7

THE IRON LADY
AND THE
STARVING WOLF

A dream again.

I’m— No.

Not me, her.

Varia’s standing on a beach, me inside her body and looking out. I’ve never seen the ocean, or if I have in my past human life, I can’t remember it. Those memories are sealed in my heart. It’s water, so much water, but it’s wide and wild and pulsing like living steel edged white.

She stands on a gray-sand beach and looks out at the ocean. She can feel it calling, a faint bell with only one word, getting louder.

destroy.

destroy.

destroy.

This world must be destroyed.

She looks down at her hands, at her wood fingers and fine nails. She hates the world, and it should all be destroyed. Every last unfair bit of it. No! She doesn’t. She loves it. She loves…a girl. But which girl? Mousy hair, blue eyes, but her features are lost. Lost in the sea of burning and ravaging and breaking.

destroy.

The voice is the hunger, and it is not. It’s the inverse, the opposite, the void where there is presence. It is a voice without sound, thought without intention. It’s a hunger stranger than mine. Different than mine and yet the same. It wants us to be the worst we can be, always.

Our black hair whips around our face, the sea breeze brutal, and we watch it be brutal to the water. To the world.

Beneath the torrid waves, white manes rise like shark fins.

I wake up with a headache and a looming sense of dread. Varia. No mistaking it this time. That was Varia, what she was seeing. But why can I see through her? Why only in dreams? And why is she standing on a beach, staring?

Staring at what?

I think about telling Lucien and Fione and Mal. But then I get a horrifying thought—if I can see through her, can she see through me? Am I endangering everyone? Again? But I have to stop her. I have to stay with them and stop her.

All I can do is put my boots on, one lace at a time.

The village is sorry to see us go.

They stand at the edge of the ruin that was once their home, a nauseating mixture of mud and blackened char squelching beneath so many pairs of boots. The mosquitos are out in full force, the air heavy and muggy with a looming thunderstorm, but they couldn’t care less, gathered as they are, waving their prince off down the road.

“We could’ve taken more cheese,” Malachite drawls, his arms packed full of paper-wrapped wheels of the stuff.

“You look ridiculous,” I tease. “Like you’re about to tip over.”

“Into a bed, hopefully, where I will stay for the rest of the season.”

“Nonsense,” Fione says as she passes us, cane thumping more easily in the drier mud of the road. “You have work to do. We all do.”

“Ravenshaunt is twenty-five miles northeast,” Lucien asserts, looking at a half-burned map the headman palmed to him before we left.

“Should we commandeer a horse? Or four?” Malachite asks, adjusting cheeses so his hand can twitch back toward the blade strapped to his spine.

“No,” Lucien says. “When we get closer, I can teleport us.”

“No, you will not,” I start. “Save your energy.”

Lucien’s eyes grow tired and thin as he looks over at me. “My magic is a tool, Zera. It should be used.”

“Yes,” I agree lightly. “But not for every little thing. We have legs, Lucien. We can walk.”

“It would be faster to—”

“I’m not going to have you lose another hand just because—”

I bite my tongue too late, and not hard enough. Malachite and Fione go still, the birds in the trees go still, and Lucien makes a clicking sound.

Malachite starts toward him, cheeses spilling. “Luc, you can’t do this horseshit so lightly—”

“It’s not horseshit,” Fione says evenly. “It’s magic.” She fixes her gaze on the prince, periwinkle-blue turning icy on the edges. “Which means it’s dangerous. You have to treat it with respect.”

“You don’t understand—”

“No, you don’t understand,” I interrupt Lucien. “You’re important to us. You’re the one who ties us together—ties the whole fucking country together. Sacrificing parts of yourself to stop Varia faster is not how we do this.”

“Then, pray tell.” He snarls. “How do we do this? You obviously know better than I.”

of course we know better. The hunger grows louder, as if it’s echoing his anger. silly young thing, we’ve been fighting before you, shedding blood before you—

“I don’t know any better,” I fire back. “But this can’t keep going on. You need to get a handle on your magic. You need to understand—watching you throw pieces of yourself away just to stop Varia—”

“I will do whatever it takes.” His voice turns stony, with none of the vulnerability from the pool last night. “Alone, if I have to.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Malachite scoffs. “I thought we’ve learned our lesson about ‘doing things alone’—”

“If the four of us are going to stop my sister,” the prince interrupts, “if we’re going to stop who knows how many thousands of raging valkerax, all of us have to be ready. Ready to do anything.”

