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Emara sprinted past the vibrant cerulean and seafoam stone buildings that lined the streets of Faveno, flower murals in pink and yellow twisting along them. Carriette was barely an apprentice medic; what had she been thinking to let her go on her own? She’d only been in Faveno for a few weeks, so there was no way she knew the city well enough to navigate the blockades going up at the inner gates.

Frustration and alarm surged through Emara as she wove between the retreating soldiers to the towering wall that surrounded the inner city. Most of the innocents had been evacuated since the Rastgol had besieged the ramparts three days ago, so now only a trickle fled the walls in their disorganized evacuation.

Ahead of her, the portcullis had already been lowered on the main gate, and she took a sharp right down another narrower street. Her heart already hammering, she skidded into the tiny postern gate where fleeing soldiers ducked through, their faces marred with sweat, dust, and fear.

She shouldered through the tide of bodies, her slight form easily slipping through the low entryway.

“Not that way, lass,” one of the soldiers called after her, blood staining his tunic. “They won’t be able to keep this gate open for much longer.”

“I understand.” Emara didn’t even bother to glance at him as she ran out onto the cobblestone road wedged between the inner and outer walls. The clang of swords and cries of the nearing battle echoed between the golden stones, and Emara urged her legs faster. The eastern spire was close now, and there was another small postern gate on the other side of it. She and Carriette could make it.

High above, soldiers streamed along the battlements, buying time for the city to empty before the Rastgol decimated whatever was left. Any stragglers would be taken as slaves or roasted alive for the Rastgol’s celebratory feast, and Emara still couldn’t decide which were the lucky ones. Her fingers fluttered to the quiver and dagger at her belt, and she shifted her bow on her shoulder. No, it would be worse for her. The Rastgol believed drinking the blood of Odriel’s Blessed granted them power, and she’d heard they’d kept Blessed slaves alive for years, using them like cattle for milk.

A shudder racked Emara’s body. She’d never let them take her alive, even if it meant making the final cut herself.

She ducked into a side stair up the battlements and almost collided with a contingent running down. The man in front nearly shoved her back into the road. “The east spire is lost. Run for the main gate.”

Emara pressed herself flat against the wall. “The main gate is closed, and the Rastgol are coming from the west. You have to use the southeast instead!” If the man heard her, he gave no sign as he ran toward the main gate. Emara stumbled out of the way of the others scattering in either direction, her gaze searching the crowd. “Have you seen—”

A blaring horn from atop the spire interrupted her, and the crackle of fire scorched the air from somewhere above. The answering, guttural roar chilled her to the bone, her next words pitching with rising panic. “A girl with pigtail braids. She’s only—”

“Emara!” Relief coursed through Emara as Carriette raced out of the stairwell, her flushed cheeks streaked with blood, and her hazel eyes huge with terror. “They’re coming. They climbed the battlements. What do we—”

“This way!” Emara pulled her east, running as fast as she could without dragging the girl behind her. They’d barely rounded the curve when the arrows rained down from the outer ramparts.

Carriette jerked her hand away, lifting her arms to protect her head with a scream.

“Don’t stop!” Emara grabbed her again. “We have to keep moving.”

Reluctantly, Carriette ran after Emara as the arrows clattered to the stones behind them. The girl tripped, and Emara yanked her back up, her gaze desperately searching for the gate’s small alcove. In her rush, she almost passed right by it. Grinding to a halt, she turned sharply into the small hole cut through the wall, stooping so as not to bang her head on the low ceiling, but the iron portcullis had already been closed. She laced her fingers in the iron lattice and heaved once, but it didn’t even budge.

“They’ve locked us out,” Carriette whispered, voice shaking, “left us for the Rastgol.”

“No, we just need to keep going.” Emara laced her fingers in Carriette’s, sending a probing trickle of yanaa—no injuries and only minor fatigue. She could go on. “There’s one more that could still be open.”

“But we—” Carriette shrieked as an arrow sank into her thigh, and the pain lashed through the connection between them.

“Carriette!” Emara pulled her into the alcove just as another arrow bounced off the wall behind her. They ducked low, and Emara almost stepped on a battered black cat huddled in the corner.

