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Finally, Alvira turns her attention away from the mass of bodies, hands clenched around her bulbous rings, eyes glistening with rage. As she makes to leave, those eyes fall to the empty gallows, the cut rope swinging to the beat of her people’s chants.

Bring her home!

Bring her home!

The girl.

The girl!

“Where is she?” snarls Cressida beside her.

“She’s… gone,” murmurs a guard, dumbfounded and useless.

But Alvira is already spinning, her skirts catching and tearing on the armour of the guards as she barrels past.

“Find her!” she shouts. And then another order: “And bring me that iskra witch!”

CHAPTEREIGHT

The high cornstalks snatch at the skin of her cheeks. The soles of Dawsyn’s bare feet are laced with shallow cuts as they crush the broken shoots.

Will the guards come already?

Will the mob buy her a moment more?

The forest line is ahead, over the last knoll. There, the grass will not claw at her face, but the forest floor will prove even more unforgiving. She sprints toward it, her muscles resisting.

A little further,she wills them.

Her chaperon crashes through the bracken a moment before Dawsyn. She gasps painfully, her body leaning toward the sanctuary of ground, ready to surrender. How weak she has become in such a short time. She places her hands on her knees and gulps at the air, struggling to look up at her guide, her saviour.

“Who are you?” Dawsyn demands.

The cloaked figure turns, and Dawsyn looks at the place where a face should be. Instead, only shadow fills the hood of the cloak. It unnerves her.

“Show yourself,” Dawsyn says now, squaring her stance.

A slow laugh. “Not even a word of thanks first?”

The voice… It is familiar. It brings to mind flashes of brilliant white light, the bitter taste of wine, the slow, seductive smile behind red lips. “Baltisse?”

The woman’s hand passes over that faceless hollow, and as it lowers, the mage is somehow uncovered, her molten eyes churning just as Dawsyn remembers.

“You are as demanding as ever,” the mage says, lowering the velvet hood to her shoulders. Her golden hair falls down her back and chest.

Relief, heavy and choking, shudders through Dawsyn, and she laughs. A familiar face.

Baltisse approaches. “You’re laughing,” she says blankly, nose wrinkling with distaste. “Did those Queens break you?”

Dawsyn’s sighs, her chest still ragged with exertion. “It is likely. I’ve been conversing with a dead rat for the past week.”

“A more scintillating conversationalist than the likes of Esra and Salem, I’d imagine,” she remarks with a sniff. “We have a ways to walk and no time to linger. We are still too close to the palace. May I?” Baltisse holds out her hands.

“May you what?”

“Heal you?” Baltisse’s fingernail caresses the side of Dawsyn’s neck, and she flinches. Only now can Dawsyn feel the acute ache in her throat, the broken skin.

“Since when do you seek consent?”