do us any harm."

"Oh, I'm not worried," I assure him. "I think it's great."

Pulling me forward, Iven leads me around the castle to the stables; like New Fauske, Svalbard City has a stable just for its Katyran horses. Inside, though, are six Katyrans instead of two. Iven brings me over to one in the back corner, a young-looking stallion tossing his head around spiritedly.

"This is Aries," he says. I raise my hand to him and stroke his mane, whiter and cleaner than snow, and softer than any normal horse's.

"He's beautiful."

Iven leads him out of his stall and pulls a stool out from beside it. "Hop on," he tells me.

I blink. "You want me to ride him?"

"Yes," he laughs. "Where I'm taking you is too far away to walk to, and a regular horse can't handle the ice."

"I've never ridden a Katyran before."

"Really?" He raises his eyebrows. "Don't you have Katyrans in New Fauske?"

"Two," I answer. "But we don't _ride_ them."

Iven pats Aries's flank. "Horses are made for riding," he says. "Even Katyrans."

I step up onto the stool and swing a leg over the horse, adjusting my dress to keep my underwear from showing. "I'm not exactly dressed for horse riding."

Iven shakes his head. "I won't tell your father," he promises.

He brings out another Katyran for himself (Libra, a mare) and leads the way out of the stables. I dig my heels into Aries's sides, and he follows after them obediently.

Outside, Iven's mare breaks into a canter, her feathered hooves flaring out like white pom-poms. I urge Aries into a run as well, bracing my hands against his neck to keep my balance as he lunges and sways to Iven's side. Iven waves to two large dogs wrestling in the snow, whistling to get their attention. They run to his horse's side, loping after him for a minute until the Katyrans outpace them.

"Those are your dogs?" I ask.

He nods. "Two of my hunting dogs."

Of course the prince would be allowed out on hunts. "What exactly do you hunt for out here?" I ask. Other than a few stray birds flying over the ice, I hadn't seen any signs of life outside Svalbard City.

"Usually we fly down to the mainland to hunt," Iven explains. "There are some reindeer here, but they're not much of a challenge."

"I've never been on a hunt before," I tell him wistfully. "I do have a dog, though. An Eskie."

"You should bring him here," Iven suggests.

"I'll try," I promise. If I ever get to come back here, that is.

As we come upon the city gates, Iven signals the watchtower guards, and they draw open the gates fast enough for us to pass through without our horses breaking their run. And then we're out on the pathless, endless ice, the frosty wind whipping back our hair and battering our faces.

"Where are we going?" I call to Iven over the wind. "Nixa's spring?"

"Better than that," he shoots back, head low over his horse's mane. "You'll see."

We run and run and run, galloping over the barren whiteness while caressed by refreshingly cool Arctic air. The Katyrans' hooves pound rhythmically against the ice, calming and exhilarating at the same time. Eventually, a sliver of ocean water crests the ice shelf ahead of us; we're nearing the edge of the glacier.

The ice begins to grow weaker under the horses—Iven and I extend our arms out over it to fortify its strength as we continue on towards the ice shelf. About a hundred feet from its edge, we dismount and walk the rest of the way, our footsteps lifting up the fragile, cracking ice.

Iven stops at the very edge of the ice shelf and points down. "Look."

The glacier drops down into the ocean like the face of a cliff, harsh and steep and tinted an alien blue. Light from the low morning sun reflects off the crag-like bulges in the ice, dancing and shifting and forming weak shadows. Above us the open skies stretch on endlessly, unmarred by land in any direction. And among the choppy ocean waves below are scattered ice floes, struggling to keep their crests above the water.

"Wow," I breathe. "There's nothing that looks like this in New Fauske."

Iven smiles. "It gets better," he promises. "Watch this." He stretches a hand out over the edge of the ice, closing his eyes in concentration. Directly under us, a patch of ice solidifies and expands until it's five feet wide, bobbing up and down in the water.

I raise my eyebrows, impressed. "Did you get that ice from the ocean water?"

Iven nods, shrugging his shoulders. "It's harder with the salt," he explains, "but the water is close to freezing already." He lowers himself to the ground, casting out his hands again, and smooths a section of the ice shelf into a slide down to the new ice floe.

I blanch. "You want us to jump down on that thing?"

"Trust me," Iven says. He slides down and lands on the floe, holding out his arms expectantly.

_Why not?_ I push myself down the ice and land squarely in the prince's arms. The floe rocks under the sudden addition of weight; I hold out a hand to steady it.

Iven smiles, letting go of me. "You all right?" I nod.

With a wave of the prince's hand, the floe lengthens, extending out in a narrow strip towards the horizon. "What are we doing?" I ask. "Walking across the ocean?"

"A part of it." Iven grabs my hand and leads me down the ice path, both of us keeping it afloat and steady with our hands as we go. Eventually the path takes a turn to the right, then it bends back again towards the ice shelf of Nordaustlandet, heading straight into an ingrown cave of ice. Iven ices over the water beneath the cave's mouth and beckons me inside.

"This is amazing." I run my hands over the smooth, blue-white walls of ice, strong and stable as rock. The cave extends deep into the glacier, stretching off into half-darkness. The wind sings against the ice, and I can feel the waves pulsing under Iven's ice cover. It's like nothing I've seen or felt or heard before.

"There are lots of glacier caves embedded in Austfonna," Iven says, "but this one is the best. I've been coming here since I was twelve."

I lean back against the cave wall, manipulating its shape to fit my figure, and watch the mist of my breath dissolve into nothingness. "I can see why," I say. "I try to get away from Nixan politics whenever I can, too."

Iven settles himself next to me, slouching against the wall. "It sucks to be a Nixan sometimes," he agrees. "But it comes with its benefits. Like this—there's no one else who could last more than a minute in here."

I laugh, thinking of the bundled-up Caphian helping us off the plane. "Lucky, lucky us."

Iven touches my cheek, and gently turns my head to face his. He slides his other hand under my neck to lift it off the ice, pulling me into him. Cautiously, he traces my jaw and tilts his head and leans in, letting his lips graze mine.

I go stiff immediately, resisting the kiss, and he feels it. He pulls away, setting my head back against the ice. His eyes are concerned. "I'm sorry," he says. "I should have asked."

I try to stand up straight, but I feel suddenly dizzy. "It's fine," I tell him; "I was just...a little surprised."

"Surprised?" he echoes. "Cass, we're getting married tonight."

My heart stops, frozen solid in my chest.

"What?"

Iven steps back, stuttering. "Yes—our parents planned it, last month. I'm sorry; I thought you knew."

_Married? To Prince Iven?_ My knees start to shake. It all makes too much sense—why my father let me come with him to Svalbard, why he had me pick out a white dress....

"There's no Arrival Day ball tonight, is there?" I ask quietly.

"There's going to be a dance after the bond-lock ceremony," Iven says. His vanilla brows sink low, a deep crease growing between them. "You didn't know about any of this?"

"No." I try again to push myself up, but a wave of nausea sweeps over me, strong and sudden. "I feel sick."

"You look sick." Iven puts a hand to my forehand concernedly; I resist the urge to shrink back. "I'm sorry I surprised you like that."

"No...it's not your fault." I remove the hand as gently as I can. "I'm just—the trip here wore me out, and I'm not really used to riding horses. I just need some rest."

"Of course," the prince says. "I should've known." Carefully he wraps an arm around my waist; I let him, only because I can't trust myself to walk on my own.

Iven leads me back across the ice, reinforcing its surface wherever the lapping waves have eaten away at it, and takes me back to the horses. I lean on him the whole time, but neither of us say a word.

_This can't be happening,_ I think. _Not again._

# Four Months Ago: Cassatia

Keira had always told me that Coeur d'Alene wasn't a _real_ Sen city, but for someone who'd never been around any number of Senex before, it was overwhelming. I'd seen cars and roads and tall buildings before, and I'd watched a few Sen movies on Keira's phone, but never before had I been out in their world like this.

"Keep your head down," my father said quietly beside me. "You're drawing too much attention to yourself."

"Sorry." I stopped gaping around at the Sen shops and studied my feet instead, slouching down self-consciously.

My father stopped me in front of the entrance to a place called _Ataraxia_. Looking through its curtained windows, I saw that it was a restaurant—a very fancy restaurant.

"Is this what we came all the way out here for?" I wondered, trying not to sound too disappointed. "To eat at a restaurant?"

"Not exactly," my father said, smoothing out the sleeves of my dress and fixing a few unruly strands of hair. "We're meeting Professor Fayeren here, and his son Ainsil."

"Really?" My father had never allowed me anywhere near Nixan boys before, other than my little brother. "I didn't even know he had a son."

"He does; a boy about your age." Satisfied now that I looked presentable, he wrapped an arm around my shoulders and guided me forward. "I hope that the two of you will be able to get along."

"Of course."

"I mean it, Cassatia." He stopped me before I could push open the doors, turning me around to face him. "This is important. I need to make sure he's suitable for you."

_Oh._ I had a bad feeling about what he meant by that. My heart squeezed in my chest. "Suitable?" I echoed, my breath hitching.

"Yes," Fenris said. "You're a Nixan lady, Cassatia. You had to know that this was going to happen."

"That what was going to happen?"

"Don't play dumb—you know what," he snapped. "I've been in talks with the professor about this for years. We want to see the two of you married."

Married.

"No." I struggled my way out of his grip. "That's insane. I'm not getting married to someone I've never met before."

"You're meeting today." My father caught me again; through the doors I could see the restaurant hostess watching us concernedly. "Come on inside, Cassatia." I didn't have any way out of this, so I followed him in, my legs like wobbly lead.

Inside, soft jazz music filled the air with easy sophistication. My father nodded to the wide-eyed hostess and led me to the back of the restaurant, where two Nixan men sat on opposite sides of a four-person table—Natanael Fayeren, chancellor of the Royal Academy, and a teenage boy. A teenage boy who my father wanted to be my bond. _Nixa, please help me._

My father drew back the chair beside the boy and motioned for me to sit. I obeyed without a word, swiping the skirt of my dress clumsily underneath me.

"Cassatia," Professor Fayeren said as Fenris took his seat beside him, "this is Ainsil, my oldest son." I turned to look at him, taking in his wide blue eyes, his puckered lips, the shadow of hair growing beneath his nose. He wasn't bad-looking, to say the least—but the thought of marrying him filled me with intense revulsion.

Ainsil Fayeren held out a hand. "Pleased to meet you, my lady." Reluctantly I took it, and shook it as gingerly as possible.

"They'll have to do better that that," the professor said to my father, shaking his head. I tensed, dropping Ainsil's hand as fast as I would a burning ember.

My father nodded. "But they'll have plenty of time to get acquainted. Anyone can learn to be bonds."

"We should start looking at rings, then," Fayeren replied.

"You're kidding," I said; I couldn't help myself. " _Bond-rings_ , already?" Both men flinched at my tone. I felt Ainsil's eyes searching my face, but I refused to turn and acknowledge him again.

"It's not as sudden as you think, my lady," the professor said with a smile. "Your father and I have been planning this since you were a child."

"I don't care what you've been planning. I just met him," I said. "I'm not going to marry him."

Fayeren tensed, looking to my father expectantly. "You're seventeen, Cassatia," Fenris said sternly. "You aren't a Sen; it's time for you to get your bond. This is how we have always done things."

"You can't make me marry someone I don't want to," I insisted. "It's not your choice."

"We had a deal, Your Grace," Fayeren said quietly to Fenris.

Fenris held up a hand to placate him. "My daughter will come around," he promised. "She'll marry your son—I will make sure of it."

_I will make sure of it._ I felt like I was about to throw up.

A waitress chose that moment to stop at our table, brandishing a pen and notepad. "Can I start you all off with something to drink?"

"Where's your bathroom?" I asked, my voice hoarse.

"Cassatia," Fenris said under his breath.

"Past the hostess's stand and to the right," the waitress replied, directing me with her arm.

"Thank you." I stood and walked off before anyone could stop me. I passed the hostess, but I eschewed the bathrooms and headed instead out the restaurant doors, running straight onto the road.

A car flying towards me honked loudly, its driver slamming on the brakes. It screeched to a stop just inches from my knees. Loud music pounded from inside it; when the driver rolled down his window, the pounding grew even louder, spilling out onto the street.

"What're you doing in the middle of the road, dumbass?" the driver yelled at me around a cigarette. "You looking to kill yourself or something?"

I circled around to his window and ripped off my necklace—a tight string of pearls, gleaming in the sunlight. "I'll give you this if you can get me out of here." The man made a grab for the pearls, but I held them up out of his reach.

"Get you where?" he asked.

"I don't care. Just get me away from this place."

The man motioned for me to get in the car; I opened a back door and climbed in amongst burger wrappers and the powerful stench of smoke and grease. A suspicious-looking little box was tucked underneath the driver's seat.

"Go," I said, trying not to cough. "If you're fast enough, I'll throw in my earrings." I held one up to show him: miniature diamonds dangling from tendrils of silver.

The driver hit the gas in response, and away we flew. 

# 3 October: Keira

We drive west from Norfolk into northern Pennsylvania, where I tell Wes and Basil we'll have the easiest time getting past the Sentry border guards. As we wind our way through the mountains, the sun climbs into view and glares at us through the rearview mirror.

Wes takes out his aura detector and fiddles with it every five minutes or so, as if waiting for Sentry guards to pop up on it. Eventually he says, "We have to be close to the border stations now."

"We are," I tell him truthfully.

"Then we should find somewhere to stop and rest before we cross over."

"And eat," Basil adds, fingering the empty peanut bag beside him.

_Great Goddess, why now?_ "We can't stop in the middle of the buffer zone," I protest. I've never felt less in need of food or sleep; my body is pounding and buzzing like I'm amped up on caffeine. _We're so freaking close._ Once we get to the border guards, I'll be all done with this mess. __

"The buffer zone is a hell of a lot better than Nixan land," Wes says. "I'd rather stop now instead of waiting for Baz to fall asleep at the wheel just across the border." Baz shoves him, but nods his agreement.

I take a deep breath. "If we stop now, we'd just be giving the Wardens time to band together and come after us. I'm sure they'd be fine crossing into no man's land for something like this."

"They have no idea where we are," Wes says. "And even if they did, they wouldn't dare come this close to the Nixan border. Another minute of driving and we'll be showing up on Sentry aura detectors."

"You're outnumbered two-to-one," Basil tells me.

I grit my teeth, fuming. We're starting to get uncomfortably close to October sixth—Cass's birthday, the day she'll be permanently exiled to Nixa knows where if I'm not back in New Fauske with Ferignis. But teenage boys are going to do what teenage boys want to do; there's no use in arguing. "Where do you suggest we stay, then? I don't see any Marriotts around here."

Basil pulls off onto a little side road snaking through the mountains. "No, but there are plenty of abandoned little summer cabins all around," he says. "We'll find something."

We do, pretty quickly: an old log cabin at the top of a big, steep-sloped wooded hill. A fallen tree, dead long enough that it's begun to rot, blocks the pebbly driveway halfway up, a good sign that the cabin hasn't been lived in for a while.

We park the car beside the fallen tree and climb the rest of the way up to the cabin ourselves. It's the kind of worn-down and out-of-date abode that some charitable people would describe as _quaint_ —old, tattered lacy curtains in the windows, a tree bough hanging precariously over the roof, half the paint (lead paint, probably) chipped off the door. The door's hinges are so rusty that it takes a solid two minutes for us to open it.

Inside is no better than out—the air is stale, and everything is covered in several layers of dust. Basil immediately heads for the kitchen, burrowing through the cabinets and pantry in search of food.

"Nothing," he concludes, exasperated. "Not even canned beans."

"There has to be someplace to buy food around here," Wes says. "Maybe fifty miles away, but still."

"We only have forty bucks between the two of us for this whole trip, Wes," Baz points out. "And I'm sure my parents have already gone and frozen my bank account."

"I have money," I say reluctantly. I do; I'd been saving up my miniscule Sentry allowance for the past year so I could buy Cass a phone for her birthday. But thanks to my current situation, my priorities have flipped around a little. Now my primary concerns are making it back to New Fauske with Ferignis in time and making sure Fenris knows I'm not still locked up in Boston. And since Wes idiotically left my phone back at the Warden compound, debit card purchases are the only way my progress across the country can be tracked. So I pull my card from my jacket pocket and grudgingly hold it out to Basil.

Basil waves it away. "You get the food," he tells Wes. "I'm the one who's been driving all night."

"Not with her I'm not." He raises his cuffed wrist, indicating the form chain connecting us. "If you want to take her instead, be my guest."

"Fine," Baz sighs. "But you don't get to sleep till I get back." Wes nods, rolling his eyes.

Once Baz is gone, his car disappearing trunk-first down the hill, Wes sits down at a rickety old table pressed up against a cracked, grimy cabin window. He fastens his cuff of the form chain to one of its legs—if I wanted to, I could easily flip the table over and break free, but whatever—and kicks his Ferignis-laden backpack against the wall. I take the seat across from him and lean back against the window glass, sighing.

"I couldn't fall asleep right now even if I wanted to," Wes admits.

"Same," I say dryly. "Why did we stop here, then?"

"Because," Wes says, "we're not meeting the Sentry Line guards sleep-deprived."

"You don't have to worry about the Line guards," I lie. "I promised you I know how to deal with them." Wes raises an eyebrow, prompting me to elaborate, but I don't; I doubt he'd be too pleased to hear the details of my plan.

"So," I say, clearing my throat, "how long are we going to stay here?"

Wes shrugs, not letting his eyes leave mine. "As long as we need to sleep for, I guess. We can leave sometime tonight."

_Good._ By the end of tonight, Wes and Basil will be Sentry chow, and I'll be on my way back to New Fauske with Ferignis. Maybe I can even get Caphian to fly a plane out here for me. I close my eyes and picture myself reclining back in a cushy plane seat, sipping a soda and humming along to music, with the _jnani_ sword propped up by my side....

"What're you smiling about?" Wes demands.

"Nothing," I assure him.

But first, I have to ensure that my Warden captor is sufficiently annoyed and uncomfortable. If he's going to delay my victory flight, he sure as hell is going to pay for it.

So I crack my knuckles and splay my hands out on the table, lean forward an inch too far, and ask the question most despised by the antisocial, ultra-cagey Westrey Dorsans of the world: "So, I was thinking—while we're waiting here, why don't we take the opportunity to tell each other a little more about ourselves?" 

# Two Years Ago: Keira

The morning of our final Sentry trial, we were all frisked for weapons and handed daggers and folded photos on our way out of the dorms.

The dagger was nothing special, standard steel with a bronze hilt; it was the photo that was important. I broke its seal with my nail and opened it, studying the face that glowered back at me. It was a girl, blonde with emerald-green eyes. Not Delphi, thank the Goddess.

The blonde girl would be getting a similar photo of me—maybe she already had. They'd taken the pictures during lunch, so I most likely had spaghetti sauce smeared all over my face. Hopefully that would make me harder to recognize.

I glanced back behind me into the dorm, wondering if I could find my girl right then. But I couldn't see much of anything; there were too many people crowded around the door, all too eager to get their daggers and assignments.

We were taken outside to the endless expanse of desert extending out behind the Sonoran building. The morning sun was blinding, boring right into my eyes—I should've grabbed the sunglasses Diana packed for me.

Two strings of observation towers, spaced about a hundred feet apart, stretched off into the distance. Coaches stood at the top of each tower, arms crossed behind their backs. We candidates were directed to stay within the space between the towers. I found myself wedged somewhere in the middle of the pack, with a little bit of elbow room in each direction.

I looked around some more for my girl, squinting into the sun. But it was hopeless—there were a thousand kids around me, and a few hundred of them were blonde girls. I wished I could've gotten someone with pink hair or a mohawk or something.

"Keira." I spun around to find Delphi grinning sheepishly at me. My stomach flipped. _Delphi...._

"Hey," I breathed. "You ready for this?"

Instead of answering, Delphi snuck a hand behind my neck and pulled me closer, the cool metal of his dagger pressing into my nape. I made a startled noise deep in my throat. Delphi's other hand cupped my chin, angling it up until I was staring point-blank into his deep dark eyes. And then he leaned into me and planted a kiss on my lips.

Instinctively my mouth opened to make room for his, and I felt Delphi's hot breath traveling down my trachea. It took me a second to come to my senses: _What am I doing?_ I quickly shoved him away, stepping back and wiping the taste of him from my mouth. "What the hell was that?"

Delphi's eyes were twinkling, and his smile was wider and whiter than ever. "I wanted to kiss a girl before I die," he said. "You seemed like a good choice."

My head reeled as he disappeared back into the crowd. The desert spun and flipped and somersaulted around me. _A good choice?_ What did that mean? Did it mean anything? _A good choice...._

_Focus, you idiot,_ I snapped at myself. _This is important._ Life-or-death, literally.

Asreil the lieutenant stepped out of the building with a microphone; everyone, coaches and candidates alike, immediately went quiet and turned to face him. "Congratulations, all of you, on making it to this stage of the trials," he began. "You have all proven to myself and to your coaches that you have the potential to be great Sentries." Everyone took a moment to applaud themselves, while I squeezed shut my eyes in an attempt to dispel the image of Delphi's smile.

"We have narrowed down our pool to one thousand and twenty-four of you," Asreil continued. "Exactly twice of what we need this year. You have each been paired randomly with another candidate. Only one of you will take the name of Serasul."

I looked at the picture of my target again. She had a little mole on the side of her neck and a healing scar along her left cheekbone. Nothing that really popped out.

"I will go over the rules now." The lieutenant stepped forward and cleared his throat. "No shifting is allowed, nor any weapons other than the dagger you were given today. You may only kill the candidate that you have been paired with." There was a collective intake of breath from the mob at the word _kill_. "Any other kills will result in your immediate disqualification from the trials."

I felt the thrumming of my pulse everywhere from my throat to the heels of my feet. And as my pulse rose, so did the temperature of Cass's pendant, pumping strength through my bloodstream and helping to quell my fear just a little.

"You will begin at the blow of my whistle. When you have completed your trial, hold up your dagger and one of your coaches will come to confirm your kill and assign you a sector. Those who finish first will get their first choice of location." He glanced around, shielding his eyes against the sun. "Any questions?" No one came forward. I bit my lip and tightened my grip on my dagger. _This is it._

I mumbled a quick prayer—"Please, Nixa, don't let me die"—and then Asreil blew his whistle, transforming the quiet stretch of desert into a bloodbath with one little puff of air.

Danger came at me from all sides. A shifter girl lunged past me, brandishing her blade, in pursuit of her target, almost taking my nose off along the way. Someone else, running past me from behind, slammed hard into my leg, and it was all I could do to keep my balance and not face-plant in the middle of a wild stampede. Some desperate idiot decided to throw his dagger at someone on the other side of me; I ducked out of the way to keep it from implanting itself in my skull. Three near-deaths, one after the other.

A blade slashed at my arm, tearing through my skin like butter. Red-hot pain shot up my body—I would have keeled over from the strength of it if not for Cass's pendant, which checked the pain almost instantly.

I whipped around to face my attacker, my own blade at the ready. She was blonde, with emerald-green eyes and a mole on her neck and a thin cut framing her cheekbone. Her mouth was curled into a semi-feral snarl.

It was my girl.

She swiped at me again; I blocked the blow with my dagger, hearing the ringing clang of metal as the blades scraped together. The girl staggered back from the force, and I leapt at her and yanked her forward with her shirt balled up in my hand. Another shifter running by knocked into my shoulder, hard, but I barely felt it. All I felt was the drumming of my heart and the heat of Cass's pendant searing my skin.

The girl grit her teeth, struggling to free herself from my grip with grunts and curses. I held her still and slammed my dagger's hilt into the side of her head as hard as I could. She fell forward into my arms, knocked instantly unconscious.

