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Stopping, I turned to face them. “You can go.” Theyshouldgo.

Mari frowned.

Behind her, Magnus blew out a heavy breath. “Oh, thank fuck.” He started to turn. “Let’s get out of here.”

“You misunderstood. I’m staying. You all go on without me.” It was fair. The right thing to do. My wife. My fight.

Mari shook her head, eyes wide. “Leave you?”

Magnus faced forward again, his jaw locking hard with determination. “Sorry. We can’t do that.”

Vidar called from behind Magnus, his voice a loud whisper, as though he feared being overheard. “We don’t even know what we’re fighting here, but we’re not leaving you to it, my lord. Not alone.” Vidar thumbed the edge of his sword. “Can’t abandon you. This forest isn’t a good place.”

Magnus sent Vidar an annoyed look. “Really?”

Vidar missed his sarcasm. He was a deadly fighter and the only warrior to stand taller than me, but he didn’t possess the keenest mind. “We’re in the skog, lure to any huldras living here.” He shivered dramatically. “I hear they like to collect cocks and fashion them into ear baubles.”

“Stop it,” Mari snapped. “You don’t know that. Those are just stories.”

“No one who comes this far into the skog lives to tell the tale,” Vidar insisted, looking around at the forest, which seemed to swell and grow with every passing moment.

“Then how does anyone know anything about a huldra here?” Mari gave a disgusted grunt and an eye roll. “Someone would have had to see one.”

I scowled, beyond arguing with them. “You all go. Now.”

“We’re staying with you.” Mari shot the other two warriors quelling glances, daring them to contradict her.

They squared their shoulders and nodded resolutely. They were no cowards. True, this place affected them and got beneath their skin in a way no army of seasoned soldiers ever had, but they were still trained warriors from the Borderlands. As far as I was concerned, that made them better than everyone else.

Magnus cocked his head. “You hear that?”

“I don’t hear anything,” Mari snapped.

“Exactly,” Magnus returned with great satisfaction.

Mari fell still and listened.

So did I. Magnus was not wrong. It was too quiet. I couldn’t recall the last time I had heard a magpie or the chitter of an animal chasing through the underbrush. Even the wind was silent, not a rustle through the trees. Not a leaf stirred. The calm was complete, absolute, a dead space where things held themselves still, lying in wait, predators in the grass.

I pushed on, using my sword to hack at the ever-encroaching brush, filling the silence. It was arduous work. As soon as I forged a path, cutting down thicket, more grew in its place.

The three warriors followed me. Trustingly. Into every fray, every abyss. Why would this be any different?

I wondered how trusting they would be if they knew I was led by some inexplicable insight, a knowing. That the fizzing X carved into my flesh compelled and guided me.

I did not leave the City the same man who had arrived at its gates. I had not felt the same since I married Tamsyn. Since I stood at that altar and clasped her bleeding palm to mine. She was another piece, another jagged shape that fit and locked into place against me. Tamsyn.

That’s how I knew she was alive. And how I would find her.

I WAS ACCUSTOMEDto the fog and mist in the Borderlands. It was part of the territory. Natural. Necessary. As integral as the air itself. There was my skin and blood and bone and... fog.

But this fog? It wasn’t right.

It was different.

The forest was bathed in a red miasma. As though a hand had waved over the land and washed it in blood.

“What the fuck is this?” Vidar panted from the back, bringing up the rear. “Is the forest on fire?”