We finally reach Thornewood at dawn. In the gray light, the mist-shrouded fir trees look like ghostly, unwelcoming sentinels. They waver across my line of vision as I try not to think about what might await us.

A stone pillar covered in runes marks the border between Lazul and Zelen. One of the fae folk is seated beside it, in a chair carved from a gnarled tree. Behind him is the entrance to Thornewood, a massive arch made of thickly woven vines. They grow from the ground, coiling round one another in an impenetrable spiral.

We don’t have many fae in Lazul. They shun cities and the bitter cold, keeping to forests, lakes, and moors. My guess is this one is a brownie. It wears a pointed cap with a cowslip stuck in the band and is popping mulberries from a basket into its wide mouth with one warty hand and smoking a reed and hickory nut pipe with the other.

“Attention!” Agate begins. “We are Her Royal Highness of Lazul, Princess Thedramora, daughter of—"

I elbow him in the ribs before he can go any further. “Hush, you overeager wank. It makes no difference to them.” I nod to the fae. “Good morning.”

It hops off the stump and makes me a gracious bow. The cowslip in its hat bobs. “Greetings, travelers. I am Catkin, a brownie of Zelen’s outer lands. ’Tis tasked upon me to require a toll.” His mouth is stained purple from the berries and his teeth are plated with gold and silver.

“Oh, great,” mutters Gate. “What is it, a riddle?”

“I require gems, food, or coin.” He holds out a long-fingered hand.

I rummage through my pack until I find a few coins. The brownie bites a crown, the Lazulian twenty-five-cent piece, and inspects the profile of my great-grandmother’s face stamped on it. He counts the pieces out one by one, before nodding and dropping the coins into a pouch at his belt. “Many thanks, good lady. Travel carefully in the Poison Forest. It isn’t what it once was.”

“And what do you mean by that?” I ask. “This forest has been named Thornewood for millennia, after your goddess Thorne, the Lady of the Wood.”

He shakes his head. “It’s ailing, festering. There are things in there what shouldn’t be.”

“Like what?”

“Things,” he says again, and I resist the urge to roll my eyes at his theatrics. “I don’t go in anymore, not far. But I’ll take more coin and offer provisions in return.”

“Do you live nearby?” asks Gate.

He nods and hops off the chair. We follow him about a quarter of a mile into the bracken that skirts the edge of the forest until we reach a little cottage tucked into a glade. The cottage entrance is too low for us to enter, so we stay outside until Catkin returns carrying a basket. He hands it to me and tells Gate, “There’s a pile of kindling in back if you want a bundle.”

I inspect the little cottage as Gate goes to fetch the firewood. Vines grow along the thatched roof, and the side is painted with clever depictions of mushrooms and dragonflies. I lean forward to look at them closer and the basket over my arm shifts, emitting a rank smell. Cautiously, I lift the lid. Inside is a loaf of moldy bread, several pieces of rotting fruit, and three slimy fish with glazed, staring eyes. A maggot squirms out of a fish’s eye, and I shriek and drop the basket. Just then there’s a sound behind me, a cross between a grunt and a huff, and I whirl around.

Catkin is clinging to Neev’s back like a child wanting a horsey ride, but he’s clutching at her shoulder with one long-fingered hand, and with the other he presses a small, sharp blade to her throat, perfectly placed to slash the artery and spill her blood on the ground.

I stand perfectly still. If I move to touch my vial, he could kill her, and if I strike him, I might hit her too.

“Go,” he whispers. “I’ll take care of her.”

I shake my head. “What do you want? Why are you doing this?”

“She’s one of them.”

“One of them?”

“Them. The broken ones.” He says this like I should know what he’s talking about.

“The... I don’t understand. She’s with me. Please, Catkin, put the knife down.”

“No. They’re no good for anything once they go bad.”

“She’s not bad. She’s with me.”

