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“My sweet Dawsyn,” Baltisse simpers. “What thing scares you to death?”

“My sweet witch, you can go fuck yourself.”

A ghost of a smile crosses Yennes’s lips. “Fear is a powerful motivator, Dawsyn. It may be helpful.”

“Yes, dearling,” Baltisse grins. “Tell Yennes and Baltisse. What is a thing most scary to you?”

Dawsyn scoffs tiredly. “I don’t know, mage. Why don’t you rattle around inside my head and find something yourself?”

Baltisse’s smile only widens. Her eyes turn volatile–

“Wait! Mother above.Fine!Give me a moment, for the love of–”

The door to the cabin opens a fragment. Hector’s face appears through the crack.

The mage mutters a curse. “Hector! Did I not ask you to–”

But Hector cuts in with a finger to his lips. It is then that Dawsyn hears it. Outside, footfalls can be heard. Many of them. Close by in the forest.

Guards,Hector mouths to them, and then steps back, leaving the doorway open.

Heart in her throat, Dawsyn grabs her ax and follows immediately, Baltisse and Yennes close behind. Under the light of a half-moon, Hector creeps back toward the rest, all standing in various poses of stillness around the dwindling fire, weapons in hand.

Ryon has his hand on Salem’s shoulder, closest to the edge of their camp. His eyes find Dawsyn’s as soon as her feet leave the stoop. In them she sees reflected her own alarm, for the forest around them echoes the sounds of an approaching battalion, voices muted and cautious. A horde. All of them searching.

“Don’t move,” Baltisse murmurs, and somehow, they all hear it.

Will they be able to see us?Dawsyn thinks toward the mage.

Her lips are bloodless. They barely move when she answers. “Only if they come close enough.”

Together they wait. Each pulse in Dawsyn’s throat feels more painful, more threatening than the last. The desire to hide, to do anything other than stand here in the open is tangible amongst them.

Baltisse’s spell will obscure this place,Dawsyn tells herself, eyes darting when she hears a rustle nearby.They will walk right by us.

Suddenly, a whistle, short and sharp, cuts through the night air. It could have been a bird, except for the abrupt halt of marching feet, the nickering of horses.

“Split apart,” comes a man’s voice in the distance, low and abrupt.

Feet scuttle fallen leaves, hooves tread on the ground, branches scrape against Terrsaw armour. It comes from more than one angle, ever closer.

Ever closer.

Dawsyn watches from behind as Ryon’s wings unfold. Slowly they appear. He holds them carefully upright at first, not daring to extend them where they might scrape the low hanging branches. Tasheem and Rivdan do the same. She sees their outlines, trembling with the urge to take flight.

From the near darkness comes a voice. “Shit.”

A grunt. Then the clang of metal.

A guard appears. He stumbles through the woods nearby, the moon glinting off his armour as he weaves between trees. So close. Too close.

Dawsyn’s fists clench. Her stomach turns over as the guard’s gaze lifts, slowly higher, and straight into the eyes of Esra, not five feet from him.

But the guard’s eyes slide away again quickly. It’s as if Esra were part of the woods, perfectly blended with his surroundings.

“Tawny, man. You stray too far alone, son. If you come across those mountain beasts, they’ll rip you to shreds.” A voice from the north now, tone urgent but muted. “What are you doing?”

“I thought I saw firelight,” the guard named Tawny mutters, staring straight at the fire in question. Flames dance in his eyes. A piece of burning wood tumbles from the smouldering heap and rolls across the ground. Tawny only shakes his head and looks away. “These woods trick the eye at night.”