༛༛ ༛ ༛༺༻༛ ༛ ༛༛

The air is still. It sits, stagnant and cold, not a single shimmer disturbing the calm. But then it's there. A puff of breath in the utter stillness.

I flex my fingers and let out my own breath. The Order is here.

A shout rises from ahead to confirm that fact. There's a moment of heavy silence after those shouted words as each person comes to the realisation that they're not going to escape in time. That ship is too far away. The witches refuse to give them aid. The princess is missing. No one is coming to save them.

I lift my chin, eyeing those gathered before me, the two little girls with their mother. "Get the sick and elderly out of here." When no one moves right away, I curl my lip, black eyes narrowing. "Now!"

There is no uncertainty. There is no scramble for choices and negotiations. I already know what Palmira wants and how far she's willing to go to get it. These people have always been just an obstacle in her way and I am the perfect weapon she longs for.

There is only this fight and the next.

And with Palmira, it'll always be as simple as that.

Those who can't fight retreat deeper into the village and towards the mountains. But those who can fight idle by the village's walls. Some have already shifted, their other forms catching flakes of snow in their furs or creating inhuman footprints in the sludge of the road. Others brandish their weapons and hold them high.

Someone steps up beside me and I flick my narrowed eyes to them. Galiana stares ahead, blue eyes piercing into the trees beyond the walls that stand between us and an army of warriors.

"There's still time for you to flee," she murmurs and I can't bite back the scoff before it spills from my lips.

"You want me to run?"

Sliding her gaze to me, Galiana's features seem to be carved from granite. "I want for you to not be used as a weapon to help destroy this world. It's what I've spent my life trying to prevent since you were born."

I tilt my chin and drag my attention back to the coming soldiers, their movements light in the underbrush, like they hope to catch us by surprise.

Perhaps if I allowed myself to fully trust the Order when I was with them, spilled all of my secrets to Erasmus when he asked me to, then he'd know that catching me by surprise isn't such an easy thing to do.

"I don't need to be prophetic to know the fate that awaits these people," I tell Galiana, my gloved fingers curling around the hilt of the blade in my belt. "I've seen how far Palmira is willing to go for victory. I'm not running. Not anymore."

"I wish you would reconsider."

"Why? And please don't claim it's motherly love."

Galiana lets out a breath that fogs the air. "You were made for this war. But this war will unravel the world if escalated as it has been before. I can't protect you from gods."

"Then maybe I should find someone who can."

The look Galiana sends me has a wry smile twisting my lips.

Fuck her gods. Fuck her prophecies. Palmira took Ari's head and she wants me in chains. That's all I need to know to have me drawing my blade and anticipating the sharp tang of blood on my lips.

The first of them don't approach beyond the treeline. They idle in the shadows, away from the light of dawn.

"They're here," I murmur.

"What are they doing?" Galiana questions.

"Waiting."

"For what?"

It's a good question, and one I can't answer. Perhaps they want to draw us away from the relative safety of the walls of the village. Perhaps they already have another trap waiting for us.

The crunch of leaves under boots sounds and my spine stiffens. The weight behind it, the balance of a fighter that relies on strength over agility, I'd know those footsteps anywhere.

"They're waiting for him," I tell Galiana, fingers tightening around the blade in my grip, the very same one he gave me.

Erasmus peels from the shadows of the trees and steps into the hazy sunlight, flakes of snow settling on his broad, leather-clad shoulders.

The last time I saw the man he was letting me go, claiming that the cost of Palmira wielding me far outweighed the gain. But now he's here, fighting for her once again.

I curl a lip at him as he stops amongst the snow, standing between our two people's. He waits for me there, in the inbetween. He doesn't beckon me closer. He doesn't speak. He just meets my eye and I walk forward, ignoring Galiana's sharp hiss.

Passing the walls, boots squelching in the snow, I stop a few strides away from Erasmus.

"You were meant to go to Wymler," he says, folding his muscular arms over his chest.

"I did."

He glances away from me, towards the north, as though he can see Wymler's mighty walls from here. "Did you find your answers?"

Spine straightening, I keep my words tucked beneath my tongue.

My answers. The answers that tell me Palmira is fighting this war for a just reason. The answers that tell me I have the blood of gods in my veins. No, they're not my answers. They can never be.

"Why are you here?" I question.

Those russet eyes settle on me again, the creases lining them deepening as he frowns. "Palmira wants you captured. She won't stop."

Glancing behind him at the gathered forces, I raise a brow. "I thought you didn't want me to fall into her hands."

"She's asked me to kill anyone who gets in my way. The shape-shifters—"

"—are under my protection," I cut in. "You've already taken their prince. I won't let you take more." A tightness forms around my throat as I say the words, reminded once again that Rosabel is gone. She'd be by my side if the Order hadn't come to these shores. "But if you don't want to capture me for Palmira, then what are you here for?"