I adjusted my grip on the dagger, ready for its blade now. Shifters streamed past us like minnows headed downstream, giving us only the thinnest of berths. Looking around, I saw several daggers already thrust into the air, and several of the observation towers vacated as coaches flew down to check out the kills. Vultures, some of them in the literal sense.

I snuck my blade under the girl's shirt and sliced through the skin between her ribs, thrusting up towards her heart. Her eyes were still open—I hadn't ever seen eyes as green as hers before, even on a shifter.

Her body began to convulse, thrashing wildly in my arms so that I could barely hold onto her. Blood spilled over my fingers, warm and thick. I pulled out the dagger, and blood gushed from the wound, seeping out from under her shirt and covering my entire lower arm.

I put the blade to her throat and slit it, digging into the vital arteries there. Even more blood oozed from between her lips, and her eyes went dull entirely. The spasms stopped, and the body went still.

I couldn't stand to look at her for more than a moment. I let the body fall from my arms, landing at my feet to be kicked and stepped on by the shifters fighting for their lives all around us.

I raised my dagger above my head, and the nearest coach swooped down from his tower to land bent over the girl's body. He checked for pulse and breath, then stood with a clipboard in hand and congratulated me on becoming a Sentry. "In which sector would you like to serve?"

Even though I'd known the answer to that question for years, it was a full minute before I had the voice to respond.

❄🔥❄

The five hundred and twelve of us left were marched back inside the Sonoran building to be cleaned up. A Sentry massaged antiseptic cream into my blade wound, which had begun to hurt again as soon as Cass's pendant had cooled, assuring me that it would heal fine. Most of the shifters around me were in worse condition; several were limping, and one had a gaping leg wound that would probably need to be treated by Nixan healers.

After all our collective blood had been washed off, we were taken into a long hall in the building's left wing where Sentries waited at tables with tattoo guns. We were divided into lines, and the Sentries immediately got to work etching Sentry marks into everyone's right forearm.

I scanned the hall for Delphi, but his almost- _faedra_ eyes and elvish grin were nowhere to be found. I tried not to worry; I couldn't see most of the remaining shifters from my place in line.

Cass's pendant had gone entirely cold by this point, which made getting my tattoo much more painful than the dagger wound. It was all I could do to keep my arm still while the gun needle tore at it, driving its signature blue ink deep into my skin. The pain allowed me to forget about Delphi, at least for a moment.

I looked for him again in our next location: the big gym we were brought into on our first night in the Sonoran building. The chairs and screen were gone, but Caphian had returned, along with a handcuffed girl he held by the elbow. Her dark hair reached all the way down to her waist, and her slender figure was wrapped in a sun-patterned turquoise drape. She was one of the _jnani_ telepaths, taken from India years ago to maintain the Sentry mind-link.

I still couldn't find Delphi. I craned my neck and stood on tiptoe, wishing I were taller than five-three, but I couldn't pick him out from amongst the sea of shifter heads.

"Spread out some more," Caphian directed, gesturing with his free hand. "You'll need space to lie down." The crowd thinned as shifters retreated into the open corners of the gym; I continued my search fruitlessly. _Delphi, where the hell are you?_

"Hey." Someone tapped me on the shoulder. I turned to find the girl who'd slept next to me in the dorm—Mira, she was called. She had a nasty cut running across her forehead, but other than that she looked okay.

"Congratulations," I said, not knowing what she wanted from me. "We made it."

"Yeah." She glanced down at her feet. "You killed Soraia."

"Oh." My thoughts flashed back to the girl, her bright green eyes and lifeless body. It was worse with a name attached. "Were you friends?" I asked quietly.

She shook her head, blushing. "No, no—not really. I just...knew her. We grew up together."

_What does she want me to say?_ "I had to. It wasn't really a choice, I mean. She would've killed me."

"To complete your initiation as Nixan Sentries," Caphian said from up front, "you will need to pledge your allegiance and be joined to our mind-link. Laena will put you to sleep, and when you wake your minds will be connected to those of every Sentry in the Western Province."

"No, I know," Mira said. She fingered her hair, her eyes flitting across the gym nervously. "I, um...I was paired with your friend."

The blood froze in my veins. "Who?"

"You know, the one you always hung out with at night. The one I kept having to tell to shut up because he was laughing too loud."

"Repeat these words after me," Caphian directed. "I pledge my life, loyalty, and honor to King Aknes, the Loraveires, and the Nixans of the Western Province. I give my soul to the goddess Nixa and swear to uphold the laws of her Trinity. I swear to defend her from all who might deny or defile her, and to aid in the Nixans' holy mission to share her teachings with every Novan."

His pledge was echoed around the room, but I couldn't bring myself to join in. _Delphi._ My knees gave out underneath me, and I collapsed onto the gym floor.

"Are you okay?" Mira knelt down beside me. "I'm sorry; I shouldn't have told you like that."

"Now lie back," Caphian said. "Unless you want to fall asleep on your feet."

"He came at me first," Mira said. "Went right for my throat. I was just defending myself."

I could barely hear her. My ears were ringing, and everything was spinning like it was after he kissed me. _Oh, Nixa, no. Please no._

I saw him then, right in front of me. Strutting over with his hands in his pockets, leaning over me smugly. "Guess I won't be coming to New Fauske after all," he said.

My eyes closed against their will, and I fell back against the floor, asleep before my head hit the ground. 

# 3 October: Westrey

I raise my eyebrows, leaning back until I'm a safe distance away from Keira's face. "You want to know more about me?"

"Yeah." Keira gives me a lopsided smile. "I want to know what your life was like before you had a shifter stuck to your arm. You know—pretty girls, the sister we're running off to save, the reason your Warden buddies call you _Doorstop_...."

"Door _step_ , actually," I correct her. "And it's a really stupid reason."

"What's the really stupid reason?"

I lower my shoulders, deciding to go ahead and humor her. "Well," I say, "like I said, me and Freya don't know who our parents are, which means they must've been Wardens who didn't take their Warden's vows. Deserters."

"That's allowed?"

"Sort of." I sigh. "It's very rare, but you're allowed to refuse the vows and go off into the Sen world instead. The only condition is that if you ever have kids, you have to bring them back to the Wardens to be raised. And deserters usually don't want to be seen again by the Wardens they left, so they leave their kids outside a bunker in a basket or something."

"Ah." Keira nods understandingly. "So you were a doorstep baby."

"Basically," I say. "That's just what they call all deserters' kids. It's not exactly a compliment."

"I'd imagine not," Keira says, giving me a somewhat rueful smirk. She leans forward again. "So, is there anything else interesting that's happened in your life? Embarrassing Sen school stories, maybe?"

"No."  
She narrows her eyes interrogatively. "You have to have embarrassing Sen school stories," she insists.

"Not any that I want to share with you, I don't." I lift my chin to her. "It's your turn now. Tell me about yourself." I am curious about how she grew up, at least a little.

Keira sighs, tilting her head to the side. "Well, I was born in Skalten, the capital of Sector Three—it's near Minneapolis, sort of. I never went to school, but my foster parents taught me to read and write and everything. I lived with them until I was seven, when my eyes turned."

"Any siblings?"

She shrugs. "No idea. Shifters are supposed to have as few links as possible to other shifters, so foster parents aren't allowed to raise more than one kid at a time. If I had a twin like you, we would've been raised apart."

"Shit," I say.

"Anyway, once my eyes turned, I was shipped off to New Fauske to work in Fenris's castle. I've never seen my foster parents since. End of story."

"What, so you lived in the castle until the Sentry trials?"

"Yeah." She gives a small, almost imperceptible shudder.

"What were they like?" I prompt her. "The trials, I mean." The Wardens know next to nothing about the Sentries' centuries-old initiation process.

"Hard," she says tersely. "Less than half of us made it to become Sentries."

"All the other shifters were...what, killed?"

"Yep." She looks away. "Each of us had to kill another shifter on the last day of the trials, to prove that we could if we had to." She picks at her nails. "I had a friend there who was killed that day. I knew the girl that killed him, too."

"That's rough," I say. "Really rough." She nods, clearly not wanting to elaborate.

But I'm not finished with her yet. "Have you had to kill anyone since then?"

She closes her eyes. "This isn't exactly my favorite thing to talk about, you know."

"So you have, then."

"Only once." Keira opens her eyes again, but keeps them averted from mine. "It was right after the Massacre. There was a big Shade camp revolt, and Caphian took a bunch of the new Sentries with him to help put it down. I—well, I shot at a bunch of people. There wasn't really another option; the Nixans don't have much use for a Sentry who won't kill anyone." Her voice goes low. "We were always told that we were fighting to save Novans from eternal damnation, but I never really understood how putting a bullet through someone's head was supposed to save them from anything."

I frown at Keira, sizing her up. I've always thought of the Sentries as Nixan henchmen, loyally executing the will of the dukes and king. But hearing Keira hash out her life like that—taken from her parents when she was seven, locked away and made to work in a castle, then fight for her life at the Sentry trials and beyond, and be forced into killing—makes me wonder if the Sentries are really Nixan lackeys or Nixan slaves.

Freya is the only family I've ever had, and the shifters took her away from me. I've always blamed them as much as the Nixans for what happened to her. But maybe I haven't been seeing the whole picture.

"What are you looking at me like that for?" Keira demands.

"I think I'm starting to see why you'd want Fenris dead," I tell her. "The Nixans have screwed over the Sentries as much as they've screwed over the Wardens."

Keira opens her mouth to reply, but she falters, her eyes flitting suddenly to something over my shoulder. I turn around to find that a trio of people has slunk into the room behind us, silent as snakes.

"A shifter and a Warden shacked up in the mountains, discussing the death of Duke Fenris?" one of them says. "That sure isn't something you see every day. Mind if we join in?" 

# 3 October: Keira

Three flawless-looking men and women stand against the cabin wall, brows raised and eyes twinkling. I hadn't even heard them come in. Their hair is raven-black, their skin a few shades darker than Wes's: using the Novan version of racial profiling, I determine that they must be vamps, dusties, or Shades with dyed hair. When one of the girls smiles, revealing a pair of razor-sharp upper canines, I quickly decide that my first guess was correct.

My pendant grows warm; I can feel adrenaline pulsing through my body. Vamps are bad news—they're stronger and faster than anything I can shift into, and their bites are more venomous than any snake's. They drink your blood, like vampires in Sen stories, but only after they've stopped your heart. They're the Wardens' allies, but the conversations I overheard in the Boston bunker made it clear that vamp-Warden relations are about as sunshine and rainbows as Shade-Nixan relations. So, basically, we're screwed.

I stand, the form chain clanking against the floor. The smiling vamp girl laughs. "The Warden chained his shifter to a table," she says. "It doesn't look like we're dealing with Einstein here."

"The chain keeps her from shifting," Wes growls. "What are you doing here? This is way past the guard stations."

"We live out here," the vamp says, creeping closer. Her companions follow, a short step behind. "Not everybody likes to play by your rules, you know. Your people are assholes; they try to tell us what to do, and they give us no say in it at all." She lifts a shoulder. "Last I heard, this country was a democracy."

"Funny," Wes mutters.

"Not really," the one boy vamp says. He's tall and dark, with guyliner and bulging arms.

"Anyway," the first vamp says, "we just stopped by for a chat, and maybe a little bite to eat. It's not often we find Wardens or Sentries creeping around the no-fly zone. Finding both at the same time's even rarer." She licks her lips, her eyes flitting between the two of us excitedly. "We're not supposed to touch Wardens, of course, but I figure you're fair game if you're all the way out here."

"They'll make a nice treat," the other girl says behind her, sweeping back her bangs. "I haven't fed on a Novan in years."

Wes's arms burst into flame, all the way up to his shoulders. He pulls his fire-gun from his belt. "You can't touch me," he says. "You're not immune to fire, are you? Or bullets?" He fires the gun into the midst of the vamps; a millisecond later and they've all leapt aside, allowing the bullet to fly between them and through a window instead.

"Smart," I say to Wes.

The vamps share a look, amused. "That was cute," the girl in front says. "I think I'll start with your pet shifter, though." _Of course._ She steps up to me and grabs me by the shoulders. Her hands, complete with sharpened fake nails, look dainty and fragile, but I feel their strength firmly holding me in place. I don't even try to resist. She winks at me, almost seductively. I bite back the urge to spit in her face.

She grabs my arm and runs a nail down its underside, slicing open the skin all the way down to my Sentry mark. I bite my tongue to keep from crying out until Cass's pendant eases the pain. The vamp lifts my arm to her nose and sniffs at the blood, her eyes brightening.

Her other hand leaves my shoulder and traces its way across my collarbone, wrapping finally around my pendant. I tense; the vamp notices, and smiles. "Pretty necklace," she says. "Mind if I take it?" And with one firm yank, she snaps it clean off my neck.

_"Eeeeeep!"_ A high-pitched wail cries out from behind me, the wail of an aura detector; the vamps' heads snap up in tandem, and Wes unleashes a wild volley of fireballs and bullets that sends the girl with bangs flying out the door. The hair of my pendant thief catches fire—she screeches and drops to the ground to smother it. In one fluid motion, I shift into a kite and shake off the form chain, fly upside-down over the table with a couple of wing beats, and land in human form beside Wes's backpack as the chain clatters to the ground. I pull Ferignis by the hilt from the backpack and rip off its sheath.

The remaining girl vamp, standing again, narrows her eyes; the boy, who has pinned Wes to the wall, stiffens and stares. Wes frees himself with a well-placed crotch kick and a fireball; then, realizing the cause of the vamps' distraction, he turns to me and gapes stupidly.

"So you _can_ shift, Sentry," the girl vamp says, looking wary now. _Good._

I stand, slowly, and creep around the table towards the vamps, holding Ferignis out in front of me. I clench the sword as tightly as I can, pain throbbing up and down my arm now that my pendant is gone. Blood drips to the ground, forming a path of little red dots and rivulets behind me.

"What is that?" the guy vamp asks.

"It's called Ferignis," I say. "Its touch can burn the flesh off a vamp and send them straight to hell." I step closer, as confidently as I can. The vamps backtrack towards each other until they stand shoulder to shoulder.

While I have their attention, Wes slinks up behind them and presses his gun to the girl's temple. She flinches away from the metal, grabbing Wes by the arm only to release him with a yelp a moment later when he sets himself on fire again.

"I suggest you get out of here," I say, swiveling the aim of the sword between her chest and the boy's. "Follow your friend, and go find a snack that's not in possession of vamp-killing weaponry."

The vamps turn to each other doubtfully. The girl nods, clutching Cass's pendant to her chest, and the two of them vanish in a rush of wind, too fast for my eyes to follow.

Wes tucks away his gun, and I lower Ferignis onto the table behind me. "That bloodsucker took my pendant," I breathe. I retrace the vamps' steps to the open cabin door, searching the floor in case she dropped it in her hurry to get away. Nope.

"How did you get out of the form chain?" Wes demands. "How did you shift?"

"Oh, come on," I say. "You really think that chain had some special magic that kept me from shifting?"

"Yes," Wes says, "because you couldn't shift before." He comes up to stand right behind me and crosses his arms. "Or were you just pretending?"

"Well, I _was_ ," I admit, "but only because I knew there was no way your Warden friends would let me stay in their bunker if they knew I could fly away whenever I wanted to. Which I didn't do, by the way." I try to step outside, but Wes swings in front of the doorway and blocks me.

"Where do you think you're going?" he growls, holding me back and closing the door. "Like hell I'm letting you run off into the woods by yourself."

"I have to find my pendant," I say, struggling against him. I could shift—I have no reason to pretend I can't now—but I don't want to freak him out even more.

"You've got to be kidding me," he says. "After all that, you're worried about your necklace?"

"It's not just a necklace," I snap, grunting as I try to shove him aside. "It's an ice-glass necklace, you idiot."

That was the wrong thing to say. _Damn it._

"It's _what_?" Wes pushes me away from the door forcefully, taking his aura detector from his belt. "Is that why this went off when the vamp ripped it off you?" He shoves a finger at the little gray dot in the detector's center, meant to represent me. "The ice-glass was hiding your aura or something?"

"I didn't know it could do that," I say quickly. I hadn't, at least until a couple weeks ago when Evana told me. And now I've unintentionally handed Wes a super helpful nugget of confidential Nixan information. _Oops._

"Well, you knew it was ice-glass," Wes growls. "You didn't think that was worth mentioning before?"

"It was just a gift, all right? From a friend." I run my fingers along the skin beneath my collarbone where the pendant had been; I hadn't taken it off in over two years. "It's not like I could actually channel Old Magic with it or anything. I'm not a priest."

Wes slams shut the cabin door, trapping me inside. "Well, it's gone for good now. There's no way the vamp just _dropped it_ ; people with perfect coordination don't drop things."

He's right, unfortunately. Cass's pendant, the whole reason I got sent here in the first place, is gone for good.

Gritting my teeth with frustration, I slump back against the wall and clutch at my still-throbbing arm. I watch Wes out of the sides of my eyes as he fiddles with the aura detector. "I should have this set to pick up all Novan auras," he mutters. "Apparently our allies aren't very good at being allies." He puts the detector on _everybody_ mode; there's another shrill beep, and two red dots pop up beside mine, the orange dots of the vamps already outside the detector's range. "Looks like Baz is back, at least."

Sure enough, Basil stumbles into the cabin a minute later, carrying four grocery bags worth of food. He takes in the scene—the bullet hole in the window, the soot and blood stains on the floor, the shifter-less chain cuffed to a table leg.

"Okay," he says; "what exactly did I miss?" 

# Seventeen Months Ago: Keira

I leaned over the café counter, my arms still sore from my last supply patrol. "I'll have three strawberry smoothies, please."

The barista at the register punched in my order. "That'll be eleven twenty-five."

_"I'm paying,"_ I said through the mind-link.

Salene narrowed her eyes at me. _"No, you're not."_

_"I wanted strawberry banana, actually,"_ Arion said.

I turned to look at him, reclining back in his seat with his eyes shut. I'd thought he was asleep.

"Actually, can you change one of those to strawberry banana?" I asked. The barista sighed as she put in the new order, nodding.

I paid for the smoothies despite Salene's protests, and when they were ready I grabbed some straws and helped her carry them back to our table.

Salene kicked Arion in the shin. "Wake up, you lazy ass. Keira just bought you a smoothie."

"Thanks, Keira," he yawned, sitting up. "I'll buy you something the next time we're here."

_Here_ was Marley's, a Sen café that had also happened to be a bona fide Sentry hangout. It was nestled in a small Sen town only a short flight away from New Fauske, and it had great coffee and smoothies. Plus, the Marley's baristas and regular patrons knew not to ask about the weird eyes and strange conversations.

"If you're feeling charitable, I'd rather you just pay me back," I tell Arion. "I'm trying to save up to buy one of those battery charger phone case things."

"Be quiet," Salene muttered, taking a sip of her smoothie. "There are Sentries all around us. Some of them might be Caph's friends."

I snorted. "Oh, come on. Don't tell me Caphian doesn't have a secret Solas phone stashed away somewhere."

"He does," Arion confirmed. "I used to play him on Fruit Ninja."

"Still," Salene said. "We have the mind-link for a reason."

She'd hardly finished speaking when the voice of Caphian himself echoed through the mind-link: _"Meet at the top of the west tower in thirty minutes."_

All three of us froze with our smoothie straws hanging from our mouths. "Did you guys get that," Salene said, "or was that just me?"

"Nope. We're all lucky winners." Arion checked his watch. "It's barely nine in the morning. And I was up till midnight in a watchtower."

"At least you weren't on patrol," I said. "I had to fly back from Seattle yesterday." Most of the Sentries on my patrol got to ride back on the supply train, but I was one of the unfortunate few chosen to guard the train from above.

"Well," Salene sighed, "we'd better get going. Don't want to keep him waiting."

The three of us tossed our barely-touched smoothies in the trash, and as soon as we were far enough into the woods to be away from Sen eyes, we took off for New Fauske.

Sentries could never play normal for very long.

❄🔥❄

There were one hundred and eighty Sentries called by Caphian to the west tower. The tower wasn't meant to hold so many people, so most of the latecomers ended up perched on its parapets in positions that would be precarious for anyone who couldn't change into a bird at a moment's notice. Caphian stood in the center beside Asreil and Thea, his two top underlings, with a big map of Sector One propped up next to him. Behind the map were large crates of guns and patrol belts.

Well, this looked interesting. _"An emergency patrol?"_ Arion asked me and Salene. I shrugged. None of us had ever been on an emergency patrol before.

"Last night," Caphian began, "one of our supply patrols reported some discontent in a Shade camp called Fersa." He pointed it out on the map: a little dot in southeastern British Columbia. "When the patrol came to collect their monthly quota of goods, they were chased off by the Shades and given nothing from the month of production. One Sentry was badly injured, and the two Nixan missionaries stationed in the camp had to flee for their safety."

_"Pricks,"_ someone random thought into the mind-link, heard by everyone assembled. Caph looked around for them, but no one came forward. It was hard to tell who was who in the mind-link when there was a crowd.

"Anyway," Caph continued, clearing his throat, "you have all been chosen for the emergency patrol I'll be taking to put down their revolt. For many of you, this will be your first time in real combat. Most of our more experienced Sentries were participants in our assault on Alexandria last week, and I'm allowing them all to take a break from battle to recover." He'd been injured himself, I realized—his left arm was covered in burn marks that clearly hadn't been looked at by a healer yet. I wondered what lucky Warden had managed to get a shot at him. "Fortunately, we should be able to take care of these Shades without their help."

"Shades hate the sun," Thea reminded us unnecessarily. "They're at their best in the dark—they'll blind you, and use the darkness to sap your strength. Their camp is in the middle of a thick forest without much sun, but there's an open hill face just to the west of it. We are going to flush the Shades out of their camp and force them out into the open."

Caphian nodded. "We'll attack in three groups of sixty, led by myself, Asreil, and Thea." He turned to his map again, tracing a finger along the three paths he'd drawn in between Fersa and New Fauske. "Asreil's group will attack from the north, and Thea's will come in from the south. My patrol will circle around the camp to stake out in the woods past the hill. It's about a three-hour flight from here; we'll coordinate so that all the groups will arrive at about the same time."

"We're going now?" someone asked, aloud this time.

"Yes," Asreil said. "We'll reach Fersa around one, which is the best time to fight Shades. Shadows are shortest, and the sun is at its strongest."

"We're all flying there, but we have medical copters stationed nearby for the injured to get home," Caphian added. He glanced around the tower one more time. "If there aren't any questions, I'll divide you now into your groups."

Salene and I were put with Caphian, while Arion was grouped with Thea. Caph led his group over to one side of the tower, dragging one of the crates behind him. Inside it were simple handguns; I'd rather have had an assault rifle or something, but a handgun was about the biggest weapon that a shifter was capable of shifting with.

Caph had volunteers pass out belts and guns to everyone in his group while he consulted his notepad. "All right; we've got a good flight ahead of us. A good fight, too."

_"I've been to Fersa before on patrol,"_ Salene told me. _"It's one of the biggest Shade camps in the sector."_

I sighed. _"Great."_

"Keira," Caphian called. My head snapped up. "Asreil said you flew well on his last patrol with you. You'll front our formation first. Salene, you can front second."

Salene and I exchanged excited glances. _"I wasn't even sure he knew our names,"_ I thought to her. She grinned.

"We're leaving first," Caph said. "Let's go kick some ass." The Sentries on the parapets flung themselves over the side of the tower, changing into falcons and hawks and eagles as they fell; I joined the birds with Salene as a red kite, working my way quickly up to the front of the pack, and together we flew off for Fersa.

