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It was never pleasant stepping into the full light of day.

Tanwen squinted, shielding her eyes from the accosting sun as she and her mother left the tranquil shadows of the forest to enter the harvest fields. Though it was a short distance to the northern outbuildings, the summer’s heat did quick work in plastering Tanwen’s shirt to her back, her exposed skin growing slick with sweat.

Tanwen hurried her pace, her steps kicking up dust along the dirt road, to find a shadowed reprieve under the nearest covered pavilion.

She never understood how any creature could live so unprotected under the searing gaze of Ré. The father of the High Gods was a demanding master, greedy to cover every strip of Cādra with his bright and blistering fingers.

But it was not merely the midday blaze that gripped Tanwen with discomfort or set her longing to retreat into the forest; it was what else filled the sky.

In the distance, dozens of Volari peppered the blue expanse, massive wings pumping as they hovered over various plots of farmland. Vultures , her people often called the Volari stationed here. A necessity to their clan’s process of life as well as a warning of its vulnerability.

Here flew the children of the High Gods assigned to oversee and aid in the western land’s agriculture. For these fields were what fed most of Cādra, including the floating isles of Galia and the king and queen themselves.

While this forced a symbiotic relationship between the two races—both needing what the seasonal harvests yielded—it was not without a lack of injustices. The Volari might extend their magic to bring rain to thirsty crops, heat to frosted ones, and a breeze to spread pollination, but the Süra did the backbreaking work on the ground. The labor that left hands bleeding, skin puckering from sunburns, muscles overworked, and bodies parched. But such was the price for food grown on their own soil—and the reason Tanwen and her mother were here.

By midday, any meddyg was a welcome sight to the workers.

Her mother greeted the other women stationed within the outbuilding, cooks and seamstresses, while Tanwen unpacked supplies in their assigned section. The open pavilion was outfitted simply: a few cots, chairs, and rows of benches for the workers to sit and eat.

“I’ll finish setting up,” said her mother, handing Tanwen one of their water sacks. “Go find your father and brother. They will need a refill after working all morning in this heat.”

“Use one of the horses,” advised Venya, the female warden of their post. “There was a handful of equipment the crop master needed your pa to check. They are most likely further south by now, near the squash.”

Tanwen gave Venya a thankful smile, but before she could take leave, her mother grasped her forearm, stilling her.

“Remember what we spoke of,” Aisling whispered, eyes earnest, features stern.

Do not draw attention to yourself.

Do not speak to others.

Stay safe. Blend in.

Tanwen clenched her teeth together, her frustration with the unceasing reminder never far. But she managed a nod, which released her mother’s grip.

She hurried to the stables, her mood lifting when she spotted the white-and-brown mare in one of the stalls.

“I had hoped you’d still be here, Rind,” whispered Tanwen as she stroked the horse’s nose, the scent of hay lying thick in the space between them.

Friend. Rind nuzzled her neck. Sister.

Tanwen’s chest heated with the honor of such a greeting.

“I need to find my father and brother,” she explained, continuing to keep her voice low so no nearby stable hands could hear. Curious Cosletts, indeed, if they found her conversing with a horse. “Do you mind giving me a ride?”

Rind huffed, prancing as she gave her consent.

“Thank you.” Tanwen smiled before she saddled the horse and led her outside.

Despite being back beneath the expansive sky, the pumping wings of the Volari in her periphery, her pulse jumped with excitement as she mounted Rind.

Women were not extended many of the same activities as the men, but riding was blessedly one she could partake in.

The summer heat turned to an exhilarating wind as she urged Rind into a gallop, traveling down the harvest road. The breeze fingered through her hair and across her cheeks, and for a moment, she dared to close her eyes, wondering if this was what the Volari felt when they flew: free.

As she neared the beginning rows of squash, Tanwen pulled on Rind’s reins, slowing the mare to a trot. Workers were busy, bent over the infinite strips of vegetation. Their only respite from the heat was the shade made by their large straw hats, their horns poking through holes at the top. None paid Tanwen mind as she passed. Distractions were never well met here.

As she neared the middle of the plot, Tanwen easily spotted her father and brother hunched together by a wagon. Two other Süra stood to the side. The crop master, no doubt, and a farmhand there to help.

Her gaze hooked on to her father’s western horns protruding from his wide-brimmed hat. Beneath would be the headband that secured them in place, hidden beneath a fashionable wrapping that many Süra wore to push back their hair. Her father tied his so tight that he often suffered headaches. A necessary pain for my freedom, he had once remarked. And a penance.

Tanwen wasn’t sure what he had meant by the latter, but she had noted the tender gaze from her mother as she handed him a tonic to ease his discomfort. It was a look that spoke of their past, but Tanwen and her brother knew better than to pry into that domain. Unless they wanted a father who brooded for days and a mother who handed out unnecessary chores.