I can tell he isn’t listening to me, and I start to panic, terrified he’s going to kill her. In my peripheral, I catch a glimpse of Agate returning from the woodpile, but I keep my gaze on Catkin, hoping to distract him. Almost imperceptibly, Neev shifts, like she’s redistributing his weight, but in the process, she angles her body slightly so that Catkin’s back is closer to Agate. A few seconds that feel like eons pass, and I hear the thwack of the crossbow.

Catkin goes rigid and his fingers loosen on Neev’s shoulder before he tumbles to the ground.

Agate strides to his limp form and rolls him over with a foot. The bolt struck him in the side of the neck and he’s clearly dead. “Dark goddess, save us from nutty fucking fae,” he mutters.

Neev falls to her knees, putting a hand to the side of her neck, and I run to her in case he somehow managed to slit her throat in the second before Agate’s crossbow bolt hit him. When I pull her hand away there’s only a small cut where the blade nicked her. I tear a strip off the edge of my shirt and hold it against the cut until the blood stops, squeezing her gloved hand.

“It’s alright,” I tell her over and over. “You’re safe.”

She looks up at Agate, her luminous eyes clouded with sadness. “Did you have to kill him?”

“What else should I have done? Let him kill you? He was mad.”

I stand and pull Neev to her feet. “Let’s get out of here.”

“What about the food?” asks Agate.

I shake my head and point to the overturned basket. “Spoiled. Like you said, he was mad. It’s a shame, but I don’t feel safe here.”

We don’t waste any time returning to the forest gate. Neev grabs my hand as we cross beneath the arch, and Agate’s fingers hover over his crossbow. The air beneath the trees is cold, and there’s no wildlife to be seen or heard. Thornewood should be alive with the calls of birds, the buzzing of insects, and the foraging of small creatures at this time of year, but it lies quiet as a crouching panther, watching. Waiting.

As we pass through a clearing a few hours into our hike, I glimpse my first animal. It looks sort of like a deer, but it’s an odd shade of green and in place of antlers, branches sprout from its head. It blinks two sets of eyes at me—eyes that are rimmed with moth wings instead of lashes. When I take a step, it turns and disappears into the forest with a flash of white tail, just like a normal deer.

“Have you ever seen anything like that?” I ask Neev. “Was it...natural? I mean, was it fae?”

She shakes her head. “I don’t think so. There was something wrong about it.”

Catkin’s words echo in my ears. There are things in there what shouldn’t be. Neev warned me too, at Peakstone. I thought she was gullible to believe such folk tales.  

“What exactly did you hear about this place?” I ask.

“I only heard about it through servant gossip. They say those who live near the forest have started to leave because the game has gone bad—that it’s become aggressive or inedible. And some say children who go into the forest for berries or water don’t come back. They’re taken by a monster called the Gaunt Man.”

A shudder goes down my spine and I shrug it off. This too has the ring of an old folk tale more than truth, surely? Nonetheless, I have a sudden instinct to turn back. It’s so intense I taste bile in the back of my throat.

“Sounds made up, doesn’t it?” I say lightly. “Like a story to keep children from running off alone.”

Neev shrugs. “Maybe. But Catkin...” She bites her lip.

"It’s like Gate said, something was wrong with him. He probably went mad being out here alone for so long. Brownies are meant to live on farms or in houses, aren’t they?”

“Yes, there was one on the farm where my mother and I lived when I was young,” says Neev absently.  

My gaze slips to Agate, and his cheerful, conceited expression is gone. He looks somber and scared. I force myself to walk past him, leading the way down the path.

“Let’s press on.” I try to make my voice sound normal, but it comes out strained. “Several hours of daylight left.”

Neev and I make camp in a chilly glade filled with unfamiliar blue flowers while Gate takes his crossbow to hunt for our dinner. Once we’ve started a fire and set up an A-frame shelter of fir branches, I inspect the flowers and find them covered in a powdery mold that crumbles away at the slightest touch with a puff of sickly-sweet rot.

Neev spins one of the blossoms between her gloved thumb and forefinger. White dust drifts into the air and she lets the flower drop to the forest floor.

“What if this dust is toxic?” I ask.