❄🔥❄

Three hours later, our patrol descended into the woods west of Fersa, ready for a fight. _"I'm tired,"_ Salene complained as she landed in falcon form beside me on the branch of a cedar tree. _"Fronting is hard."_ Though kites aren't the biggest or fastest of raptors, I wasn't tired myself; all I could feel was a red-hot spot of heat on my chest where Cass's pendant should be. __

_"We'll wait for them to come to us,"_ Caphian said to the patrol from a branch above our heads. _"Just hold tight for a few minutes."_

It wasn't long before we saw Asreil and Thea's patrols diving into the woods over the hill, coming in from opposite directions as planned. Seconds after their descent, the _bang-bang_ and whistle of gunshots reached our ears. I tensed; I couldn't see anything through the thick trees, and even with a kite's hearing, there was no way of telling if the gunshots were coming from Sentries or Shades.

_"I thought Shades slept during the day,"_ Salene said to me.

"Not if they're expecting us to attack, they don't."

Salene shivered. _"I hope Arion's okay."_

_"He'll be fine,"_ I assured her. _"He's not stupid enough to get himself killed in his first fight."_ Hopefully.

It was about five minutes of shooting and slashing and yells and screams before Shades began pouring out of the woods ahead, running downhill straight at us while simultaneously attempting to shield themselves from the sun. _"Now!"_ Caphian called. Salene and I spread our wings and dove off our branch, pumping quickly to gain altitude until we flew just below Caphian. The rest of the patrol rose from the trees as well, their wing beats following us like rolls of thunder. Some extra-ambitious Sentries overtook Caphian to fly at the head of the flock.

_"Watch your shadows!"_ Caphian warned. The Shades closest to our patrol had swapped their guns for knives; one Shade stabbed his knife into the breast of a Sentry's shadow painted on the hillside, and one of the birds ahead of us shrieked and fell to the ground like a rock. After him, a few more Sentry shadows were stabbed and slashed, and a few more Sentries plummeted to their deaths. Not me and Salene, though—we stuck right behind Caph, our shadows deftly skirting all the Shades with knives.

_"Dive!"_ Caphian yelled as we neared the center of the Shade mob. We tucked in our wings and swooped down, the wind whistling over our backs, shifting when we were a few feet above head level. I landed on a Shade woman as a snow leopard, and snapped her back simply with the force of the impact. I dealt a quick blow to her neck and landed on my feet, shifting back to a human and whipping out my gun to fire freely at the blue-and-purple-haired heads in the crowd. Caphian did the same just ahead of me, and Salene beside me.

In the thick of the crowd, we didn't have to worry as much about the Shades attacking our shadows; they could just as easily slice through the head of one of their own as one of ours. We did, however, have to worry about knives and bullets flashing past us at the speed of light—even with the ability to shift in the blink of an eye, I quickly found myself going on the defensive, worried more about preserving my own life than taking others'.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a Shade charging at Caphian with his knife extended, ready to stab him through the neck while his back was turned to him. _"Watch out!"_ I yelled to Caph, lunging forward and intercepting the knife blow with the barrel of my handgun. The gun and knife clanked together just above the nape of Caphian's neck; the Shade pulled out another knife and slashed the blade down the side of my leg. I cried out in pain, but kept my bearings long enough to shoot the man in the foot. His legs buckled underneath him, and Caph turned and fired two bullets into his chest.

"You saved my life," Caph breathed, turning to find my eyes. "Thank you."

"Don't mention it." A knife blade arced towards my head; I ducked and shifted back into kite form to get above the fray.

_"Is your leg hurt?"_ Caph asked me from below as he changed into a wolf and clamped his jaws around a woman's arm.

_"It's fine."_ It wasn't actually—my leg was bleeding even as a bird—but I couldn't feel the pain at all thanks to Cass's pendant.

_"Good. Go to the copters if it gets worse."_ Caphian lunged for his Shade woman's throat, putting an end to her screams.

I flew higher, angling my wings to circle the fight and find another place to dive in. It was much safer up here—I didn't have to worry anymore about being shadow-stabbed out of the sky, and aside from a few bullets whizzing by, all the Shades' attention was focused on the Sentries on the ground.

Asreil in eagle form flew by me, leading a small group back towards the woods. _"Some Shades are retreating to their camp,"_ he said to me, _"to recover their strength in the darkness and launch another attack. We need to drive them back into the open again, and leave the bodies of the ones we can't."_

_"All right,"_ I said, following Asreil's group towards the camp before adjusting to enter the woods twenty degrees to the left of them. I dove down to tree level and flew a little ways in, dodging branches and tree trunks and dumbstruck squirrels. I heard a sharp gasp of pain from somewhere nearby; I located the source easily, and landed neatly on the ground beside a young Shade girl huddled beneath a tree, clutching at her leg in pain and hoping the shadows around her would heal her.

I got to my feet and pulled out my gun, stepping closer until I stood directly above the Shade with my gun pointed straight at her head. It took her a minute to realize I was there—when she did, her eyes locked first on the gun in my hand, then shot up to my face. They were dark eyes, bloodshot and brightened by pain, sunken into a face framed by tousled indigo hair. The leg that she held to her chest was covered in scores of bite marks from some vicious animal. My leg would probably be killing me like that, too, if not for the pendant.

"Please don't kill me," she whispered.

The gun trembled in my hand. _Great Nixa._ The ten seconds I'd spent studying the girl were too much; I'd made her too human. It's easy to kill faceless people in a crowd, especially when you can't tell exactly who you're shooting at—but killing injured, unarmed little girls at point-blank range was something else. I still had nightmares about killing Soraia, and Soraia at least had been trying to kill me back.

A blade pierced my leg, ripping it open just above my earlier wound. The gun fell from my grasp. "Get out of here, Shaila!" a Shade boy yelled behind me, pulling me back into a chokehold. I screamed, stars dancing in my eyes.

Before I could shift my way out of the grip, another Sentry swooped down and wrested the Shade off of me. I fell to my knees with a gasp, then watched breathlessly as the Sentry slit the throat of the Shade with his own knife. He released the body, and it fell limply to the ground at his feet.

"Where's the girl?" the Sentry demanded. I turned around; she was gone, vanished into the woods. I shook my head.

"I'll find her." The Sentry shoved past me and took flight, leaving me alone with the dead body of his kill.

I stayed there, silent and still, for a good five minutes, listening to the gunshots and screams echoing around the woods until I heard hers, the shriek of the little girl as she died at the hands of the Sentry who'd rescued me. Then I grabbed my fallen gun and took off, flying back into the fight. 

# 3 October: Cassatia

Iven takes me back to Austfonna Castle and leaves me at the door to the banquet room. "Your father's inside, I think," he says. He's right; I can hear his voice, muffled, coming from the other side of the door.

"Thank you," I say gratefully. "I'm really sorry about all this."

"Don't worry about it," the prince assures me. "Hopefully you'll feel better after you get some rest." He steps away with a bow and a flash of a smile.

Taking a deep breath, I wait for Iven to retreat out of view before wrenching open the banquet room door.

My father stands at the other end of the room, deep in conversation with Evana and Caphian. Hearing me come in, they go quiet and turn to face me, surprised looks etched into all three of their faces.

"Cassatia," my father says. "You should be upstairs with your maidservant, preparing for the ball tonight."

I close the door behind me, leaving a handprint of ice on its surface. "The ball?" I ask, "or my bond-lock ceremony?"

My father stiffens; Caphian turns to him with a look of what I assume is legitimate surprise. "Bond-lock ceremony?"

"How did you find out?" my father asks me quietly.

"Prince Iven told me," I say. "Right after he tried to kiss me." I shake my head. "I can't believe this, even from you."

"Cassatia—" Evana begins, but my father lays a hand on her arm to stop her. She nods, stepping back to give him the floor.

Fenris frowns at me, disappointed, like I've performed beneath his expectations. I glare back at him, not blinking. "You can't blame me for not telling you earlier," he says, "given how you reacted the last time."

"And speaking of _the last time_ ," I say, "what about Ainsil? What happened to your big deal with Professor Fayeren?"

"I only promised Natanael that our families would be joined in marriage," Fenris says. "Ainsil has a sister, and you have a brother."

"That's disgusting." Icy tendrils creep up my arms, twisting and turning like vines across my skin. "Aren's thirteen."

"And unlike you, he understands the importance of his marriage." Fenris steps around the banquet table, coming closer to me. I shrink back until I hit the door. "I have given you the prince to take as your bond—the next ruler of Nixa's Kingdom. No one in our family has received that kind of honor before." He grabs me by the shoulders. "Do you not realize what you are being offered? You'll be a member of the royal family; you'll have everything you could possibly want."

_Not everything._ I swallow, meeting my father's eyes determinedly. "I won't," I say, shaky and quiet. "You can't make me."

Fenris scowls, looking at me like he wants to give me a slap across the face. "You're acting like a stubborn toddler," he says. "I don't understand it. Is there another boy you want to marry? Had you ever even kissed a boy before today?"

I'm silent. My father nods. "That's what I thought." He steps back from me. "You aren't refusing to bond to the prince out of love—you're refusing out of stubbornness and pettiness. You don't want to marry him only because I want you to."

"Fenris," Evana says, coming closer. "Don't be hard on her; she is overwhelmed." She looks at me with a glint of sympathy in her pale eyes. "The trip must have tired her, and a marriage as big as this one would be hard for anyone to take in so quickly." She runs a conciliatory hand down my father's arm. "Let me take her back to New Fauske. She should feel better after she's had a little time to process everything."

Fenris narrows his eyes at me, weighing his options. Then he nods. "I'll make the necessary excuses," he says. "If my daughter is going to disgrace her family, I'd rather her not do so in the middle of the holy city." He beckons Caphian over. "Can you fly Evana and Cassatia back to New Fauske?" Caph nods, bowing.

"Come on, then." Evana touches my arm gently and leads me out of the room.

"Thank you," I whisper to her. Going back to New Fauske will, at the very least, postpone my getting married for a little while. _Getting married...._

My father's right. I'd never been alone with a boy before Iven, and certainly never kissed one.

But I had kissed a girl. 

# Seventeen Months Ago: Cassatia

The _thwack-thwack_ of helicopter blades slicing up the air behind the castle was never a good sign.

Cars and planes and helicopters weren't allowed inside the city except in emergencies—helicopters meant that there had been an attack somewhere in the sector, that Sentries were injured. Or dead, of course.

I quickly sent Phoebe off to find out whatever she could; she returned to my room breathless twenty minutes later, telling me there'd been a revolt in a Shade camp called Fersa.

"Caphian took most of the new Sentries out with him," Phoebe panted. "The ones who didn't fight in Alexandria."

I froze, my blood running cold. __ Keira was a fantastic fighter, especially with the blessing from my mother's pendant—if Caph had taken a patrol of new Sentries with him to Fersa, Keira would've definitely been on it.

"Thank you, Phoebe," I said, my voice strained. "You're dismissed for the night."

"My lady." Phoebe curtsied and ran off, leaving me by myself.

I spent the next hour pacing in circles, fiddling nervously with anything within arm's reach and filling my room unintentionally with ice and snow. _Keira Keira Keira Keira Keira. Where the hell are you, Keira?_ I knew I couldn't look for her in the infirmary—no one was allowed to disturb the healers after a battle—but I had to know where Keira was, if she was in there.

I glanced out my window; if Keira wasn't hurt and had flown back to New Fauske with the rest of the Sentries, I hoped she would stop by my room to let me know she was okay. But she never did.

I felt a tug on my dress skirt and looked down to find Rhody at my feet, blinking up at me with big dark eyes. When he saw that he'd gotten my attention, he gave a little growl and pulled again at the dress, more insistently this time.

"What do you want?" I asked. In response, Rhody ran to my door and turned back to me with his tail wagging, prompting me to follow.

I sighed. "You want to go outside." Maybe that was a good idea: Keira didn't seem to be coming to see me anytime soon, and the outdoor air always helped to clear my mind. "All right, then."

I let Rhody lead me down to the castle's south entrance. Only one Sentry stood guard at the doors instead of the usual two—he stopped us before we could pass through. "We don't have any spare guards to accompany you outside, my lady," he said. "Almost all of our Sentries are occupied after the Shade battle."

"I don't need an escort," I insisted, pointing to Rhody. "I'm just taking my dog out. We won't go far."

For once, the guard didn't argue. He drew back the doors, murmured a quick explanation to the Sentry on the other side, and waved us out.

The snow outside had deepened underfoot, and more was falling in thick spiraling sheets; the return of the Sentries from battle had, apparently, distressed the Nixans of New Fauske considerably. Rhody bounded forward past the ice pond, circling around the side of the castle to the stables where we kept our family's two Katyran horses. I followed him, parting the snow ahead to give me a clear path forward. "Where are you going?" I demanded.

Rhody stopped at the stable door and scratched at it, barking. Its lock had been opened, I noticed, which struck me as slightly unusual. "We're not going in there," I said, catching up to him. "Come on." I tried to draw him away, but he plopped down beside the door and resolutely refused to move.

"Stupid dog," I muttered, coming back over. "There's nothing in there but the horses. Look." I pried open the door to find two horses with their heads poking out from their stalls, and on the raised platform beneath the back window, a girl massaging a very bloody leg.

"Hey," Keira gasped. "You think you could help me out here?"

"Oh." I froze in the doorway. Rhody squeezed his way past me, barking.

"Your dog's a genius, Cass," Keira said with a wince. "All I had to do was tell him to go find you."

Recovering from my shock, I stepped over Rhody and ran to her, kneeling beside her and running my hands down her leg. "Ow, ow, _ow_!" Keira complained. There were two wounds: one a long gash, stretching from her thigh to a little above her ankle, and the other a deep incision that looked to have reached her muscle. Blade wounds, definitely.

"You should be in the infirmary," I said. "You should've come back in one of the copters."

"I would have," Keira said through her teeth, "but your stupid pendant kept me from feeling any pain until we were already halfway back. And besides," she added, "I'd rather leave the infirmary for people who need it."

"It looks like you need it," I muttered, examining the wounds again.

"You know what I mean," she said; "the dying people. The people who got stabbed in worse places than their leg."

"It's not exactly a little scratch, Keira," I pointed out, my breath hitching. "You've lost a ton of blood."

"That's why I need you to help me, you idiot," Keira wheezed. "Use your Nixan magic."

"I'm not a healer," I protested. "I don't know what to do."

"You've healed yourself before, plenty of times."

"That's different," I said, my voice climbing an octave. "That's automatic, almost, and it's much easier."

"Please, Cass," she breathed. "Just try."

I sighed. "All right." I bent over Keira's leg, shoving Rhody aside when he put his paws up on the platform to sniff. Then I closed my eyes and concentrated until I felt the tingle of ice in my fingertips. Keira took in a sudden breath; I opened my eyes to see rivulets of ice climbing up her leg, mending the wounds before evaporating into the air. By the time they'd finished their work, the leg was red and bloody but entirely gash-free.

Keira let out a relieved sigh. "Thanks."

"Yeah," I said, "no problem." But the effort had drained me—I felt suddenly lightheaded, as if I were the one who'd just lost two pints of blood. "Can I sit down, though?"

Keira slid over to give me room beside her on the platform. I fell back against the wall with a groan, wiping my forehead. "Now I understand why healers have to rest all the time," I murmured. "That one leg just about knocked me out."

Keira smirked. "It just about knocked me out, too."

"What happened out there, exactly?" I wondered. "The Shades surrendered, right? What did you have to do?"

Keira sighed. "I really don't want to talk about it."

"Oh, right." I crossed my arms. "Just like you don't want to talk about the Sentry trials, even an entire year later."

"Maybe because blood and murder aren't my favorite topics of conversation," Keira growled. "Why do you care, anyway?"

"Because," I said, "I want to help you."

Keira shook her head. "You can't help me, Cass. You're a Nixan lady; my mental well-being isn't your problem." She leaned forward until she was close enough for me to taste her breath. Her silver eyes bored into mine, bright and sharp. "Seriously, Cass, don't worry about me. Please."

"I have to," I whispered. And suddenly I couldn't help myself anymore—something in the way she looked at me broke down any resistance I had remaining. I wrapped my arms around her neck, put a hand to the back of her head and pulled myself in to her. She didn't resist, so I tilted my head enough to miss her nose and pressed my lips to hers. I twined her hair around my hand and tasted her, her sweat and her warmth and her breath.

Then I felt a hand on my chest, and Keira drew back her head. "Whoa," she breathed.

The feeling was gone, as suddenly as it had surfaced. I could help myself—I had to help myself. I pulled away and stood up, the world spinning and lurching around me.

"Hey." Keira grabbed me by the arm, but I shook her off.

"I have to go," I said. "Come on, Rhody." The dog stood from where he lay under Taurus's head and followed me to the stable door.

"Cass—" Keira stood to follow me, but I held out an arm to keep her back. My heart was racing: _no no no no no_. "Can we talk about whatever the hell that was?"

"You know what that was," I panted. "That was me not thinking straight because I used up all my energy fixing your damn leg." I stepped outside, into the snow.

"Cass," Keira said, "where are you going? Don't—" I shut the door before she could finish and fell back against it with a sob, trying and failing to hold back tears. Keira was never going to look at me the same way again.

"What was I doing?" I murmured, hugging my legs to my chest. "What did I do?" Rhody pawed at my side, wondering why I was suddenly so upset, but I ignored him. "You shouldn't have brought me here," I told him, my breath catching. "I'll never be able to take that back."

# 3 October: Cassatia

Evana spends the first hour of our flight back to New Fauske in the cockpit with Caphian; when she finally climbs back into the passenger cabin, she hands me a bag of chips and a soda before settling herself in the seat next to mine.

"I thought you would've fallen asleep by now," she says. "You've been up for ages. Are you doing all right?"

I pop open the soda. "I'm tired of worrying about getting married," I mutter. "Maybe I should become a priestess like you. Take a vow of celibacy and everything."

Evana nods, a little flush coloring her cheeks. "I'm sure it was hard finding out like that."

"Yeah," I agree with a raise of my eyebrows. "I know I'm about to turn eighteen, but plenty of Nixans don't get married till after that." I sigh. "Does my father just want to marry me off so Aren can inherit the province instead of me?" My father has always liked Aren better, mostly because Aren listens to everything he says.

"It's not that at all," Evana assures me. I _mmm_ at her skeptically. "Your family—the Loraveires—have been nobility for only a short amount of time. Before Avasol Loraveire laid claim to America, your family line was all commoners. The king at the time made Avasol duke of the new Western Province, but that did nothing to change your bloodline."

"That's what this is about?" I ask incredulously. "My _bloodline_?"

"Exactly," Evana says. "That bloodline has plagued your family for centuries. For generations, many Nixans refused to accept your claim to the duchy because of it. And until recently, no one from the older noble lines would marry into your family out of honor. Your father's marriage to a Carasten was an incredible advancement for the Loraveires; unprecedented."

I bite my lip, a lump forming in my throat. "My father loved my mother, though." I say it almost like a question—my mind flashes back to the night five years ago when I found Evana tangled with my father in the sheets of his bed, their arms and lips and everything else locked together. It's something I never told anyone about, even Keira.

Evana nods. "Of course he did. He loved your mother more than anything. But he also loved her pedigree—the Carastens' line branches directly off of the Heilagurs'. If you didn't have your mother's blood, I doubt King Aknes would have allowed you to bond to his son."

"Because keeping royal blood intact is all about incestuous relationships."

"Distantly incestuous, yes." Evana shrugs. "But all of us are related to some extent. The Fayerens share blood with the royals, too. It's the reason their family has so much power, and why your father originally wanted you to be a part of it."

_Of course._ I hadn't known that—I hadn't cared to know it—but it certainly made sense. "This is messed up," I say. "My father can't decide who I marry based on how royal their blood is." He shouldn't be deciding who I marry at all.

Evana looks me right in the eye. "He's only looking out for his family," she says. "Think of the honor it would bring your name if the next king or queen of the Kingdom had Loraveire blood. It would be the ultimate gift to your ancestors, and your descendants, to marry Prince Iven and bear his children."

"You think I should, then?"

"I think you should look to the Goddess for guidance," Evana replies. "But if you're asking for my opinion, yes, I do." Gently she touches my shoulder. "I think you'd like living in Svalbard with Iven. He would be good to you, and you'd have tremendous power, ruling the Kingdom at his side one day. Everyone in New Fauske would be so proud of you."

Nodding, I picture the prince, smiling at me as he brought me into his ice cave. He's handsome, and nice, and as adventurous as I've always wished I could be. He certainly isn't the worst person I could end up with. And yet I feel sick to my stomach at the thought of spending the rest of my life at his side, raising his children.

I wish more than anything that I could talk to Keira about it. But even if she were here, I know that she would agree with Evana. She'd want me to marry the prince—she would call me selfish for refusing to, just like she did last time.

"You should really get some rest," Evana says. "I can give you something to help you fall asleep, if you'd like."

"That would be great," I tell her, closing my eyes. Sometimes the best solution to a problem is to just stop thinking. 

# Four Months Ago: Cassatia

My mind reeling with thoughts of my father and marriage and Ainsil Fayeren, I let the man with the cigarettes drive away until we reached a little stretch of woods on the outskirts of Coeur d'Alene, when I decided that I could not deal with the loud music and nauseating smell any longer. A thin covering of ice was beginning to eat away at the stained leather of the back car seats; I waved it away before my driver could notice. "Pull over here," I said.

The man pulled his cigarette from his mouth and turned to me in surprise. "Here? We're in the middle of nowhere."

"Just pull over. I want to get out." He shrugged, and pulled his car into a length of grass off the side of the road.

I tried to open the door, but he stopped me with a hand. "I want the necklace first. And the earrings."

"Yeah, fine." I yanked them off and shoved the jewelry into his hand. As soon as he pulled it back, I ripped open the door and stepped out into the fresh Idaho air with relief. The man gave me a lazy wave, inspecting the jewelry, then slammed on the gas and headed back up the road with my door still hanging open.

I walked a little ways back into the woods, and once I was satisfied that I was out of sight of the road I collapsed against the nearest tree and buried my head in my hands, trying my hardest not to start crying. Ice and snow, thicker than when I was in the car, crept out in a circle around me, snaking up the tree behind my back until even its leaves were encased in ice.

My father was right; I knew that I would have to marry soon, and I'd always known that he would be the one making the arrangements. But having Ainsil Fayeren staring me in the face like that, and his father talking about our bond-rings, had made everything feel a thousand times more real.

And then, just to make things worse, the last person in the world I wanted to see emerged from deeper in the woods. "You'd better hope there are no Senex wandering around out here," she said, indicating the snow cover around me and the frozen tree. "Even in Idaho, snow in June is a little bit peculiar."

"Keira," I said, lifting my head while a thousand emotions swarmed my brain. "How did you find me?" _Great Goddess, why_ her _?_

"Well," she explained, "I'm off-duty all day today, so I decided to follow you on your first visit to Sentown. What I did not expect was to see you take off in the car of some creep, and for Caph to order all the Sentries in the area to help search for the missing Nixan lady."

"So what?" I growled. "You want to drag me back to New Fauske? Pick up some easy kudos from Caphian?"

Keira disregarded the idea with a flick of her wrist. "Screw Caphian. I'm more interested in finding out what the hell is wrong with you, and, you know, why you drove off with a random Sen guy."

I shook my head. "I had to get away from there."

"From where?" Keira crossed her arms, stepping closer to me. "Would you mind filling me in a little?"

I took a deep breath. "Well, my manipulative asshole of a father tried to set me up to marry Professor Fayeren's son today."

"Wow." Keira plopped down beside me, shivering a little in the snow. I wished she wouldn't sit so close to me. "Okay. But, I mean, you knew he'd be pairing you off with someone pretty soon, right?"

"Well...yes." I shivered, too, and inched away from her. "But I didn't expect him to sit me down with someone I'd never seen before and start making plans for a bond-lock ceremony."

