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Tanwen stood bottling salves in her family’s kitchen, but her nerves were a waterfall of disruption. Her attention kept drifting to her bedroom door, which lay down the hall to her right, to the scuffed floorboard under her mattress where a leather pouch hid the ambrü.

Tanwen swore she could hear its pulsing red glow as though an unwanted guest were knocking on their den. Particularly the kidar who had offered it to her last night.

There are ambrü waiting to be given for what you may know of this man.

His rumbling words had chased Tanwen the entire distance back to her home. Had rung out with each creaking step she had climbed to her family’s tree den and whispered in the thick forest air filtering through her window as she slipped into her bed, unseen by her dozing twin brother across the room. As Tanwen gripped her covers close, her swirling confusion and fear-tangled thoughts had made sleep futile.

Despite the kidar’s threat, he had surprised Tanwen.

He was intimidating, to be sure, but hadn’t acted like any other Volari she had yet encountered.

Where had been his forceful demands? Or his condescending tone and rough handling when he hadn’t gotten what he sought?

Instead, he had stood assessing, poised, calm.

He had even sunk to her level to offer up the ambrü.

It had sent Tanwen reeling with uncertainty, not enjoying how her blood thrummed from his nearness, how his restraint had teased the promise of her safety.

A dangerous mirage.

And Tanwen had already been born into danger. Was a danger.

She was an abomination to hide.

Her grip tightened around the jar she held, frustration scratching up her throat.

Why? she wanted to scream to the High Gods. After so many years, why now are the Volari looking for my father?

And what would happen if they found him? Found them?

Tanwen’s anger tumbled to worry, a cold clasp to her spine.

She did not wish to be forced further into the shadows. A phantom at the fringes of life, back on the run.

Reasons enough for why she had refrained from going to her parents last night, waking them to warn of the kidar who was out searching for a wingless Volari. A kidar who had used a name for her father that had long been buried. A name Tanwen was forbidden to even mutter in her thoughts.

Her father was Flyn Coslett now. They were all Cosletts.

Heiro was a surname her parents had abandoned after the birth of her and her brother, a history best left severed along with her father’s wings.

While there were many pockets of mysteries within her parents’ pasts, Flyn and Aisling Coslett had made sure their children knew of their deepest-buried secret: their love. Or, more aptly, their love that broke crucial Cādra law—that a Süra and Volari were never to reproduce—for Tanwen and her brother, Aberthol, were the repercussions of such sin.

They were Mütra.

Mixed blood.

A plague on Cādra.

Unnatural creatures born to possess unnatural abilities. Thieves of celestial magic, which swam through their blood, never destined for any but the Volari to have and to wield.

Tanwen frowned as she set aside another filled jar, then absently reached for the next.

Not that her parents would ever call them by such names. Their mother often said they were her wyrthia, her miracles. But Tanwen didn’t know of any miracles that were meant to be so thoroughly hidden. Or destroyed.

She only understood they were blessed to appear as Süra, with their horns that matched their mother’s. No differences marked their backs, no partial wings or misshapen physical traits, like many other Mütra they had happened upon had.

As for Tanwen’s father, without his wings he had been passing as a Süra for as long as she could remember.

Only at home, in the privacy of shuttered windows and locked doors, did he dare remove the band of horns from his head.

A gift from a Süra long swimming in the Eternal River, he had explained to Tanwen and her brother when, as children, they had asked how he could come to own horns. Meaning, he had cut them from the head of the dead. Tanwen remembered how her own horns had throbbed as she was tucked into bed that night, imagining a shadow slipping into her room to carve them out.

Tanwen shivered at the memory, stopping in her work.

The extremes to which her family had gone to hide were exactly why she hesitated in confiding in them now. Despite the potential danger the kidar’s sudden appearance brought, she understood what outcome would follow her confession: Her family disappearing, again , and with it Tanwen vanishing from another home. Forced to become invisible. Or, rather, further invisible.

No. She couldn’t allow it. She wouldn’t survive it! Tanwen clenched her teeth as her resolve settled. Why should I continually suffer from an act I had no part of? A life she had never asked for.

“Wen,” breathed her mother as she swept into their workroom, drawing Tanwen’s attention away from her rising ire.

Her mother fluttered like a hummingbird as she pulled down dried roots over the sleeping hearth and flowers hanging by the window. She paused only to gently spread them out on a table along the far wall.

“Are you almost done?” asked her mother as she eyed the stack of bottled salves beside Tanwen. She answered her own question with a satisfied nod. “We must make it to the fields by midbreak,” she explained, continuing her spin about the room. “And we must stop in Unig on our way. I told elda Anora I’d deliver her ointment for her foot. Here.” Her mother offered up a small filled glass vial, which she had swiped from an organized row. “Put this along your belt. I’ll help pack these salves up between us.”