She shrugs. “I’ve traveled through Thornewood before and never seen it.”

This non-answer irritates me. When Agate returns, I start to tell him about the strange flowers, but before I can, he holds up a pair of small game. “I shot a brace of something, but...I don’t know what they are. I thought they were hares at first, but they’re not.”

We kneel beside the campfire to look at the animals. They’re small, and I can see why he mistook them for hares in the dim light, but they have spines like porcupines. Taking one to the edge of the campsite, I draw my dagger and slit open its gut, careful of the wicked-looking spines. Luminous gray and green entrails spill onto the dirt, releasing an odor like the ferment of the blue flowers.

“Not folk tales, then,” says Neev.

Again, I’m hit with the instinct to flee this place. Something really is amiss here, and I don’t want to know what it is. I just want to run, to send mages and greenhealers from the Triumvir to work it out.

But that’s cowardice. Taking the easy way out. It’s not what a real queen would do. Dette would never abandon me because she was afraid of an old forest. I glance at Agate and Neev, not knowing how to tell them what I’m thinking. They both showed up as unwelcome companions at first, but now I seem to have taken on the role of their unelected leader.

“I don’t think we should eat them, Agate,” says Neev carefully, as if she doesn’t want to offend him.

“Yeah, no shit.”

“Sorry you went to the trouble,” I say, although I’m not entirely.

I’m still angry with him for enchanting me last night, for putting me to sleep without asking. He’s been persuasive with me before, but always for my safety—luring me out of some drinking hovel or convincing me not to sleep among the old tombs when I was feeling implacable. But he’s never sedated me or given me a dream without asking for my permission. It felt invasive, and while I know he did it to bring me safely back to Lazul, more than likely for a reward from my father, I trust him less now than I ever have.

Agate shrugs, looking angry with himself. “I shouldn’t have shot something I didn’t recognize.”

I can’t read Neev’s face like I can Gate’s. It’s not clear if she’s annoyed with me for bringing the two of them here, or just regretting her own decision to come.

“I guess it’s hardtack and the berries we picked from the moor, then,” I say.

Neev pulls her cloak off the low-hanging branch where she hung it while we built our shelter. “I’ll forage something to eat. Won’t be the first time.”

She throws the cloak over her shoulders and leaves the campsite. Agate and I sit by the fire as we wait for her to return. “Do you think she’ll come back?” he asks.

I shake my head, staring at the blue flames. “I don’t know.”

She could find her way to the path with little trouble and follow it back the way we came. The road from Thornewood to Thistle is more winding than the trade road, but it leads there all the same. I’m relieved when she returns with a spray of pepper grass in her hand. She tosses her cloak next to the fire, and a pile of spongy mushrooms, dark berries, and greens spill out of it.

“Ramps, morels, and mulberry,” she says. “I found them in a hollow.”

I munch on a spike of pepper grass while she chops the roots and greens on a flat stone with Gate’s knife. The pungent weed makes my mouth and nostrils tingle, but it’s satisfying after eating nothing but hardtack, jerky, and wild game.

“Here, I’ll do that. You’ll ruin your gloves.” I hold my hand out and she places the knife in my palm.

“Have you ever chopped anything in your life, Princess?” asks Agate.

I slice into one of the long white pepper grass roots. “Yes. The fingers of a man who touched me without asking.”

Neev bursts into unexpected laughter, covering her mouth.

Agate exhales noisily. “Is this because I used my power on you? Will you please let it go? I had no choice.”

“That’s nonsense. You know how I feel about being persuaded without permission. I thought we were...”

I was going to say friends, but that’s ridiculous. I’m not friends with an undercaptain in my father’s guard. He’s an errand boy and social climber, and I’m a princess who hates doing what’s expected of her. We were lovers for about five seconds after Dette and I didn’t work out. Now we’re reluctant sparring partners. That’s it.

Agate looks at me askance. “I won’t do it again,” he says. “Unless you expressly ask.”

I turn my head and he huffs impatiently at my stubbornness. “Why do you wear gloves all the time, anyway?” he asks Neev, changing the subject. “...I knew someone in training who always wore them. He didn’t like to touch people.”