Keira made a little noise of commiseration. "Was the guy an asshole?"

"What?"

"Professor Fayeren's son. Was he an asshole?"

"I don't know," I said. "I barely talked to him. But that's not the point."

"Well, your dad's not gonna let you get out of something like this, so as long as he's not a complete douche I say you go along with it."

"And marry him?" She didn't understand; she couldn't. "Some guy I don't even know?"

Keira shrugged her shoulders. "Isn't that what Nixan nobles do?"

"Not my parents," I protested. "They'd known each other since they were kids."

"Well, what were you planning to do to avoid it? Run away?" I didn't answer.

"Cass," Keira said, looking me right in the eyes and holding me with her gaze so I couldn't turn away, "one day your dad will be gone, and you can do whatever the hell you want. You'll be in charge of the whole province, and you'll have the power to ditch the Fayeren boy if you want to. You'll be able to make things better for everyone here, and fix all the crap that's going on. But you won't ever get there if you go running off into the woods like a scared little girl."

I shook my head. "I never wanted to run the province."

"Well, I hate to break it to you, Cass, but you were kind of born for it." Keira grabbed at my hand, but I pulled it away. "Don't you get it? You can change everything once you're in charge. You could get Wi-Fi installed in the castle; you could work something out with the Shade rebels; you could get rid of the Sentry trials, even."

"That's what you want," I said darkly. "You want me put in charge because you think I'll _change everything_. You want me to marry Ainsil Fayeren so I can take over the province from my father and do whatever you want me to do with it."

"Isn't that what you want, too? You said you want the Sentry trials to be fixed, and that you wish we weren't fighting with the Shades."

"Of course it's what I want. Sentries shouldn't have to fight for their lives when they don't need to."

"If that's what you think, you'd be a selfish prick _not_ to marry Ainsil Fayeren and take over for your father." Keira stood up. "But I know that's not what the real problem is." I tensed. "The real __ problem is what happened that night in the stables last year, and why you haven't let me get anywhere near you since." She touched my shoulder, and I shuddered, handily proving her point.

"That was a mistake," I told her firmly, as snow and ice spread farther into the woods to betray my distress. "I've told you a thousand times, I don't want to talk about it."

"Well," Keira said, "I do, because it's the whole reason you don't want to be with Fayeren. You've been holding it in, making it worse and worse to the point that you're scared to death of yourself. And me."

"Shut up," I insisted. "Please, Keira." Snowflakes flashed by in the wind—I could taste them. If it weren't for Keira, I could have been happy with Ainsil Fayeren, or anyone else.

"You can marry him for your father and not _love_ him, Cass. Once you're in charge, you can get rid of the one-bond-per-life rule and dump his ass."

"This is all your fault," I said. "This wouldn't even be a problem for me if it weren't for you."

"It's not my fault," Keira insisted. "It's you, Cass—you just refuse to accept it. You hate yourself for something you won't even admit you feel."

Something snapped inside me. "Get away from me," I growled, extending a hand and sending a jet of snow and sleet flying for Keira's face. She jumped out of the way and scowled at me, raising her hands.

"Fine," she said. "I'll leave. But you can't hide from yourself forever, you know. You might as well own up to it." She changed into a bird and flew off into the trees, leaving me alone.

I let out a sob, burying my head in my hands. _I can get over her,_ I told myself; _I can get over anything._ But the more I had to repeat it to myself, the more it felt like a lie. 

# 4 October: Westrey

Thanks to the vamp attack, we end up spending the night in the mountain cabin.

After Keira and I explain what happened to Baz, he goes out again to buy some gauze wrap for Keira's arm. I do my best to clean the blood off the floor and collect the shards of glass littering the ground near the bullet hole in the front window. Keira insists on looking around the woods for some sign of her stolen ice-glass necklace, _"just in case,"_ and I follow her warily with my fire-gun, bracing myself for the moment she shifts and disappears before my eyes. But she never does; after twenty minutes of looking Keira gives up her search with a frustrated sigh, and the two of us go back inside to finish tidying up the cabin.

After Baz returns with the gauze and fixes up Keira's arm, we go out to the grill behind the cabin and cook ourselves some burgers and hot dogs, which we eat alongside the chips and candy Basil brought back with him. It's not until four in the afternoon that we settle into the cabin's moth-eaten bed, Baz and I right-side up and Keira sprawled across our legs. I keep my fire-gun tucked under my pillow, just in case.

Keira wakes us up just before daybreak, jumping on our backs and grabbing at our hair. "Wake _up_ , you lazy fire-breathers! Do you know how long you've slept?"

I pull myself up with a groan; Baz stays still beside me. "About as long as you did, I think," I yawn, rubbing the back of my head. "Otherwise you would've been pulling our hair out earlier."

"We needed sleep," Baz mumbles, refusing to open his eyes. "We're not driving off onto Nixan turf when we're not at a hundred percent."

"Fine." Keira sits back, crossing her arms. "Let's wait here for the next batch of hungry vamps to show up—I don't care. I'm not the one with a sister locked up in New Fauske, getting beat up by Nixans while you guys catch up on your beauty sleep." I think of Freya, bloody and screaming two thousand miles away, and swallow. Keira's right—Freya shouldn't have to endure a second more than she has to in the hands of Fenris.

I shake Basil by the shoulder until he opens his eyes. "Let's get moving." Keira rolls her eyes and slides off the bed, muttering something under her breath.

We eat a quick breakfast of Pop-Tarts and dry cereal, then pack up our things and head out to Basil's car. The sky has begun to lighten, coloring the tops of the trees to the east. So much for crossing the border in the middle of the night like I'd wanted.

"Let me fly ahead," Keira says, "and deal with the border guards. They won't see me coming, but if your auras pop up on their detectors they'll kill you before you get another fifty feet."

"Your aura's come back, too," I point out.

She shakes her head. "Your detectors only pick up Nixa-worshipper auras; ours only pick up infidel auras. They're not gonna see me." She holds out a hand. "Give me your detector so I can find the guard station. I'll take the guards out, and you'll get by without a problem. I promise."

I raise my eyebrows at her. "That's your big plan?"

"It'll work," she insists. "Trust me."

I pull the aura detector from my belt, turning it over in my hands nervously. I don't want to trust Keira. But something about yesterday, whether it was the conversation we had about our screwed-up lives or Keira saving my ass in the vamp attack, has made me a little more willing to. Plus, we don't have much of a choice; Keira can fly off whenever she feels like it.

I look at Baz. He shrugs, leaving it up to me.

"Fine." I hand Keira the detector. "We'll give you a five minutes' head start. Go do your thing."

"Yes, sir." Keira pockets the detector, shifts, and takes off, scaling the tree line and heading due west, faster than any bird I've seen before.

Baz and I watch the retreat of her dark smudge of a shape until we can no longer make it out. "You know," Basil says, "she kind of reminds me of Freya."

I punch him on the arm. "Freya would rip you to pieces for saying that."

"Probably." Basil shrugs. "Still, that doesn't mean it's not true."

I use my phone to count down the five minutes I promised Keira. Then Baz and I hop into the car, tossing our backpacks in the back sans one pack of beef jerky for the trip. Basil yanks the car into reverse and pulls out onto a narrow vein of road, twisting and turning through the woods until his GPS leads us onto a nicer two-lane highway.

Now that it's light out and I'm not half-asleep, I can appreciate the fall foliage: red and orange and yellow, dotted here and there with green. Early fall leaves dance and spiral to the ground around us, fluttering in the breeze. It's like we're driving through an enormous, living fire, bright and colorful and always in motion.

"Now I understand why people come out here to see the leaves change," Basil says, nibbling on a piece of jerky with one hand on the wheel and no eyes on the road. "You don't see trees like this in Boston."

"You're a terrible driver, Baz," I tell him.

"I don't hear you volunteering," he says, but he turns some of his attention back to the road anyway.

I sigh, glancing back behind me. "This is weird without Keira. I've gotten used to intermittent complaining coming from the backseat."

"I'm surprised you let her go off on her own," Basil says. "One minute you were following her around with a fire-gun, and the next you're letting her fly off to her Sentry friends."

"She could've flown off anyway if she wanted to," I point out. "And besides...I don't know, I'm starting to think she might actually be what she says she is."

Basil snorts. "Hope you're right," he says. "We've pretty much put our lives in her hands at this point. And, you know, the lives of every other Warden in the world."

"If you want to make me feel guilty about trying to save my sister's life—"

"I'm not," Baz insists. "I would do the exact same thing if Freya was my sister. I'm just saying, this road trip of ours could end up starting a war all across the continent."

"We're already in a war," I growl. "And honestly, it's probably time we started acting like it."

"Well, maybe, but—oh, shit." Basil's voice quickly drops down to a hiss, and he clenches the steering wheel.

"What?" I demand, going tense.

Basil points a thumb behind us. "It's the freaking Sen police."

"Seriously?" I look back to find two men on police motorcycles tailing us; Basil makes an abrupt left turn to lose them, but they swoop in right behind, unmistakably after us.

"Are we speeding or something?"

"No," Baz protests. "I'm not even going fifty."

One of the men holds out his right arm, gesturing to the side of the road. "I think they want us to pull over, Baz."

"They're Senex," Basil says; "we don't have to listen to them. We could burn them to the ground if we wanted."

"Just pull off," I sigh. "It'll be easier."

Basil rolls his eyes. "Fine." He slows down and stops the car in the long, weedy grass beside the road. The policemen pull off right behind us and dismount.

"My license is in my bag somewhere," Basil says. I reach behind my seat to grab the bag and begin fishing through it.

Baz rolls down his window as an officer steps up to the car. "What's the problem with— _oh_."

I look up. The officer has a gun pointed directly at Baz's forehead, and a finger hovering over the trigger.

I sit up quickly and reach for my own gun—but before I can pull it from my belt, the barrel of the other officer's gun taps against my window, daring me to move. The officer has removed his helmet; his eyes are bright purple.

So much for Keira being trustworthy.

"Get out of the car," one of the Sentries says. " _Now_."

# 4 October: Keira

It kind of sucks to be a Sentry—no family, always on call, the prevalent kill-or-be-killed attitude. But if there's one thing that makes it all worthwhile, it's flying. There's nothing better—riding the wind, swooping and diving to your heart's content, feeling the lift of thermals under your wings, watching the ground flit by underneath you in more detail and clarity than any human could ever hope to see.

But I don't have time to enjoy myself right now; I need to explain my situation in-person, which means that I have to get to the border guards before Wes and Baz do. I can fly faster in my kite form than they can drive through these winding little mountain roads, but still, a five minutes' head start is cutting it kind of close. And the vamp wound I'd gotten yesterday has translated over into an aching wing, making it harder to fly as fast as I want.

I feel a little bit guilty, turning the Warden boys in like this, but it's not like there's another option. They took the bait by following me all the way out here—they deserve what's coming to them. _Right?_

I keep low, flying just above the treetops; when I come upon a little clearing I dive down, folding back my wings and letting the wind skim my feathers before unfurling them with a _whoosh_ and landing on my knees in human-girl form.

I stand, stretching my legs and taking a quick look around to check for company, then pull Wes's aura detector from my jacket pocket. I see the two Warden boys' red dots coming up behind me, a few miles away, and two gray Sentry dots towards the rim of the detector's screen, almost directly ahead of me.

_Perfect._ I'll have the sword delivered to New Fauske in no time.

And that's when a sudden, invisible wall of weight slams into me, knocking the breath from my lungs and sending the aura detector flying across the clearing. I feel the unmistakable pressure of fang-filled jaws clamping around my arm, but there is no scary beast around to claim them. I reach up, grunting, and feel my hands digging into mangy invisible fur.

Great Goddess, what the hell is this?

I shift into a cat, wiggling out of the invisible thing's grip and onto four feet, then grow into a bristling wolf. Four patches of flattened grass tell me where the thing's paws are, and as a wolf I can smell it, too: something big and angry, maybe a bear. I snarl, and lunge towards it; a heavy paw slams into my muzzle, knocking me back into the grass. I leap to my feet, shifting again into a snow leopard, and have another go. This time, I manage to run my claws down the invisible bear-thing's flank, deep enough to elicit a roar. Another paw swipe rakes my shoulder, drawing blood, but not enough to stop me. I lunge again for the bear-thing, but I collide with nothing but air.

I pull myself up again, confused. Then I feel a weight crash on my back, and sharp claws digging into my skin. I hiss and yowl, slamming my side as hard as I can into the nearest tree. The weight drops off my back with a yelp.

I change into a kite, pounding my wings frantically to gain altitude, but before I've cleared the treetops a pair of invisible taloned feet lock around my neck, squeezing the life out of me. The two of us lose height quickly, held up only by the erratic beating of our pairs of wings; I shift back into a human as we near the ground and feel the talons stretch apart and leave my neck. I fall squarely onto my back, sending a wave of pain shooting up my spine.

By the time I've managed to roll myself onto my feet, a man has materialized in front of me, dark-haired and sunglassed and leveling a gun at my head.

Swallowing back my fear, I raise my hands cautiously in surrender. "Don't shoot," I say; "we're on the same side." My shoulder is killing me—blood has already seeped through the folds of my jacket, dyeing the fabric red. And my vamp wound had only just stopped throbbing.

The man cocks his gun. "I don't think so, Sentry." He has a bit of an accent, something I can't place. When he moves his arms to adjust the gun, I see that there's no Sentry mark etched into his right one.

Okay, then. __ An invisible foreign shifter who's not a Sentry. I can work with that.

"I'm not a Sentry," I say. "Not anymore. Why would a Sentry be flying around so far past the guard stations?"

"I don't know; you tell me." The shifter man keeps the barrel of his gun fixed just above my eyes, holding it admirably steady. When he steps closer, a weird-looking bracelet he's wearing bounces sunlight into my eyes, blinding me. _Ice-glass._ How did he even get that?

I take a deep breath, blinking. "I'm traveling to New Fauske with a couple of Wardens," I tell him. "We're going to sneak into Fenris's castle to rescue some prisoners and take out the duke." I indicate my all-black outfit. "Look. No Sentry would wear this."

The man lowers his gun, though he still holds a finger over the trigger. "Where are the Wardens, then?" he asks.

"I don't know. They drove off without me. I was supposed to take care of the guards at the closest border station and meet them there." My eyes fall on Wes's aura detector, lying in the grass just behind the man. I point to it. "Look on there."

He inches backwards to the detector and picks it up slowly, never once taking his eyes off of me. He looks at the screen and sucks in a breath. "Jesus Christ. You're not lying."

I step over warily and sneak my head in below his armpit. Sure enough, my dot is in the center of the detector's screen—nothing shows up, of course, for the ice-glass-wearing shifter guy—and there are two red Warden dots a few miles further west, with two more gray dots hot on their trail.

"Jesus," the man says again. "Are the other shifters with you?"

"Nope," I reply, "they're border guards." I grab the detector from him and stuff it back into my pocket. "So now, if you'll excuse me, I need to go save some asses."

# 4 October: Cassatia

The day after I return home from Svalbard City, I head to the one place outside the castle I can go without bodyguards: the Great Temple, home of New Fauske's Nixan priests. There's a little temple inside the castle as well, where morning prayer services are held for the castle's inhabitants, but if you want to have a talk with the Goddess, the Great Temple is the best place to go.

The Temple is a long, large, rectangular building, with a central vein running down its middle and rooms branching off at even intervals that lead into priests' living quarters and seminary rooms for the novitiates. There's only one entrance, from which a snowflake-strewn carpet leads all the way to the back of the Temple.

Near the entrance, the Temple is loud, with priests and priestesses running back and forth and chatting and praying, and the building is bright and open, with glass panes for a roof to let in the sun. But as I head further back, the noise fades away, the temperature drops, and the skylights give way to stone, engulfing the Temple in darkness. The hall seems to narrow; I can hear my breaths ricocheting off its walls.

At the very back of the Temple, all the way against the wall, is a massive ice-glass stone ringed by tiny fires. The fires lick and snap at its sides, trying to pick away at it, but the stone is unmeltable.

I kneel between two of the fires, feeling their heat against my legs, and lay a palm on the ice-glass. It's cold, making my nerves dance and spark with excitement. Even the greatest fire in the world could not heat ice-glass—only Old Magic.

Back here the Temple is still, uninhabited; it's me, alone, in the presence of the Goddess. I can say anything, do anything, and no one else will ever know.

"Nixa," I whisper. "I need your help." I close my eyes, gulping down a breath. "I was supposed to marry the son of the king last night. My father arranged it with King Aknes—he promised me to the prince. And Evana thinks that I should marry him, too." I bite my lip. "They want me to bring honor to the family. And I understand that, and I want it, too, but I don't want this."

I press my forehead against the ice-glass, feeling its stubborn coolness seeping into my thoughts. "Not because I'm trying to be selfish—I don't _think_ I am, at least—but because it would be a lie. Every political marriage is a lie, I guess, but our marriage would be even more of one. I don't love Prince Iven, and I don't think I'll ever be able to. And it wouldn't be fair to him, for me to deceive him like that." I'm making up excuses now, trying to justify what I want. This isn't about Iven: it's all about me, only me. "I want to serve you, Nixa, but I want to serve you here, in New Fauske. I'm happy here." A tear slides down my cheek, landing on the face of the stone; my eyes have gone blurry with more. I've never felt more like a helpless, spineless damsel in distress. "Please, tell me what you want me to do. I don't know—I'm so alone, Nixa, I—"

"Princess." I snap up my head with a gasp, standing and whipping around with my hands out. A silhouette stands at the edge of the light further back, wringing her hands nervously. "I—I'm sorry to disturb you, but you're father says it's urgent."

I lower my hands, shaking. "Phoebe," I breathe. "You're back already?"

"Yes—we just got home." She backs up, head bowed. "Your father wants to see you in his bedroom."

"His bedroom?" My heart quickens; that means he wants to speak with me in private.

"He said you have to come right away." She gulps. "I'm sorry if you were—"

"It's okay," I insist, stepping out from between the fires and walking back into the light, sliding past a fidgeting Phoebe. "I'll go see him, don't worry."

It's not until I'm out of the Temple that I realize she called me _princess_.

❄🔥❄

My father stands at the foot of his bed, arms crossed; when I enter, he grabs a little wooden box he'd set beside him and holds it out to me.

"For you," he says.

Curious, I take the box, examining it. It's smooth and brightly polished, mahogany-red in color, with a golden winged wolf carved into its top and Old Norse words engraved in fine calligraphy along its sides. Carefully I pop its latch and pry it open.

Inside, padded and embellished by blood-red velvet, is a silver diamond ring, with miniature sapphires studding its sides. Six prongs support the center jewel, each topped by a sapphire of its own. And the diamond itself is huge, fifteen carats at least, and perfectly clear, reflecting colors and light like a kaleidoscope.

It's the most beautiful, expensive-looking ring I've ever seen—I know immediately what it's meant for.

I close the box. "This is a bond-ring."

"It was crafted by three of Svalbard City's finest jewelers," my father says. "Each of the jewels was hand-selected from among thousands, and cut with the greatest precision."

"This is a _bond-ring_ ," I repeat. "I'm _not bonded_."

"I explained to the royal family that you were feeling ill last night," my father goes on; "it seemed you had already told the prince that story. He had his bond-ring all picked out for you already, and I passed on one for him on your behalf."

My mouth goes dry. For Nixans, putting on a bond-ring is equivalent to accepting a marriage proposal—once you put one on, you're supposed to wear it forever.

"I never agreed to this. I'll refuse Prince Iven in public if I have to. I won't put on the ring, I swear to the Goddess."

"Then the king will accuse our family of lying and treason," Fenris says, "and our whole province will be caught up in it. The entirety of Nixa's Kingdom will be divided, and we'll be weaker than we have been for centuries."

"That's your problem," I growl, "not mine. You caused this, by pretending I wanted to be thrown into an unbreakable union with someone I barely know."

My father shakes his head and snatches the ring box from my hands. "You are ignorant," he says. "I'd hoped that your time with Evana and the Goddess would have helped you to learn, but clearly I was wrong. Even after all these years, you fail to understand that this is bigger than you. This is about uniting the kingdom in a way that it has never been united before, and instead you want to divide it."

"I don't want to divide anything," I insist. "All I want is to have a say in the rest of _my_ life. Right now, that's all I care about."

"You don't understand what we're facing, then." My father grabs my arm. I squirm, but he refuses to loosen his grip. "I'll show you—maybe you'll understand then."

He pulls me from his room and to the stairs, and all the way down a winding hall to the door leading into the infidel prisoners' holding cell. He nods to the Sentries guarding the entranceway, and they draw open the door to reveal an expanse of white beyond.

I clench my fists. "I'm not going in there," I say, backing up.

"You will." My father puts a hand to my back, hard as rock, forcing me inside. "It's about time you met a Warden." 

# 4 October: Westrey

The Sentry guards hijack our car, throwing us handcuffed into the back and driving us back to their station with a gun swiveling between our heads. They take our fire-guns, using special gloves to keep from burning themselves, and our bags, Ferignis and all.

After a few minutes, the driving Sentry pulls off the road and parks the car in a ditch. He and his friend yank the two of us from the back, and lead us down a little footworn trail through the woods to a gray, steepled Gothic-esque building, surrounded by statues of Nixan kings and winged Katyri wolves. It's a far cry from any shack-in-the-woods Warden border station—then again, the Nixans have nearly unlimited funds from their allies' slave labor, and Old Magic to cover up anything that looks too out of place.

There's a big metal cage beside the steps leading into the station—the Sentry guards drag us into it, shoving us against the bars, and lock us inside. One of the Sentries—the one with the purple eyes—heads into the station, while the other waits outside to examine our bags and keep a gun on us.

The guard draws out Ferignis and steps back to study the blade in a patch of sunlight; once he's a few paces away, Basil whispers to me, "Why haven't they killed us yet?"

I shrug. "They probably want to talk to Caphian first. Maybe they'll take us back to their castle and throw us in with Freya and Quincey."

Basil shudders. "That's not much of an improvement on being killed."

"This is what we get for trusting a shifter," I growl. I twist my hands in their cuffs, wondering if I can set the Sentry watching us on fire, but I end up sending a bush thirty degrees off up in flames instead.

The Sentry drops Ferignis and runs over to smother the flames, cursing. He throws his jacket on top of the bush and coughs through the sudden spiral of smoke. "Set anything else on fire," he threatens, "and I'll put you infidels to sleep."

" _You're_ the one who thought we could trust Keira," Baz whispers back. "I'm innocent on this one."

"You still decided to come with us," I point out. "I didn't force you."

"True," Baz says. "But it's not like I was gonna say _no_."

The Sentry guard comes over with Ferignis. "Either of you want to tell me why you've been lugging this around?"

"Because it's cool," Basil says. "Swords are pretty badass, don't you think?"

The Sentry slides the sword through the bars of our cage until it touches the skin beneath Basil's chin. "I'm asking for a real answer, smartass."

"Jesus," Baz says, leaning back against the bars to avoid the sword tip. "If you're going to point that thing at one of us, how about him?" He waves his cuffed hands to indicate me; I shoot him a glare.

"Don't interrogate them," the purple-eyed Sentry says, stepping back outside. "We're leaving that to Caphian's Sentries."

_Caphian's Sentries._ So we are __ going to New Fauske.

"Guess you'll get to see Freya again after all," Basil mutters.

"What was that?" Basil grunts as the sword tip digs deeper into his skin. "If you have something to say, how about you share it with all of us?"

"Stop it," Purple Eyes demands. "We're supposed to ship them to New Fauske unharmed." Reluctantly, his partner pulls back the sword and slides it back into its sheath. Baz breathes an audible sigh of relief. "Caphian said to make sure they're—" But Purple Eyes doesn't get a chance to finish his thought, because he's yanked back and thrown to the ground by some sudden invisible force. And then a red kite—one of Keira's bird shifts—comes swooping down from the sky, shifting into a snow leopard as she crashes down on top of the other Sentry, Ferignis flying from his grasp.

