The forest warped and blurred as Niccola fled down its paths, deeper and deeper, until the pursuing footsteps of the royal guards finally gave up behind her. The sky had brightened to midday when she finally slowed. She was deeper in the forest than she'd ever been before, with only her own trail to follow back out to the living world. Niccola collapsed against the nearest tree and buried her face in her hands.

She'd made a terrible mistake.

She'd run to the sound of Isaiah's scream just in time to see him hauled away. The guards had spotted her. Shot at her. Missed—she could thank the density of the Talakova for that—but given chase, until her legs shook and her whole body threatened to give out from under her. She'd made a mistake. She'd told Isaiah the truth, but the truth had stopped making sense as she uttered it. As he picked it apart, driving question after question into her deepest insecurities. He didn't understand. Didn't know how it felt... there was no other explanation for his lack of will to throw off his parents' control.

Only there was, and she'd seen it herself, in person. She knew he was scared, and that they had so much more in common than she'd said in that moment: in feeling inadequate, judged by people close to them in some way or another. But Isaiah didn't believe he was right. Didn't trust his own decisions enough to take action on them, even when all the evidence was laid bare. Niccola had trusted herself completely... until this.

She couldn't betray her duty to her sister—the debt she owed for her negligence. To ask for Calisian help on that would have been a slap in the face of her attempts to command the throne: to show that she was just as capable a ruler as her parents had been, magic or none. To bring down the woman who had stolen her sister from her. Only in her self-sacrifice would Varna regret what they had lost after she showed them they didn't deserve her.

But she'd still hoped to have Isaiah's help at least a little longer. The time when she'd planned to strike out alone had come, and she suddenly didn't want to. She'd make any excuse to keep Isaiah at her side, but she'd blown that chance, done the right thing and still managed to break his trust, and now she didn't know what the right thing was anymore. She'd had good reasons for keeping her secrets. She hadn't known if he would prove different from his parents, in the end. But even that dug into her chest, reminding her of all the times he had. How much more willing he'd been to work with her at first than vice versa. She had just wanted to use him for her own means, and he'd suggested alliance instead.

She'd broken his trust, robbing him of the most stable base he might have had to buck his mother's grasp. That wasn't an unfair expectation of him. Both their realms were at stake, and the Catastrophe would repeat itself if he didn't take control of Calis and lead it down a different path. Niccola wanted him in the palace, and she wanted him here, and now she had neither. Isaiah had been captured, dragged back to a prison that he wouldn't leave again unless he could put up such a resistance—alone.

The sky's colour had changed.

Niccola squinted up at it. What had been full daytime an hour ago at most had faded into shades of late afternoon. The realization hit her like a bucket of frigid water. The time distortion. A day outside must be only a handful of hours here; it had been late morning when she and Isaiah had seen Erelah die, and Niccola had been running or resting for only a pair of hours since. If even that. Everything was such a blur, it was difficult to tell. In only half an hour more, though, night had fallen. Niccola remained in her pretense of a hiding spot, hugging herself at the base of the tree. The moon was full, shedding shattered fragments of light through the Talakova's canopy. Niccola nearly stopped breathing as one crossed her arm. She could see the pattern of her own skirt through it.

Eight moons. It was more than that: another lie. It had been eight and a half, almost nine.

Niccola stumbled to her feet. Some raw survival drive pushed her back towards the forest's edge. She had to slow down time again. She had to find Dinah, but Dinah wasn't someone she wanted to face alone. She needed time to track the woman down without the pressure of her ninth Crow Moon breathing down her neck, time to free Phoebe and still... still what? Isaiah didn't trust her anymore. Phoebe would take the crown, as per Varnic tradition. Niccola was unneeded. Unwanted. Her sister mattered more, together with the death of the woman who had stolen the whole crown lineage of Varna. For that, Niccola would rather sacrifice herself than the guards Varna would need in order to defend itself if blame for the second Catastrophe fell the same way as the first. And if that finally quelled the Varnic whispers about a magic-less demi-queen sitting on the throne, she would be happy.

Only now reality was bearing down, and she wasn't happy. She'd tried to prove herself and failed. Now she was scared.

Her clock was almost up. By the time midnight lightened into the deep charcoal shades of predawn, she was back on a trail again. Niccola froze as the sound of a predator's breathing reached her through the undergrowth, only to realize it was her own.

A twig snapped.

Niccola's body coiled into a hunting crouch. The animal urge returned, and she was no longer sure whether it was from the Talaks' influence, or whether it truly was her own. There was a person in the forest. She could see their outline as she peeked from her hiding place: a shadow with a foraging basket on its back, wandering between the silver-lit trees.

She could end this tonight. Take this whole burden off her shoulders, and focus on the true enemy here. There had been disappearances in Calis already; one more would add only incrementally to the situation, and she knew how to pull a body deep enough into the forest that it would never be found. It was too easy.

She had no weapon.

