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You sound incredibly cheerful for a bird in a cage surrounded by hungry cats. If a raised eyebrow were a sound, it would be his voice, and I can’t help the curl of my lips in response.

Then don’t speak to me. I’ve missed you too much to be anything other than happy to hear you.

Wren… My name curls up in his bone voice, cozy and warm, a hearthfire.

“What is this?” The BloodLetter’s rough tone pushes through my conversation with Lorcan, and I startle, coming back to the living side of the veil, but don’t respond, assuming he’s not addressing me.

“SoulBinder? What was that?” He is suspicious, and it makes him angry, easy to see even behind his bone masque.

“What was what, BloodLetter?” I ask, furrowing my brow in apparent confusion.

“What just happened?”

“I’m sorry…I don’t understand.”

He turns his horned head to Kylabet, who is watching me through narrowed eyes, but shrugs slowly in response. “It could just be tiredness. I’ve seen it happen before. Or a quirk of her that we don’t yet understand.”

“ That is precisely the problem, Flank Commander. There can be nothing that we ‘don’t understand’ about the creature by the time we get to the Crimson City, or—” he cuts himself off, but clearly she understands his meaning.

“I am a woman , not a creature ,” I mutter tightly under my breath, and he whips his head back around to face me.

“Say again?” he asks, almost a taunt, and goddess help me, but I let it raise my hackles, despite my better judgment.

“I am a woman , BloodLetter,” I bite back. “As such, I feel it prudent to warn you that you will never understand everything about me, as any other woman could tell you.”

Kyla coughs, turning her head to disguise her smile, but Axton is all fury and force. “Are you mocking me, Demon?”

“How in Sky and Earth is it mocking you to call myself a woman, BloodLetter?”

His reply is lost in a tumult of sound from behind us, where there is a sudden chaotic flurry of movement and alarm.

In an instant, the problem becomes clear.

One of the massive horses that is tasked with pulling the hay wagons has spooked for some reason and is barreling through the line of people and animals behind us, dragging a splintered wooden wreck behind it.

The horse is panic-stricken, foaming at the mouth, shoulders wet with sweat, its eyes wide and wild as it crashes through the camp.

Kylabet wheels her mount away from us, barking out commands to the Riders who appear as if from nowhere, trying to gain control of the terrified animal, but it backs up and rears, legs clawing at the air before coming back to earth.

Tremors run down its body, its skin shivering in ripples as the Riders surround it; it snorts and almost screams, turning its head this way and that, startling as it bumps into the broken wagon still attached to it.

Being fenced in is clearly making it more nervous, and though it can’t move forward, it’s stomping and shaking, flinging its head.

Beside me, Axton inhales deeply, then dismounts and slowly approaches the massive beast on foot, hands out and voice low.

I don’t understand a single word he’s saying, but the sound is soothing, singing, calming, and the horse stills, even though the white rings remain around its eyes and its nostrils still flare open with heaving breath.

Most of the people around us seem to take this as a sign that everything is now under control and back away, checking on those who were pushed to the side of the path, calming their own skittish mounts.

Only Kylabet and a few of the Riders remain as Axton reaches up to the horse’s bridle, still using that same, sweet voice, almost a lover’s tone, velvet dark.

It’s extraordinary to watch the calm settle over the horse, despite huffing with rapid breath, chest straining against its harness.

After a long moment, Kylabet turns her own mount away to survey the damage, and the Riders in the circle also relax as Axton leans his forehead against the horse’s nose.

It’s only through sheer, dumb luck that I’m still staring at the BloodLetter when a piece of the wagon that had been precariously attached finally falls off.

It is enough to send the horse wild again, jerking its head up from Axton’s grip and hurling him back onto the ground a few feet away, flat on his back.

The BloodLetter hits hard, is stone still, chest unmoving, when the horse rears up a second time, iron-shod hooves glinting in the sun.

It’s a death sentence for the bone-masqued man — one massive foot would crush him — and I kick my mount forward without thought, placing us in the small space between the rearing animal and the BloodLetter.

Stupid, Wren, STUPID! is all I have time to think before the hooves come down, catching on my horse’s back and tack before dragging down its side and yanking me from my saddle headfirst to the unforgiving ground below.

By the time I hit, Kyla is already there, her blade through the wild horse’s neck, her body between it and her brother, between it and where I lay sprawled in the dirt.

Every bone in my body feels like it snapped in two, and I’m sticky with blood, though I can’t tell if it’s mine or the dying animal beside me.

For a moment it is completely silent, and then there is total pandemonium, the unrelenting noise sending lightning bolts through my brain.

Riders are calling and rushing toward Axton, helping him sit up and giving him water.

Someone grabs at my limping mount, who snorts and pulls away from their hands, turning to nudge its soft nose against my cheek as though it’s checking on me.

Lorcan is frantic on my back, voice pulsing in and out with the sound of my heartbeat, and it’s difficult to breathe.

All I can do is lie on the ground, completely still, just trying to force my eyes to focus and my lungs to expand. Both efforts seem completely useless.

So it’s only the fuzzy outline of Kylabet’s face I see when she stands over me, and only a faint echo of her voice I hear when she addresses me. “Barn mouse did I say? More cat, perhaps. You are showing fierce claws, SoulBinder.” Then, lower, more somber, “I owe you a life debt.”

My eyelids feel as though they are weighed down by a mountain, and my lungs are only just beginning to remember their purpose, barely stuttering back to life, so my reply is thin and reedy, more of a whisper than anything.

“My head…works best…attached to my shoulders,” is all I can manage, and even bruised and bloody, the answering sound of her roar of laughter is strangely gratifying .

“So it does. So it does. Alright, Binder. We’ll see what we can do to keep it that way.

” She pauses, then crouches beside me, wiping some of the blood from my face.

“He won’t be happy that you’ve added to the riddle, Binder.

You’ve put him…well, us… in a very strange position.

I’m letting you know as a mark of gratitude.

I wouldn’t expect any from the BloodLetter. ”

My head hurts too much to keep my eyes open, or to waste energy on replying, so I just lay in the dirt, not acknowledging her words.

She takes a few moments to run her hands over my arms and legs, to turn my unresisting head from side to side, then hums in apparent approval.

“It’s not as bad as all that,” she murmurs.

“Nothing broken, just the wind knocked out of you, and some bruising. You’re lucky.

Your horse took the brunt of it, but is also fine.

” I hear her stand beside me, hear her whistle to someone in the distance, and then feel reins wrap around my unresisting hand.

“We move on shortly, Binder. Mount when you’re ready.

Head, shoulders, and all.” Nudging my body with her foot, she encourages me to respond, amused now that everything seems to be settled.

“Don’t be lazy. Children take that sort of fall all the time when learning to ride. On your feet.”

For a brief moment I contemplate pulling her bones from her flesh, dreaming about how satisfying it would be, then sigh, and struggle to sit up, wondering why I couldn’t just have let the pack horse stomp Axton into pulp.

Stupid, stupid Wren.