“It’s not like that.”

“How is it, then?”

“None of your business,” I say.

He looks between us, his black brows drawn together. He knows we’re hiding something, but I don’t enlighten him. It’s not my secret to tell, and Gate’s not exactly a snitch, but I wouldn’t put most things past him if they involve coin. I don’t want him putting her in danger.

I have two nightmares. In the first, I keep glimpsing something walking through the forest, something pale with an uncanny gait that scrambles from tree to tree on disjointed limbs. I thrash in my sleep as it gets closer and closer, clammy with sweat, but I can’t wake up.

That dream fades into another, and I find myself wandering through Peakstone. I walk through the large bronze doors inlaid with lapis and turquoise, and cross the throne room, the feasting hall, and the corridor to the inner chambers. I push open the door to the solarium, which has been left unused since my mother died. It was her sanctum. My heart leaps into my throat, because she’s sitting by the window surrounded by the dried, shriveled remnants of her ferns, trees, and succulents.

I go and kneel before her, laying my head in her lap like I did as a young child. Her fingers toy with the dark waves of my hair.

“Everything died,” she says. “No one watered them.”

I look at her. “We thought you were dead.”

She shakes her head. “I’ve been alive all this time.”

“But...they told me...”

“They lied.”

I rest my head in her lap again, crying burning tears at the injustice of thinking her dead all this time. Her fingers comb through my hair until the nails catch in the strands. When I put my hand back to disentangle them, my fingertips brush sharp claws and prickly feathers instead of smooth skin.

I lift my head to look at her, nearly paralyzed by dread. She has transformed into her bird form, her familiar face changed to that of a giant horned owl, the yellow eyes cold and merciless, the sharp, curved beak the length of my forearm. She blinks at me, once, and opens her maw to swallow my head. My skull crunches like an eggshell as the razor-edges of her beak sever the bones and sinews of my neck.

I jerk awake with a scream trapped in my throat. I lie perfectly still, breathing hard, trying to quiet myself as the thick terror of the dream recedes. It’s been a long time since I had a nightmare about my mother.

I was four the first time I heard that she bit off the heads of criminals as executioner. It’s where our people got their names for her: the Horned-One. The Devourer.

When I grew older, I understood it from a practical standpoint. She was small, and it was much easier for her to transform into her stronger bird form than swing a heavy ax and worry about doing a shoddy job. Nothing worse than a botched beheading. Not to mention the show of force such a spectacle must have been.

None of that changed how terrified I was at the idea of my mother in her owl form, and what she did while in it.

I wasn’t allowed to see an execution until my first menses. She didn’t want me to, but the other priestesses and my father’s advisors were all in agreement that I must. It was one thing for my mother, a warrior queen, to become executioner. But I could not come to it as a soft, untried girl who had never seen the weight of my forthcoming title.  

That morning was cold enough to freeze the blood in one’s veins and my nurse dressed me in layers of fur and leather. The pealing of temple bells rung by black-veiled priestesses sliced through the crisp air as I walked to the courtyard, and my breath curled from my lips in white vapor. The man being executed had been arrested for murder and cannibalism. When his head was severed from his neck, the blood steamed in the frigid air and then froze in a wide pool, red as the blood I’d found on my sheets the day before.

When I finally saw what my mother could do with my own eyes, I feared her, but I also understood her. It's no wonder my nightmares about her are always a mixture of comfort and terror.

The rotten-smelling powder from the flowers has dusted my face and coated my bedroll as I slept. I sit up, brushing it out of my hair and lashes. That’s when I notice Neev. She’s sitting on her pallet with the hood of her cloak on and her knees drawn to her chest. Our cooking fire has gone out and the air is so cold I can see her breath.

“Are you alright?” she asks.

“Bad dream.” I’m embarrassed that she might have heard me screaming or thrashing around in my sleep. “Did I wake you?”

“No. Couldn’t sleep.”