Tanwen did as she was told, and soon they were loaded up to leave.

As she adjusted the weight of the pack across her back, Tanwen studied her mother doing the same.

Aisling was tall for a Süra, with delicate features that softened her stronger personality. Her father often joked that it was Aisling who was Tanwen’s twin over Aberthol. While it made her mother blush, Tanwen was always hit with a pang of guilt.

They might share visual traits and duties—Tanwen training to follow in her mother’s footsteps as a skilled meddyg—but her heart’s true desire lay outside their kitchen. In a workshop along the forest floor.

But in there, women were not suited to roam.

“What is this?” asked her mother, unfolding a cloth near Tanwen.

The room was flooded in blue light as the jadüri was revealed. Aisling snapped her gaze up to meet Tanwen’s. A race of emotions flooded her mother’s features—suspicion, no doubt, for how she had acquired it; worry with her realization; relief in finding her safe—and then settled on an expression that left Tanwen swallowing an ache in her throat: pride.

“Maja and Parvi were generous during my foraging,” explained Tanwen, having nearly forgotten about the sacred bud that she had set out to show her mother.

Instead, all morning her thoughts had been weighed down by the kidar. The threat of which she was now hoping would merely fly away as quickly as he had from her last night. After all, she hadn’t revealed anything to him. There was no use in causing her parents alarm from someone who could very well already be headed back to Galia.

“Well done,” said her mother, re-covering the plant with the cloth. The blue glow was snuffed out. “We will make docüra from it tonight, while the nectar is still rich. Your father has some business in the capital at end of week. We’ll go with him and sell our mixture to meddyg Lyral. The gods know we can use the gem.” Within her palm, Aisling cradled the linen like a newborn as she bent below one of their cupboards. “We will also give an offering of gratitude to Thryn so she may bless our endeavors.”

Tanwen watched as her mother hid the jadüri. It was from her that Tanwen had learned how to bury treasure in floorboards.

“Ready?” asked her mother as she stood.

Tanwen nodded, and together they left the workshop, then exited their home.

As Tanwen stepped across the threshold, the full sweetness of the forest filled her lungs.

An endless sea of brown-and-green foliage spilled out on the other side of the balcony. High above the sky was a canopy of leaves, stretched open like interlocked hands grasping for the sun. Only speckled slashes of light dived into the bowels of the woods, poked holes in cloth to grace the forest floor.

It was a leafy tangled net, the Low Gods’ gift that kept the Süra safe. For only the smallest of winged creatures could fly in here. If any Volari did dare enter the Zomyad Forest, it would be on equalizing terrain—their feet.

As Tanwen followed her mother, descended the curling steps that hugged their tree den, she held tight to this reminder of their security.

In the forest we are safe. My family is safe.

A large reason, Tanwen knew, they had made the long voyage to live here those ten years ago.

Her and her brother’s childhood had not been made up of consistencies. Because of what their family hid—past and present—they had moved often, living in tight abandoned quarters dug throughout the wild open Bandon Lands of southeast Cādra. It wasn’t until they had reached Zomyad, a place farthest from where they were born, that Tanwen experienced what it was like to put down roots. Decorate a home. Have a home. One she was desperate to hold on to as long as she could.

With determined strides that matched her thoughts, Tanwen kept pace with her mother as they turned from the staircase to cut their way to another tree by way of a large extended branch outfitted as a bridge.

Most of the woods was connected similarly, their city and towns most of all. A twisting of stacked buildings along tree trunks and roads along grand branches, hanging bridges that swayed from one great sapling to the next. And like all Süra dwellings in Zomyad, the Cosletts’ den was built high within an anfith tree: the largest and oldest of its kind found in Cādra.

But unlike other homes, theirs, of course, was in the most inconvenient section of the forest: in a pie slice of land on the northwest edge.

As one would guess, it was not a quick trek to Unig, the closest town, but it was a familiar journey, and soon Tanwen and her mother had reached the cluster of buildings that made up its border.

“Wait here,” instructed her mother as she took the vial Tanwen handed to her from her belt. “I should only be a moment with elda Anora. Do not talk to anyone.”

Tanwen pursed her lips at the repeated instruction she had endured since birth.

Do not draw attention to yourself.

Do not speak to others.

You do not need friends. You have your brother.

You must stay close. It’s the only way to stay safe.

Safe. Hidden. Forgotten.

But what her parents hadn’t taken into consideration was that to stand alone was to stand apart, and often that drew worse attention than better. The Cosletts had built a reputation for themselves.