Niccola fumbled around her, searching for a pointed stick, a large rock, anything. Or maybe she was strong enough to strangle someone with her bare hands. She dropped low and began to stalk the forager, only for the reality of her thoughts to barrel down on her like a load of dropped stone before she'd gone six paces. These were Isaiah's people. The people he considered family more than his own.

Niccola stumbled back to the tree she'd hidden behind and pressed against it, gasping for breath. She slid to the ground as her legs gave out on her. I don't murder, she'd said. She'd thought. As if there was such a line between taking down Dinah and taking down anyone else. Niccola pressed a hand over her mouth as her stomach threatened to reject the last meal she could no longer remember. She was spiraling. Alone, and scared, and even now, the sky lightened through predawn towards proper morning. Shadow still clotted the understory of the Talakova, but it was no longer the darkness of night.

Another day, gone.

Then someone screamed.

Niccola ducked on reflex. Sounds of a violent struggle erupted where she'd seen the lowland citizen a moment before. The man struggled and shouted, muffled as though something was held over his mouth. Then a silky voice cut through the crashing and yelling, and the man went silent. Niccola clenched both fists as everything in her chilled.

The silky voice spoke again, needing no volume to carry through the forest. "I know you're there, Niccola Hadani of Varna."

She knew who this was. Knew without even needing to see the woman's face. But how did Dinah know her name?

"Show yourself," said Dinah. "Unless you want to be responsible for the death of this innocent person... or perhaps your sister would provide a better bribe?"

Niccola rose to her feet, paralysis obliterated by a surge of icy resolution. Unarmed, she stepped out from behind the tree to lock eyes with the woman whose face she had stared at in a sketch and in her dreams for so many moons. Dinah was smaller than her: bird-boned and lean, her black curls done up in a neat pile atop her head. The hollows beneath her cheekbones were visible even in the predawn gloom, lit by the lingering silver of magic-vision. Brighter silver was the knife in her hand, pressed to the throat of a trembling citizen.

When she saw Niccola, she smiled. "There. Now, will you cooperate and come with me, or shall I disappear your sister a second time?"

Niccola's voice grated. "I'll come."

As if Dinah could stop her.

Dinah threw a distasteful look at her own hostage. Then, in a quick and brutal motion, she slit the man's throat. Niccola froze mid-gasp. The man's body hit the leaf litter with no more sound than a sack of flour, together with a scattering of sprayed blood.

Dinah wiped her dagger on a cloth and stepped away. "Can't have that one carrying news to the lowlands, now, can we?"

Before Niccola could find a single word to answer, Dinah switched to an incantation in the Talaks' own language. As she stepped away towards the deeper forest, the body behind her began to warp as if in an illusion. In all of a dozen heartbeats, it had disappeared. Talaks. She'd called the Talaks to it, and they'd cloaked it to drag it off to wherever they would feed. What remained would surface in the coming days, if it was ever found at all.

Dinah paused and looked back to meet Niccola's eye. Her raised eyebrows were telling. Sick to her stomach, Niccola followed.

"Going to make a blood sacrifice of me?" she said, far more calmly than she felt.

"Oh no. You're much more valuable than that."

They were one behind the other on the same trail now. Niccola's fists tightened, opened, sorted themselves into claws she would need to grab for Dinah's throat. Then she lunged. Dinah vanished. Niccola leaped back as a crow flapped to the branches of the nearest tree, where it perched and turned a condescending eye back on her.

Very clever, mocked a crow's voice in her head, only it wasn't a crow's. It was a human's voice in the tone of a crow's. Did you think I would be so foolish as to fall for petty tricks?

Niccola stumbled back again, shaking. She'd never heard the voice like this, but the impression it left was as recognizable as the individual it had come from. Every crow's impression was. This was the mute crow that had visited her over the last four moons. It wasn't mute. And it wasn't a crow. It was Dinah, hiding herself so as not to give her game away the moment she spoke in Niccola's mind.

That crow had also been Isaiah's.

"Is Isaiah part of your plan, too?" said Niccola. Her voice shook with emotions too deep to name.

Dinah flew down from the branch and transformed back, landing lightly on the path in human form. Something jingled as she did. She wore a ring of keys on her belt, ready at hand like those of a prison warden or head palace guard. "The prince? Oh no, I just needed to keep an eye on him. It's quite fortunate his mother is so controlling... I'd have considered him a much greater threat otherwise." She began to walk again, trailing a slender finger along the plants on the pathsides, as though this were nothing more than a casual morning stroll. "Though yesterday morning really did have me worried. It is fortunate the palace takes anonymous tips in its crow-boxes and acts on them so swiftly when it believes its interests are in danger."

"You sent the guards to kill Erelah."

Dinah smiled. "Clever girl. You know, I have a feeling you and I would have gotten along had we been the same age when we met."

"I am nothing like you."

"Are you so sure about that?" Dinah smiled over her shoulder, then beckoned Niccola onto a path that Niccola already knew would take them straight towards the heart of the Talakova. If it had a heart at all. "Come now. Your sister has been waiting for you."