He’s made some decision between last night and this morning. I watched his back as he slept, rising and falling in his bedroll in the woods, and I knew his mind was churning. But not in this direction. Our direction.

“Lucien—” I start.

“You’re just as bad as she is!”

It’s a loud, clear voice, burning in the muggy air. Fione, her hair undone, sweat beading her brow and anger flushing her whole face the brightest red. Since the moment Varia touched the Bone Tree, she’s been subdued, tempering herself to keep back the pain. But now it radiates off her like heat waves.

“If you think sacrificing yourself to stop her is the right thing, then you’re just as bad as she is. Just as fanatic. Just as foolish. Just as short-godsdamn-sighted!”

Her shrill notes ring. Malachite’s chest deflates, and I can’t look anywhere but at my hands.

“I don’t want to lose her!” Fione shouts. “I don’t want to lose you, either. I don’t want to lose anyone anymore!”

I look away with a wince. Fione’s voice fractures, the shards of her anger falling by the wayside as her fists unclench and her eyes water.

“If the only way to win is by losing, then I don’t want to win at all.”

human fools, the hunger sneers, burning quieter now. nothing can be gained without something being lost. that is the nature of nature. it is futile to fight it.

Lucien looks utterly thunderstruck. Malachite’s frozen, Fione panting. Above us, the storm clouds roll out a too-perfect rumble of thunder. The graves. I look up, to the white peaks of the distant Tollmont-Kilstead mountains. All I can think about are the graves, sitting in the snow. Fourteen red ribbons, fourteen iron bells. My steps are tender as I walk up to Lucien’s side. Not touching, but close enough.

“Is death really a victory?” I ask him softly. “Is sacrifice really something to celebrate? Or something to mourn?”

Lucien’s head inclines ever so slightly over his shoulder, hawk eyes slicing just the barest part of my neck. Malachite is the first to start walking again, gathering the spilled cheeses up in his arms.

“Arguing’s better when you walk,” he says. “Gets all the angst out through the legs.”

Fione finally breaks her gaze from Lucien’s face, and she starts walking after the beneather, cane stabbing the ground with remnant simmering fury. I reach out two fingers to touch Lucien’s hand—the left one. The unmoving one.

“You—” I swallow. “You’re important. To me.”

He says nothing, mouth tight and faced away from me.

“I’m the Heartless,” I say. “I grow back. Let me do the sacrificing, all right?”

There’s a moment where he pivots, looking as if he’s about to say something. But then his brow furrows. He thinks, tries to open his mouth again. The words are hard. They always are.

Sometimes, words aren’t needed.

I squeeze his left hand in mine, and he switches me to his right hand, the one that can squeeze back, and together we walk down the storm-shadowed road.

Optimistically, I never thought I’d see the Bone Road again. Maybe in the afterlife, in the final fevered death-dream of mine, but not in the flesh. Or the dirt, as it were. The same long twin ruts in the road, the same rabbit dens and long grasses swaying, the same Sunless War mass graves in the distance—graves that will swell to capacity soon—between boggy pools and throngs of fireflies. It’s the same, save for the minor fact that Nightsinger’s forest is missing.

Though “missing” isn’t the right word. When fire takes something, it takes violently and with scars—visible dark reminders. Swathes of black as far as the eye can see, crisped trunks of only the tallest trees all that’s left. If I squint, I think I can see the stone foundation of Nightsinger’s cabin, but it’s more likely wishful projection. More likely a lump of decaying plant matter. This massive scar, all that’s left of the place I spent three years of my life. Living. Dying. And living again. Fighting my first fight. Dueling my first duel. Learning to love Crav and Peligli, each in their own way. Learning to love Nightsinger, and hate her, and admire her all at once.

Learning how to live again, without a family. Without humanity. Without a heart.

Nightsinger and Peligli and Crav left before the fires. Y’shennria promised she’d warn them, and I trust that she did. They’re alive still, somewhere. But the forest is very much dead. If I close my eyes, I can still hear the woodlarks calling to each other, the crackle of branches as animals move through their daily ritual. The breath of the forest.

Gone.

The smell is decay and burned things. This is what it feels like to be empty. To miss something you never thought you would.

Lucien catches my stride as we walk past it. “This…isn’t this it? Varia told me—”

“Yeah,” I agree quickly.