Tears streamed down Carriette’s face, leaving wet tracks on her grimy cheeks. “Don’t leave me, please don’t leave me, I’ll—”

“I won’t, but I don’t have time to take this out right now.” Emara snapped off the shaft of the arrow and widened the tear in Carriette’s trousers. She put her fingers to the pale skin and let the pain flow into her. The cat stared with one large blue eye as she hissed through her teeth, replacing Carriette’s blistering pain with the cool yanaa flowing from her center, washing over the wound like water, and bringing the torn flesh back together around the arrow.

Carriette’s jaw dropped, her cries quieting. “You’re… you’re one of Odriel’s Blessed.”

Emara peeked out of the alcove, her gaze scraping along the battlements. If their attacker was still out there, she couldn’t see them. “It’s still going to hurt when you run, but you should be able to work through it. We just have to be fast enough to make it to the next gate.”

“They’re here for you,” Carriette continued, something in her face changing… twisting. “How dare you bring them upon us.”

The words slapped into Emara. “Carriette, it’s not like—”

With a grunt, Carriette launched into the street, waving her arms. “She’s here!” she yelled up at the battlements.

“Carriette, come back!”

“Odriel’s Blessed.” Carriette stabbed a finger in her direction. “Take her and leave the rest of us—”

Another arrow sank into her throat, cutting off her last words.

Emara flinched as Carriette fell to the ground, her head cracking against the cobblestones, heavy and motionless. Emara folded over with a thick, rattling breath, pressing her hands to her face for only a second before straightening. With Carriette gone, she had to keep running. A new pain that had nothing to do with her body coursed through her, and she looked to the cat at her feet.

“Well, perhaps I can rescue at least one soul.” She scooped up the cat, holding it close to her chest and taking a deep breath. Strangely, a pulse of yanaa prickled against her fingertips with the sensation of something both old and comforting—like the scent of aged books. Was it coming from the cat? Another arrow clattered into their nook, and Emara jumped. The yanaa mystery would have to wait. “Hold on, kitty.”

The cat looked up at her with its one blue eye, only a scar remaining where the other used to be, almost as if it understood.

Then she rushed out into the street and down the road, arrows following close on her heels. But however fast the Rastgol were, Emara was faster. The arrows fell away as she rounded the corner, trying to push Carriette from her mind. It would haunt her later of course, like they all did, but she could only take one step at a time, and hope there would be a “later” to worry about.

The street was quiet when she reached the gate, and her heart sank. She skidded to a stop, only to find a locked portcullis staring back at her. The echoes of yells and heavy footsteps grew louder behind her, while ahead, the outer wall curved to meet the inner along the shoreline, forming a dead end with only a stairwell leading up to the battlements. She started toward it, careening into the dusky doorway.

The cat tensed in her arms. “Not that way.”

Emara shrieked, dropping the cat. “What in the skies?”

“The stair’s blocked higher up. You’ll only be trapped.” He scampered back out the door. “This way, to the sea grate.”

Emara followed him without hesitation. After all, she seriously doubted a cat would go through the trouble of talking to her for the sake of a lie. “Who are you?”

He ignored her question as he led her into the wedgelike dead end to the narrow channel. There, sewage flowed through a series of grates beneath the walls and out into the choppy waves of the ocean.

“We must swim through here.”

Emara considered the greenish brown water sloshing with the waves, her eyes watering from the reek. Behind them, the bellowing shouts echoed louder. “I can’t get through those bars.”

“Swim down. One of the bars is broken on the sea side. You should be able to squeeze through.”

For a moment, Emara fell silent and looked up at the gray sky above her. Maybe here in her last moments, she’d finally gone mad. The shriek of a circling brown hawk brought her out of her stupor, and she shook herself back to attention. How stupidly indulgent to let the shock steal her precious seconds. That was how people died.

Seeing no alternative, Emara slid into the water as quietly as she could. With any luck, the Rastgol would pass by here and assume she escaped up the stairwell somehow. “Aren’t you coming?” she whispered to the cat.

The cat paced the water’s edge, his black fur on edge as he eyed the water. “I’ll follow once you’re through.”

“I heard something t’over this way,” a Rastgol shouted in his barbed accent.

So much for them passing her by.

Taking a deep breath, Emara dove down, her eyes stinging in the murky water. Sure enough, two of the bars had rusted and broken away at the bottom. Skies above, she didn’t know who that cat was, but she was glad she’d picked him up. The only problem was… it was still quite narrow. She grabbed the rough metal, and bracing her feet against another bar, pulled as hard as she could. The bar groaned, only giving a few fingers’ width, but hopefully it would be enough.