I squint, staring through the brush of the A-frame into the branches of the trees above. A light powder drifts down from the tree like snow. I scramble out of the shelter. It’s coming from the sea of white blossoms in the tree nearest the tent. They’re distorted and swollen. I make a sound of disgust, duck back under the shelter, and shake off my blanket before climbing back under it. “I think this is pollen.” I rub some of the powder left on the blanket between my fingertips.

“That’s worse.”

“Why?”

Neev wraps her arms around her shins more tightly. “Because mold makes sense. Flowers can get diseases. But fermented pollen?”

Agate groans in his sleep. “Should I wake him?”

She shakes her head. “We slept under this tree all night. If it’s going to kill us, we’re as good as dead already.”

I don’t know how logical this is, but I’m tired and cold, and I decide to take my chances. Lying back down, I draw my knees to my chest and pull my cloak over my head to block out the sickly sweet smell of the pollen.

When I wake in the morning, my mouth is parched and I reach for my water skin, eager to take a long swallow. When I pick it up, it feels lighter than it did last night. I don’t see how this is possible. The water I drank from Thornewood on past journeys is clear, cold, and sweet, but I always ration my water when traveling. It’s a trick my mother taught me from the years she spent on military campaigns. Never count on having fresh water. Always conserve.

Agate is gulping from his own canteen, and Neev is preparing the leftovers from last night for breakfast. Asking either of them if they drank my water will only breed bad feeling. It’s a poor leader who creates mutiny in a small company, and I imagine Gate will accuse me of being paranoid, so I say nothing. Soon we’ll reach the Black Stream, the wide, rushing river that runs through the center of Thornewood, and the other skin in my pack is still full. I tell myself I’m being overly cautious and decide it’s better to say nothing.

As we make our way back to the path, I say, “Neev, will you show me where you found those mushrooms last night?”

She nods. “Sure, if I can find them again.”

“I think we should gather more, in case any other animals we encounter are...” I clear my throat. I don’t want to use the word deformed, but I don’t know how else to describe them. Transfigured comes to mind, but I shrug it away and catch Neev giving me a strange look. “Inedible. It’ll be nice to see some healthy trees.”

We follow her through a frozen fen, at one point crossing a pond of water lilies encased in solid ice. They’re still green and white beneath our boots, like they’ve been preserved in glass. When we come out of the vale, it’s a bit warmer, and I pause to look at a cluster of toadstools growing around the base of a chestnut tree. They’re normal toadstools, red speckled with white, but as I study them, they change before my eyes, swelling and growing into bloated, fleshy flowerheads that look like a cross between fungi and flora.

I don’t even realize I’m reaching for one until Neev snaps, “Don’t touch those! Or the chestnuts. The spines on them are sentient.”

Sentient? I frown at her. She can’t be serious.

“Good rule of thumb for roughing it,” says Agate, giving the chestnut tree a wary glance and nudging one of the toadstools with the toe of his boot. “Don’t touch anything unfamiliar.”

“And yet you just did,” I reply.

He glowers at me and drags the toe of his boot through the carpet of fallen leaves. “There. It’s sorted.”

“Maybe. Or maybe it’ll eat through your boot like acid and turn your toes into writhing worms.”

“Won’t be much good to you then, will I?”

Neev is listening to our exchange. “Are you finished?” she asks.

“With what?”

“With whatever this is.” She motions to me and him. “Or should I leave you two alone?”

Gate scoffs. “Already done that. Three times.”

Neev gives me a surprised glance and I feel my cheeks redden. As usual, I could kill him. “An underwhelming experience,” I reply. He rolls his eyes.

“Have you forgotten we must reach the gates of Cliff Sedge before they’re closed for autumn?” asks Neev.

“That’s days from now,” says Gate.

“Right. And if the two of you keep distracting me with your bickering, I’m going to lose my way and it’ll take us even longer to get there. And once closed, they cannot be opened by force or spell, in case you forgot.”

Gate and I clam up like scolded children. Neev turns on her heel and we follow her in silence.