“I’m sorry,” he says.

“Why? You didn’t burn it down.”

“No. But my father did.”

“Don’t start apologizing for awful parental figures.” I force a smile at him. “Or we’ll be here all day.”

His snort is faint, but he stays with me every step of the way, until we peel off from the Bone Road entirely and onto a smaller path, and I’m secretly grateful for it.

As the Ravenshaunt name implies, one sees the ravens first, circling heavy in the sky. And then one sees the ruined parapets, thirty-year-old bleached banners caught between the holes in the mortar and rippling in the wind. Thunderclouds gather like steel wool over the skeleton of the fortress—castle? Keep? I’m not sure what to call it now. All I know is it was once a home. For Y’shennria, for her family.

Time changes things.

Even an immortal, magical thrall who never ages.

“She just said she’d be waiting here for you?” Fione asks.

“Yeah.”

Her rosebud lips crinkle. “Where?”

“All right, yes,” I start cheerily. “It’s a pile of rocks. But maybe there’s a door on it, somewhere.”

“We should spread out and search,” Lucien agrees. “Mal, take south. I’ll take north. Fione, west, and Zera—”

“East. Got it.”

His voice stops us before we can scatter. “Be careful. I think there’s magic here.”

“What kind?” Malachite quirks a white brow.

“The waiting kind.”

It’s ominous, but we have work to do. We peel off, Malachite and me walking the same direction. There’s a beat, and then I smile.

“First one to find the magic probably perishes.”

“Cheery thought,” Malachite agrees, and I nudge him.

“Look on the bright side. There’s a one in four chance I find it and that’s fine. But, I mean, even if you die, Lucien can just make you a Heartless! With me.”

He shoots me a withering ruby-eyed look. “You seriously don’t know by now?”

I blink. “Know what?”

“Have you ever seen a witch with a nonhuman Heartless?”

“I’ve seen maybe four witches in my life.”

He sighs. “Only humans can become Heartless.”

“Oh.” I blink. “Well. That explains a lot.”

“Does it?” he drawls, pushing me gently away from him. I stumble to a stop in front of the east side, and he turns the corner around half a stone stairwell and is gone.

Y’shennria’s home is even more ruined than I thought. Up close, you can see all the witchfire marks, black and deep, and the remnants of a battle. Massacre, really. Old, old bloodstains on scraps of rug and bookshelves, hidden from the elements by the ruined walls so well I wouldn’t know the brown marks were blood at all if the hunger couldn’t smell it. I shudder and try not to think of any of the bloodstains being Y’shennria’s. Or worse—her family’s. Her baby’s.

This place is just a shell—barely any infrastructure left at all. Y’shennria’s hiding here? Maybe there’s a cellar sequestered away somewhere, because there sure as the afterlife isn’t a single room left intact. There isn’t even enough hall left to walk in, my shoes finding purchase in the titanic piles of stone bricks and wooden support beams bleached pale by the grassland sun.

The thunderstorm hits right when I reach the top of one such pile, crackling lightning across the sky. This pile is the tallest out of the ruins and gives me a perfect view of everyone else—Lucien with his eyes to the ground, Fione tapping semi-intact walls with her cane suspiciously, and Malachite on his hands and knees, listening with those blade-long ears of his. A banner flaps beneath my feet, and I squat, pulling it up by its loose threads and admiring the washed-out emblem I can finally see—a raven with four wings taking off from a single tree.

“Where are you?” I whisper to the emblem. “I miss you.”

Something behind me crackles and I whip around, ready for the inevitable landslide of brick and wood I’ve created by disturbing the pile. But there’s nothing. No movement, or rather, a movement so small I barely see it at all. There, in the center of the pile and on the very top, something pokes up green from the dust and debris. It grows, bigger and bigger, before my eyes and only when it sprouts a bud and many fine thorns do I realize it’s magic.

A magic black rose that blooms right in front of me.

Y’shennria. The thickets of them in front of her manor in Vetris.

I can’t contain my laugh as I walk over and peer down at it, half embarrassed. “You seriously weren’t supposed to hear that.”

“There you are.” I jump at Lucien’s voice so close all of a sudden. He’s standing behind me on the rubble, eyes riveted to the rose. “Gods above—emotion magic.”

“Is that…a big thing?” I ask.

“It’s difficult,” he asserts.