My mouth falls open. _What the hell?_

Purple Eyes shifts into a tiger to battle his invisible enemy, who quickly slashes open his muzzle with unseen claws. The other Sentry becomes a giant, mangy dog to battle Keira the snow leopard, both of them snarling as they go for each other's throats.

"Are we supposed to help them?" Baz wonders above the commotion.

I shake my head. "I'm not setting another bush on fire."

Baz and I watch breathlessly as Keira knocks her Sentry backwards into the woods and Purple Eyes goes limp under his assailant's weight. The invisible force finally materializes as a grizzly, glowering down at Purple Eyes and giving a deep, angry roar that nearly deafens me. Purple Eyes pushes him off with a powerful kick of his hind legs, scrambling to his feet and letting out a deafening roar of his own. Meanwhile the dog-Sentry has emerged from the brush, licking his teeth as he circles the snarling Keira.

And then, as if responding to some sudden, silent signal, both Purple Eyes and the dog change into birds and take to the sky, abandoning their post and leaving Keira and the grizzly all alone with us. Both of them shift back into their human forms, the grizzly becoming a twenty-something man in sunglasses.

"Go inside the station and look for the keys to this thing," Keira says breathlessly to the man, running over to our cage. He quickly obeys.

"What the hell is going on?" I demand when Keira reaches us. She's got a few scratches running down her arms thanks to the fight and a nice little shoulder wound, but nothing too serious. "Why did the Sentries leave like that?"

"They're going to get help," she pants, glancing anxiously around. "We have to get out of here before they get back."

"They _both_ flew off for help?" Baz asks. "Why?"

Keira shakes her head. "I don't know," she snaps. "Not really my biggest concern right now." There's an edge to her voice that gives me the impression that she isn't telling us everything—but that's not my biggest concern right now, either.

The mysterious new man emerges from the station and throws Keira a set of keys. "These must be it," he says. "Their bags are in the station, too."

"And who's that?" I ask, pointing to him. "How did he make himself invisible?"

"Don't ask me," Keira says, trying the keys until she finds the one that unlocks the cage. She wrenches it open and pulls us forcefully out, bending over to unlock our handcuffs. "He's the reason I couldn't deal with the guards before they found you. He's a shifter, but he doesn't have a Sentry mark."

"That's because I'm not a Sentry," says the man. Keira turns to face him as he descends the station steps to our cage, slowly removing his sunglasses. Behind them are two black eyes, so dark I can't make out the pupils. Keira mutters something under her breath. "I'm a _faedra_. And that means I'm on your side."

# Ten Years Ago: Keira

Every morning, before I ate or dressed or did anything else, I had to check my eyes.

I'd climb up onto my bathroom counter and lean into the mirror glass until my nose was only inches from it. I knew that the difference in color could be small, a hint of green or a shade darker blue, so I had to look very carefully.

But when the change came, it was obvious. One morning when I checked in the mirror, three months after my seventh birthday, there were two silver eyes staring back at me.

My knees slipped on the granite, and I fell off the counter with a yelp.

"What was that?" my foster mother called from down in the kitchen.

I sat up. Pain shot up my back, but I hardly noticed. "My eyes turned!" I yelled.

Something crashed downstairs; a second later, the _thump-thump_ of footsteps was thundering up to the bathroom. My mother wrenched open the door with a frying pan still in her hand. She fell to her knees beside me on the linoleum and grabbed my cheeks, turning my head roughly to face her. I whimpered, surprised.

She examined me for a moment, then let out a deep sigh of relief. "Oh, thank the Goddess," she breathed, hugging me tightly and planting a kiss on the top of my head. "I'm going to call your father, okay?" She pulled her phone from her pocket, flipped it open, and fumbled with the buttons, her hands shaking so hard she had to dial the number twice.

"I'm in a meeting, honey," my foster father's voice crackled out from the phone.

"Keira's eyes turned, Stefen," my mother told him, her voice shaking even more than her hands. A tear inched down the side of her cheek. "Silver. She's all right." 

# 4 October: Keira

"I'll drive," the _faedra_ guy says once we reach Basil's car, holding out his hand. He's put his sunglasses back on, thank the Goddess. "Who has the keys?" I point back to Baz.

"I'm not handing my car over to some invisible shifter freak I don't know anything about," Baz says resolutely. "Even if he did just help break us out of a cage. We don't even know your name."

"It's Feolan."

"Okay, well, that doesn't actually tell us anything."

"Look, I'm trying to help you," he insists, wiggling his fingers. "Keira told me your plan; you're trying to get to New Fauske, but you don't even have ice-glass to hide your auras."

"I _used_ to have ice-glass," I mutter. "Before some asshole vamps stole it from me."

"Well, I've got a whole collection of it back at my place. I'll take you there—it's in the direction you're headed, and as long as we can outpace the Sentries we just fought off, I can guarantee we won't pass by any Shade camps or patrol routes on the way."

Baz and Wes exchange a glance. "You have ice-glass?" Wes asks tentatively. In response, Feolan shows him his bracelet: a golden band that creeps over the back of his hand to form a point just beneath the knuckle of his middle finger, with a small piece of ice-glass embedded in its metal.

Wes clenches his jaw and nods; sighing, Baz unzips his backpack and hands Feolan the keys.

I take shotgun, leaving Baz and Wes to climb in the back. "This is the second time today we're being chauffeured around by a couple of shifters," Baz mutters.

"No gun on us this time, though," Wes points out.

Feolan slams on the gas and yanks the car back onto the road, driving as fast as Baz's Malibu will let him. There's really no need to rush at all—no Sentries are going to come after us. En route to the guard station, I'd managed to send Caphian a quick mind-link message to tell the border guards to let us rescue the Wardens. They'd done a pretty good job of faking the fight, at least until the end.

"All right," I say, leaning forward towards Feolan. "Now that we're out of that mess, I think it's about time you told us what your deal is. How are you a not-dead adult _faedra_ , and how the hell did you turn yourself invisible?"

Feolan swerves to avoid a dead deer splayed out on the street, going precariously fast considering the size of the roads. The Sentry detector now resting against the dashboard shows no shifter auras chasing after us; hopefully he'll realize soon that he can slow down a bit.

"Hold on a second," Basil says from the back. "What even is a _faedra_?"

"A shifter whose eyes turn black," I tell him. "They're supposed to be thrown out in the woods to die as soon as their eyes change."

"Shit," Basil mutters. "What the hell for?"

"To a Nixa-worshipper," Feolan says, "a _faedra_ is an abomination, worthy of only a slow and painful end. When my eyes turned, my foster parents left me for dead like all good Sentry parents are supposed to do."

"But you didn't die," Wes says.

"No," he agrees, "I didn't die. I was born in Nepal, in the Eastern Province's capital, just north of the border into _jnani_ India. A few days after I was abandoned, a group of _jnani_ living in the mountains found me and took me in."

"So you were raised by _jnani_ ," I say, skeptical. "A bunch of creepy mind-readers that hate everyone who isn't part of their cult."

"The _jnani_ hate the Nixans and Wardens, yes," Feolan says; "but not abandoned seven-year-old shifter boys. They didn't blame me for everything the Sentries have put them through." He smirks. "I learned so much more from them than I ever could've learned from Sentry parents. They're the ones who taught me to turn myself invisible, using Old Magic."

"The _jnani_ can't use Old Magic," I say. "Or you. That makes no sense." Only Nixan priests are supposed to be able to. Then again, he _had_ turned himself invisible, and unless that's a _faedra_ thing, Old Magic seems like the only possible explanation. I clutch at my head, already feeling a headache coming on.

"Anyone can use Old Magic," says Feolan. "Even a Sen, if they were trained. It's not some exclusive holy Nixan power—all you need is ice-glass to channel it." He taps the stone on his bracelet.

I shake my head. I'd been wearing ice-glass for years; does that mean I could've been using Old Magic all that time? Had I been using it already without realizing it, every time my pendant helped me in a fight? Or is Feolan just spouting bullshit? The last option seems the most likely.

"Okay, enough with Keira," Wes cuts in. "I have some questions, too." He pulls Ferignis from his bag and unsheathes it, right there in the car. "Take a look at this."

Feolan grabs the sword, turning it over and studying it with a smile on his face. "Whoa," I say, grabbing the wheel as we begin to creep into the wrong lane.

"I know this sword," Feolan says. "It was a gift from the _jnani_." He looks at me. "Is this what you wanted to kill the duke with?"

"Yes," Wes answers when I don't respond. "It works, right? The magic curse thing?"

Feolan raises his eyebrows. "You think the _jnani_ gave you a magic cursed sword? They're just mind-readers."

"Well, that's what they told us. Don't they have special _jnani_ magic, though?"

"The _jnani_ have no magic but Old Magic," Feolan says, shaking his head. "And Old Magic can't curse anything—all it can do is manipulate the senses and create illusions. Fenella Shirey might think this is a powerful weapon, but it's no different than any other sword—Duke Fenris and his priests know that as well as I do. You could kill the duke with it, sure, but it would be a lot easier to just use your fire-guns." He gives the sword back to Wes and finally returns his hands to the steering wheel.

I press my head against the car window, more confused than ever. There's no way this guy could be telling the truth. Fenris wouldn't send me across the country to bring him a magic sword that he knows isn't actually a magic sword. "Even if the sword isn't cursed," I say slowly, "how would Fenris know that? He seemed pretty worried when he found out about it."

"He knows," Feolan insists. "The _jnani_ have far-casters observing him. His High Priestess has told him much more than she was meant to about the secrets of Old Magic. He knows what's real and what's not."

"Well, I think it makes perfect sense," Wes says angrily. "Wouldn't Fenris want people to think that he's the only thing between them and some evil curse?"

"It doesn't make perfect sense," I mutter. _You don't know what you're talking about._

"Why not?" Wes wonders. "You believe what a bunch of Nixans and Sentries brainwashed you into thinking instead of a shifter raised by mind-readers?"

I spin around to face him and Baz. "Well, it kind of defeats the whole purpose of us being here, then, doesn't it? If Ferignis can't curse the Nixans?" _Why are they buying into this guy so easily?_ I guess the fact that the two of them have come this far on the word of one of their sworn enemies testifies to their moronic level of gullibility, but still.

"Oh, screw Ferignis." Wes tosses the sword aside, nearly cutting off Basil's thumb. "We've made it this far; we're going to New Fauske to get my sister and kill Fenris, curse or no curse."

"Do you really not believe me?" Feolan asks, lifting his glasses to study me with his _faedra_ -black eyes. I shudder. "I just proved that shifters can do things the Nixans have always claimed we can't—doesn't that make you wonder, at least?"

_"He's got a point,"_ says some little voice deep in my thoughts. Feolan did turn himself invisible right before my eyes, twice, and he's an alive adult _faedra_ —both of those are things I wouldn't have thought possible yesterday. And it's not like the duke has ever been very trustworthy; he wants to exile his own daughter, after all. But I can't believe Feolan, because that would negate the whole reason for my being here. I squeeze shut my eyes, holding back a groan as all the conflicting thoughts swirl around my head like hyperactive ballerinas.

I really, _really_ wish I'd never run into this guy. 

# 4 October: Cassatia

My father leads me down the hall to the prisoners' cell, his hand a fist in the small of my back. Artificial lights glare down at us, turning the stark white walls blindingly bright. My heart pounds in my throat; I've never been allowed to see the infidel prisoners before, and that had always been perfectly fine with me.

I can hear noises up ahead, distant like they're coming from underwater. I can't make out what they are, which is probably a good thing.

As we walk, the noises grow louder and louder, echoing in my ears. Eventually I can't take it anymore: I stop at the end of the hall, the blood cold in my veins. "We don't have to see them," I say quietly.

Fenris nods. "We do," he says. "It's the only way you'll understand." He guides me around the corner, and we come face-to-face with a thick glass wall enclosing a space about the size of my bedroom.

Crouched beside the far wall is a dark-haired, olive-skinned girl—a _Warden_ girl—hiding her head between her knees and shaking. Beside her kneels a man with electricity dancing between his fingers.

"A _llyre_."

My father nods. "We brought him in a few weeks ago."

A few yards away is the other prisoner—a dustie boy, a little younger than Aren, with a patch covering his scarred left eye socket—and a Nixan man standing over him with an ice-whip. Both of them have their gazes fixed on the girl.

The _llyre_ says something to her, his voice low and muffled by the glass wall. She shakes her head, not looking up from between her knees. Even from here, I can see the welts and scars running up and down her arms. The _llyre_ says something else; this time, she raises her head to meet him eye-to-eye, trembling, and spits in his face.

The _llyre_ 's electric hand immediately catches her arm, and she lets out an ear-splitting, inhuman shriek, her body lurching at least a foot in the air. The dustie boy cries out and tries to run to her—the Nixan behind him snaps his whip hard against his back, and the boy falls flat onto his stomach and stops moving.

My mouth goes dry. "Is he dead?"

My father gives a little chuckle. "He wishes he were. They both do."

The girl, pulling herself off the floor and shaking even harder than before, locks eyes suddenly with me. I stiffen. Her eyes narrow, and she forces herself onto her feet; her wobbling legs give out twice before she can stand up. She stumbles over towards the glass wall, and the _llyre_ man does nothing to stop her. I wish he would, even if it meant another scream.

She stops right in front of me and puts her hands against the glass. I quickly look down, but my father grabs me by the jaw and forces me to meet her eyes. "Look at her," he urges.

The Warden girl has bones for arms and legs, and not an inch of skin unmarred. Her clothes have been torn to shreds, and her teeth are yellow and rotten. But her eyes are bright, lit by a fiery hatred directed right at me. The eyes alone I know will give me nightmares for many days to come.

"She and the boy have been here a year and a half now. Every day, we give them the chance to tell us what we want to hear. If either of them did, we would give them a quick death—we would even cremate them like their people prefer. But every day, they refuse." The Warden's eyes grow harder, brighter; I wonder if she can understand my father through the glass. "We've tried everything to get them to speak, but neither of them has offered information any more important than the whereabouts of a useless _jnani_ sword. It was two months before we even learned their names." My father's breath is hot against my ear. "They have endured incomprehensible pain to help their side. They would rather become living corpses than tell us anything that could hurt their people. And you refuse to bond with a prince to help yours." He releases my jaw, looking me right in the eyes. "Do you understand now?"

The _llyre_ finally grabs the Warden girl, pulling her back by the arm. She struggles, screaming; he slams a fist against her temple.

Something breaks inside me—I can't do this anymore. Maybe the infidel prisoners can keep their resolve, but I can't. I'm too weak.

"All right," I say, choking on the words. "I'll do what you want."

Fenris pulls the ring box out from under his arm and opens it. "Put this on." The Warden girl lets out another shriek, somehow higher and louder than the last.

I take out the ring, turning it over in my trembling hands, and slide it onto my middle finger. It fits perfectly. "Can we go now?"

"We can." My father drapes an arm around my shoulders and leads me away from the glass, back around the corner and down the hall, with the screams growing louder and louder the farther away we get. 

# 4 October: Westrey

We get to Feolan's place late in the afternoon, a little one-story house in eastern Ohio sitting back in the woods across from an elementary school. It looks like it could use some fixing up—the grass is jungle-thick, and half the roof shingles have fallen off—but Feolan doesn't seem like the kind of person who puts much thought into how his home looks.

He parks Baz's car in his rock-strewn driveway and ushers us in the front door. It smells like incense inside, and Hindi inscriptions cover the walls. A picture propped on top of a wraparound kitchen counter shows Feolan surrounded by half-smiling Indian men and women; I point it out to Keira. "Well, it looks like he was right about being raised by _jnani_ ," I murmur to her. She shakes her head in response.

I don't know why she's so reluctant to believe Feolan. The _jnani_ have always been willing to lie to us; they probably thought that giving us a fake-magic sword as a gift would keep the Wardens from demanding anything else from them after we helped save them from Sentry invaders. And it worked. It pisses me off, of course, that Baz and I put all that effort into stealing the sword for nothing, but it was never about the sword for me—Keira's the one who insisted we bring it. We're going to rescue Freya from New Fauske either way, especially if we have Feolan's ice-glass to help us.

"Wait here." Feolan leaves us by his kitchen table and runs off into another room, returning with a plain wooden box. He sets it in front of us, and Baz opens it up to reveal a full chest of jewelry—rings, necklaces, bracelets, even earrings. Each has a piece of ice-glass hanging from it or embedded somewhere in its metal.

"All three of you need to put something on," Feolan says. "You can take as much as you want—I only need my bracelet."

"Is there anything we can wear other than jewelry?" Basil wonders.

"Nixan priests have their ice-glass implanted in the backs of their necks," Feolan says. "Would you prefer that?"

Basil ends up choosing a bracelet that looks just like Feolan's—I go with a simple gold ring, and Keira, sighing, digs through the box until she finds a necklace like the one she lost. She puts in on, fingering its pendant with a frown.

"Can you teach us how to do the invisible thing before we leave?" Basil asks Feolan. "Or come with us and do it for us?"

Feolan laughs, shaking his head. "It's not something you can pick up overnight. And I'm not going anywhere near New Fauske." He pulls a tattered atlas off the shelf beside his table and begins to flip through it. "But there is someone on your way who might be able to help you out with that." He finds a page depicting North Dakota and bends the atlas to show it to us. The page is covered in markings and circles, showing Sentry patrol routes and Shade camps and Sylvan villages. Feolan points to a circle somewhere in the middle of the state. "There's a Shade camp here called Manssi. A girl lives there who knows almost as much about Old Magic as I do."

"And she'd help us?" I ask. "And the Shades would let us in their camp?"

"She should. She wants revenge on Fenris and his Sentries more than anyone. And last I heard, her camp is on the verge of rebellion against the Nixa-worshippers." Feolan runs his fingers across the map. "I can put the camp's coordinates into your phone, if you want. It's a long drive, but if you leave now you should make it there by tomorrow night."

"Thank you," I say gratefully. "For everything."

Feolan shrugs. "If you're going to stir up trouble with the Nixans, I'm happy to help."

My phone buzzes in my pocket; I pull it out to find a message from Naira. _They've found tapes of you past the station. Know you crossed._

Immediately after comes one from Fenella: _Well done. Hope you realize how many lives will be lost because of you._

"What is it?" Baz asks.

"Nothing." I quickly click off the phone and stuff it back in my pocket. _Hope you realize how many lives will be lost because of you._ I swallow, feeling suddenly sick to my stomach.

"We're wasting daylight," I say, forcing myself to think of Freya. Nothing else matters, as long as we can get to her. "Let's get back on the road."

# 5 October: Cassatia

Twenty minutes before dinner, Phoebe raps on my door, startling the dog asleep on my chest.

"Come in," I call, scratching Rhody behind the ears to placate him.

She steps inside, timid and flighty as ever. "Did I wake you, princess?"

I flinch. "No, I was just resting." I sit up in bed, letting Rhody slide off onto the blankets. "What is it?"

"Your father wants me to help you get dressed, princess."

_Great Nixa._ "Please don't call me that," I groan. "Stick with _my lady_ , if you have to."

"I'm sorry," Phoebe says quickly, backing up.

I push myself out of bed and indicate my current outfit, the simple white frock I usually wear to sleep. "I'm already dressed for bed, Phoebe. I was going to have my dinner brought up here tonight."

"I—I don't know, my lady, I was just told I had to dress you."

"All right," I sigh, wondering what this could be about. "Pick something out, then."

Phoebe helps me into a fancy ice-blue dress, complete with a diamond necklace and earrings—the kind of thing I'd wear to a dinner with some bigwig Sylvan leader. She brushes out my hair after, weaving it into an elegant crown braid. I don't say anything the entire time, instead examining my new bond-ring.

"Is something wrong, my lady?" Phoebe asks eventually.

I quickly drop my hand. "Nothing's wrong," I assure her. "Just my father." My eyes flit to the fake-gold watch I'd set beside my vanity mirror last night—the watch Keira gave me before she left for the Sentry trials. Swallowing, I take it and fasten it around my wrist.

"Cassatia." It's my father, calling from out in the hall. My head snaps up; without waiting for a response, he pries open my door and steps inside. "Cassatia, you have visitors."

Following him in are King Aknes and Prince Iven—my new bond. Phoebe drops my comb, her mouth gaping open.

I stand up quickly, brushing down the skirt of my dress. Phoebe gives a deep curtsy, and I follow her lead. Rhody, a little less concerned with decorum, leaps off my bed at the sight of the newcomers and bounds over to sniff the prince, going up on his hind legs to get at his butt.

_Great Goddess, no._ "Rhody," I hiss. My father shoots me his most disapproving look yet.

But Iven only laughs, squatting down to Rhody's level. "This is the dog you were telling me about?" he asks me, smiling. I catch the glint of a bond-ring on his finger—the ring my father gave to him without my knowing.

"Yes," I say, my voice shaking from the surprise of it all. "His name's Rhody."

"Stand, Iven," the king orders gruffly. The prince obeys, giving Rhody one last pat on the head.

King Aknes clears his throat. "Cassatia," he says. "I hope you are feeling better today."

"Yes, King Aknes," I say with another curtsy. "Much better, thank you."

He nods. "Your father and I decided that, for your comfort, we should hold the bond-lock ceremony here," he tells me. "Tomorrow, on your birthday."

"That sounds perfect, Your Majesty," I say, swallowing back the bile rising in my throat. "Thank you."

"We're going to head downstairs for dinner now," my father says. "Afterwards, you can show the prince around the castle. He's never been to New Fauske before."

Iven comes over to my vanity and offers me his arm. "Ready?"

I slip my arm into his, feeling the cool metal of his bond-ring as my hand skims across his. _My bond, Prince Iven._ I don't think I'll ever get used to that.

I let Iven lead me down to our banquet hall, my head held high, feeling less like a princess than I ever have before. 

# 5 October: Keira

We spend a full day and a half driving through the bowels of Flyover Country, stopping for the night in a grimy Indiana motel along the way. During the drive, whenever Wes and Baz become particularly annoying, I am tempted to open up the mind-link and call in some of the local Sentries to take care of them, but my innate sense of laziness compels me to let them chauffeur me around as long as possible. In the meantime, everything we buy en route to New Fauske—food, gas, the motel—goes onto my debit card, a silent assurance to Fenris that I'm heading back his way.

I still don't know what to make of everything Feolan had said. He can't have been telling the truth about Old Magic and Ferignis; it made no sense. But for some reason I can't stop his words from replaying themselves in my head, over and over again.

Though I know it will slow us down, I really do want to meet the girl he told us to find. I don't know anything about her—Feolan was very light on the details—but maybe she'll be able to help clear some things up. I want to talk to her first—then I'll call in the Sentries.

It's about eleven at night on day two of driving when Basil's phone GPS announces that our destination is on the right. Unfortunately for us, _"the right"_ is a Shadeless expanse of grass and trees a few miles off the highway.

"You've got to be kidding me," Wes growls from behind the wheel, tapping the aura detector beside him. "There are zero Shades showing up on this thing."

"Feolan probably made the whole Shade camp up," I mutter. "No one actually lives in North Dakota; not even Shades."

"Just keep driving," Basil says. "There's zero reception out here—maybe my phone's just confused."

Two minutes of driving later, a shrill shriek of a beep fills the car, loud enough for all of us to jump to cover our ears and for Wes to almost run the car off the road. Once it's over, a little black dot pops up on the detector, almost straight ahead of us.

"Black is Shades, right?" Wes asks.

"Yes, black is Shades," I say. "I thought you would've learned that in your Nixan-killing classes."

"Wardens should get to be black," Basil sniffs.

