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The blond woman drew her dagger, its steel darkened with old blood.

“Wait!” The plea burst out of me, unplanned, desperate. “I’m worth more alive than dead.”

The blond woman lowered the dagger. She glanced at her companions questioningly.

“And why is that?” asked their leader, easing her pistol slightly towards the earth.

-Bianca,- Aric said, his tone sharp with desperation, - please, whatever you’re planning, don’t do it. Beg them for mercy. Grovel if you have to. Please, just… don’t die.-

I flicked a startled glance at him. I knew he needed me, but… the way he spoke, it sounded like he cared about me. As a person, not just an ally.

Impossible. It was only our truce talking. And the brigands had made their intentions clear—I had to try. Otherwise we would both end up dead.

“I’m a Damarian Adept,” I said, ignoring Aric’s warning. “The strongest one alive. You have no idea what the Council of Nine would pay to get me back.”

“She does have a Damarian accent,” observed the man. “But she doesn’t have a witch’s eyes.”

I smiled viciously at him, showing my teeth. “Care to get a closer look?”

I had the light in my favor. The sun was nearly at the horizon. Shadows stretched long, and the road was swiftly dropping into gloaming.

Any moment now.

The outlaws were looking at each other, their hesitation plain—a weakness I could leverage. I kept talking, the words pouring out in a barrage. “I’ll prove it. I can transform matter into any form I like. I’ll demonstrate my power on my horse right now.” I switched to Damarian, praying the brigands wouldn’t know more than a few common phrases of the tongue. “Asphyxiation, whippersnapper, pulchritude—”

“Stop that chanting,” the leader barked.

“Indigestion,” I continued, pouring every ounce of power into my voice that I could, “discombobulation, fripperies—”

The dark-haired woman raised her pistol, her face livid.

The sun sank below the mountains.

“Décolletage!” I finished desperately.

Light burst across the road. The white horse vanished. The other horses, the real ones, spooked en masse. The two brigands on foot scattered, trying in vain to avoid flailing hooves and surging equine bodies. The dark-haired woman yelled as her own steed reared, throwing her to the ground.

I didn’t wait to watch the chaos unfold. I threw myself at the leader’s horse, seizing it by the reins, and scrambled onto its back. I reached a hand down for Aric.

“Quick! Get up behind me!”

Desperation lent us both strength. He swung into the saddle and locked his arms around my waist. I kicked my heels into the horse’s sides.

“Go,” I shouted at it, “go, go, go !”

The horse surged beneath me. We were airborne, sailing over the ditch. My teeth came together hard as we landed on the other side.

An explosion. A streak of what felt like fire across my ribs. We plunged away from the road and deep into the trees, Aric’s arms so tight around my waist I could barely breathe.

Shouts rose behind us but quickly faded into the distance. I clutched the reins as branches whipped my legs. The forest closed around us, dark and grasping; we crashed onwards, hurdling fallen logs and veering around trunks. If the brigands gave chase, I couldn’t hear them over the pounding of the horse’s hooves.

My head swam, dizziness washing through me. Something was wrong. I was used to having flares, but not like this—as if the world were peeling itself away in slow layers, everything becoming gradually more distant, the wind roaring louder and louder in my ears until it sounded almost like a lupine howl…

I only realized my legs had loosened from the horse’s flanks when I slid from its back, landing on my side with an impact that jolted white-hot agony through my entire frame. The world went momentarily black.

“Bianca!” Aric’s face filled my vision. He’d turned the horse around, come back for me. He reached for me, then drew back with a hiss. A dark, wet substance covered his palm. “Rot it, you should have told me you were bleeding!”

“Oh,” I murmured. “That’s why everything hurts.”

The fire across my ribs had spread, growing from kindling to all-consuming blaze. I dragged in a shallow breath that stabbed like a dagger. Just enough light remained to see that my shirt was dark with a spreading stain. Oh. That was the blood. I recalled the explosion as the horse bolted. Now I could place the sound: I’d been shot.

“Rot it,” Aric hissed. “I need something to stop the bleeding. A shirt, or… or…”

A manic giggle rose in my throat. He was completely naked.