“Oh? And how would you know? Have you been trying to spell emotions lately?”

“For a while I thought I could get you to leave Varia using it,” he admits. “But it turned out to be far beyond my capabilities. And my conscience.”

I ignore the barest swelling of my chest. “Right. So. What does this little thing mean?”

“Someone who knows you made this spell,” he muses. “They knew you’d come here, and you’d feel a specific emotion in this approximate area. It’s tailored to you, and only you. Very delicate work—and a very powerful witch.”

My heart hammers. “Nightsinger?”

He pauses for a moment. “No.”

“How would you know?” I frown. “You’ve never met her.”

“I’ve felt her,” he says. “Through you. No, this is someone much more powerful. And with help from someone else, someone who knows you very well.”

“Y’shennria,” I breathe. “This is her sign to me. Can you do anything with it?” I pause and give him a knowing look. “Something that won’t hurt you?”

“Perhaps,” he agrees. “Go find Malachite and Fione, and I’ll think of something.”

I have the creeping urge to refuse, thinking it some ploy to get me away so he can do risky magic again. But he just stares at me, and I know I have to go. I have to trust him. If we don’t have trust between us, we have nothing.

When I get back with Mal and Fione on my heels, Lucien is sitting by the rose, stock-still, his hands folded in his lap. He looks comfortable, but there’s a sheen of sweat on his temple, and his grimace is one of pain.

“Is he all right?” Fione asks.

“He’s not doing that overexerting thing again, is he?” Malachite reaches out to shake Lucien’s shoulder when a voice cuts through the air.

“I wouldn’t touch him if I were you.”

All three of us whirl, Malachite’s unsheathing blade ringing, the rapid clicks of Fione’s crossbow cane unfolding, and my claws piercing out through my flesh instantly, bloodied and over-ready. I freeze at the figure standing on the pile with us, velvet purple cloak billowing around them. They lower their hood, and all it takes is seeing that gorgeous mass of fluffy hair pinned with amethysts to know.

My claws jerk back in, my eyes wide. “Y…Y’shennria?”

Her dark face with its high cheekbones lights up, softly and all at once. “Zera.”

Her voice. It’s the same. Cool, precise. It echoes even now in my head as it always has, teaching me, reminding me of the rules.

In Vetrisian court custom, one does not embrace. Unless one is family.

I run, unthinkingly—scrabbling over the pile, bricks and wood flying, my arms reaching for her through the swirling dust.

And she catches me, hands and all.

Scarred neck and all.

Smile and all.

…

“I must admit—you surprised me, Your Highness,” Y’shennria says, her arm laced in mine as we walk the perimeter of Ravenshaunt. “The rose’s spell was to bring me to Ravenshaunt should Zera return, but I didn’t expect to find you here—casting your own spell of all things!”

“You find me just as surprised, Lady Y’shennria,” Lucien admits. “With all due respect, Father and his ministers had you branded a traitor. I thought I’d never see you again.”

“On the chopping block, maybe,” Malachite offers.

“Malachite,” Fione warns. “Manners.”

Y’shennria smiles, her every step like air over water—all elegance and measured steps. “Oh, Your Grace, I hardly think that’s of much concern now, considering the position we’re all in.”

Just having Y’shennria close, the ability to walk with her like this—it’s everything I’ve been wanting. To have someone who knows what I’ve been through is a silent source of strength. It’s strange to say, but even her lavender perfume relaxes me. Lucien, on the other hand, is the exact opposite. His posture’s completely changed—from Whisper-relaxed to Prince-straight. Y’shennria clearly reminds him of the court, of his position. Of everything he left back in Vetris.

“Now then.” Y’shennria’s smile fades, her seriousness bringing the faintest of creases to her mouth. “I’d appreciate it greatly if you would tell me why you’re all here, and with Zera still Heartless.”

Catching Y’shennria up on all of what’d happened after she left is easier than I expected—a lot of it she’d heard from secondhand witch sources inside Vetris. She’s already acutely aware of King Sref’s movements thanks to Windonhigh’s vigilance, so I don’t need to tell her about his army gathering. Or being destroyed. Evlorasin escaping was another thing she didn’t need to be told—the whole country knows a radiant, rainbow-sheathed valkerax had burst forth from under the city and flew away. Everything else is fair game—Varia, the Bone Tree, Evlorasin’s training. She wants to know everything. And, unlike nearly everyone else I’ve encountered, her dark eyes hold not a scrap of judgment for my choices.

