The forest is dark; this is the first thing. The second is the knowledge that she can’t make it light.

Freya blinks. Nothing changes; nothing but herself. It melts into her skin, creeping through her being and knocking rudely on her bones. It doesn’t wait for an invitation, and soon she’s awash with it. Soon, she’s shivering. Soon, she’s new.

She turns, but the forest is endless. Row after row of trees, a stretch of marching black. No sign of where she came from. No indication that, even if she wanted to, she could get back. Taika’s fires, the wailing wife, the echoes and the dead. They’ve faded into nothing.

She turns back and mild bewilderment jolts. Where the night was impenetrable, now there’s a road, quiet and glinting with snow. The edge sweeps past her bare toes. The middle is churned and choppy, deep, trampled by many feet. It’s as if she’s been stood here for years.

Move. Like a whisper through the trees, the word curls around her. You’ve been taking too much time.

Swatting at the voice, Freya shakes her head. Soon the women will be strong, and not easily dislodged, but now…she can’t help staring at her feet, at the ground. Covered with the pine needles scattering the snow, they’re as speckled as river-bird eggs.

As speckled as river-bird eggs? Freya frowns. Never in her life has she thought such a thing. Ørenna only knows why she thinks it now. Maybe the change stopped her knowing anything; maybe she’ll never know anything again. Maybe this is how Anneliese became who she was—how she was—what she was—in the end.

A person, plagued by things she can’t explain? Human? Freya twists her nails into her temples. The sharp, cold pain makes her focus. She’s not losing herself; she’s adjusting. She wouldn’t be here if it would make her lose her mind. From the way the women talk, by the end of Anneliese’s ice plains pilgrimage, she was as disappointingly normal as anyone.

Looking up from her feet, Freya steps from the snowbank, and sets off down the road. Her legs, her back, her fingertips; even her insides shudder and tingle. Thinning her lips, she looks around.

The road is all there is. Fringed with the unbroken, battle-ready tree lines, there’s no end, either forward or back. A long, straight hill, a moonless night, and a crisp, lifeless silence; this is her eerie welcome to the outside. This is the witching hour, and she is having fun.

Hopefully minus the witches. She may be a monster, but magic scrapes her skin.

Oh, but none of this matters. A breeze blows through her, and suddenly she’s light, the breathy air itself. Her insides thump and settle. A curtain lifts, like the end of a sickness. Freya speeds up. She’s complete.

Almost skipping, almost running, the balls of her feet barely brush the snow. Her toes scrape the crust, flicking powder at her legs. It’s sharp. It’s refreshing. Freedom is a tang; winter ghosts on her skin. The cold hisses oh, how alive.

Alive, and horrifically cold. It hits her like the entrance to Taika’s cave, that icy, smothering suffocation before it lets you in. Freya grimaces. She’d never miss that nefarious dress, but it’s the coldest she’s ever been. Every inch of her is bare. The frosted road needles her feet. Her fingertips throb and freeze, the pain burning, biting, blistering. If she doesn’t move faster, she’ll drop. Fold, collapse, frost over. Numb. As light as the change has made her, her body’s starting to stiffen.

Freya’s heavy lips curl. Her new form is blasphemy. Her old skin was better. Regret twinges through her, and flees as quick. Before, she was so much more suited to the cold. Her skin was coarser. Now, it’s smooth. From what they showed her in the pool, it’s the only change she’ll miss. Her eyes have lightened from violet to glaciers, but that’ll make her blend in. Her tail crept back inside her with the change, and that’ll make her blend in. Her hair is the same. Her shape is the same. Her old skin, though, she could do with, its thickness, shield, warmth. No one would be able to tell.

They would. The voice sighs inside her head, less a whisper, more concrete. Freya ignores it. What bothers her more, snaking in like seduction, is something she hadn’t expected: weakness. Weakness that goes beyond physical strength. Her mind feels dulled and tame. Her hearing is rounded and contained, and her sense of smell, before so wickedly voracious, now hovers close to her head. It leaves her vulnerable. It leaves her weak.

She’s always despised feeling weak.

But that’s it. Rattled by a violent shiver, Freya dredges her mind into focus. She’s going to be vulnerable; she’s going to be weak. She’s going to be human. She is.

Urgency judders through her legs. She pushes them faster, faster. The aching air throws her hair back from her face, rushing, throbbing, electric. A heart-shaped face, a pale face, born of twenty-five years in the forest. A more human face, ever so slightly; the pool showed her that, too. Less unsettling.

A little more tame.

Freya swats this away. If she even contemplates griping, the time in which she has to leave will leave her in time. Being abandoned here, running down a hill that would never truly end, would be worse than never having left. Mathew would pass by and continue to the outside. She’d watch him go, and be stuck. Forever.

She grits her teeth and pushes on. Her chest pounds. She’s abnormally breathless, but she has to keep going, and going, until—

Until the road blurs and evens out. Ending in an unforeseen blaze of light, drenching her limbs and through to her bones, it brings her to a jerky stop. Her feet skid and scratch. Throwing up a hand, Freya shields her eyes. It’s everything she’s never seen.

The moon, wearing an expression as surprised as hers. The stars, behind a dusting of cloud. A strange lamp hanging from the eaves of a cabin, skulking across a grey stretch of ground…and the vivid, unnatural torches of four startled men.

Perfect. Allowing herself the shortest of smirks, Freya stops to wait for Mathew. The men’s mouths are open, their eyes all white. She sleekly recovers her poise and guile. They couldn’t be more perfect…until they’re dead.