He takes a moment to consider the question. We stand in silence in the snow, letting the flakes melt on our skin, the anxious breaths of those at our backs' filling the air.

Erasmus has the power to stop this fight from happening. Or the power to soak the mud and snow in blood.

"Palmira has already succeeded," he says, his voice low, meant for my ears only. "She has her army. The Empire, Oranday—"

"Oranday?" I ask, unease crawling along my skin. Val was meant to be in Oranday.

"The last piece she needs is you. Rupteran has knelt. Don't let their pain be for nothing by refusing to fight by our side."

Shaking my head, the refusal is already rising upon my tongue before he even finishes speaking. "If I go to her, if I give in, Ari's death would mean nothing."

Something flickers over his features, a pain he tries to hide, but I recognise it for what it is, if only because I've seen it in my own reflection. "It already means nothing."

I lick my lips, a strange thing uncurling in my stomach, something that's been absent for too long.

Want. A raw craving to feel his life wrenched away beneath my hands.

I don't give him a moment to react before I lunge at him with a scream spilling from my lips like a wild animal. The blade in my grip dives for the dark skin of his throat, the want to see crimson liquid running down it like thick syrup urging me forward.

The steel never touches his skin.

Erasmus catches my strike, swinging me around with a knee to my gut and a twist to my wrist that pries the knife from my fingers. Pain arcs up my forearm and I gasp, unable to focus on anything but that point of agony.

Something presses to my chest and I manage to catch a glimpse of his hand against my sternum before a sygil ignites on his arm and what feels like a blow from a battering ram slams into my chest. I'm torn away from him, flung into the air with a resounding boom that echoes across the snow.

I feel nothing for a moment, the pain of what he did not even registering as wind yanks at my clothes and tears my hair from its braid. Then I slam into the wall of the village, rattling the wood and sending snow cascading over me as I slump to the ground. Air escapes me. The ability to move flees my limbs. Everything is lead and numb and cold.

Get up.

As I blink, it's not snow I'm surrounded by, but stone. Black stone, like it's been drenched in blood so many times the stains can no longer be scrubbed away. The black stone of the Empire where I near died. Where I killed a man who claimed to be a god.

Get up.

Surviving that fight killed Ari. It got his head removed from his shoulders.

Keep going.

I did, brother. I kept going. I survived. But for what?

"Azura!" the shout drags me back into the freezing dawn. Galiana drops beside me, blue eyes wide, her hands hovering over my prone form for a moment before she rolls me on my back.

Vibrant hurt claws through my body and my lips part in a silent shout, but nothing comes out. My breaths are a wheeze, ribs piercing flesh, threatening to split it, threatening to cut into my lungs.

I stare up at the clouds as figures move around me, fighting a slow dance of clashing steel and roars of pain. The fight has begun.

Galiana's hands cup my face as she tries to get my gaze to focus on her, but I can barely keep my eyes open.

For what? Why would I fight back to consciousness? Why would I stand, spit blood, and continue to bare my teeth? For what?

For me.

The words don't belong to my brother, spoken on a whisper, weak as a fluttering breeze. But they echo in my head, throbbing at the back of my skull, thumping alongside my heart.

Ari.

These are his people. And I've lead Palmira to them.

Shoving Galiana's hands away, I pry my eyes open and heave in a breath of cold air. It scrapes like shards of glass going into my lungs, but with the pain comes clarity.

I will not let Palmira destroy these people again.

Rolling onto my side sends molten oozing over my muscles, near buckling my arms. With gritted teeth, I manage to get to my hands and knees and shove myself up.

Broken bones aren't a new prospect.

I stand, snow falling from my clothes, the hurt a currant that runs beneath my skin. A constant. A necessity.

I ball my hands into fists and look to the place I last saw Erasmus. All I find is a swarm of writhing bodies and twisting shapes, beams of gold from the breaking dawn dappling fur and scales and swords and plates of armour. Erasmus has been swallowed by the battle.

The fierce want is still coiled within me. I need to find him. I need to see him bleed. If I can't have Palmira's head, then I'll settle for his.

I march forward, searching the foreign faces around me for one in particular. Someone rushes me with a cry spilling from their lips. Dodging the slash of their blade, I send a boot into the back of their knee that forces them to the snow. They try to swipe again with their blade but I catch their wrist and slam the butt of my palm into their forearm. A scream is wrenched from them as the bones in their arm splinter and I pry the blade from their hand to delve further into the fray.

My next enemy fights with someone else, but I plunge my blade through his ribs and push him off the blade again, quick to move on and continue searching.

I make my way through the ranks, a whirlwind of death as I slice, thrust and kick, not once letting anything cloud my vision. Screaming surrounds me, the stench of blood and innards filling my nostrils and I leap over fallen enemies and allies.