“You did what you thought was best for your own future. Albeit misguidedly.” She looks at Lucien with a small smile. “It sounds as if she’s given you enough headaches for a lifetime, Your Highness.”

“Two lifetimes.” He sighs, rubbing the bridge of his nose.

“And it sounds as if you wish for her to give you more. Why else would you make her your Heartless?”

“Necessity,” I blurt before he can say anything. “Varia didn’t seem keen on letting me go, even after our agreement.”

“You are very useful.” Y’shennria’s lip-twist is so small, I’m guessing only I notice it. I give her a casual shrug and a full-blown smirk.

“And here I am, unable to admit to it because you taught me modesty above all things—”

“Forgive me, Lady Y’shennria,” Fione interrupts. “But where have you been?”

“The only place Old God families like me are safe anymore,” she answers swiftly. “Windonhigh.”

There’s a beat as the four of us share a look. Y’shennria obviously notices it—she’s a master of social cues, after all—but she pretends she doesn’t.

“I was planning on bringing Zera up to Windonhigh, should she come,” Y’shennria continues, glancing over at me. “Nightsinger’s there. And Crav and Peligli haven’t once stopped telling me how much they miss you.”

A sharp pang runs through the center of my chest. “They’re safe?”

“The safest place for them in Cavanos,” Y’shennria agrees. “Yes.”

It’s hard to know when you’ve been holding on to something until you finally let it go, or it leaves of its own accord. You can’t know how heavy it weighs on you until it vanishes, and all that weight is suddenly and wonderfully missing. I’d been carrying around so much worry for the three of them that only snowballed the more Vetris geared up for war, and now…

Now there’s room to breathe.

“Sometimes, the gods aren’t so bad after all.” I exhale.

“We’re searching for a way to destroy Varia’s hold over the valkerax,” Lucien starts. “Is there any way we could accompany you and Zera to Windonhigh?”

Y’shennria’s lips knit in a tight line. I know that look. It’s the “with conditions” look.

“A High Witch made this rose for me, as a favor. I was to bring back only Zera.”

“Y’shennria…please.” I turn to her. “I’ll beg if I have to.”

She thinks on this, the wind rustling through her high hair, and then she turns back to Lucien.

“You must understand, Your Highness. You may be a witch now, but you are still the prince of Cavanos. The enemy.”

“There is no enemy anymore,” Malachite cuts. “Vetris is gone.”

Fione and I both look to Lucien, but he’s completely still, even his hands slack.

“Not entirely gone,” Y’shennria starts softly.

“But debilitated enough they won’t be an issue for the witches,” the beneather presses. “Not for a long-arse time.”

“You’d be surprised at the human ability to bounce back.”

“And you’d be surprised, ma’am, at what little tolerance I have for pointless upworlder squabbling. The valkerax are here. And we have to stop them. Are your High Witches going to help or not?”

Y’shennria moves from one foot to the other, her lavender silk dress swaying uneasily with the movement. Malachite won’t give an inch, chin high and eyes red spears.

“I promise you,” he continues, hard, “that witch flesh and human flesh burn the same.”

None of us says anything, Lucien not stepping in with a reprimand, nor Fione with an addendum. Just silence. Just Y’shennria’s hazel eyes flickering over each of us in turn, and none of us blinking.

Finally, she exhales what sounds like a laugh. “I see you’re all very serious about this.”

“And I see you aren’t as much,” Lucien says. She turns her eyes on him slowly. Tension winds the air like a bard turning his lute, tight and absolute. I can’t stand to see the two of them at odds, so I step in.

“Everyone’s trying, okay?” I hold up my hands. “Y’shennria, just two days. Give us two days in Windonhigh, and we’ll be gone.”

“‘Us?’” she leads. “So you’ll leave with them?”

“I—”

“What about Crav, Peligli? Nightsinger? And…” She trails off, looking at her own hands. “You’d be safe with us.”

“I know.” I nod. “I know that. And I’m grateful for it. But I—” I gulp. “I have to finish what I started. Varia has the Bone Tree partly because of—”

“Zera,” Lucien exhales the word, like a reminder I’m not at fault.

“Because of me,” I finish. “She has it sooner, now, because of me. I enabled her power. And I’m going to disable her power. I’m not going to run from guilt anymore. I’m going to fight, like Reginall said—every moment of every day.”

