“How will we keep him from killing us the same way he killed them?” asks Gate.

Neev turns away to stare out over the valley below the mountain pass. I shake my head because I truly don’t know. The sylphs had no one with them with my power, or Gate’s. But it’s possible we lost the element of surprise when I encountered Rothbart in Thornewood. I set out on this quest so recklessly, just because I thought I could save Dette on my own and felt guilty for how things ended between us.

“I need to think.”

We find a sturdy tree off the main road to sleep in, sheltering against the wind beneath a rocky overhang. When a fire is going, the sylphs boil their porridge and toast bread, and Gate carries water from a nearby stream. I’m sick of sylphan food, but I eat it without complaint and drink lots of water, grateful it’s clean and not enchanted.

“Ibis will be returning on the morrow as agreed,” says Plover, “but I plan to continue on with you.”

Agate looks up at him in surprise but says nothing.

I frown. “Are you sure? You could die.”

“The shade said the sorcerer came as an owl. I have wings as well. And my arrows are swift and sure.”

“We’ll be glad to have you, then.”

Ibis takes his leave of Plover with obvious reluctance. He catches Plover’s forearm and pulls him into a firm embrace, flexing his shoulders until their wingtips touch, blue against white, surrounding them in a feathery fortress.

When they part, he says gravely, “May there always be wind for your wings, brother,” and clasps the back of Plover’s head.

“And may you fly as swiftly as your arrows,” Plover says with a smile.

Agate snorts a little under his breath at this farewell and I kick his ankle, although I know he barely feels it through his boot.

Ibis scarcely gives us a backward glance. I think he’s among those sylphs who believe that humans and sylphs are better off not meddling in one another’s affairs. I would almost agree with him, if only because sylphs maintain their small realm with relatively little intrigue or conflict. But Dette’s abduction and the danger presented to them by Rothbart make the point moot.

Our campsite is the highest point we’ve camped at thus far. The air is cool but thin and everyone except Plover is easily winded. He says we’re only a day’s hike from the summit of the pass and will reach Lebed by nightfall the following day.

Even though we teased Gate about Plover earlier, Neev and I spend half the night awake, not talking. I taste her lips as we caress one another with roving hands. She removes her gloves and holds my face in her bare hands as she kisses me. Her fingertips run lightly over my palms, and she skims the backs of her fingers along my arms and the insides of my wrists with a naked tenderness that makes me feel like I’ll fall apart. But lovemaking within earshot of others isn’t something that appeals to me and when I can’t control my ragged breaths, I make her stop. I lie awake for a long time after she falls asleep, reveling in the warmth of her body next to mine, aching for her.

I have my first nightmare since leaving Thornewood. I dream of Dette. She’s in a dark, slimy dungeon. The kind that was outlawed in the Triumvir ages ago. She’s chained to the wall, and she begs me to free her. You forgot me. She says it over and over as black tears stream down her cheeks.

I jerk awake, my heart pounding with panic from the dream. Something feels wrong. Terribly wrong. I pat around blindly until my hands find Neev’s slim body. She’s lying on top of the coverings, her breaths soft and shallow with sleep.

A low, trilling whistle comes from the ground below and Plover stirs in his roost above us.

I peer out the window of our platform. It’s so very, very dark, and I can hardly see anything, but something is on the ground below our tree. I can hear its labored breathing. There’s a grating rasp, and whatever it is places its hands on the tree trunk.

Plover stands and the branch creaks beneath his weight.

“Don’t,” I hiss. “You don’t know what that is.”

“It’s Ibis. He used the guard’s secret whistle.” Plover launches himself from the tree branch with a rustle of his wings. A few seconds later, he lands lightly on the ground and I hear him cry out.

“Gate! Neev, wake up!” I shake Neev and Gate grunts in his sleep below us. Fuck all. This is the worst time for him to be such a deep sleeper. I toss the rope ladder out the window of the platform. I want to rush down it, to look down and see what’s happening on the ground, but to do either would be a death wish. I descend slowly and carefully, clinging to the rope in the dark.

There’s a sound of scuffling below me.

I keep going, hand after hand, foot after foot. When I’m close enough to drop to the ground, I let go, landing in a crouch and grabbing my vial. Plover is kneeling on the ground beside a prone figure.

“What is it?”

“I told you, it’s Ibis.” His voice is choked with anguish. I find one of the sylphan torches near the campfire and manage to light it with shaking fingers. It glows with a slowly growing green light and in its partial illumination, I see why Plover is crying.

Ibis is full of arrows. One protrudes from his thigh, another from his belly, and a third is lodged beneath his ribs, stuck straight through his breastplate. There’s even one piercing his wing, which explains why he was on the ground. A dark trickle of blood leaks from his nostril and the corner of his mouth.

I kneel on his other side. Plover doesn’t try to disturb the arrows, and I assume he knows the wounds will be fatal. He has Ibis’ hand in both of his, and is speaking to him in the chirruping, sibilant sylphan tongue. All I catch are a few words of comfort.