“Tanwen, did you hear what I said?” asked her mother, who had remained awaiting her reply.

“Yes,” Tanwen assured. “I will be as though the moss on this tree,” she added, unable to keep the dryness from her tone as she leaned against the trunk. At two and twenty, she was more than tired of her leash.

Her mother seemed to pick up on her discontent, for her gaze narrowed, but in the end, she left to make her delivery.

Tanwen let out a bored sigh, pulling at the weight of her sack across her chest as she eyed the surrounding web of town. Children ran across a bridge high above, while citizens moved about to buy or sell wares from stalls built into the massive protruding tree roots below.

And here Tanwen stood, meant to be as though the foliage she hid beside—a backdrop. An unremarkable detail to their world. She crossed her arms over her chest, her annoyance prickling.

To blend in was a seemingly impossible request when, since birth, Tanwen had felt more like the sun, a beacon reaching far and wide.

I cannot believe you left our den without me, came a familiar, though out of breath, voice within her mind.

As if on cue, Tanwen glanced down to find a mouse scurrying up her pant leg. Eli, she thought with a smile, drawing her small friend into her hand. His whiskers tickled her palm. I’m sorry, she replied silently. Mother was in a hurry, and I thought you were napping.

I was, rebuked Eli, until your stomping out of the workshop woke me up. You really must be more courteous of those around you. Especially if they are sleeping.

Tanwen rolled her eyes.

She had found Eli a month ago after he had made himself at home in their bread box. When he had squeaked his apology and Tanwen had replied with her forgiveness, he had frozen, clearly in shock to have understood her and she him. Ever since, he was never far from her side.

Eli was an example of what her magic attracted. Wherever she traveled, the creatures followed.

And within the forest of Zomyad, creatures were aplenty. Animals squeezed out of cracks and shadowed knolls to be near her. Millepedes skittered along her boots to curl within her laces as if seeking her warmth. When she walked at night, glow beetles gathered to light her way; lynxes and foxes followed as her guards. Owls soared forward to scout her destination. Since her earliest memories, Tanwen could feel the nature around her and hear the nearby creatures, and in exchange they could hear her.

Friend, they would coo. Ally, cousin, familiar.

This was her one reprieve in being a Mütra, in their family moving from place to place to eventually be sequestered to the farthest reaches of this forest. The animals here had become her confidants, her companions to chase away the spells of loneliness. Her protectors and the only reason her parents ever let her forage alone. The very magic that put her in danger gave her the smallest taste of freedom.

We are blessed to have these abilities, she would often argue with her brother. Instead of another Mütra trait to call us out. We can hide our magic.

I’d rather not have to hide anything at all, Aberthol had huffed, flicking his finger to cause a puddle out of arm’s reach to splash. While he could not communicate with animals like Tanwen, her parents had come to decide Aberthol could affect sky elements. While the Volari could manifest them, Aberthol could move them. Push away raindrops, redirect a breeze, shield himself from heat or freeze.

Their father thought their magic was fascinating.

Their mother found it terrifying.

What if they draw attention to it without thinking? As a reaction or a form of defense? Aisling’s fearful rebuttal had traveled down through floorboards to where Tanwen and her brother had sat together as children on their bed, listening to their parents’ whispered debate.

Then we will teach them to hide it even under the worst pain.

And their father had.

Tanwen could still recall the searing agony of those lessons with her father. The nausea of hearing the screams of her brother and then, after, each of them sitting together—silent and tearstained—as their mother cared for their burns.

Her father might pass as a Süra, but they would never forget he was born a Volari, and while he no longer had his wings, he still held his powers. And that was to wield heat.

“I was wondering when Bedryg’s critter would be back in town.” The deep voice returned Tanwen’s attention to where she leaned against a tree trunk, two men having approached. She realized with dismay Eli was still in her palm, her fingers having been absently stroking his fur.

Tanwen bit back a curse.

Begone, friend, she thought to Eli, stirring the mouse to run up her arm and leap into the foliage at her back.

Osian snorted his disgust, turning to his companion. “See, Luwyg, I told you she’s always covered in rodents.”

Luwyg replied with a bored assessment of Tanwen, his gaze snagging on her horns before his lips pursed in clear disdain.

Tanwen stiffened, wishing to draw deeper into the shadows.

If her parents had wanted them to blend in, it would have helped if her horns weren’t of the eastern clan. Being so obviously a foreigner was only met with distrust in these smaller towns of Zomyad.

“Tell me, critter,” began Osian, smile pointed. “Have you been sleeping on the forest floor again? Or have you finally dug your bed underground like all straight horns?”