Wes puts the detector on silent and we continue on down the road, more and more Shade auras popping up onscreen. He pulls off when the mass of black dots is half a mile to the right of us; out here in the middle of nowhere, the roads only go in one direction. "Guess we're walking from here," he says.

I jump out of the car to be greeted by a frigid blast of North Dakota night wind. "Great Nixa." I reach back inside to grab my blood-spattered jacket, shrugging it on and shivering.

Wes turns off the car, grabs his bag from the back, and leads the way off into the woods. I feel like the three of us are in a horror movie—no one around for miles in any direction, the moon darkened by clouds, the wind battering tree branches against each other and filling the woods with ominous noise. Even though we're half a mile from the Shade camp, there are no lights shining through the trees like you'd expect near a place of human habitation; when the Shades say they like the dark, they mean it.

Wes and Basil whip out their phones to remedy the lack of light, sweeping their flashlights across the undergrowth to reveal all the roots and thorns and branches in our way, patiently waiting for us to trip over them and embarrass ourselves.

"Uh-oh." Wes stops in his tracks, looking down at his aura detector.

"What is it?" Basil asks, coming up behind him.

"There are a couple of Shade dots," Wes answers, "right on top of us."

"That's right," says a voice from the brush. Two phone lights immediately flash in its direction, revealing a pair of Shade men stepping out from the trees, guns at the ready. They flinch away from the light, their guns swiveling over to its source. The Warden boys lower their phones and back away submissively.

"What are you?" one of the Shades demands. "You don't have auras, and there aren't many Senex who carry around detectors."

"They're Sentries," the other one says. "The girl has a mark on her arm."

I quickly pull down my sleeve, the guns whipping over to point at me. I find it quite unfair that the Shades can see a tattoo on my arm with no light while I can barely make out their figures.

"I'm not," I say. "Not anymore, at least." Unfortunately, my assurance does not lead to a lowering of the guns. I throw an arm out to the figures of Wes and Baz. "Look—I'm walking around with a couple of Wardens."

The Shades' attention returns partially to the Warden boys. "They do look like Wardens," one of them says.

"It could be a trap," warns the other. "Meant to test our loyalty or something."

Wes holds out his arms, and balls of fire blossom in his palms. Both of the Shades jump back in shock. "No trap," he promises.

"What do you want from us?" the first Shade asks, his tone a whole lot less accusatory after the fire trick.

"We want to talk to your camp leader," I say. "Can that be arranged?"

The two Shades exchange glances, gesturing silently to each other. "Yes," one of them says eventually. "Come with us."

The Shades press the three of us into a single-file line and direct us through the woods, one in the lead and the other bringing up the rear, the muzzle of his gun pressed against the nape of my neck. "Don't you think about pulling anything," he hisses to me under his breath. "I don't have any qualms about killing shifters."

"I believe you," I whisper back.

We emerge from the woods into a large clearing, where the moon gives us enough light to make out some industrial buildings and the shack-like homes and tents that surround them. The dark figures of Shades at work and play flit around talkatively from building to building, though the conversations die down significantly as our group heads for the center of camp.

"We have guests," our Shade line leader announces, bringing us to a stop beside a big rock statue of King Aknes. A crowd of Shade silhouettes gathers around us, jostling their friends to get as close as possible.

"Who are they?" a woman calls from the back; the crowd parts to let her through. She stops an arm's length away from us, entirely undaunted. A beam of moonlight falls across her face, allowing me to make out its features: thin, arched eyebrows, crisscrossing scars, hollow eyes. She has three white dots painted on one cheek, marking her as camp leader.

"The girl's a Sentry, Anese," the man with a gun to my neck says.

"A former Sentry," I correct before more Shades' guns can come out.

"And the boys are Wardens." Wes does the fire-in-hand trick again, and this time Basil joins in too. A collective gasp goes out across the crowd, but Anese the camp leader only frowns.

"How did a couple of Wardens end up in North Dakota?" she asks.

"With a lot of help," Wes says. "And hidden auras."

"We're on our way to New Fauske," I say, "to cause some trouble for the Nixans. We were told that this camp would be sympathetic to that."

Anese's frown deepens. "Told by whom?"

"A shifter named Feolan." I throw out the name in case it sparks some recognition, but no dice.

"I don't know who that is," Anese says.

"Well, okay, but he knows you, apparently."

"What are you looking for?" a man calls out behind her.

_That's a good question._ "We just need a place to stay for the night," Wes says.

Instantly, hisses and shouts break out from the crowd. "Quiet!" Anese yells. When the noise has died back down, she says, "We'll talk about this in our meeting-hall. Come with me." She turns her back to us and beckons for us to follow; the majority of the Shades come as well, with a few grumbling and heading back to their shacks disapprovingly.

We are led through the camp, skirting past dangerous-looking metal tools lying around in the dark, into one of the largest huts onsite. It's windowless and fireless—once the door is shut, the darkness is as complete as if we were blind.

"Could we have a little bit of light, please?" Wes asks.

"If you must," Anese's disembodied voice says from somewhere out in front of us.

Wes turns on his phone, shining its light around at various chairs and tables and obstacles in the hut. Baz finds a big stick on the ground and lights its tip to produce a makeshift torch, giving us enough light to see the large cluster of Shades ahead of us.

"We can't have Wardens in our camp overnight," one of them says. "We're already having enough trouble as it is."

"Trouble with the _Nixans_ ," someone else says. "Our quota gets bigger and bigger every month, and our payments get smaller and smaller; we know we can't live like this much longer. Our missionaries already left to report to New Fauske—there'll be a bunch of Sentries here out for our blood in a few days anyway."

"So why give them more of a reason to tear us apart?" the first guy snaps back.

"Is this really necessary?" Basil whispers to Wes. "I think I'd rather just sleep in the car at this point."

Wes shakes his head. "We need to find the Shade girl Feolan was talking about. There's no way we'll make it into New Fauske if we can't turn invisible."

"Keira said she could get us in, and she can't turn invisible," Baz points out. He looks to me expectantly.

I grit my teeth. "I'll get them to let us stay here," I promise. "Just give me a second."

Baz shrugs. "Go for it."

I step forward, clearing my throat obnoxiously enough to get the arguing Shades to shut up. "Look, all of us here want to see Fenris's head on a stick, okay? But no Shade revolt in the entire history of the Western Province has actually succeeded in overthrowing the Nixans. Not even close. If you try to rise up against them, you'll be sentencing half your camp to death. More than that, if the Sentries are feeling a bit less charitable." A couple Shades nod their agreement, filling me with a miniscule amount of confidence. "But the three of us have got a plan to get Fenris's head on a stick that not only has a legitimate chance of succeeding, but also will keep all of you out of a deadly fight with the Sentries. If we get this right, the Nixans will have much worse things to worry about than a Shade camp not meeting their quotas."

"That sounds great," a woman says; "but harboring a couple of Warden fugitives isn't exactly risk-free for the camp."

"We don't have auras," I say. "Your guards can attest to that. So even if a random Sentry patrol were to pop in for a chat tonight, they'd have no idea we were here unless you led them straight to us. The risk of you keeping us here for one night is basically zero. And the reward could be a whole lot of your lives saved."

There's silence for a minute, filled with some quiet whispers and muttering. "Well," Anese says eventually, "we have been hiding another illegal Novan here for the past two months. Though she may blend in a little better than a couple of Wardens, I see no problem with allowing them to stay with her if it's just for the night. Come forward, Iraine."

A young Shade girl pushes her way through the crowd to Anese—she looks sixteen or seventeen, maybe. I perk up a little, wondering if she's the one Feolan was talking about. "Would you be willing to let these three spend the night in your tent?"

"Of course, Anese," the girl says, dipping her head.

"Bring them there now, then." Some of the Shades around Anese grumble their objections, but she shuts them up with a quick look.

"Thank you," I tell her. "We'll be gone first thing tomorrow morning, I promise."

The girl Iraine ducks wordlessly past us and nods for us to come with her. We follow her out into the camp again, Basil lighting the way with his stick of a torch. I keep right at Iraine's heels, waiting for her to say something about who she is or why she's here, but she never does. Anese called her an _illegal Novan_ —does that mean she's a _faedra_ , like Feolan? I can't make out anything about her appearance thanks to the darkness, but the way she navigates around without relying on Basil's torch tells me she must be a Shade.

Iraine brings us to a tent on the outskirts of camp, a good distance away from everything else. "Jesus," Wes mutters as we climb inside. "It's freezing in here. And _dark_."

"They're a couple of spoiled brats," I explain to Iraine. "Would you let them start a fire in here? They'll put it out if it starts to get too big."

"What are you, our mother?" Baz asks. The truth is, I'm just as cold and would also love if we could start a fire, but I decide not to say that out loud.

"Sure," Iraine says, her silhouette giving a tiny shrug. "Just make sure the tent flaps stay open."

We root around for sticks and branches in the woods outside the camp until we've got enough to start a nice little indoor fire we can all sit around. Iraine and I rub our hands warm in its heat, while the Warden boys stick their whole heads into the flames. I kind of wish I could do that without killing myself.

Now that I can finally see her properly, I take the chance to study Iraine. I'd been right earlier: she definitely looks more Shade than _faedra_. Her skin is darkish, and I can make out a little bit of color in her hair—in full sunlight, I assume it would be just as blue and purple as every other Shade's. She's got a jewel-encrusted ring on her right middle finger, where a Nixan's bond-ring would be. _Aha._

"You're the girl Feolan sent us to find," I say. "The one he says knows Old Magic."

Iraine gives me a little smile. "Yes." Wes and Baz finally pull their heads out of the fire, their gazes flitting over to her.

"But you're not a _faedra_ —you're just a Shade. So how are you an illegal Novan?"

"Because I'm not just a Shade," she replies. "I'm something else, too." Slowly she extends a hand out over the fire, opening it to reveal a blooming daisy. I choke on my own breath. That's not something Shades can do—that's a Sylvan power. Which can only mean one thing.

"Holy shit," Baz says. "You're a _hybrid_." 

# 5 October: Westrey

"A hybrid?" I echo, narrowing my eyes at Iraine. "I didn't even think that was possible." Novan orders don't interbreed, ever.

"Me neither," Keira murmurs, shaking her head. "What does that mean—your parents are from different orders? How the hell does that even happen?"

Iraine leans in closer to the fire, closing her fist and causing the flower to crumble into ash. I look her in the eyes—they're dark like a Shade's, but even in the dim light I can make out little flecks of green like you'd find in a Sylvan's. "Well, my mother was a Shade; she ended up having to leave her camp when it was attacked, and she came to the Sylvan village my father was living in. And that's where I was born, and where I grew up."

"Well, why aren't you there now?"

"Because Duke Fenris found out about me," she says, her smile souring. "He sent a team of Sentries up to the village to kill me; they never found me, but they did get my mother. I ran away soon after that." Iraine glances around the fire, sizing each of us up. "You say Feolan sent you here?"

"Yeah," I tell her. "How do you know him, anyway?"

She shrugs. "I bumped into him back when I was on the run, right after he moved here from India. We stuck together for a bit." She holds up her hand to show off an ice-glass ring glistening in the firelight. "He taught me how to use this."

Keira bites her lip. "He taught you Old Magic?"

"Can you turn people invisible?" Baz asks eagerly.

"Sure." Iraine pops out of view to demonstrate, leaving the fluttering tent flaps exposed behind her. I blink, and she's back beside the fire again.

"Shit," Keira says. "You can do that too?"

"Anyone can," Iraine says, lifting a shoulder. "It's not hard to do once you've figured out how to channel Old Magic. The other senses are harder to trick—but as long as we're careful, being invisible to the eyes should be enough to get us into New Fauske."

Baz and I exchange a glance. "You want to come with us, then," I say.

"Depends. What's your plan, exactly?"

"Well, ideally," I say, "we're going to rescue the two prisoners the Nixans are holding captive and put a bullet through Duke Fenris's head."

"And you think you'll be able to do that?"

I nod. "With your help, we should. Keira knows New Fauske, and Baz knows fire-guns."

"Great." Iraine clasps her hands together. "Then I'm in."

"It'll be dangerous," Basil warns. "As in, possibly-dying dangerous."

"I don't care," Iraine insists. "I've made it through possibly-dying dangerous before. And it would be an honor to die trying to take down Fenris." She's got a glint in her eyes, something bright and fierce that I recognize from my own—anger deepened by a special kind of loneliness that comes from losing something you don't think you'll ever get back. Iraine's lost her family and been forced out of her home because of Fenris and the Sentries—how could she not want to come with us?

"Great," I say, holding out a hand. "Welcome to the team."

# 5 October: Cassatia

I take Iven around the castle after dinner, ending my tour at the top of the north tower, where I usually meet Keira once a week. As soon as we get up there I regret it—watching the prince lean over the parapets, eyes fixed on the sky, I feel like he's invading the deepest recesses of my privacy. Like he can learn all my secrets just by being at the top of the tower, standing where I stand.

"It's so peaceful up here," he breathes. "Just you and the sky. I can see why you like it."

I nod, swallowing. "I used to come up here every week, when the rest of the castle was asleep, and just...look out at everything."

The prince gives a little smile, studying me. "Will you miss it?" he asks. "New Fauske?"

I hesitate, my breath catching. "Well, it's the only home I've ever had."

"It'll be okay." He steps over to me and covers my hand with his; I stiffen. "I promise."

I bite my lip. "I hope so."

Iven leans forward, the moonlight dancing in his concerned eyes. "Do you want us to bond?"

I close my eyes. "We have to," I say. "We committed to it as soon as we put on our bond-rings."

"Do you _want_ us to bond?" Iven repeats. When I don't respond, he moves his hand to my shoulder. "You can be honest."

I fall back against the parapets. "I do—of course I do. You're the prince, and this is the biggest honor anyone in my family has ever received."

"You don't," Iven says. He doesn't sound angry or disappointed, just sorry. "That's why you left Svalbard City as soon as you found out. You didn't send me this." He puts a finger on his bond-ring.

_Great Goddess, help me._ "It's not you," I say, quietly. "It's not that I don't want to bond with you. It's just that—"

"There's someone else," Iven guesses.

I look up at the sky, studying the patterns of the stars. It makes it easier to answer him. "Yes. There's someone else."

Iven makes a noise deep in his throat. "I'll talk to my father," he says. "We can figure something out, find a way to cancel the ceremony."

"No." I grab his arm as he turns away. "It's too late," I say. "People already know; they know we're wearing each other's rings. And besides...it would never work out for me with the other person. For a number of reasons. Really, Iven, I _want_ to go back to Svalbard with you."

The prince turns back to me, his mouth struggling to decide between a smile and a frown. "Can I kiss you, then?"

"Of course." He leans down; I tilt up my chin to reach him. Our lips meet, and this time mine go soft against his, not putting up the resistance they had before. His hands wrap around my waist, and mine around his neck. It feels mechanical, unnatural, but it's close and simple and nice.

Being bonded with Iven won't be too bad. I picture myself with him, riding Katyrans across Svalbard and exploring Austfonna Castle and travelling with him all over Nixan Europe. The longing I feel for Keira is as sharp as ever, but maybe Iven can help me get rid of it. Maybe it's a good thing for me to be separated from her.

When we break apart, I feel slightly better and a whole lot more tired. "Can we go to bed now?"

"Sure," Iven says. "I still need to figure out which room your servants set up for me."

_For him._ I breathe a sigh of relief. Separate rooms, at least for now.

"I'll help you," I offer. "There aren't too many bedrooms in the castle that are worthy of a prince; it shouldn't be too hard to find." Iven gives a gentle laugh and follows me back over to the access hatch, his fingers lightly grazing the watch around my wrist. 

# 6 October: Keira

There are plenty of things I should be doing right now.

I should be fleeing the camp, sneaking off with Ferignis while Basil and Wes are asleep and getting my ass back to New Fauske while I still have time. I should be sleeping, making sure I'm not drop-dead exhausted for the most important day of this entire mission. I should be doing something other than crouching by our dying tent fire and trying to turn myself invisible.

Of course, being me, that's exactly what I'm doing.

I didn't entirely believe Feolan when he told us he was using Old Magic to turn invisible, but seeing some Shade-Sylvan order hybrid do the same thing pretty much confirms that invisibility is not some weird _faedra_ trick. The fact that there's an order hybrid here at all raises a whole lot of questions. Fenris, the priests, the Sentries—they'd all claimed that hybrids were impossible, that no two Novan orders could interbreed. And then I saw a nocturnal Shade-looking girl conjure a flower in her hand. Between that, the adult _faedra_ and all the invisibility, I'm starting to wonder what the hell is even true anymore. Who says I can't invisify myself too?

I try everything, but no matter how tightly I wrap my new ice-glass necklace around my finger or how hard I pray to Nixa, I remain just as visible and powerless as before.

"Hey." I gasp, whipping around to find Wes sitting up behind me. "I don't think we need anyone sitting guard in here."

I take a breath to calm my nerves, lowering my shoulders. "I just...I can't sleep."  
Wes scoots over to the fire, narrowing his eyes. "You're trying to turn invisible," he guesses.

"What, you're a mind-reader all of a sudden?"

"No," he admits. "But I can't think of many other reasons you'd be up at one in the morning with a necklace around your finger."

"I guess I'll give you that," I sigh. Wes leans in closer until I can feel the heat radiating off of him, warming my skin in the cold October night. "I think I might've used Old Magic before," I tell him quietly. "Whenever I fought, or flew for too long or something, my pendant would get all warm and help keep me from noticing the pain; make me feel stronger, even."

"Wait a second," Wes says, sitting forward. "You mean the ice-glass was helping you that time you beat me up in training? You're not actually that much better than me?"

"No," I admit, not entirely sure why I'm telling him all of this. "I was given that pendant to make me a better candidate at the Sentry trials. Until yesterday, I'd never once fought without it."

Wes shakes his head. "I don't know if I should be relieved or angry right now."

I ball the pendant up in my fist. "I didn't think I was actually using Old Magic before—I just thought the pendant had a blessing put on it. But now I'm not so sure."

"Well, Old Magic tricks the senses, like Feolan said, right?" Wes says. "What if you were using it to trick your own senses?"

"That's what I was thinking. But if I could use it before, why can't I use it now when I actually know what I'm doing?"

Wes thinks for a second, tilting his head. Warily I wait for his response.

"I've got an idea," he says eventually. Reaching into the fire, he ferrets through the sticks beneath it and pulls out two of the longest, extinguishing the flames creeping down from their tips. He hands the non-burnt end of one over to me. "Let's go outside."

I glance down at the stick, standing up as he does. "What the hell is this for?"

"You used the ice-glass before when you were fighting, right? Maybe you just need to get your blood pumping first."

Without waiting for a response, Wes slams his stick into mine, almost hard enough to knock it from my hands. "Hey!" I attack him right back, clashing sticks with him like we're fencing. Wes backpedals out of the tent, nearly tripping over Basil's sleeping lump of a body; I follow him, my stick pressed against the veins of his neck. His stick grazes my arm, just a little—its heat sears my skin and sends waves of pain shooting up my body. I cry out, losing my grip on my weapon. Wes digs his stick into my stomach, and I topple back into the grass.

"This is so unfair," I growl, getting to my feet again. But now I can feel the pendant growing warm in my hand. I throw it around my neck and feel its power seeping into my muscles, the pain melting instantly from my arm.

I come at Wes again with renewed strength, knocking him to his knees and pushing him back against the tent until it nearly collapses under his weight. "Good!" he pants. "Now the invisible part!"

I slam my stick into his side again, my mind reeling. _Invisible invisible invisible,_ I think. _I can do this._

Suddenly Wes lurches back. "Whoa," he says. "It worked, Keira."

I look down, and find nothing. My body has disappeared, clothes and all. The stick is still there—I feel it pressed against my hand—but it now looks to be floating by itself in midair.

Swallowing back a scream, I concentrate on where my hand meets the stick, envisioning my solid flesh around it. Slowly my arm fades back into view, along with the rest of me. I drop the stick, feeling suddenly lightheaded.

"Hey." Wes catches me as I pitch towards him, letting me down gently in the grass. "You're welcome, by the way."

"Thank you," I tell him, my voice strained. The pendant has cooled again around my neck; I bury my head between my knees, sighing.

Wes sits down beside me. "Are you okay?"

"Not really." I just used Old Magic, undeniably, which means that Feolan was right about anyone being able to use it. Which means that, more than likely, he was right about Ferignis and the curse, too. Which means that there was absolutely no reason for me to fly across the country to bring Ferignis to the duke, and according to Feolan, Fenris knew all along.

Then why did he send me?

Wes sighs. "I feel sick," he admits. His voice is open, unguarded—trusting, even. "Whatever happens tomorrow, it's going to start something with the Nixans. I mean, I have to save Freya, of course...but there's a good chance it's going to lead to even more Wardens being taken and killed. The Nixans started the Massacre last time some of us crossed the Line—what we're planning to do tomorrow is a thousand times worse."

I raise my head. "That's what he wants," I say under my breath. "It has to be." Fenris wanted me to go to Boston to incite the Wardens. He's tired of us sitting on our asses and quelling Shade rebellions—he wants us to go into all-out war mode, just like in Europe. Cass always said that the king thought Fenris was weak for not spending his days ordering Warden attacks; this is his solution. To use me as a clueless pawn to help him get the respect he wants—respect that will probably cost us thousands of lives, Sentry and Warden alike. I clutch at my stomach; now I'm starting to feel sick, too.

I once told Cass that she would make things better once she's in charge of the province. She's different from the other Nixans—she listens. She could work something out with the pissed-off Shades, and figure out something better to do with the _faedra_ s. She could change the Sentry trials so shifters don't have to become murderers to live themselves. She could set up peace talks with Fenella and her council, maybe even agree to a truce.

And Fenris wants to keep her from getting a chance to do any of it.

I dig my nails into the ground. Maybe I shouldn't stop Wes and Baz from rescuing Freya and offing the duke. Hell, maybe that's what I've wanted all along—maybe that's why I've hesitated all this time to turn them in.

"Keira?" Wes prompts. "What are you thinking?"

I pull my debit card from my pocket and hold it out to him. "Can you give this to Anese for me?"

He takes it from me uncertainly. "Your card?"

"Yeah, I think we should use cash from now on. Tell Anese it's hers as long as she can get one of her Shades to use it somewhere around here tomorrow afternoon."

Wes's eyes flit from the card to my face and back again. "You think the Nixans are using this to track us."

I shrug. "I don't know, but there's always a chance. You've got to cover all your bases, right?"

"Right," Wes says. His fingers brush against my arm, lingering there for a second; my body goes suddenly tense, like a reflex. Then he stands, scratching the back of his head and clearing his throat. "I'll be right back. You should probably try to get some sleep."

I nod, and watch him disappear into the darkness before heading back into the tent, stamping out the fire and curling up with my back to Basil.

_I'm still doing this for you, Cass,_ I think, closing my eyes. _I promise._

# 6 October: Westrey

"Wake up." I feel a weight pulling at my arm, almost hard enough to dislocate my shoulder. "Wes. Get the hell up."

It's Keira, of course. I groan and roll over into the grass. "Touch me again," I growl, "and you're gonna lose a hand."

"We have to get out of here," she says, pouncing on top of me and knocking the air from my lungs. "We need to be at the gates of New Fauske by six, when the supply shipments come in."

Reluctantly, I sit up and rub the sleep from my eyes. It's still pitch-black out—I wonder how long I was asleep for. I click on my phone to find the numbers _5:08_ staring back at me. _Jesus._ Baz yawns beside me, stretching out his back; Iraine is crouched at the entrance to the tent, looking anxious and more than ready to leave. And Keira is hovering over me, arms crossed impatiently as she waits for me to get to my feet.

"I'm too tired to drive," Basil moans, pulling himself up. "We'll end up stuck in a ditch somewhere."