The hollow she leads us to is full of mist, and I’m relieved to find that it smells clean and normal. As the sun burns away the mist, I identify the aroma of sweet timothy grass and lavender. The summer flowers scattered on the carpet of moss are healthy and familiar: bluebells, daises, and nasturtiums. We fill our packs with pungent offshoots—wild onion, garlic, bidens, bloodroot, chickweed, and more of the spicy peppergrass. Neev picks handfuls of the spongy morels and flat, round oyster mushrooms too.

“I don’t want to leave,” I say, hugging myself. “It feels so safe here.”

Neev grunts as she pulls up a stalk of pepper grass. “It’ll be all right. I know where we’re going, and I trust you to get us there safely.”

I wish I shared her confidence.

There’s an oak growing in the center of the hollow. It has rough variegated bark and a cap of healthy leaves. I pause beneath it to listen to the wind rustling the branches. There are offerings nestled among the roots: bundles of fragrant herbs, polished stones, fat acorns, and little figures carved from sticks. I crouch to inspect them, and Neev joins me beneath the branches.

“Do you suppose this tree has a dryad, and the offerings are for her?” I ask.

“They’re for Thorne. See?” Neev points to a rune shaped vaguely like a woman, carved into the thick trunk. “It’s one of the altars I told you about at Peakstone. Her tree is said to have been an oak.”

“Was Thorne a dryad?”

“Yes. One of the oldest.” She takes a little spray of white bloodroot flowers and adds them to a handful of lavender and springy heather. Binding it all together with a thin stem, she kisses the makeshift bouquet and places it among the roots of the tree with the other leavings.

“Wait,” I say as she starts to turn away. “I want to leave something, too.”

I cast about for a suitable plant, but I’m not skilled in foraging like Neev, or a greenhealer like Dette. For all I know, I could choose something pretty but poisonous. Finally, I take off the plain silver ring I wear on my thumb. A gift from Dette for my fourteenth birthday. I touch it to my lips and nestle it atop a patch of brilliant green moss.

“Blessed Lady of the Wood,” I whisper. “Give me strength to find her.” When I meet Neev’s eyes, she looks stricken. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. It’s just, you love her.”

“Dette? Of course I do.”

“You told me you didn’t. You said your engagement was political.”

I bite my lip. “I barely knew you when I said that. I’ve known Dette since we were eleven. We were betrothed by our parents, and that was political, but I loved her, always. I can’t help it. We had a fight the night of the ball and she said that I’ve always loved an ideal of her. She was right, in a way. But this isn’t about some infatuation. It’s about saving her. She’s my best and oldest friend.”

Neev frowns slightly, nodding. “I see. I understand why you mean so much to one another. Dette talked about you all the time.” She looks sad, but I can’t tell why. Agate is waiting for us, looking impatient, so we leave the hollow reluctantly.

By late afternoon, the warm, sunny hollow is like a distant memory. It’s dark beneath the trees, as if the summer sun can’t filter through the branches. By nightfall, the forest is freezing, and I can’t stop shivering. As Neev and I build another A-frame with fir branches, I shake so hard my teeth clack together and my muscles start to ache. I can tell Agate is cold, too. Although he holds himself still better than I do, he stamps his feet and beats his arms against his chest.

I go with him to find firewood. We end up walking far from the campsite to find any that’s not wet and rotten. I’m so busy searching for fallen branches with the shifting light from my vial that at first I don’t even realize I’m alone. I have no idea where he went or how long he’s been gone.

“Gate?” I call. “Where are you? Agate!”

I hear footsteps shuffling through the underbrush and turn toward them in irritation. “Don’t wander off like that. One of us could get lost.”

He doesn’t reply, and that’s when I realize the footsteps moving toward me aren’t heavy enough to be made by his iron-toed soldier’s boots. They’re mincing, rushing forward and then stopping. My heart jumps into my throat. I tell myself to stay calm and stop being so afraid of everything. But then I make out an odd shape, moving toward me through the trees.