At the sight of her father, a sense of relief loosened Tanwen’s tense muscles. If he felt comfortable working in the fields under the watchful eyes of the Volari here, then he must feel safe. Confident in his and his family’s disguises.

More reason not to tell him about the kidar, thought Tanwen. Her father had passed as Süra this long, unrecognized by those flying above; he would certainly continue to.

At the sound of her and Rind’s approach, their group turned, regarding her. Well, all except her father, who remained thoroughly absorbed in tinkering with a hinge on the wagon’s front axle.

“Wen.” Her brother smiled up at her from beneath the brim of his hat. He helped to steady her mare as she dismounted. “I was praying to Udasha that she might lend a sliver of her fortune to bring you here.”

“You really must be suffering dehydration to extend such a kind greeting, brother,” said Tanwen sardonically.

“Let us find out, shall we?” Aberthol stretched out his hand. “Pass over that water sack, and we’ll see if I remain glad of your presence once my thirst is quenched.”

“No need for tests,” said Tanwen as she gave him the pouch. “Dehydration or not, it’s already been proven neither of us can tolerate the other for long. The Low Gods only know how we were able to live in such tight quarters all those months in Mother’s womb.”

“We did come early,” he reasoned.

“Exactly my point.” Tanwen huffed a laugh.

Aberthol shot her a wry grin before taking hardy sips.

While she and Aberthol were born with their mother’s dark hair, her brother was the one who inherited their father’s tight curls. The edges of which were currently plastered with sweat against his temples and neck.

“Oy.” Tanwen poked his arm, causing a bit of water to slip from his lips and trickle down his cheek. “Save some for Father.”

“You should have brought two,” Aberthol grumbled, lowering the sack.

“We did . The other is back in the pavilion for when you all break for midday meal.”

“Thol,” called her father, drawing them both to look to where he now lay halfway under the wagon. “Get the pliers and the larger of our springs.”

Aberthol did as he was ordered, Tanwen coming to stand beside her brother as they watched their father twist and knock loose a rusted spring housed between the axle and the wagon’s floor. He grunted and groaned as he worked. Tanwen often wondered how annoyed he must feel being forced to use tools instead of his heat magic to shape metals like clay.

“Are these the wheel shocks you installed last season?” asked Tanwen, her mind hungry to remember every move and twist and fix her father orchestrated from the ground. Neither he nor Aberthol was a farmhand, but they were often hired to repair and better the equipment the Süra used for the harvest.

While her father never spoke about his time in Galia, she knew his occupation had been of the engineering sort. His mind was quick to invent, to create, to better the best.

Tanwen remained a riveted audience as she grasped her hands tightly behind her back, resisting her urge to reach down and assist her father.

That was Thol’s role.

“Yes, these are them,” answered her father, pushing out from under the wagon. As he took care to readjust his hat, he did nothing about the dirt covering his pants, shirt, and beard. “We’ll need to grease them more often than I had calculated so they don’t grow so brittle as quickly.”

“I can experiment with creating different oils,” suggested Tanwen. “Find a mixture that would last longer so greasing more often isn’t necessary.”

Her father met her gaze, a flash of curious delight that filled Tanwen with a rush of warmth.

See, Father, she wanted to say. Like Thol, I also am worthy of your time.

A painful howl turned Tanwen’s attention to where a Volari descended from the sky like a hawk onto a mouse, clamping down on a worker two rows away.

A dust cloud awoke as Bastian, the head Volari of the harvest unit, pumped his massive gray wings to steady his hold on a squirming Süra. “Be still!” he demanded. “Running is never a match for our flight.”

At his words, three more male Volari landed nearby.

The captive man grew slack, but his terror-stricken features remained. “Please,” he begged of Bastian. “I have done nothing wrong!” His basket of squash lay tipped over and forgotten at his feet.

Tanwen did not recognize the man in Bastian’s grip, but with how little she interacted with her clan, there were always unfamiliar faces.

“Are you sure this is him?” asked Bastian to an approaching Süra. “You will be punished in his stead if what you say is untrue.”

“I know he is Mütra, sir,” assured the accuser. He appeared about the same age as Tanwen, but there was a sick pallor to his complexion, with chipped horns and signs of malnourishment hinting that he might be nearing his final swim in the Eternal River. He reeked of desperation. “The truth of their abomination is on their backs,” he said, pointing to the captive man.

Tanwen’s blood drained from her, Aberthol’s hand now a vise grip on her arm.

“What?” cried the man. “No! He lies! He’s a liar. I am a Süra of the Zomyad Forest!” He attempted to turn so he could speak directly to Bastian, but he was forced to his knees, his hands slapping against the dirt to catch his fall.

