I clung to Aeryn’s hand as if letting go would kill us both. Hissmall fists pounded a guard’s chest, his guttural screams echoing in my ears, a sound I’d never been able to forget, as they yanked him from my arms and dragged us toward cages disguised as carriages.
Mama’s face was serene even as her hair singed. She found us through the smoke.I’ll find you,she mouthed. Then the fire swallowed her words.
They burned. And in a way, so did I.
The heat shimmered, bending the square into something… wrong. The crowd blurred. The same woman passed me twice. A shop sign’s letters slid into a language I didn’t know.
I stumbled toward the apothecary—its crooked sign creaking overhead. Colette was already bustling behind the counter, sleeves rolled, hair pinned in a mess of brass combs.
“You’re losing him, Aurelia,” she said without looking at me. “Something’s shifting.”
“Changing,” her raven called. “The darkness will eat the light.”
Her words clung to me as I stepped back into the street.
The market went silent. Through the stillness, he appeared. Gold eyes, unblinking, fixed on me. The air thickened, pressing against my ribs.
The apothecary door swung open. Only white waited beyond it. Cold rushed in and the gold-eyed figure stepped forward.
4
Aurelia
I woke gasping,pain finding me instead of air. My cheek pressed to frost-slick earth. The trees above swayed, their branches whispering to each other.
For a heartbeat, I lay still and listened.
The forest listened back.
My hands flew to my side. Snow seared my fingertips as I clawed through pine needles and ice, searching for my pack, for anything solid enough to tell me which way was up. “No—no, no.” Panic surged hot under my skin.
Breathe. You’ll figure it out. You always do.
The words shook inside me. My breath misted fast and uneven, my pulse refusing to obey. My thoughts splintered. What if this was a sign? What if I’d already lost, and the forest was just letting me walk a little farther before it claimed me?
I drove the heels of my palms into my eyes until sparks bloomed in the dark. The pressure anchored me.
I couldn’t lose myself here.
Breathe. In four, out four.
Slowly, the ragged edge of my breathing eased. I let my hands fall, stinging and raw from the snow, and forced myself to take in what I had. The pack sat half-buried nearby, strap torn but closed. Enough to keep moving.
I swallowed hard and adjusted the straps, tightening them until they bit into my shoulders. The weight steadied me. My legs felt heavy as I pushed myself upright. My ribs ached from the fall.
Every joint ached. My left palm was raw, skin torn where the rope had burned me. When I flexed it, blood welled sluggish and dark before the cold stopped it. That, at least, was useful—my pain preserved in ice.
Fog lay low between the trunks, heavy enough to turn sound to cloth. The air reeked faintly of wet iron and crushed fir. My bootprints vanished as soon as I made them, swallowed like the woods wanted no record of me at all. Branches rattled though no wind stirred.
A horse screamed, far off, one strangled note, and then went silent. When the quiet came back, it didn’t fit quite right.
The deeper I went, the more the forest bent. Light shifted wrong. Shadows stretched thin as wire, then snapped back. Branches arched like ribs. A low hum gathered beneath my sternum—pressure, not sound. My pulse fought to match it.
I slowed, hand hovering at my dagger. My ears strained. I caught myself glancing west. Through the fog, the trees opened just enough for me to glimpse a sweep of shadow. For a blink, I thought it was campfire smoke—until I saw how thick it ran, heavy and wrong. Movement flickered there, shapes low and hunched, then vanished.
That way lay nothing—or so the maps claimed. The Forgotten Lands.
A shiver ran down my spine. Stories always warned that evenlooking west too long was asking for trouble. My head snapped forward. Nothing there.