"I'll drive for the first few hours," Iraine says. "The rest of you can sleep in the car. We'll switch off."

We stumble out of the tent, the chill of the morning gnawing through our skin. I shiver, zipping up my jacket. It'll only be getting colder from here.

We leave Manssi with as little fuss as possible, ignoring the stares of curious Shades and walking along the fringes of camp with our heads ducked down. Since none of us can tell her exactly where we left our car, we let Iraine and her night vision take the lead once we get into the woods—she finds the Malibu within twenty minutes.

Iraine climbs in the driver's seat, fiddling with Basil's phone GPS. Keira, squeezing into the back with me, grabs it from her impatiently and enters in an address. Baz takes shotgun, bundling up his jacket to rest his head on and reclining his seat until I have zero leg room behind him. Sighing, I pull my legs up on the seat beside me; Keira plops her head down on top of my feet and kicks her legs up over her window.

"This car suddenly seems really, really tiny," I say. Keira _mmm_ s in agreement. I think back to last night, sitting beside the fire with her and actually enjoying the closeness—that feeling, unfortunately, is long gone now, replaced with nervousness and doubt and a dull sort of adrenaline.

"I'll drive as fast as I can," Iraine promises. She turns on the car, pulls it out of park, and follows the road on westward.

❄🔥❄

Baz wakes me up somewhere in western Montana to take the reins for the last part of the drive. I take the car up steep mountain climbs and down dips and past more speeding pickup trucks than I thought existed. Finally, about an hour before sunset, I begin to hear the telltale vibration of the aura detector stuffed into one of our bags, and soon enough we drive by an old wooden sign almost unreadable under the plants that cover it: _NAL FERRIS STATE FOREST_.

"Hey, guys," I say, "I think we're here."

Keira yawns, sitting up and blinking around at our surroundings. "Turn here," she says, pointing to an unpaved road to our left. I do, the car bumping and rolling over the gravel. "There should be a little parking lot up ahead."

Keira's _"parking lot"_ is a loosely-defined corral of rocks, divided up by wobbly lines of white spray paint. I pull into an open space, shut off the car, and turn to Iraine.

She's sleeping in the passenger's seat, sunlight falling on her face in a way I'm sure she'd never allow if she were awake. Her hair looks beautiful under the light of the sun: a deep, intense purple at the top that fades into cobalt with electric blue at the ends. Even her brows and lashes are purple-blue, and somehow the coloring looks entirely natural on her. It is natural, I guess, for a Shade hybrid.

I shake her lightly. "Hey. We're here."

She wakes almost instantly, rubbing open her eyes and arching her back. "All right," she murmurs; "let's do this." She swings open her door and jumps out, waiting for the rest of us to follow.

Baz and I check our fire-guns and search one last time through our bags—I ignore Ferignis's hilt sticking out of mine. At this point, the _jnani_ sword is just an extra useless thing to carry around.

"The city gates are about a ten minutes' walk from here," Keira says. "We're still on Sen turf, but just barely."

"It's probably time to go invisible, then," Iraine says. She clutches at her ring, and suddenly my body has vanished out from under me. Panicking instinctively, I grab onto the nearest tree branch, feeling my nonexistent fingers closing around it. _I'm still here I'm still here I'm still here._ With a deep breath to steel myself, I let go of the branch, running my hands over my arms and legs and chest to make sure they all still exist.

"Shit," Basil's voice says from behind me. "That almost gave me a heart attack."

"Over here," Keira calls. She shakes a fir sapling off to our right to get our attention. "Follow my footsteps."

We do, keeping tight to Keira's trail of pushed-aside branches and dead fall leaves pressed into the mud. She takes us deep into the forest, up hills and over rocks; eventually, all four of us are breathing heavily enough to disclose our location by sound alone.

"It's like we're ghosts," Basil pants. "Like we aren't even here."

"Not exactly," Iraine warns. "We still take up space—we can't pass through walls or anything."

"Or heavily-guarded castle doors," I add.

"I have a plan for that," Keira assures us, snapping a thorny branch back into my face.

We emerge from the woods near a big wooden platform, behind which a cargo train is stopped. Shifters carry boxes and barrels and tied-up goods across the platform to where a long procession of horse-drawn wagons waits, driven by whip-wielding Sentries. As soon as a wagon is full, a tarp is pulled over its top, and the wagon is urged forward to make room for the next. Each of them is pulled by two horses—white or gray or red or brown, but never black.

"That's our ride," Keira tells us. "The wagons."

"They're going into the city?"

"Yep," Keira says. "All our goods from the Shades and Sylvans are brought to Nal Ferris on planes and trains and shit, but nothing can be brought through the city gates except in a carriage." Branches bend and rustle as she steps out of the trees. "Come on."

She grabs my hand; taking her cue, I grab Basil's behind me. We creep quietly forward in an awkward conga line, tiptoeing over the leaf cover. Keira takes us behind one of the wagons currently being filled, loaded with corn and bread from some overexploited Sylvan village. A Sentry yanks forward its tarp; Keira's grip on my hand strains as she lifts herself inside. I climb in after her, the wood floor creaking just the slightest under my weight.

I lower myself onto a big closed box—Baz grabs my shoulder and pulls himself down next to me, and one of the girls leans back against my legs. A pair of Sentries duck their heads inside to inspect, shining a light around at all the supplies. I hold my breath, painfully aware of the fact that we could all pop back into sight at any moment.

But the Sentries' eyes pass right over us, and they pat the sides of the wagon to signify that it's full to their satisfaction. I hear the crack of a whip from up front, and the wagon lurches forward.

We're brought down a narrow, well-worn trail through the woods, the wagon rattling and shaking enough to set my teeth on edge. The temperature seems to drop with every step, and soon we see patches of snow on the forest floor and between the boughs of trees. The snow quickly becomes a full-cover blanket, and the trees go from colorful to dead and bare.

"Almost there," Keira murmurs.

I crawl to the wagon's opening, craning my head around the tarp, and see the gates of New Fauske—tall and metal and formidable—just ahead of us. On either side of the gates, and beyond them in frequent intervals along the city wall, are watchtowers manned by Sentries pointing bows into the woods.

"How explosive are the arrows the Sentries use?" I whisper to Keira.

"Explosive enough to turn everything within three feet of them to dust," she replies. "You don't even have to aim right."

I raise my eyebrows. _Great._

As the first wagon approaches the gates, about a hundred feet ahead of us, the armed Sentries on both sides begin to turn giant wheels kept in their towers. Smoothly and silently the gates draw open, inviting the carriages into the city.

"Here we are," Keira murmurs. "Welcome to New Fauske." 

# 6 October: Cassatia

"Happy birthday, Cassatia."

I turn to find Caphian standing at my door, a polished wooden box in his arms. "I brought you a present."

I stand up slowly, careful not to fold or stretch my dress. Caphian's eyes widen as he takes me in, seeing how I look after hours and hours of preparation for the bond-lock ceremony. I'm wearing the diamond-imbued mermaid dress I picked out for Svalbard, and a sapphire-studded snowflake necklace Phoebe chose for me—and, of course, Keira's watch. My hair's been done in layered waves, and my face has been smoothed and colored with hundreds of different powders and pastes. I look like I should be turning twenty-eight instead of eighteen today.

"You really do look like a princess, Cass," Caph says with a smile, setting the box down on the table beside my bed. "Has your father seen you yet?"

I shake my head. "He hasn't been to see me all day."

"He'll be pleasantly surprised, then." Caphian helps me into the seat behind the table. "Go on—open it."

I crack open the box to find a checkered board topped with carved wooden black and white pieces. "A chess set," I say.

Caphian nods, lowering himself down onto the table beside me. "Remember when I first taught you how to play?"

I purse my lips. "It was right after my mother died."

He nods again. "You hadn't left your room in days. I thought this game might help you take your mind off things a bit. It's hard to concentrate on much else when you're trying to think ten moves ahead."

I pick up the white queen piece, running a finger across its crown top. "You think we could play right now?"

"Caphian." Diana ducks into my room. "It's time."

Caph shrugs, giving me half a smile. "I guess not." He pulls me up from my seat; I clutch at his wrist nervously. He raises his eyebrows at me, surprised. "It'll be okay, Cass." I swallow, nodding.

Caph and Diana escort me through the halls and up to the castle temple. My father waits at its door in suit and tie, ready to lead me in. Soft ceremonial music leaks through the walls, reminding me unnecessarily of the significance of the occasion.

My father nods to Caphian and offers me his arm. "You look beautiful," he says.

"Thanks," I say, my mouth dry.

"We'll have a concert afterwards," he tells me. "I promised the king you would treat us to some of your violin. _Avasol's Concerto_ , perhaps?"

_Of course._ "I'd love to, Father."

He hesitates for a second, studying me. "I'm proud of you, Cassatia." He says it like he means it, but his words only make my heart beat faster. I hope this is over soon—a sweaty bride is probably not optimal for a royal's bond.

I take my father's arm, and Caphian draws open the door.

My limbs go stiff as I look inside. Blue and white flowers circle the room, and an ornate rug stretches from the door to the little landing on which Prince Iven waits in a crisp white suit. The king stands behind him, wearing his crown and cape, and Evana stands underneath the landing's giant arched window, dressed in white and looking three times as striking as I ever could in the color. My brother Aren waits off to the side with Rhody, freshly-groomed, sitting beside him; both of them look entirely overwhelmed. And sitting among the pews of the temple, crowded into every nook and cranny, are people, Nixans and Sentries and even Sylvans and Shades. As soon as the door opens, they all turn to me in unison.

I try for a smile; the prince gives one back encouragingly from the landing. My father leads me forward with measured, careful steps. I stick close to his side, holding my head up as regally as I can and praying to the Goddess that I don't trip over my dress. Everyone bows deeply as we pass them.

My father helps me up onto the landing, then takes his position beside King Aknes. I stand at Evana's shoulder, face-to-face with the prince.

Evana raises her arms, and the corner orchestra's music dies down to silence. She begins to speak, her voice ringing out loud and strong throughout the room.

"Today we have come together to celebrate history," she says. "Today, for the first time, the blood of Avasol Loraveire will be joined with the holy family of Heilagur. Today, the provinces will be united as they have never been before. Today, our blessed Prince Iven chooses for his bond the child of our most noble duke, Lady Cassatia Loraveire."

The crowd breaks out into enthusiastic applause. Iven nods to me, his eyes bright.

I take a deep breath, steeling myself as I wait for the applause to end. _No backing out now._

Iven holds out his hand, palm facing me and fingers aimed up at the sky. I place my palm against his, the diamond of my bond-ring reflecting enough light back into my eyes to blind me.

"Now they will seal their bond," Evana says.

The prince begins, his voice much softer than the priestess's. "I choose you, Cassatia Loraveire, for my bond. I will love you and honor you and defend you from all harm. I give you my heart, my body, and my soul. I pledge this to you in the holy name of our Goddess."

I go next, half as loud and twice as shaky. "I choose you, Iven Heilagur, for my bond. I will love you until my death and bear you children to further your name. I give you my heart, my body, and my soul. I pledge this to you in the holy name of our Goddess." I slip my fingers between Iven's, and we clasp our hands together tightly.

"You are bonded," Evana says; "for now, and forever. I present you now to our people as prince and princess of Nixa's Kingdom."

" _Avtalte_!" the crowd begins to chant. " _Avtalte_! _Avtalte_! _Avtalte_!"

Iven pulls me in for a kiss; I wrap my arms around his neck and press my lips to his, closing my eyes and tasting his breath. The chanting grows louder, the air grows cooler, and I feel the gentle touch of snowflakes on my arms and face and shoulders. " _Avtalte_! _Avtalte_! _Avtalte_!"

I pull back from Iven, turning back to the crowd. The music has begun again, and the room has dissolved into a mess of scattered flowers and snow.

Iven squeezes my hand, and I press myself against him, my legs too weak to support my weight on their own. "Are you all right?" he murmurs into my ear.

"Fine," I tell him.

It's probably the worst lie I've ever told, and he knows it. He squeezes my hand again. "It'll be okay," he says—the second time I've heard that today.

"Of course it will." _Please, Nixa,_ I pray, _let him be right._

# 6 October: Westrey

The next few minutes are some of the strangest in my life.

Our wagon clops down a snow-dusted cobblestone path through the city, giving us a front-seat view of its little homes and shops and buildings. Nixan men and women chat and laugh on patios, and little kids throw snowballs at each other from their yards. One snowball hits the flank of one of the horses pulling our wagon, causing him to whinny and freak out the other.

It's weird; surreal, even. I'd never seen a Nixan before—no Warden on the continent has, probably, for hundreds of years. Now we are surrounded by thousands of them, and they have absolutely no idea.

Ahead of us, looming over the entire city, is a giant white castle, harsh and chiseled, with a tower sprouting from each of its corners. It is flanked by two other giant buildings, one tall and the other long—the Royal Academy and the Great Temple, according to Keira. The castle's massive double doors stand directly ahead, guarded by two Sentries with pointed staffs. And behind the guards are fluttering blue flags with the Nixan snowflake emblazoned on them.

The cobblestone path bends to the right, and the wagon jerks sideways to follow it. "Here's where we get off," Keira murmurs, grabbing my arm and pulling me with her. I jump obediently, and land hard on my invisible knees with Baz's elbow between my ribs. I gasp; Keira pulls us up and out of the way of the next carriage in line.

"Could you be any louder?" she hisses in my ear, guessing its location surprisingly well. "In a minute we won't have a stampede of horses to cover up all your noise."

"Sorry," I growl. We stand frozen at the edge of the path while the rest of the convoy goes by, right in the middle of the Nixans' capital city. All around us are Nixans and shifters going about their business, blissfully unaware of the fact that a bunch of their worst enemies have just infiltrated their home.

"Let's go." Keira pulls me off the path and onto another one, a path made not from stone but from countless footsteps compressing the snow. I feel a hand close around my shoulder—Iraine's, I think. We inch forward on the balls of our feet, careful not to touch the undisturbed snow to our sides.

The path leads around the side of the castle, through a twenty-foot-wide alleyway between it and the Royal Academy. "Where are we going?" I breathe.

"To the southern entrance," Keira replies.

"Why?" I ask. "Do they not guard their back door or something?"

"Of course they guard their back door," Keira says, the eye roll clear in her voice. "Two Sentries inside and out, just like the front entrance."

"Then why does it matter where we go in?"

"You'll see."

Behind the castle, a huge crowd of Nixans has gathered around a giant frozen pond on which a man and woman are skating. Beside the pond is a white grand piano with a young woman bent over its keys; next to her sits another woman, singing in what I assume to be Old Norse with one of the clearest and best voices I've ever heard. The melody sounds like a cross between _Amazing Grace_ and _Auld Lang Syne_ sped up a few BPMs. The skaters dance and leap in perfect harmony with it, weightless as feathers. And the ice ripples around them like a rolling sea, obeying the will of the singer and the skaters.

"Whoa," Basil breathes beside me.

"What is this?" Iraine murmurs.

"New Fauske has a big skating show whenever there's something important to celebrate," Keira explains.

"What are they celebrating today?" Basil wonders. "Our arrival?"

"It's the birthday of the duke's daughter."

"Oh, right," Baz says; "I almost forgot about her. Are we planning on offing her too, for anarchical purposes?"

"Just Fenris," Keira insists, her grip on my arm tightening. "Anyway, we're not here to watch an ice show—we're here for the distraction. Look at the doors." They've been propped half-open, allowing the guards stationed inside to watch the skaters.

"How considerate," I mutter.

"Come on." The audience stands a couple yards back from the edge of the ice, but a few sets of footprints circle the pond and lead through the open doors. When Keira yanks me forward I step into one of the bigger prints, hearing a soft _crunch_ as my foot digs into the snow. I tense, but the noise is easily covered up by the music and the crowd's conversations.

As we make our way around the pond, I find my eyes inextricably drawn to the figure skaters. I watch as the man grabs the girl by the waist and tosses her into the air, quickly falling back to give her center stage. She lands neatly and enters into a tight spin, arms above her head; a tornado of snow forms around her, growing taller as she spins faster and faster until all I can see are her fingertips. The piano strikes a heavy chord, and she lowers her arms in one quick motion, the snow-tornado dissolving instantly into nothingness.

"That's amazing," I breathe.

Keira pulls me forward roughly. "No stopping," she hisses. "Come _on_."

My foot slips; with a yelp I fall to my knees, my leg sliding out over the ice. As the girl skater whisks by, her skate rams into my shoe, and she falls face-down with a startled cry.

_Shit._ Baz grabs me quickly from behind and helps me back onto my feet. The four of us wait, statue-still and dead silent, as the piano stops and the singing falters, and a collective gasp goes up from the crowd.

For an awful moment, I think I've exposed us—but it's the fallen skater everyone is focused on. Her partner pulls her back up again, and the music picks up right where it left off.

I let out a silent breath. _Thank God._

We make it to the doors, waiting for a loud burst of applause from the audience before tiptoeing past the four door guards. We enter into a pristine marble hall just behind a raised platform with a gilded throne seat in its center, intricate patterns of wolves and snow etched into its back. The hall reaches up for dozens and dozens of feet, crisscrossed intermittently with overlooks spanning all the different floors. It's enormous; our steps would be echoing all over the place if not for the amount of noise coming from just outside.

Keira takes us into a little hallway off to the side. It's dim, lit by little orbs of light built into its walls. If the Nixans have to use electricity, they're going to use as little of it as possible.

At the end of the hall stand two Sentry women guarding a heavy-looking white door, one not conveniently held open for us to pass through. Keira holds out her arms to stop us before we get too close. "They're through there," she whispers.

I clench my teeth. Freya is _right there_. "How are we getting in? Old Magic?"

"Too tricky," Iraine murmurs. "Shade magic." Her arm brushes mine as she extends it, and I hear her suck in a breath. The hall lights flicker out for a second, and suddenly there's a _crash_ and a clattering; when the light returns, the two guards are heaped in a pile in front of the door, their staffs rolling back towards us.

"They'll be asleep for about twenty minutes," Iraine says. "I think."

"Let's hope so." We step over the bodies and shoulder open the door.

Inside it is bright, bright white, eerie and artificial—they're not sparing any electricity here. Screams and cries, almost inhuman, echo through the halls—Freya's screams.

I can't help myself anymore. I take off with Baz's footsteps right behind, turning at the end of the hall and nearly colliding with a thick glass wall. Behind it is a Nixan with a whip, a dustie boy splayed out and shaking on the tiles, and a man crouching beside a bloody, broken teenage girl. My sister.

The man grabs her ears, snapping back her head. Through the wall I hear the sick crackling of electricity, and Freya lets out a screeching, mangled cry.

I pull out my gun, but Baz is faster. _Boom._ The bullet pierces straight through the glass and the man crumples to the ground. The Nixan with the whip looks up, startled. _Boom, boom._ He falls too with a gasp, landing on top of the dustie boy. The boy snaps up, groaning and pulling himself out from under him.

"Freya!" I scream, pounding on the glass.

"Wes?" She looks around wildly, but she can't see us.

Keira and Iraine catch up to us, and suddenly my fists on the glass are visible and in flames. Freya screams and falls back, covering her mouth with a shaking hand.

Keira yanks up her jacket sleeve and presses her Sentry mark to the glass wall. When she removes her arm, the wall begins to slide slowly down into the floor.

Not wasting any time, I leap over the sinking wall and run to my sister, stumbling over the body of the fallen Nixan man. "Freya." I grab her by the shoulders, feeling the bones poking out from underneath her frayed shirt. She shrieks and tries to push me away, but I hold tight. "It's me, Freya. It's Wes."

Freya shakes her head, her eyes clouded and unfocused. "You can't be here," she says hoarsely. "I'm hallucinating."

"I'm here," I assure her. Gently I touch her chin—she jerks back instinctively, but lets me raise her head to meet my eyes. "I promised I'd get you out of here, didn't I?"

Freya studies me for a minute, stiff and still; then she lets out a wild, shaky laugh, and collapses against my chest. "God, Wes," she breathes. I wrap my arms tightly around her and press my face into her hair. _Freya._ She begins to shake, sobbing into my shoulder. I feel tears well up in my eyes, and for once I don't try to blink them back. _Freya, Freya, Freya._ I never thought I'd see her again.

I hug and hug and hug her, both of us crying, never wanting to have to let go.

# 6 October: Keira

"Oh, my God," Wes says into Freya's hair. "I thought you were dead." He's shaking, but his sister is shaking harder, weak from shock and months of being tortured by Nixans. I exchange a glance with Iraine; we have to get moving, but I'm half-afraid Wes would turn his gun around on me if I suggested it.

"I can't believe I'm not," Freya murmurs back. Then she pulls away, just a little, to look Wes in the face. They look very similar—his hair is a little curlier and she is half a foot shorter with a different nose, but it's easy to believe they're twins. "I told them about Ferignis, Wes," she says. "Our second day here. I thought they were going to kill Quincey—it was before I realized they wanted both of us alive—so I had to tell them something."

"It's okay," Wes says, stroking her hair tenderly. "We don't need it anyway. Just a fire-gun."

"What are you talking about?"

"Part two of our plan," Basil says. "You didn't think we came all this way just for you, did you?"

"Baz." Freya whips around to see him. "Jesus, Baz, you're here too?"

"I wasn't going to let Wes take all the credit." He opens his arms, a sly half-smile on his face; Freya stumbles into them for a hug that ends in Baz lifting her off her feet and spinning her around in circles.

"What about them?" I turn to find the little dustie boy I'd forgotten all about pointing at me and Iraine, his arm trembling. He has an eyepatch strapped around his head, and his one remaining eye is wide with an animal fear. "That's a shifter." Freya makes a gagging noise, wriggling her way out of Basil's arms to face me.

"Hi," I say, waving a hand awkwardly.

Freya clenches her fists, but Wes lays a hand on her shoulder to calm her. "She's with us," he promises. "She and Iraine are helping us get you out."

"Yes," Iraine says; "and that would be a whole lot easier if we get out of here before the guards wake up."

Freya swallows and turns to the boy, who's still trembling. "It's okay, Quincey," she says, squeezing his shoulders. "If Wes and Baz trust them, so can we." He nods, a little bit of the fear leaving his eye.

Wes hands the two of them spare rings he took from Feolan's box of ice-glass jewelry. "These will hide your auras," he explains. "Iraine will turn us invisible, and then we'll be all set."

"Invisible? What do you mean?"

In response, Iraine taps her ring, and the six of us flicker out of view. Freya yelps; I hear Baz's surprised _oof_ as she falls back against him. "It's okay," he assures her. "You're still here. It's just an illusion."

"An illusion," Freya repeats, her voice wavering all over the place. "Holy shit, Baz. Holy _shit_."

Once she and Quincey have oriented themselves to invisibility, we grab hands and I lead the way back to the door out of the holding cell, moving much slower than we had before thanks to Freya and Quincey's uneven steps.

I open the door as quietly as I can: the Sentry guards are still fast asleep on the other side. I let out my breath and pull the others forward, stepping again over the bodies.

Out in the dimly-lit hall, we have to take a moment to acclimate ourselves to something other than intense brightness. Iraine breathes an audible sigh of relief to be back in semi-darkness.

"So," she murmurs behind me, "where are we going to find Duke Fenris?"

"I don't know," I say; "somewhere inside the castle. I can shift and fly around to find him."

"No shifting," Wes insists. "We're sticking together while we're invisible."

"Fine," I shrug. "We'll find him the old-fashioned way, then."

We step out into the main entry hall, craning our heads to search for signs of life on the upper floors. A few shifter servants walk across the landings, but I don't see any Nixans.

"What's going on outside?" Quincey whispers.

"A skating show," I say. "For Fenris's daughter's birthday."