“If you are,” said Bastian. “Then you will have no issue removing your shirt.”

Tanwen’s stomach clenched with dread as she forced herself not to glance to her father, to what he hid beneath his tunic.

“You cannot order such a thing,” the man pleaded desperately. “Süra of the Zomyad are under the protection of—”

“Take off your shirt,” ordered Bastian once more, this time each word a swinging hammer to steel. “If you do not, then one of us shall.”

The wings of his nearby brethren shifted, as though they were awaiting his command.

The man at his feet began to tremble in clear terror, a sob escaping him.

Tanwen no longer held her breath as panic curled its fingers around her neck, squeezing, squeezing as she was helpless to do anything but watch.

I know they are Mütra. The hateful words sliced along her skin.

The memory of her previous night hurtled down on her from the heavens. When she had been forced into a similar prostrating position before the kidar.

Nausea gripped Tanwen.

Terror drowning.

How different last night could have turned out.

How all her future days could still transpire.

Despite how Tanwen loathed it, her mother’s warnings were clearly justified.

A collection of gasps brought Tanwen back to the scene within the field.

The man on the ground had slipped off his shirt.

And there, in the clear blaze of day, was his guilt.

Two tiny wings, useless and flesh covered, twitched on either side of his shoulder blades. But it wasn’t the crooked appendages that nearly made Tanwen buckle in anguish. It was the raw markings made by the band the man had used to confine them and the angry, vicious scars covering them like a tapestry. Knife wounds sliced across the base of his wings. Red and puckering. A history of the man’s desperate attempts to rid himself of the sin of his existence.

Tanwen swallowed past the burning ache in her throat. How similar these scars were to her father’s. But where this man’s work had failed him, whoever had seen to her father’s dismemberment had succeeded.

Bastian glared down at the Mütra, distaste a pinch to his dark features, before he turned to one of his nearby men, giving a nod.

The small blade hardly made a sound as it was drawn from his belt.

“No!” cried the Mütra, scurrying back, but he tripped over his own hands in his hysteria. “ No! ” he shouted louder, his desperation echoing across the field as he was grabbed by his executioner. “I am not bad,” he cried. “I am not bad. I have no magic. I am worthless. I am worthless!”

“Then nothing shall be lost here this day,” replied Bastian.

Death was but a flash. A reflection of sun against a blade as it was raised to slit a throat. Somewhere behind Tanwen, Rind whined her distress. Birds stirred into flight as the Mütra’s body collapsed in the dirt.

Stillness.

Silence.

And then there was an exchange of money into hands. The accusing Süra’s sharp smile as he gazed into the bag of gem passed on by one of the Volari. Not even ambrü worthy, the ending of a Mütra’s life, and yet still enough to hunt them.

There was a shouting of orders for the crowd to get back to work, but Tanwen stood rooted, unflinching as the gale made by the children of the High Gods taking flight pressed into her.

The Mütra took up her vision as he was dragged away, the scraping of his bent wings along the dirt. A red trail of death followed him, a path that marked the last spot he had lived.

Later, he would be burned alone. Even if he had those who loved him, they would not come to stand by his flames. They could not.

To be Mütra was a plague.

To be Mütra was a mistake.

One to be corrected.

Eradicated.

Tanwen hadn’t realized she was shivering until a hand to her shoulder caused her to flinch.

Her father had come to stand between her and her brother. Beneath his hat, his gaze was lowered, but she saw the tenseness in his jaw, the rough swallow in his throat.

She wondered if he was reliving a flash of his own tortured past, when his brethren had stripped him of his wings. If so, it was not a long haunting, for he eventually let out a sigh, squeezing her shoulder before nudging Aberthol’s.

Back to work, the gesture said.

As their father turned, she momentarily met her brother’s gaze. Aberthol’s green eyes held a storybook of fear, of worry, but then—just like her father—he blinked, and it was gone and so was he, returning his attention to the wagon.

Tanwen was left alone, her only companion the mare who stepped forward to nuzzle her neck.

I am here, the horse’s warm huff said. But we should go. It isn’t safe.

No, agreed Tanwen. It isn’t safe.

But neither was their forest when Süra were out hunting Mütra.

If their neighbors were ready to betray neighbors for a bag of gem, what wouldn’t they do for an ambrü?

A curl of icy dread spilled into Tanwen’s veins at the thought, a heavy sinking of understanding.

The ambush of the kidar last night and the killing of the Mütra today were more than a coincidence, more than a reminder of their vulnerability. They were a Low God forewarning.

Tanwen and her family’s time in Zomyad was up.

And she would have to be the one to tell them.