Tanwen gritted her teeth, fighting a reply. She might hold no loyalty to the eastern Süra, but the slurs still stung, if only because those were her mother’s people.

If I don’t say anything, they will get bored and leave, she reminded herself. They always get bored and leave.

Do not draw attention to yourself.

Do not speak to others.

You are Mütra. You are Mütra. You are Mütra.

It was the mantra Tanwen had clung to since she was a young girl, when those in town had begun to have an appetite for heckling her, the shy foreigner who lived on the fringes of their forest.

“Where else is she meant to find her worms to eat?” countered Luwyg, idly picking at his nails.

Tanwen’s ire prickled.

If I don’t say anything, they will get bored and leave. If I don’t say anything, they will get bored and leave.

“Speaking of worms,” continued Osian. “How’s your brother these days? Still cowering behind your father?”

Hate was a slithering sensation, one that filled Tanwen’s veins as she curled her hands into fists at her side. If only I could give you something to cower from, Tanwen silently shot back, her rage frothing.

As soon as she had the biting thought, Tanwen was too late in sensing the danger.

A snake lunged toward Osian from behind her shoulder. An uncoiling yellow rope from the tangle of leaves. Fangs bared; venom poised.

There was a collection of gasps as the men jumped apart.

The snake was knocked from the air by a thrown stick. It hissed as it slithered quickly back into the bushes.

“We are all done here, Wen.” Her mother’s tense voice cut into the moment as she strode toward her. “Osian, have you not left blessings for Bedryg lately?” Aisling glanced worriedly to the wide-eyed man. “It seems you have upset our goddess of our home if her children are acting out like that. I’d return to your den immediately and offer up your best spirits to atone.”

Osian merely nodded, still regaining his bearings as Tanwen’s elbow was gripped by her mother, who practically dragged her away.

Only when they were a good distance from town did she stop, spinning to confront Tanwen. “That was foolish, girl! What were you thinking?”

“I didn’t do anything!”

“So that snake decided to attack Osian all on its own?”

Tanwen folded her arms over her chest. “It’s entirely possible. If I were a snake, he certainly seems like someone I’d want to bite.”

“That”—her mother poked her arm—“right there is why the snake tried. Your thoughts can become theirs. You must refrain from drawing suspicion onto our family. Onto you.”

Annoyance flared hot through Tanwen, dry leaves catching flame. “And living reclusively from the rest of our clan isn’t suspicious?” she countered. “Keeping Thol and me from having friends isn’t odd? Making sure we don’t utter more than a handful of words when in town is completely normal behavior? Parading around with horns that are clearly foreign makes it so easy to blend in? I have not drawn suspicion onto our family; you and father have. Or are you truly unaware of our name, the Curious Cosletts, which is whispered throughout Zomyad?”

“Wen.” Her mother sighed, the fight seeping from her like she was an overwrung wet cloth: exhausted. “It is better they remain curious than wise to what we hide. I am sorry for it, but you know why we live as we do, so far from where you were born. Why your father and I demand all that we have from you and Thol. We wish our world was different, but it is not. It never will be, which makes these constant arguments tiresome. All your father and I want is to give you and your brother a home, for us to live together safely. You cannot fault us in that.”

No, but what if that is not all I want in life? Tanwen wanted to scream.

Instead, she remained close lipped.

Despite how it curdled her blood with frustration, she knew her mother was right. She was always right. And these arguments were indeed growing tiresome because they always ended the same: Tanwen boiling with the same conclusion.

The gods had cursed her life.

And no amount of kicking and screaming would change that.

“I do not blame you for wanting to retaliate against Osian,” her mother went on, clearly trying to soothe the tension swirling. “His father is just as troublesome, but no good will come from engaging with those sorts. Only more trouble.”

“But I didn’t engage,” Tanwen huffed. “ I remained silent when he called me critter and a straight horn and called Thol a coward. I cannot help it if my friends wish to engage for me. And despite how you might disapprove,” she said hurriedly before her mother could reply, “I am glad they did. Someone needs to knock Osian down a branch or two.”

Her mother let out a long exhale, looking to the High Gods as though they could instill in her more patience. “All right,” she said. “I see this is currently as far as we will get on the matter. But please, for now, just ... try not to have your friends help any more today. Especially not while we are at the harvest.”

Aisling turned, officially ending the debate as she strode away.

Tanwen followed, fighting the urge to pout. And not merely because of their argument but because of what her mother had said regarding her friends.

Aisling had nothing to worry about there.

After last night, Tanwen knew even if she were to beg, no animal within the forest would save her from a Volari.

Unfortunate, indeed, given the destination they now sought would be swarming with them.