“It’s not funny,” Aric snapped. “Get up. We have to find help. You’re losing too much blood.”

I blinked up at him. His visage spun nauseating circles above me. “Can’t.” Words came thick and slow as cold honey. “Not strong enough.”

“You are strong enough.” Aric knelt, his knees darkening with dirt as he sank to the earth. “Give me your arm. We have to get you back on the horse.”

Dutifully, I tried to push myself upright. My vision swam sickeningly. I dropped my head back to the earth with a moan.

Aric hauled my arm around his shoulders. His hands slipped, slick with my blood. “Get up, Bianca! I need you to help me here!”

Pine needles dug into my cheek. The ground didn’t feel as cold as I’d expected. “Leave me,” I mumbled. “Get to… Tatiana.”

Aric swore. Then the ground swooped away from me in a dizzying rush. Pain flashed across my vision like a thousand dark stars. He’d picked me up.

I whimpered and turned my face into Aric’s bare chest, but he wasn’t letting me slip away into peaceful quiet. An agonized blur of movement. A red-hot poker grating across my ribs. Then, somehow—through Aric’s sheer force of will—we were both on horseback. Aric gripped the reins with one hand, his other arm holding me against him.

“Don’t you dare fall again,” Aric ordered, his voice snapping with the force of command. And then we were moving, the forest a blur of grey twilight, the trees dark and skeletal. I buried my face in Aric’s neck. He was warm, too warm. Dimly, I realized that I was dangerously cold. The thought was too distant to seem important. The wind was howling—no, it really was a chorus of wolves, their voices on the verge of forming words. Wyrdwolves. The horse spooked beneath me, and Aric swore again.

“Stay awake, Bianca,” Aric snapped. “They can’t have you. You’re not allowed to die. I order you not to die, understand?”

I lacked the strength to respond, even to release the unexpected laugh that flickered within me like a light in the darkness. As if a king’s order could keep me alive. He wasn’t even a proper king. Not yet crowned.

Time distilled into sensations. The fire spreading in my side. Wind teasing my hair. Aric’s warmth against me. The jolt of a strange horse’s stride. And then, in the darkness, an unexpected bloom of firelight from an open window, warm as a lover’s embrace.

The horse nickered, the sound splitting the night. A door flew open.

A face peered into mine from below: golden eyes keen as a hawk’s, features sharp as if chiseled, hair that gleamed in the firelight.

“Well,” a woman’s voice said in Gilden, “would you look what the Lady brought us.”

I slid from horseback into ready arms, and into darkness.

An owl hooting in the distance. The pungent scent of smoke, laced with the aroma of drying herbs. The heavy weight of wool over my legs. The flicker of greenish firelight playing over whitewashed walls. Pain throbbing in my right side.

I was alive.

I blinked my surroundings into focus. I lay on my back, covered by blankets, surrounded by rough plaster walls. Sunlight shafted through the window, making swirling dust motes glow like stars. A fire burned low in the hearth, embers shifting in a radiant dance. Bundles of drying herbs hung from the rafters. A woven rag rug, a muted spiral of colors, covered the earthen floor. The room held three other beds, all neatly made, all empty.

“You’re awake.” A girl’s voice spoke from somewhere near my feet.

I turned my head towards the sound, the motion washing dizziness through my skull. The speaker was a child of ten or so, her hazel gaze bright with curiosity. Her hands clicked in her lap, busy with knitting needles. When the light caught her eyes, they sparkled with gold flecks like mica.

“Aric,” I tried to ask. My voice came out as the faintest whisper.

“Don’t be afraid,” the girl said. She spoke in Gilden. “You’re safe here.”

“How—” I tried, in the same language. “Where—”

“You’re at a greenhaven,” the girl said. When I frowned, not recognizing the word, she tried again. “A place where greenwitches gather. This is the infirmary. My aunt tended your wound.”

Cautiously, I lifted my hand to my side. Through the clean shirt I only now realized I was wearing, I traced the outline of bandages.

Memory flooded back in a torrent. The trio of outlaws. Fleeing through the forest. Aric.

Urgency surged through me. I had to find Aric and make sure he was all right.

