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The stone whispers against the steel that glints in the fire's light, the only light as the dense clouds and the crop of trees that shelter us block out the moon. I focus on the steel and the cold and nothing more. Not on those around me. Not on the fact Rosabel disappeared into the storm in her other form and we haven't seen her since. Not on the understanding that churns in my gut.

There's a reason Rosabel doesn't like to shift, and I'm beginning to realise she suffers from what I do; a lack of control of the wild powers within us. We can't trust ourselves.

"Well," Vera says, sitting next to the fire with her forearms draped over her knees, my own forearm wrapped with a splint. "Seems like your witch monster has gone on a bit of a vacation."

With the burn of constant pain humming through my side, patience is a luxury I find I don't have and I flick my blade towards her, a curl to my lip. "Keep words about her out of your mouth."

Vera's slanted eyes move from my blade up to my face, shadows flickering in her round features. "Don't forget who warned you about Palmira and helped you out of Sharlikire, mad one. I can just as easily undo what I've done for you."

The anger sears into my gut like a red hot poker being slid through my skin. "Don't threaten me," I snarl, stepping forward to nudge the blade under her chin as she stares up at me with defiant brown eyes.

A hand grips my wrist and I turn as Galiana twists. A gasp leave me as my fingers numb and let go of the weapon. It thuds onto the ground and Galiana yanks me around to glare into my eyes. "Control your emotions lest they control you."

I don't baulk under her gaze, all her reprimand makes me want to do is send my head into her nose. "Are you to be my teacher now, oh wise mother?"

Letting go of my wrist, Galiana lashes out. The back of her hand splits my lips and sends my head whipping to the side. "You forget yourself, Azura. I've been lenient with you because your situation begs for it, but I won't tolerate your insults."

I wipe my hand across my mouth, the black glove coming away glistening. "I just find I don't appreciate being lied to."

"It's you who branded me a liar and that's your folly."

Prodding the cut with my tongue, I bring the pain to the forefront of my mind, burning alongside the hot coals of my rage. "Until I see a god spout fucking wings right before my eyes, I'm going to continue insulting you." Shoving past her, I leave the warmth of the fire and trudge through the snow deeper into the trees.

The searing anger that burns in my gut makes my fingers dampen and twitch in my gloves. Restlessness settles in my bones like a deep itch and I gnash my teeth at the cold air, blood still staining my gums.

Nothing Galiana says will convince me to take what she says as fact.

You shouldn't have come here.

I stop, breath clouding the air in uneven puffs.

You made a mistake.

"I did what I thought I needed to do," I snap back and spin around, searching for him in the shadows of the woods, knowing he's here, watching and judging as he's always done.

"You should have left Rupteran while you had the chance." He steps from the trees, sinewy muscles flexing as he crosses his arms over his chest, fathomless blue eyes unwavering upon my face.

"To do what? Run? Hide for the rest of my life as you made me do in the Midland?"

"Yes," he growls, baring his teeth.

"No," I sneer back, turning my back on him. "It wasn't a life."

Fingers curl around the nape of my neck and then he's dragging my head back, baring my throat like he's about to tear it out. "For someone like you, it's the only life."

"You didn't raise me to be a coward."

"I raised you to survive."

"You tortured me!" Something within me breaks. He's shoved me over the edge and I don't know how to come back over it without unleashing. The blade is in my grip and sinking deep into his stomach before I can even draw a breath. The strangled gasp he gives is the sweetest noise to my ears as I wrench the serrated edge out of his gut and kick him to the mud. He falls, and then he's gone, the darkness swallowing him like we never was.

Stepping into the shadows and whirling around, I search for him, but he's gone. The only place he resides in now and if I could dig him out, I would. I squeeze my eyes shut, tap the bloodless blade against my forehead, the steel biting with iciness.

There's a fight coming. I take a strange sort of comfort in that thought. The fight is what I know. The pain and the stench of blood and soiled breeches. That's what's familiar.

Gods aren't real, but this fight is. This fight, and the next. That's all there is.

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The camp is quiet. Calm, considering the coming storm. The sun is just beginning to rise and the storm is left behind at our backs as we walk into the village.

"Where is she?"

I spin around at the voice as a large man comes towards us, chestnut hair framing his face and eyes flinty with ice as they stare at me.

Raffy, Rosabel's keeper though he's not a shape-shifter. The pieces don't make sense, but I don't care.

"Has she not returned?"

His nostrils flare. "She shifted, didn't she?"

I glance away, remembering her thunderous roar as something entirely inhuman took over her.

"This wouldn't have happened if it weren't for you," he snaps, jabbing his finger in my direction as he advances. I look at that finger, raise a brow, and settle my hand on the blade in my belt, but Galiana steps forward before I can draw it.

"We wouldn't have risked travelling through the storm if it weren't important."

"Important? Who—" But then he stops. His gaze lands on Galiana, and he simply freezes. Lips parted, eyes unblinking, finger wavering in the air.

Whatever he sees in Galiana seems to freeze the blood beneath his skin. There's a history in his blue eyes and it's the same scrutinising stare he gave me when he first saw me.