Not without another lungful of air though. Reluctantly, she bobbed to the surface, sucking in clean air… and came face to face with a Rastgol.

Standing a head taller than other humans, the Rastgol had freckled skin, shaved heads, and unnaturally muscular bodies draped with the thick, furry hides of their buffalen livestock. Their warriors wore the bone shards of their victims as jewelry thrust through their brows and nose, while little white scars across their skin tallied their murders. This brute was no exception, and his dark eyes gleamed as he leveled his bow at her, his hands already smeared with blood.

She had only one thought before the arrow flew.

The Rastgol roared, jerking strangely as he released the arrow, and it flew harmlessly into the water. Emara flinched, her eyes widening as they landed on the cat with its jaws clamped into the Rastgol’s meaty ankle. The Rastgol tried to kick the cat away before picking it up and throwing it against the stone wall. The cat’s limp body splashed into the water.

“No!” Emara filled her lungs and dove after the animal. She gathered its black body to her chest and kicked furiously for the hole, pushing the cat through before wriggling in herself. She only made it halfway before her hips got stuck. A bolt of panic flew through her as she squirmed and kicked, her air running out. And then finally, with one last push, she was through.

She surfaced just outside the grate, and another arrow cut into the water, the Rastgol yelling to his comrades. Holding the sodden cat close, Emara swam as best she could against the current, but the waves seemed determined to dash her against the outer wall. Although she aimed for Faveno’s harbor, the effort leached the energy from her bones as the sea pushed her farther away. At last, she gave up, settling on keeping them both afloat while the ocean took them where it willed. As she churned her legs in the cold water, she let her gaze drift to the sky once more. Another brown hawk strafed the sky above, and she wondered if it had been roosting in the now smoking battlements. Hopefully it would have enough sense to abandon the city like everyone else before one of the Rastgol shot it down.

The birds were so common, at one time she’d fantasized she always saw the same one following her around, speaking to her: never stop fighting. Although she’d long disabused herself of such childish notions, she couldn’t stop from thinking it brought her good luck.

At last, the waves carried Emara close enough to the rocky bank for her to drag herself and the cat up on the rough shore beyond the outer wall, coughing and spluttering. Somehow, she’d cheated death once again. Well… almost. The Rastgol still had the city surrounded.

But before she could think about that, she had to tend to her rescuer first. She examined the small black creature, unconscious but breathing shallowly in her arms with its good eye closed. Had it really spoken to her? Or had she broken down under the stress of near death?

Gathering the warmth of her yanaa at her center, she sent a pulse through the cat. The pain of broken ribs and a serious concussion echoed back to her, as well as a significant amount of yanaa. She let it come, the ache throbbing through her own head and chest while her yanaa wrapped around its small body, smoothing away the pain.

The cat’s blue eye opened slowly, and he looked up at her with an ageless, almost luminescent stare, something about him strangely familiar.

“We’ve found you at last,” he whispered, his voice velvety and smooth. “Where have you been, Ioni?”

She blinked, the throbbing in her head growing. “I’m sorry, you must be mistaken. My name is Emara Akil.”

The cat’s ragged ears flicked, his earnest gaze locked on hers. “You may have forgotten my face, but I assure you, I have not forgotten yours. And there’s certainly no denying your healing touch. I’ve been tracking rumors of a Blessed medic for months now, but I confess I was expecting your mother.”

“I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re talking about. My mother died years ago.”

The cat sagged in her arms. “I see. I’m sorry to hear that.”

She put the cat down on a large flat rock and took a step back. “Look, I’m glad you’re feeling better, but we must go before—”

“My name is Shadmundar, cursed servant to the magus, Everard. I knew your mother, Guardian Taya Rao, who hid you away to keep you safe. I knew your father, Mido, who died when you were four. I knew your grandfather, Jago, and your great-grandfather, Pryor, both killed by the Lost. And even your twice great-grandfather, Sipho, murdered by a corrupt crown. And I can tell you, without a shadow of a doubt, your name is Ioni Rao, and you are the Time Heir.”

Emara’s ears buzzed, her head splitting with pain as she staggered backward. He was mistaken. He had to be. Her mother couldn’t have been an Heir. She’d always said Emara was one of Odriel’s Blessed. Always made Emara hide her gift. But then, how had the cat known her parents’ names?