I started to sit up. Immediately, a wave of pain crashed over me, stealing my breath. I fell back onto the pillows with a strangled gasp.

“My aunt said that you’re not to move,” the girl added belatedly.

I breathed through the pain until it ebbed to the previous dull ache. “But—my husband—I need—”

The door to the hut creaked open. “The only thing you need,” a new voice said crisply, “is to lie down and let yourself heal. ”

A woman who must be a greenwitch stood in the doorway, fists on hips. Eyes keen as spyglasses and speckled with gold, fair hair liberally shot through with grey. I recognized her face. It was the one I’d seen as I slid from the stolen horse’s back.

Tattoos like green vines twined up her forearms. Surely it was only the flicker of firelight that made them appear to be moving.

“Try and get up again before that spell’s set, and the only place you’re going for the next three weeks is the chamber pot.” The greenwitch’s voice was brisk, no-nonsense, like the sweep of a broom. She cast a look of aspersion at the girl. “You were supposed to keep her from moving.”

“I’m sorry, auntie. She only just woke up.” The girl who’d been watching me stood up sheepishly. Knitting spilled from her lap, and she made a grab to catch her ball of yarn as it ran a yellow thread towards the corner. I blinked. Were my injuries making me hallucinate, or did the girl’s knitting sparkle with the light of an unfinished spell?

The greenwitch scooped up the errant ball as it rolled past her feet and tossed it back to her niece. “Next time, come get one of us immediately. It takes only moments for stitches to tear. Now put your crafts away and get to your luncheon. Your fathers are waiting.” Her face softened. “You did well.”

The girl bundled up her knitting and ducked out the door with a tiny smile. The greenwitch shut the portal after her and crossed the floor in three steps. She moved the stool to the head of the bed and seated herself on it. Up close, she carried the bittersweet scents of soap and burnt sage.

“To answer the questions I’m sure you’re burning to ask,” the greenwitch said, “yes, your husband is safe. No, he’s not hurt. Yes, he’s currently a horse. No, he’s not in any danger, and no one is going to know you’re here. This is a greenhaven. All patients are protected while they’re under our care, no matter who they are or what they’ve done.”

My mind was as clouded as a winter day, heavy with waiting snow. I struggled to clear my thoughts. So Aric had transformed again—of course, it was daylight. “Where… who…”

“I’m a greenwitch. In case you hadn’t gathered.” It definitely wasn’t the firelight: the tattoos really were moving, as if they were a living part of the woman’s skin. “Your husband is safe. Resting. I promised him we would heal you. Now, don’t go disturbing the magic and prove me wrong.”

I touched the shirt above my bandage again, feeling the ridges of extra linen. Disturbing the magic. Panic flared. She’d cast magic on me. The magic of living things—expressly forbidden by the Adept Guild.

The greenwitch was watching me, her gaze sharp as a scalpel. “Shocking, isn’t it? To discover your Adepts could have been healing people all along instead of inventing ways to blow them up? Don’t worry, girl, you won’t start sprouting hooves or horns. I only sped along what your body already wanted to do.”

The greenwitch handed me a tin cup of water. I managed a few sips. It carried the cool taste of peppermint, along with the sharpness of other herbs I didn’t recognize. My panic subsided. I didn’t feel any different—other than the pain, which was mercifully much less than before.

“How bad is it?” My voice felt like a rasp sliding along my throat, but at least it was a full sentence.

“You’ll live. The bullet wasn’t deep, and it’s out now. You have a cracked rib, probably from falling off the horse, but most of the damage was blood loss and shock. You’ll be well enough to travel in a day or two— if you keep still long enough for the poultice to finish its work.”

“And Aric…”

“Is perfectly fine. You can see him after sunset. I draw the line at allowing horses into the infirmary.”

The greenwitch reached towards a bowl beside the bed and snapped her fingers. Smoke began to rise, herbal and languid. She stood, smoothing down her skirts.

“Now, sleep.”

The smoke curled into waves. I wanted to ask the greenwitch more, but the drifting coils lulled me. They carried me away, and all I could do was fall into a slumber laced with verdant dreams.