The thing walks on two legs, ambling from behind one tree to another like it doesn’t want to be seen. Its body is the color of pale flesh, and its arms are long and disjointed, flapping about as it takes strange steps on short, bowed legs. But perhaps the worst part is that it has no head.

I nearly scream in terror when Gate’s hand closes around my upper arm.

“Highness?” His voice is barely a whisper. “Do you see that?”

I nod.

“What is it?”

I swallow with difficulty, unable to answer him. The creature is nearly a stone’s throw away now, and it stops its ambling, bow-legged gait.

When it angles its body and flops over into the underbrush, dragging itself forward with long, disjointed arms, I gasp, “Gate? Run.”

We run like we’re being pursued by a whole horde of horrors instead of just one. When we stop to catch our breath, I make out the sound of the creature’s ambling shuffle kicking up leaves from the forest floor. I don’t know how it’s keeping pace with us. It’s almost like we’re pulling it along with our terror.

Eventually, we’re too tired to run any more, and we turn to face it. Agate draws his crossbow and I wrap my hand around my vial, although I’m not sure physical weapons will have any effect on it. As I stand in the clearing, clutching my aching side, the cursed thing fades before my eyes.

“Fuck’s sake,” pants Gate. “All that and it disappears?”

I shake my head in disbelief, trembling all over. He frowns at me. “Have you ever seen anything like that before?”

I close my eyes. “Only in nightmares.”

“Zori have mercy. What do you think it is? A shade? Have you cast a circle?”

I shake my head. “No. It’s worse than that. A shade can be sent to the next-world easily. I think this place is bringing our fears to life.”

“That’s impossible.”

I throw my hands up. “Are any of the things we’ve seen here possible?”

He doesn’t answer.

When we reach the campsite, Neev is wild-eyed. Her gloves are still on, but she’s pulling at them and twisting her hands together. I can feel the heat rolling off her, and I resist the urge to stretch out my numb hands like she’s a campfire to warm them over.

“Where were you?” she asks. “You were gone forever!”

“Something followed us and we got lost.”

“Followed...?”

“We’re fine now.”

She quivers, her lips and hands and even the ends of her hair vibrating with suppressed energy. A wave of light ripples over her, glowing white-hot beneath her skin.

I blink, and a spot obscures my vision, like I’ve been staring for too long at the sun. Dark goddess. I’ve never seen Neev like this. She must have worked herself into a frenzy while we were gone.

I can’t believe I once compared her to moonbeams and dewdrops. She’s the spark that ignites an inferno, and it’s only a matter of time before she goes off. Unharnessed, the godsgift is just another curse.

I wonder if all the wet, rotten shit in this forest will burn if she loses control. A part of me hopes so. Gate and I will, for sure, if we don’t get out quickly enough. We’ll be incinerated. Nothing but piles of ash.

I stretch my hand to her now, but not to warm it. “Neev,” I say softly, “it’s all right.”

She shakes her head. “I thought you were dead. I imagined being stuck here forever, alone. Or—” 

“We’re not and you won’t be. Try to calm down. Breathe.”

She nods, gulping air, but that same ripple of light glows beneath her skin again. “It’s not working.”

“Should I persuade you?” asks Gate.

I don’t know why I didn’t think of that. I nod encouragingly. “Let him. This is an exceptional situation.”

“All right.”

Gate approaches her slowly. “Listen to your heartbeat and the sound of my voice. Nothing else. Close your eyes.”

She does, and the tightness in my chest releases a little, but I keep my hand stretched toward her, as if it will make any difference.

“Feel your lungs inflate,” Gate continues. “Take slow breaths. You’re not made of heat, you’re flesh and bone, and this forest is nothing but ice. Let the chill wash over you. You are not a raging fire. You’re a river. Slow and cold as a glacier. Old as time. Water runs through your veins, cooling, extinguishing heat and flame.”

Gate keeps talking and the tension visibly drains out of Neev. She’s not trembling anymore. I’ve never seen him go this far with anyone else. After a while, you no longer hear what he’s saying. Your brain just makes the images he suggests for you.