I shake my head, forcing myself to remember there's more to worry about than the things someone does and doesn't know.

"The Order is coming," I say before we can get carried away throwing more accusations around. I already have too many burning a hole in my tongue. "They're here for me, but when they see the shape-shifters..."

"Why do they want you?"

Glancing up, I meet Raffy's blue gaze, a knowing glint within them that I don't particularly care for. "I took something they want back." Me. "Maybe to save the shape-shifters I have to give it back."

Galiana looks over her shoulder at me, her lips twisting and she knows exactly what I took. "They can't have you. Without Rosabel, you're our last hope."

Teeth clacking together as I bare them at her, anger churns in my gut once again, a familiar but wild beast. "Without Rosabel, this world will burn and I'll be the one burning it." I turn on my heel before I can lash out more, but with my fists instead of my words. "We need to get these people on a ship and away from Kitala before they come."

"We don't have the time," Galiana argues.

"Then we better act fast."

The coming moments are a confusing scramble. I don't know how to lead, don't know how to take command and instill faith. Especially not for a people I have failed, that I have let down numerous times without them even realising. Their prince, their princess, and now the coming Order. I owe them a chance to survive.

What I find as I stand before the gathered shape-shifters is a group of people so used to being torn from one home to another that they don't even blink at the realisation that they once again must leave. They take charge, orders are called, and then people are rushing to gather their supplies and prepare for the harsh journey through the snowy woods.

There's little else to do beyond haul crates onto carts, settle the old and sick into piles of furs and blankets to help them travel through the cold, and calm the horses.

I try not to think on the coming darkness, the inevitability of war, whether we fight on Kitala's soil or not. Palmira will hunt me to the very depths of Hell if she needed to, I have no doubts about that. But how many am I going to drag into this battle with me? How many am I going to force to run alongside me?

I clench my gloved hands into fists, nails digging into leather, trembling slightly. I should have ended it before it even began, should have stayed cloaked within shadows as I have done all my life. I should have left Rupteran as my brother said.

Answers are what I sought, and answers are what I found, but I can't to anything with them. They're as pointless to try and grasp as the wind. So, why stay? Why continue to endure under Palmira's heel?

I draw in the icy air, feeling the sharpness of it pierce my lungs. I continue working, desperately trying to banish the thoughts of the amber-eyed boy that had stumbled into my life so long ago. I focus on the beat of my heart, the thud of my feet, and the cold that nips at what bare skin it can find. But the pain will always be here, running like an undercurrent in my blood, a constant reminder of what I lost, what was taken from me because of the powers I was gifted with.

And everything that I'm willing to do to avenge Ari, even if that means war.

"My daughters," someone shouts, dragging me from my thoughts as a woman comes staggering towards us, tears frosting on her cheeks.

I step towards her as her hysterics draw gazes and halt work. "Let me help," I tell her and catch her hands in mine as she slumps towards me.

"They went out to pick berries. They should have come back with the horn, but..."

"Out where?"

She looks up at me. "Beyond the village. Into the woods. I can't... I can't shift."

"I'll get them. What are their names?"

"Nev and Lyn. Please, save my girls."

"Azura."

I glance over my shoulder as Galiana approaches, a crease between her brows. "I'll be back. Keep preparing these people to escape."

"Let me go. I'm a good tracker."

Tilting my chin, I look towards the trees where the shadows are thick without the morning sun yet to reach them. "So am I." I stride towards the trees without heeding Galiana's arguments.

Renata and Galiana want us to fit into their prophecies, their dreams of destiny and fate. They want Rosabel and I to adhere to the roles they've manifested for us. Too many people have tried to sculpt me into what they want me to be, the vision that they want to see when they look at me.

I didn't come here for anyone but myself, and I'm not going to leave here shackled to yet another form of ideals that aren't my own. Not that I have any ideals. But maybe one day I'll find some that aren't imposed on me.

Leaving the village and the chaos behind, I'm embraced by the pressing silence of the forest once more. There's no peace to be found within, knowing what lies in the thick of the woods. Like walking into the tranquil of the Midlands, surrounded on all sides by demons. The quiet is a lie. It's quiet because whatever lurks within these trees has scared away the wildlife.

My steps slow, coming to a halt as I stare down at the damp leaves that curl around my worn boots. The different shades of browns and greens seem dull to my weary gaze, nothing but splattered paint on an empty canvas. But then I draw in a breath, will the forest into my lungs, the scent of damp leaves and the cold of the snow. The colours brighten, sharpen like a magnifying glass has shifted over my eyes. Everything comes to me in such clarity that for a moment I forget why I'm here.

The forest hums in my blood, a rhythm in the way the air shifts through branches and the rock groans deep below the ground. But there's something that doesn't beat to the same rhythm. A heart. A chilled breath. The scrape of fabric against skin. The press of cold metal against thin flesh.

I start forward, a spring to my step as I stay honed in on that small space in the forest that shouldn't be there. Like a weed growing amongst the flowers, thorns pricking into petals, it needs to be removed.

Rounding a tree, that anomaly right before me, I stop as I come face to face with three sets of eyes. A knife glints in the moonlight, a whimper escapes around the cloth shoved into a mouth, and slanted brown eyes meet mine, lips twisted in a smile.