"Are we going upstairs or not?" Baz asks.

"Upstairs," I confirm. "This way." I lead everyone up a marble staircase to the second floor, and we begin tiptoeing around with our ears to the doors to listen for Nixans.

"Is that music coming from outside too?" Quincey asks me after about five minutes of searching.

"What music?" I ask.

"The violin."

My head snaps up; I close my eyes, straining to listen. Quincey's right—there are strains of violin coming from directly above us, a melody I recognize all too well.

" _Avasol's Concerto_ ," I mutter.

"What's that?" Wes asks.

"It's Cass," I tell him. "The duke's daughter. She's the one playing."

"Fenris is probably with her, then," Iraine says. "Let's check." She pulls our group towards a half-open nearby door leading into a stairwell.

"He's never with her," I protest, though I know he very well might be for her birthday. My blood goes cold at the thought of the Wardens shooting down Cass's father right in front of her. _Maybe this isn't the best idea after all._

"We should at least take a look," Iraine insists. We squeeze through the door and wait for a shifter headed down the stairs to pass us before climbing up ourselves, stopping at the door opening onto the third floor. This one's closed; Iraine listens to make sure no one is walking by on the other side, then pries it open and leads the way out.

We follow the sound of the violin to the wide open gilded door of the castle temple. Inside I see Cass, standing on the landing at its far end in a beautiful white dress, playing the concerto with Rhody at her side. The temple pews are all full, the audience watching her in silence.

We crouch in the doorway—I hear Basil cocking his gun. "Is the duke here?" he breathes.

I stretch my neck to look inside. I know the important people will all be in the front pew: sure enough, I see Caphian's golden hair peeking out from up front, and Asreil's auburn. Beside them is the thinning white-blond hair of the duke, and next over is a man in a jeweled silver crown I've only seen before in pictures.

I inhale sharply. "What?" Wes hisses.

"The king's here," I whisper. "King Aknes, right next to the duke."

"The crown," Basil says. "Yeah, I see him."

"Jesus Christ," Wes breathes. "We can take them both out."

My heart lurches—this is starting to get a bit out of control. "Just the duke," I insist under my breath.

"No way," Baz says. "When's the last time a Warden's had an opportunity like this to kill a Nixan king?" He shifts as he adjusts his weapon. "But not enough of his head is exposed. I'd just end up shooting off his crown."

"We need to get the Nixans to stand up somehow," Iraine says from behind us.

"I've got it," Wes murmurs. He slides his gun in over my ear; I can feel the heat pulsating from its metal. "Move your head, Keira, or I'll blow out your eardrum." Confused, I follow his trajectory straight forward and find Cass at the other end of it.

My stomach drops. "You can't shoot her," I say. "She's innocent."

"She's a Nixan," Wes growls. "If I take her down, the duke and the king will get up to help her, and Baz will get his shot."

"Do it, Wes," Iraine breathes. He cocks the gun, and I hear his fingers sliding over metal to find the trigger....

I lunge for him, grabbing his wrist and yanking it back; the fire-gun goes off, sending a bullet flying through the window a foot above Cass's head. She cries out, the violin slipping from her fingers and nearly falling on Rhody. Her audience gasps, and the king and duke leap up—but Basil doesn't shoot, instead grabbing me and pulling me off of Wes.

Evana the High Priestess stands, and with a flick of her wrist exposes our struggling group in the doorway. "Wardens," she hisses.

"Keira?" Cass drops her bow, too.

"Get down!" Caphian yells, whipping out his gun. Everyone ducks below the pews, we drop to the floor, trying our best to roll out of the way, and Caph and Asreil begin to fire.

_Boom_. _Boom_. _Boom_. _Boom_. Basil cries out, releasing his grip on me; behind us, Iraine lets out an ear-splitting screech. A bullet whizzes right over my head, close enough to take some of my hair with it.

I lock eyes with Cass, still standing dumbfounded on the landing. _"Help,"_ I mouth to her.

_Boom_. _Boom_. _Boom_. Cass raises her arm, and a wall of ice sprouts from the ground, filling the doorway within a second. The shooting stops, and the castle goes dead silent. 

# 6 October: Cassatia

Caphian and Asreil lower their guns; everyone in the pews turns from the blocked doorway to me. I lower my arm, shaking. _What did I just do?_

"Cassatia," Evana breathes.

Regaining a bit of his composure, my father extends an arm to the ice, and it evaporates into thin air. The figures that had been behind it have disappeared—he sends Asreil after them with a silent gesture to the lieutenant.

Then the attention of the room reverts to me. "You saved the Wardens' lives," King Aknes says, narrowing his eyes at me. Beside him Iven sits open-mouthed.

"I saved Keira's life," I say, my voice hoarse. "I had to."

My father goes red, looking like he'd be more than happy to have me killed. "Your little Sentry friend __ snuck into the castle with a bunch of infidels who tried to kill you. You wanted to save _her_ life?"

"She's my best friend," I tell him, setting my jaw. Rhody nudges my leg, wondering what's wrong.

"This is disgusting," King Aknes says. He looks to Fenris. "Your daughter has just committed treason against our kingdom, and you had her bonded to my son. We must have an annulment."

"The ceremony was conducted honestly in the eyes of Nixa," Evana says. "Iven and Cassatia are joined for life."

"You tricked me into this," the king growls to my father. "I should have known not to marry my only son to a Loraveire." He points to me, refusing to look me in the eyes. "That girl will not bear my grandchildren, I swear to the Goddess."

"I don't want to bear your grandchildren," I say through my teeth. "I never asked for any of this. But I won't let you kill Keira."

"She'll be dead before the sun has set," my father promises me, his lip curling.

"I want her locked up," King Aknes says to Caphian. "We can decide what to do with her later, but for now I want her locked up."

Caphian looks to my father; he nods. "Obey him, Caphian."

Grimly, Caph steps up onto the landing, grabbing me by the arm. He leads me back down the aisle, Rhody right behind. "Stay, Rhody," I tell him. But he doesn't listen—he follows us through the castle, past gangs of frantic Sentries with guns and fangs, and out the front doors, headed straight for the city prison. 

# 6 October: Westrey

As soon as the ice-wall is up, I turn my attention to Basil, writhing and bleeding out on the floor. His shoulder's been nicked, but what really worries me is the wound in his side that has already dyed half his shirt red. Rolling up the fabric and feeling around under the blood, I realize that the bullet is still lodged somewhere near his hipbone. "Baz," I murmur. "Oh, my God, Baz."

He winces, breathing through his teeth. "God damn it, Wes, it _hurts_."

"Wes," Keira says, "we have to get out of here before the wall comes down." I look up to find her holding a limp Iraine in her arms. "As in, we have to go _now_."

"I'm not going anywhere with you."

"You have to," she insists. "Otherwise we'll all die here."

"She's right," Basil groans. "And I really don't want to die."

I grit my teeth. I sure as hell don't want to do what Keira wants, but Baz won't get any better lying outside a Nixan temple. I worm my arms under his body, bracing my knees, and stand with a deep grunt.

Freya grabs my shirt to help pull her to her feet, then turns to help Quincey. They're too weak to be running around the castle—both of them were leaning heavily on me the whole way here—but they're going to have to. I look to Freya worriedly, but she nods off my concern. "We'll be fine."

"Let's _go_ ," Keira insists. She leads the way, Iraine moaning in her arms, down the hall and towards the stairwell we came out of. But before we reach it a pack of silver-jacketed Sentries comes spewing out its door, guns at the ready.

I look around frantically; the main staircases going from floor to floor are all crawling with armed Sentries, with countless more filing out of every stairwell on our landing and flying up from below to meet us. We're trapped up here.

"We're screwed," Freya breathes.

I set Baz down at my feet. "Not quite yet." _This is not how I'm going to die._

I let out a yell, and channel all my pent-up anger and fear and frustration into jets of fire that I shoot from my palms at the oncoming horde. I hear yells and yelps and a few bullets that land nowhere, but I can't see anything over the brightness of my fire and the stars in my eyes. Freya goes back-to-back with me and does the same, her strength coming from God knows where. Keira stands as close to us as possible, clutching Iraine to her chest.

By the time our jets have petered out, we're boxed in by a ring of fire six feet high. Two Sentries swoop down on us from above and land on my and Freya's heads as snarling wolves; we push them back into the flames, where they howl and yelp and discourage any other brave Sentries from trying the same thing. Everything around us goes quiet.

I pick up Baz again and look to Freya, my breaths loud and heavy. She looks like she's about to faint.

"Now what?" she pants.

"I have an idea," Keira says. She glances down at the nearly-motionless girl in her arms. "Iraine, can you still turn people invisible? Everyone except me?"

"I think so," she says, her voice a thin gasp. "I can try, at least."

"Perfect." She holds Iraine out to Freya. "Freya, you have to take her." My sister nods, and Keira slides the body into her arms. Freya stumbles and almost buckles under the weight; Quincey grabs her arms and helps lift up Iraine's lolling head.

Keira pulls off her jacket and wraps it tightly around one of her hands. "I need one of your fire-guns," she says to me and Baz.

"No way," I tell her firmly.

"Take mine," Basil offers. "I can't use it anyway."

"Thanks." Keira bends over and slides Basil's gun free from his belt, wincing as the metal's heat seeps through her jacket.

"Get out of here as fast as you can," Keira tells us. "Meet me next to the piano out back." Before any of us can respond, she shifts into a kite and flies above the crest of the flames, diving back down again over the landing's railing.

Grunting, Iraine reaches for her ice-glass ring, and slowly the rest of us fade out of sight. The heads of the Sentries behind where Quincey and Freya had been have moved off to either side of the fire, which can only mean one thing: they're about to start shooting at us.

"We have to go," I say.

Quincey grabs my elbow, and I help Freya part the flames to let him and Iraine through. We step over smoldering, motionless Sentry bodies, hurrying to get out of the line of fire.

Looking over the railing, I see Keira land and shift by the castle's north entrance, now guarded by seven Sentries. She pulls out Basil's gun and fires it point-blank at one of them.

The reaction is instant—every Sentry's weapon immediately turns towards the sound of the shot, and half the Sentries on our floor dive over the rails in pursuit of her. Keira shifts into a wolf and lunges, dragging another Sentry down with her amidst commotion and gunshots.

The remaining Sentries on our floor, now all clustered on one side of the ring of fire, begin firing into it in tandem. We slip past them, finding it easier now that the crowd has thinned, and make our way safely into an emptied stairwell.

There's a lone Sentry guard waiting by the exit; he hears our footsteps racing down the stairs, and readies his gun. I pull out my own, hoist Basil up a little, and shoot him right in the head before he has time to pinpoint exactly where we are. He slumps to the ground with a moan, dead within seconds.

"Nice shot, for once," Baz mumbles, almost too quiet for me to hear.

"Shut up," I tell him. "Concentrate your energy on not dying instead of criticizing me, all right?"

We slide out through the door, unnoticed thanks to Keira. She's snarling and howling and making all sorts of noise near the north castle entrance, leaving the back doors practically unguarded. The doors open to admit a pair of Sentries from outside, and we easily squeeze out between them.

Outside, we all sink knee-deep into snow. It's a much thicker covering than before, enough to obscure the ice pond. Flurries of snow whisk by our faces, cold and fast; I have to squint just to see. The crowd from the ice show has scattered—I can make out the dark figures of Sentries in the distance, shepherding Nixans into the nearest buildings.

"Come on." Slogging through the snow, I lead the group over to the now-abandoned white piano, covered in a thick layer of more white. I know I shouldn't be listening to Keira's directives, not after what she pulled in the temple, but I don't know what else to do.

After a minute of waiting, a snowy owl swoops into view, headed straight for us. I pull out my gun, ready for a fight; but a few feet from the piano the owl lands and grows into Keira, cut and bruised, wearing one of the Sentries' silver jackets and brandishing one of their pointed staffs.

"They think you're still in the castle," she pants, addressing the air just above my head, "and your scent's been masked by the snowstorm, but we still need to get away from here before blood starts dripping all over the place." My hands are covered in Baz's, thick and warm. "Follow me."

She leads us off to the left, looping around the side of the castle past the Great Temple. "Where are we going now?" I demand.

"Katyran horse stables," Keira says. "Come on."

We stop in front of a wooden snow-roofed building, held shut by a lock and chain. Keira pulls a key from a little alcove and unlocks the door. "In here," she orders. It's dark and almost windowless inside—anything could be hiding in the shadows.

I step back with Baz. "This better not be a trap," I growl.

"It's not," Keira promises. "It's a place to hide for a little bit." She steps inside, spreading her arms. "I'm running from the Sentries too, in case you haven't noticed. But if you'd rather all die out there, that's fine with me too."

"What should we do, Wes?" Quincey breathes. "Do you trust her?"

My head reels like a washing machine. Of course I don't trust her—she saved the life of a Nixan and almost got us all killed. But we have nowhere else to go, and my best friend is dying in my arms; there's no way we'll be able to get out of this alive without her.

"We don't have a choice," I tell him grimly, following Keira inside. 

# 6 October: Keira

As soon as I shut the door, locking it from inside, Iraine and the Wardens return to visibility. Freya lays Iraine down in the hay beneath one of the horses' stalls and leaves her for Basil, whom her brother has set down on the platform below the back window.

Iraine lets out a soft moan. I kneel down beside her and carefully pull up her shirt. Her bullet wound pulses just below her ribcage, spewing blood; I tear off my jacket and wrap it around her, applying as much pressure as I can.

"Give it up," Iraine wheezes. "I'm dying."

"No, you're not," I insist. "I've seen Sentries come back from much worse. We just have to stop the bleeding."

Iraine raises a shaky hand to my pendant. "Wes said you know how to use this. You turned yourself invisible."

"Only once."

"You're going to have to use it again, to get us out of here."

"I can't, Iraine." But her eyes are closed now, her muscles limp. Panicking, I quickly check for a pulse—it's still there, but weak. She doesn't have much time.

Baz lets out a cry loud enough to be heard outside the stables; he's pinned back against the wall, with Wes tying his jacket tight around his hips and Freya making a tourniquet to cover his shoulder wound.

"He's going to die," Wes says, looking at me. "Because of you."

Before I can respond, a frantic scrabbling at the door diverts my attention. I tense, bracing myself for another fight—but when the noise stops, it's followed by a piercing bark that I would recognize anywhere.

"It's Rhody," I say.

"What?" Wes growls.

"Cass's dog. Rhodaen." I get up from beside Iraine to let him in, but Quincey slides in front of the door to stop me.

"What if it's a Sentry?"

I push him out of the way. "If it was a Sentry," I say, "he wouldn't be scratching at the door, he'd be breaking it down." I unlock the door and shove it open to reveal a snow-covered white dog blinking up at me. His eyes, I quickly check, are black as usual: black eyes pretty much guarantees no Sentry.

He leaps over the threshold, shaking out his pelt. He has something dangling from his mouth—a watch, I think. "Can I see that?" I ask, squatting down and pulling on one of its straps. Rhody growls, resisting for a minute before he gives up and releases it. I turn it over in my hands; it's the watch I gave Cass before I left for the Sentry trials.

A sliver of black rock has been shoved inside the casing protecting the watch hands. I pull it out, confused. "What the hell's this supposed to be?"

"It looks like obsidian," Quincey says over my shoulder. "It's what Wardens make torch-spears and black-knives out of."

"Obsidian," I murmur. The name sticks in my head, something I should remember.

"It comes from volcanoes," Quincey continues. "It's formed by extreme heat—"

"—and it weakens Nixan powers," I finish. "The Nixans build their prisons out of obsidian."

That's where Cass is, I realize with a sinking feeling. I asked her to save us, and they locked her up for it.

I stand up. "Cass is in the city prison," I say. "We have to get her out of there."

"And why exactly do you think we're going to do what you want?" Wes says.

My eyes go from Rhody to Iraine to Basil on the back platform. I think back to the last time I was in these stables, right after the Fersa battle.

"Because," I say, "she can save Basil. And Iraine."

Wes goes silent. "She's right," Freya tells him. "Whenever the Nixans beat me or Quincey up too much and they were worried we wouldn't make it, they'd bring in Nixan healers to take care of us. They brought me back from the brink of death dozens of times."

Wes hesitates. "So what, we're supposed to just let her run off alone to save her Nixan friend?"

"You will if you don't want Baz to die," I say.

"I'll go with her," Freya offers. "You stay here with Baz and Quincey."

"No, Freya."

"I'll be fine," she promises, giving her brother a look. "I won't let her lay a finger on me. Just give me your gun."

Wes looks from Freya to Basil, pain and fear written like a book across his face. It's not an easy choice—let your sister run off with a possibly-evil Sentry to find a Nixan, or let your best friend die right in front of you. I can't help but feel sorry for him, for the position I've helped to put him in.

Finally he nods, handing Freya his fire-gun. "All right. Go find the Nixan girl. And I swear," he says, looking right at me, "if anything happens to my sister, I'll burn this entire city to the ground."

I think of him back in the castle, fire erupting from his hands, holding back an army of Sentries with his anger alone. "I believe you," I say truthfully.

I grab the Sentry staff I stole and offer its other end to Freya. "Hold this."

"Why?" she asks, grabbing it anyway.

"We're about to go invisible." I wrap a hand around my pendant, closing my eyes. Wes was right about needing adrenaline to channel Old Magic—and that I have plenty of, tightening my lungs and boiling my blood. _Invisible invisible invisible._ The pendant grows warm, and my body disappears around me.

I tighten my grip on the staff and envision the invisibility spreading to cover Freya until it does. "Wow," Quincey breathes.

"Can you open the door for us?" I ask.

He nods, holding Rhody back with a foot and elbowing the door until it gives. I throw him the key and tell him to lock us out, then step outside with Freya in tow.

Squinting through the storm, I find the rapidly-filling trench in the snow that Rhody made as he ran to find us. I lower myself into it carefully and yank on the staff; Freya jumps down behind me with a _crunch_.

We follow the trench around the castle and past a pair of storehouses. Sentries run and fly past us, but none get close enough to notice us, thank the Goddess.

The trench is entirely gone by the time we reach the low-roofed, black stone building where the Nixan prisoners are kept. It stands out sharply against the light colors of the rest of the city, dark and foreboding even from the outside.

I hear Freya blowing on her knuckles behind me. "Let's get this over with," she says.

I draw open the door just enough for us to squeeze through, and we enter a narrow hallway that leads directly to the door into the cells. The light of the setting sun slants into the hall through the tiny windows carved into the outer wall.

Freya gives the staff a sudden tug. "Keira," she hisses. I turn back to find her raising her eyebrows at me, very much not invisible. I've reappeared, too, and the pendant around my neck has gone cold again.

A gun cocks just behind us. "Where do you think you're going?" Caphian says, stepping out of the shadows.

Freya pulls out Wes's gun, cocking it as well. Caph inches forward with his barrel aimed right at Freya's head, his finger over the trigger.

It's generally not a good idea to step between a pissed-off Sentry and Warden pointing guns at each other, but that's exactly what I do. "Put the guns down," I say, holding out my arms.

"Out of the way, shifter," Freya growls. "I'm fine gunning you down too."

"As am I," Caphian says. "I would now, if I didn't have orders to bring you in for questioning first."

"Look," I say. "We're not here to kill any Nixans, okay? We're here for Cass."

"You're not going anywhere with the princess," Caph growls.

"Princess?"

"While you were away," he says, "she was bonded to Prince Iven."

_Great Goddess._ Bile rises in my throat. _She doesn't even know him._ But I push the thought down for later. "If she's the princess," I say, "then why is she being held here against her will?"

A muscle jumps in Caphian's jaw. "I have orders from her father to keep her here as long as he sees fit."

"What about her orders?" I ask. "You're bound to serve Cass just as much as her father, right? What if she wants to come with us?"

"With the Wardens who tried to kill her," Caph says.

"No," I say, "with me." I step closer to him, looking him right in the eyes. "She's my best friend, Caph; I'd do anything for her. And she'd do anything for me. That's why she stopped you and Asreil from killing me—that's why she's here in the first place."

There's indecision in Caph's eyes now, enough to encourage me to continue. "I saved your life once," I remind him. "I saved you from a Shade who wanted to stab you in the back. Why would I do that if I really was a traitor?" Cautiously I hold out a hand to his gun and lower its muzzle to point at the ground, tightening my grip on its barrel as Caph's slowly loosens. "All I'm asking is that you let us go back and see her. And if she doesn't want to come with us, we'll do whatever you want us to. I promise."

There's a long, tense moment of silence, during which I can see the conflict playing out over Caphian's face. Then his eyes stray over my shoulder to Freya, and his resolve strengthens. "I can't."

I sigh disappointedly. "I thought you'd say that." I wrench the gun from Caph's slackened grip, and before he has time to react I slam its slide against his temple as hard as I can. With a grunt, the Sentry commander topples to the ground, knocked out cold.

Freya's fire-gun slips from her hand. "Shit, Keira."

I crouch down and listen for Caphian's breaths, double-checking that I didn't just murder my former boss. "He'll be fine," I decide. "But I don't know how long he'll be out for, so we should go before we find out."

Pocketing Caphian's keys, I grab the wrist of my dumbfounded Warden companion and lead her through the door to the prison cells. 

# 6 October: Cassatia

I sit back against the wall of my cell, listening to the storm raging outside and straining to hear the measured tread of Caphian's steps in the outer hall. The seconds drag on like hours; my heart beats somewhere in my throat, and my fingers thrum impatiently against my knees.

There are three other prisoners in here with me. Two of them are asleep—the third, a thirty-something man, I recognize as the guy who snuck into the castle one night and defaced one of its ice sculptures. He's in the cell adjacent to mine, and is watching me fixedly out of the corners of his eyes.

"Could you stop with that?" I snap at him eventually.

The corner of his mouth twitches. "Sorry, my lady. I'm just wondering what Fenris's daughter could've done to get herself locked up in here."

I sigh, lowering my shoulders. "It's a long story."

But before I can elaborate, a commotion breaks out in Caphian's hall. Both of us crawl forward to our cell bars and tilt our heads, listening. _Please please please,_ I think.

"Shit," the man breathes. "What the hell is that about?"

I can make out voices, low and tense; then comes a _thwack_ , followed by a dull _thump_. __ The door leading to our cells creaks open, and my whole body goes stiff with anticipation.

In steps the Warden prisoner girl my father brought me to see, a fire-gun quavering in her hand—and leading her forward is Keira, ragged and bloody and fiercer than ever. _Great Goddess, I love her so much._

"Keira," I breathe, sliding my fingers through the cell bars. She gives me a little smile and covers the fingers with hers.

"Ready to get out of this place?" she asks.

"Can I come?" the other prisoner wonders.

My eyes flit to the open door. "You're breaking me out of here?"

"Only if you want to be broken out of here," Keira replies. She tentatively indicates the Warden girl behind her. "We need your help, Cass. For a Shade girl, and a Warden."

I bite my lip. I don't know what's going on—I don't know why Keira left or where she went, or why she's helping Shade girls and Wardens, or why they almost shot my head off in the castle temple. I don't know what Keira wants from me or where she wants to take me. But I know Keira; I know that I should trust her, that I've never not trusted her.

"Things are going to get messy if you come with us," Keira warns. "And I have no idea what's going to happen."

"I know."

"But I want you with me, Cass." She squeezes my hand, looking me right in the eyes. "For whatever comes next."

"I'll come with you," I tell her, more sure of that than I am of anything else. "Of course I'll come with you." Everything will be okay as long as I have Keira—it's the only truth I know.

Giving my hand another squeeze, Keira pulls out a set of old golden keys, fidgeting with them until she finds the right one for my cell. She wrenches back the bars with a grunt and offers me a burnt, blood-soaked hand. "You ready?"

I take the hand, smiling determinedly, and let her lead me back out into the storm. 