When Neev’s head begins to loll, I touch Gate’s shoulder to make him stop talking. He steps back from her and she opens her eyes. All the fire has gone out of them.

“That was brilliant,” I say. “How do you feel?”

“Better. I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t apologize. Without training, I’d be a raging lightning storm, and he’d be a monster who torments the world.”

“Damn,” interjects Gate. “Missed my chance.”

The bit of firewood we salvaged in our mad dash to escape the headless thing is too wet to stay lit, even with my lightning and Gate’s military-grade heat spells. We give up on having a fire for the night despite the bitter cold. I shake out my bedroll beneath the A-frame and squirm down into it. In classic soldier fashion, Gate has already bedded down and thrown his cloak over his head. He’ll be snoring presently.

Neev doesn’t lie down. She hovers, restless, trudging back and forth between the A-frame and the failed campfire. Finally, she wanders over and looks down at me. I’m trembling from head to toe.

“We have a s-saying,” I tell her, “for harsh winters in Lazul. Shivering means life. And whoever invented it can fuck right off. It’s like there’s an iron vice b-between my shoulder blades.”

“Scoot over.”

“What?”

“I’m warm again.”

“Good for you.”

She rolls her eyes. “No, I’m. Um...” She gestures to herself. “Warm. So let me lie down next to you.”

Understanding clicks in my cold-addled brain, and I shimmy sideways so she can slide under my blankets. My discomfort eases almost immediately. It’s like having a person-sized hot water bottle tucked alongside me. I give a long, involuntary sigh, and Neev giggles. I don’t think I’ve ever heard her giggle before. The sound is out of sync, both with my idea of her and with her behavior from earlier.

“Don’t laugh, I can’t help it. You’re like my own personal five-foot tall furnace.”

“So I’ve been told. I’m not laughing at you.” Her voice is soft. “I’m laughing at the situation.”

“I fail to see what’s funny about it.” When she doesn’t explain, I say, “Sorry. I always give my father a difficult time for his love of luxury, but discomfort makes me grouchy. I suppose that’s the spoilt palace brat coming out in me.”

She wriggles, trying to get comfortable, and her thigh slides against mine.

“The night I met you, it appeared you’d just been stabbed in the chest by a goddess,” she says, sounding thoughtful. “That or forced to undergo some sort of ritual...? I don’t know. I’m not asking you to explain, but you acted like it was nothing. I don’t think I’d call you a spoilt palace brat.”

“What would you call me?”

“Scary.”

The laugh practically leaps out of me, loud and coarse, and Gate snorts in his sleep and rolls over. I turn my head a little, so I can see Neev. There’s a slight smile on her lips, but it’s not hesitant like it usually is. She must still be relaxed from Gate’s magic.

“Thank you,” I say. “You didn’t have to do this. Warm me up, I mean.”

“It’s no trouble.”

It occurs to me that under different circumstances, this is the moment when I’d kiss her. My cheeks heat as I recall what I said to her several days ago when she insisted on coming with me: that I’d have invited her to my bed if she weren’t Dette’s lady-in-waiting.

I should never have said that. It was condescending and conceited, though true. I wish she were just someone I met... Where do normal people meet? At the market, or in a tavern? Someone I brought home, not because I needed her help to not freeze to death in an ancient forest, or because I need to survive to rescue my best friend from a shapeshifting sorcerer. But because I think she’s lovely and interesting and comfortable to be around.

I’d lace our fingers together and nip her bottom lip as I kissed her, and if she sighed and opened her mouth, I’d slide my tongue into it.

I squeeze my eyes tight, clench my hands, and roll away from her as if I can blot out my sudden desire. “Good night.”

Neev stays on her back, and when her soft breathing tells me she’s asleep, I lie in the comfortable cave of warmth made by her body and the blankets, thinking of the invisible barrier I imagined I’d built between us the night she saw me naked in my bedroom. The throne of Lazul. Her hidden, illegal magic. My past as Dette’s betrothed. Her duty as Dette’s servant. Brick on brick, I raise it until we’re divided again.