Y’shennria’s silent for a long moment, her brows tightening over her sharp eyes. I know she’s tabbing me up, calculating hows and whys. Finally, she gives a quick nod.

“Very well. Two days.”

“Let us go, then,” Lucien says. “Immediately, so as to inconvenience you as little as possible.”

“It’s no inconvenience to me, Your Highness,” Y’shennria says, motioning for us to follow her over the rubble and back to the rose sprouting there. “It is the High Witches who will have issue with it. They are not the most trusting sort.”

“Understandably,” Fione murmurs.

Y’shennria gathers us around the rose and looks to Lucien. “You may have to contribute to the teleportation spell, Your Highness. They are expecting only two to return.”

Lucien nods. “Right.”

“Don’t overdo it,” Malachite warns.

Lucien shoots him a tired smile. “Yes, sir.”

Y’shennria has us clasp hands, the black rose centered in the middle of us. Lucien bows his head, his fingers holding mine going black. His left hand—it might not work, but the magic still eats at it whenever he casts. Maybe…just maybe, someone in Windonhigh can give him the witch wisdom he needs to temper his magic. To stop using it to destroy himself. That’s all I can hope for, because he hasn’t listened to me thus far.

I swallow imaginary glass.

if the boy you love destroys himself to stop his sister because you gave her the Bone Tree—

My brain brandishes a white mercury sword against the hunger, the gloom.

No.

We’re fighting the guilt this time. To the teeth.

To the death.

The thunderclouds choose that moment to finally open up, a gentle pitter-patter pattering down harder until it’s entire sheets of water dumping on us, completely drenching the bleached and thirsty ruins. We wait, and wait again, a string of sick-wet moments, until my ears pop with that familiar nothingness, the world dimming to rushing blackness, and light and sound coming back in all at once.

Thunder replaced by rushing wind. Not the sort I’m used to—through trees or bushes or the grasslands. Lighter than that. Freer than that. Wind without boundaries, unhindered, howling against and with itself. The light is the near-dying sort, the sun hanging low and silver on the horizon.

But I see it clearly.

Just the horizon. Just the sun, and stretched out before us are nothing but puffy white clouds. A quilt of them, as far as the eye can see. We’re high, so high. We’re standing and dripping water on a small platform of what looks like dirt and stone, overgrown with moss and grass. It looks like land, but it isn’t. It can’t be, because there are clouds simmering just inches away, the drop down hundreds of miles.

“Windonhigh,” I hear Fione mutter next to me, and I turn to face her direction.

There, on top of the endless sea of cotton clouds, is green. Green land, rife with trees, and between them sandstone spires like lighthouses, like the tallest lighthouses in existence, stretching so high they seem impossible. Impossible too in the way they’re twisted, smooth and hollow with hundreds of windows and yet bent around each other organically, like stone trees grown side-by-side. The stone spires end somewhere, the green trees end somewhere, sheer cliff-faces peeking from white fluff. The land looks like it’s been lifted from the ground, torn out, dirt and stone and roots dangling down into sheer blue sky.

A city.

It’s a city in the sky.

And the crows.

White crows everywhere—in the trees, in the spires, flying and nesting and chattering. White deer, eating from the little meadows dotting the city. Pure white bears, sunning themselves in the afternoon light filtered through the trees, fishing in little rivers that start somewhere I can’t see and drip diamond water over the edge of the land and down into the sky.

White animals, this many—witches. Witches shapeshifted.

Hundreds of white crows streak by us, close enough to drop feathers, close enough to hear their cawing and see their black eyes watching. They tear through and by us, doing easy loops around my head, hairpin-turns over Lucien’s shoulder, swirling between Fione and Malachite in dizzying spirals. The cacophony blasts my eardrums, ringing wingbeats and scratching caws, and as quickly as the horde comes, they’re gone, only three crows hovering on the little shard of sky-land we stand on.

And then they’re not crows at all. White feathers elongate, take on the color and texture of cloth, bird-legs turn to human-legs in a twisted flash, and three people stand in front of us, hair blown by the wind.

Witches.

A particular witch, with an awe-inspiring mane of tawny hair and the stature of a statue—thick arms, powerful waist, and a face like the roundest moon with the brightest smile.

“Zera.” Her green eyes crinkle. “Welcome home.”