“Ask him what happened,” I say softly. “Please.”

Plover gives me a pained look, but he leans over and utters a high, interrogatory note. Ibis replies with difficulty, his voice harsh with torment as he struggles to speak through the blood in his throat.

“He says it was the mage. It followed him as an owl, then transformed. Much like the shade said. He tried to kill it, but it sent his arrows back at him.”

After that, the only sound is Ibis’ battle to breathe. Every now and then he convulses and dark blood gushes from his mouth.

Plover weeps loudly. I’m afraid he’s going to draw the attention of any nearby predators, but I can’t bring myself to quiet him. Finally, he slides the dagger at his waist from its sheath, crying harder.

I reach across Ibis to put my hand on his arm. “Don’t. You’ll only torture him more. It—I don’t think it will be long.”

“It’s our code,” he sobs. “He came back to me so I could end his suffering.”

I watch him from across Ibis’ body. His realm has been peaceful for so long, he’s probably never seen bloodshed like this. He might be a soldier, but he’s a gentle, cheerful one, with no stomach for violence. I hold out my hand. “Give it to me. I’ll do it.”

He shakes his head. “It has to be me. I took an oath. He is my brother in flight.”

I nod in understanding, and Plover reaches to open Ibis’ doublet. But there’s no need. Ibis is still, his pale blue eyes staring sightlessly into the sky.

Gate and Neev have both descended from the tree by now, and we huddle off to one side as Plover mourns.

“It was Rothbart,” I tell them.

“No,” whispers Neev, her voice filled with horror. “Ibis was afraid of him. He wanted no part of this.”

“I know.”

“We’re not going to survive this, are we?” asks Gate. I’m shocked at how resigned he sounds.

“He was alone,” I remind him. “He didn’t have my lightning, or your persuasion, or Neev’s fire.”

Neev shakes her head. “You know I can’t control it.”

“You knocked me on my ass the last time I tried to train you.”

“It was an accident! I was angry.”

“You can’t summon some anger over this?” I throw my arm out toward Ibis’ dead body. “For the dead guards on the pass? For the girl I saw in the forest? For Dette?”

She blanches in the torchlight, and I’m instantly sorry for shouting at her, but I’m also enraged by her fear, by my inability to help her control her magic or keep her safe. By Rothbart’s seemingly unstoppable power. The fact that he killed my mother would be enough to send me after him, but this is beyond the pale. I’ve seen enough of his evil to last two lifetimes, and I despise it, and him.

We bury Ibis at first light and pile rocks from the mountain over the grave to keep out any animals.

“He was brave,” says Plover softly, “because he faced what frightened him head-on. He planned to marry his lover of twelve winters at the Feast of Snow. I’d sing a lament for him but” —he laughs softly— “he never liked my voice.”

“Would it offend you,” I ask, “if I said something? I don’t have to, but in Lazul it’s an honor for the Priestess of the Dead to speak at a funeral.”

Plover nods and I step forward. The traditional Lazulian death rite is, may they find their rest on the Far Shore, but it doesn’t fit with sylph mythology, so I amend it. “May he find his rest on the far horizon, in the Land of the Sun, beyond the clouds.”

“Do sylphs stay with one mate for their entire lives?” Gate asks Plover later, when we’re eating lunch beside the trail. “You said Ibis had been with his lover twelve years.”

“No, not all of us. But Ibis was of clan Crane. His people choose a lover when they’re young and stay with them for many years to make sure they’ll be happy as mates, because they mate for life. Twelve years was considered a swift courtship, but they loved one another.”

“And what clan are you from?” asks Gate. I glance sideways at him, but his eyes are on Plover.

“Clan Swallow. We’re not so choosy.” He crunches on a beetle wing. “We intermarry with fae or humans, or find mates amongst our own kind, usually several. Our breeding years are spaced quite far apart, thankfully, or we’d have overpopulated the Triumvir by now. I have six siblings from my father alone, but I don’t care for females of any race, so I’ve no danger of a prolific lineage.”

“Interesting,” says Gate. He offers a bite of the pear he’s slicing to Plover, who accepts it with a grateful expression.

“I’m so very sorry for your loss,” says Neev, her voice breaking. She sounds grief-stricken, and I’m taken aback by her level of mourning for someone she barely knew. “How long did you know one another?”

“Since we were fledglings.”

“And um, how old are you now?” asks Gate.

“Less than quarter life in sylph years,” says Plover, evading the question deftly. “Humans tend to find our age discomfiting when measured in theirs. You?”

Gate looks surprised by the question. “Nineteen,” he says.

“And I’m seventeen,” I say, “and Neev is—”

“Sixteen.”

“Good, now we all know one another better,” I say briskly. “We should go. The sun is moving.”

Gate gives me a wounded look. It’s not that I want to be rude by interrupting their conversation, but I’m impatient to continue. We’ve already been set back by burying Ibis.