In the whispering cold, Freya still waits. The men are silent. Irony twitches inside her; now that all language is different, she can’t make so much as a sound. Not until someone speaks to her, when her lingering otherness is meant to kick in, but when no one says anything at all…

Ah. Peering through the onslaught of light, her bemusement leaps into scorn. They’re men; of course they’re quiet. As the silent seconds pass, their eyes rove her body, two mouths parting and the other faces gormless. She fights to keep her face innocent. She can’t blame them; she appeared in the night like a spectre, powering down the road with not a stitch to wear. White-haired in the moonlight, with her naked curves opaque, their thoughts would be far from conversation.

Good. They regard her as though she’s a tropical creature, a grasslands dancer, a wonder, a gift of the darkness and a far-distant world. It makes everything so straightforward.

Footsteps crunch behind her. Conveniently trembling in the breath of the breeze, Freya flinches. Oh, it’s perfect.

‘Help.’ She mouths the word, taking a quick, halting step. One man jolts. Freya glances back at Mathew. Tall and shadowed, he’s almost here. ‘Please.’

Spinning, slipping, shivering, she widens her face into vulnerability. Considering the bitter night, numbing her feet and hollowing her limbs, it could be a lot more difficult. ‘Please.’ Another halting step forward, another panicked glance at Mathew. Hands in his pockets, he looms behind her, and skittering forward, she hugs herself tight. ‘He’ll hurt me.’ She strangles a sob. ‘I need help.’

They won’t understand what’s happening—even less what’s going to happen—and that’s perfect. They don’t need to. All they need to do is be charmed.

They are. Eyes flitting to Mathew and back, the men shift from astonishment to concern, and as her dim eyes continue to adjust to the light, she’s starting to tell them apart. No longer simply one awestruck mass, they are two tall, one short, two with beards, one with grizzled stubble, one without anything at all. One with a thick, furred hat, one still dreamily smiling. One pushing auburn hair away from his forehead, one with a frown as he works to summon words. And all of them defenceless.

Drawing closer, Freya fills her face with anguish and meets the dreamer’s eyes. One, two seconds. Switch. The second man, third, fourth. They don’t see it coming, and before they can react, they’re frozen. Useless. Stone.

Their eyes can’t leave her. Their legs can’t move. Consternation, confusion, and panic map their faces, but as their minds swiftly falter, it all smooths away. Freya drops her act with a wicked smile. Sliding close enough to the dreamer to hear his brittle gasp, she feels the heat rise to his face, and sees the whites of his eyes take over as she closes her hands around his throat.

The breeze whips her ankles. The men smell strange, of an ugly smoke and something far too sweet. Turning, slowly and carefully, she takes them, one by one. Long fingers, red marks. The rattle of losing breath. One by one, they crumple. One by one, they die.

Pathetic. Freya regards them. Now all their lives have gone, they’re pathetic, indistinct. Kneeling by the smallest body, the wicked smile returns. She’s neither; she’s remorseless. The ability to charm, hypnotise, paralyse should be waning, yet she’s never killed this many at once. Never. Her coldness should thaw into caring, yet her humanity doesn’t squeak. It’s exhilarating. More than that, it’s a comfort.

It will be neither if you freeze. The words hiss into her thoughts. Freya tries to swat them away, but they linger, like the echo of a raven in the forest. They’re getting stronger.

Well, she knew they would. She glances back at Mathew. He’s as mute as the men, but slightly less dead. Can you not make him speak?

The women seem to hum. Not yet, they whisper. Freya frowns, but lets it go. Someone, somewhere, will say something, and give her back her tongue.

Not if she freezes. She tunes her muddy human eyes to the body at her feet. Its clothes will do; they’re fairly atrocious, but they’ll more or less fit, and until she can change them, that’s more or less enough. Beneath the garish winter coat sags a vest, sea-blue and dragged to the knees of a skinny pair of trousers. Oh, the joys of the outside. Shorn hair and too many colours; his companions are even worse.

Clothing herself, Freya appraises them. Them. Mathew. Them. Mathew. If she thinks at him, will he understand?

That one, she tries, because she might as well. The silence reminds her too much of the forest, of shadows and hiding and no way out. Too watchful. Too still. Waving for Mathew’s attention, she waves at the smoky redhead’s clothes, raids as many pockets as she can find, and straightens. Enough of Atikur; enough of Whiteland. She’s outside, and already, she’s so much more herself. She’s kept a part she expected to lose, and it kicks up dirt at the rest.

The outside’s daunting promise. The lack of focus in her vision. The dullness of her mind. None of it feels as bad as it did, and harnessing her drifting senses, she turns from the glinting track. By the forest’s edge, the snowy field sweeps off. Somewhere in its heights sits Karliquai, the old chalet, waiting alone.

Not for long. With sly satisfaction, Freya turns from this, too, to the wide grey curve around the trees. Time to leave.

Fastening her ugly coat, she lifts the ugly hood. At least she’s warm, if smelling unwashed. ‘Ready?’ She mouths the word, waving at Mathew. Extending his newly gloved hands over the four dead men, he nods. The bodies flicker, glittering slightly, and in a blink, they’re nothing but air.

From family father to the Kyo’s plaything, Mathew is their witless marionette. Freya smiles. If she cared, she might pity him, watching him straighten up again with no mind to call his own. As it is, though, she doesn’t.

What matters is that they’re ready.

Slipping into the moon-cast shadows, she begins her path down the mountain. It still smells of pine, of the glass-sharp winter, but she’s out. Every step takes her farther from the cold reach of Whiteland; every step and every second, it recedes. It’s a raging, frozen fire, and it’s losing its flames.

Inside her, the Kyo’s voices cackle. Soon, they’ll grow as strong as they are within Mathew. Freya doesn’t fight. They watch, they spy, they sigh directions; without their voices , she’d be nothing.

Their message is clear as she slips through the night, down the road to the world and away.

Time to make them scream. Time to make them run. Time to make them try to hide, in the hellish veins of nowhere.

It’s time to find the sisters.