I glance around, taking in the small, struggling form on the ground, limbs tied and a gag around their head. Then the other little girl, tears streaking through the mud on her face, a knife to her throat with blood beading at its wicked edge.

"Let them go," I order, widening my stance as I meet the man's gaze again.

"No introductions first?" he questions with a tilt of his head. "My name is Val. I believe you know my sister Vera."

A breath puffs before my face and I blink at him, confusion making the back of my skull itch. "You're meant to be in Oranday. Why aren't you in Oranday?"

A knowing smile curves his lips. "I've heard a lot about you," he says, evading my question even though I see the glint in his gaze that says he wants to tell me everything, just to rub it in my face. It makes me move towards him, but he mirrors my movements and shifts back, taking the little girl under his blade with him.

A trap.

Wincing at the sudden voice, rough like stone scraping against stone, I pause.

Don't trust.

I ignore the voices and take another step deeper into the forest.

Turn back.

Sharp pain pierces into my skull and I grunt, pressing my palm to my eye as the pain splinters through my head. Sweat dampens my brow and the grinding of my teeth nearly drowns out the voices.

Run. Go back.

"Shut up," I snarl at them.

Val laughs, his fingers twisting in the girl's hair as he drags her away from me. "We have a name for you in the Order. Azura, the mad one. I see you live up to it."

"I'll add it to the list," I sneer, taking another step forward.

"Stop!" one of the girls scream. "It's a trap!"

That's when my senses awaken again, brightening the forest around me like a flame in the dark and I see the sygils carved into the trees.

Val's features darken and he presses the knife harder to the girl's throat.

"No!" I shout, lunging forward but a growl stops me and then the other little girl is a blur of movement. Val screams as the girl sinks her teeth into his arm, forcing him to drop the blade as fangs jut from her lips and blood drips from her chin. She tears her teeth from his arm—fabric and flesh stuck between her bloodied fangs—once the other girl is able to squirm free and sprint towards me. I make sure she's behind me before drawing my blade, eyeing those sygils.

Val tosses the girl to the ground and she whimpers as she scrambles back, behind the line of sygils, behind me. He glances down at his arm, fury in the curl of his lips as blood soaks his shirt. "Fucking shape-shifters," he growls.

"Does your sister know you're here, Val?" I ask, shuffling back a step, the girls staying behind me.

Flicking his gaze up to me, something sparks in his eyes. An uncertainty, a weakness. "If she doesn't, she will soon," he says, the sharpness in his tone trying to hide the waver in it.

"She's trying to protect you, and this is how you repay her? Helping the one who beat her half to death?"

"I'm trying to help her!" he shouts, lurching forward a step.

"You're going to get her killed. Is that what you want? For your sister to die?"

"No!" Another lunge forward, fury in his gaze, and those sygils ignite. Val gasps, his spine stiffening, his arms pinning to his sides. The tendons in his neck strain as he tries to move, a translucent shimmer in the air holding him prisoner. Sweat glistens on his olive skin and he bares his teeth.

"Who put these sygils here, Val?" I ask, moving towards him. "Because I know it wasn't you. Vera doesn't have magic in her blood and neither do you."

"Fuck you," he spits between his clenched teeth, body spasming but those sygils hold.

One more step and I stand before him, feeling the power of those sygils hum against my skin. I lift my blade and tap the flat edge to his cheek. "I once had a brother," I tell him, tilting my head. "If he wasn't teaching me torture on my own body, then he was teaching me on someone else's. There are so many nerves, so many places to cut that won't kill. He taught me how to make people hurt."

Brown eyes dart to the bade resting against his skin before moving back to my face. "I'm not telling you anything, mad bitch."

"Did you know there's a nerve here?" I question, using my other hand to pull up his brow and press the point of the blade between his eye socket and eye. "It won't blind you, but Hell, it'll hurt like a bitch."

"Fuck you," he says again.

"Then again, I'm feeling a little unsteady. It must be all the madness." I pull back, waving the knife around my head as I bare my teeth at him. "Maybe I'll accidentally blind you." I shrug and dive for his face with the knife.

"Wait!" he screeches.

Blood beads on the edge of the knife where it pricks at his eyelid, but I stop and quirk a brow. "Yes?"

"It was Erasmus." He tries to pull back his head but the sygils prevent him from escaping the blade. "Erasmus made them."

My gaze shifts to the blade in my grip, the very same one that the man gave me, and my blood runs colder than the snow beneath my boots.

He's here. Which can only mean the rest of the Order has already arrived.

Staggering back, I sheath my blade and turn to the two little girls, one of them still on the ground, whimpering, talons half formed and body twisted at odd angles, like she's stuck between human and animal.

"Where are you going?" Val asks as I slip my arms beneath the little girl and tuck her to my chest. "Get me out of here!"

"I'm letting you live," I toss over my shoulder. "Even that's pushing the limits of my mercy, but I guess I owe your sister." I run, jogging back towards the village with two little girls clinging to me and an army approaching at my back.

Escape is no longer an option. I can only hope these people are prepared to fight for their freedom.