I boot a man in the chest and he stumbles back. I embed my blade into the skull of a soldier before yanking it out to thrust it into the stomach of another. I wrench my sword out of the body and take the arm of the one I kicked. His shrieks fill my ears and then I take his head from his shoulders.

As the bodies fall around me, a path is cleared. And then I see him. He fights with a sword in his grip and sygils ignited on his arms like stars in the night sky.

Pain bursts through my thigh and I gasp. A blade plunges for my throat but I drop and roll, coming up behind the soldier to shove my blade through his back and into his kidney. I pull the blade out and look to my thigh, blood gushing from the slice.

I drop my blade, tear a bit of material from a dead man and wrap it tightly around my wound with gritted teeth.

My blade is back in my gloved hand and my eyes are scouring the faces around me. I bare my teeth when I can't find Erasmus anymore.

I move, dodging and parrying weapons in my haste, pushing my way through to where I saw him.

I don't care that I've lost Galiana, Raffy, Vera. I don't care that my clothes are soaked with blood, some of it my own. I don't care for much as I search for Erasmus, blood pumping in my ears, pain a living thing writhing beneath my skin.

There's a break in the fighting, a small reprieve where I lift my head, peering through the smoke that lingers heavily in the air. I see him again, dragging one of his wounded soldiers away from the fighting. Vulnerable. His back is partly to me. It would be so easy to slip steel between his ribs and up into his heart.

Ari deserves to be avenged.

With my hand tightening around my blade, I begin to advance.

I should have killed him in that forest when he gave me a chance. He shouldn't have let me live. There's only a single path for him and I, and one of us die at the end of it.

Before I can reach him, sink my knife into him and finally satiate that want, a scream reaches me. I whip my head around to see Vera dodge the swipe of a sword, but she staggers and falls, an arrow protruding from her thigh.

Her attacker approaches her and Vera bares her teeth, her hands empty of a weapon besides her wrath.

Gaze darting back to Erasmus, I see him approaching the shadows of the trees, wounded with him. He's going to disappear again and Ari... Ari won't be avenged. Erasmus doesn't get to go free for what he did.

Vera screams again as she yanks the arrow from her leg and stands, facing her death on her feet.

Dax stared up at the blade too, the glint of inevitable death in his gaze.

"Shit," I growl, then I'm running, boots crunching on snow drenched in blood, every muscle in my body aching.

The soldier lifts his blade, preparing to strike, and I know I won't make it to Vera in time.

I couldn't save Dax, but I didn't have flame in my veins then.

Stumbling to a halt, I draw in the air that claws down my throat with the stench of death and the cold.

With pain, comes clarity.

I throw out a hand, willing whatever powers writhe within me to the surface. Whether they're from a god, from sygils or witches, I don't care. If they help me kill my enemies, then that's good enough for me. Ash fills my lungs as that fire climbs from within my chest, begging to be let loose after all this time of simmering below my skin.

The stream ruptures from me, molten heat that dries the blood that slicked my skin, causing it to flake away like crimson petals.

Flame slams into the soldier and he's engulfed, his shriek cut off by the roar of power that pours from me.

Just as quickly as it came, I pull it back to myself before my stomach can begin to churn with sick. I stagger, but before I can fall, a hand wraps around my arm and steadies me. I glance up to find Vera at my side, ragged breaths leaving her, but she's alive.

Taking a moment to survey the scene around us, I find countless sets of eyes on me, watching me like I might combust at any moment. One of those sets belong to Raffy and his gaze is piercing, narrowed, a twist to his features.

I ignore everyone around me and instead focus my attention on the forest. "Erasmus—"

"Go after him," Vera says, slipping my blade into my hand that I didn't even notice I dropped. "We've got this."

I nod and limp forward, following the wretched pieces of myself because they're all I have left. Erasmus and Palmira took everything else.

The trees envelop me in icy darkness, the dense leaves keeping the morning sun away. Wrapping my arms around my ribs, the hilt of my blade dangling from my fingers, I lurch onwards.

I twist around, searching for him, but all is quiet. I've lost him again.

No, I won't accept that.

I stop, planting my boots amongst the snow and underbrush. He's here, I just have to listen.

With the icy breeze cooling the sweat on my skin, skating over wounds that I push aside, I begin to focus. It's easier now, allowing the world to sharpen around me like I'm opening my eyes for the first time.

Instead of the familiar thump of a heart or the shuffle of footsteps and the rustle of clothes, I'm greeted by a song. It's a low hum, gentle waves of noise coming nearer. I'm lulled by it for a moment, entranced by the song, the beauty of it. There's something familiar about that song.

"Azura."

The clarity of the world falls away and the song disappears as I twist around to face the one who spoke. I clench my jaw when I'm faced not with Erasmus, but Raffy instead.

"What are you doing here?" I ask, turning away from him to scour the forest. Each moment wasted is another moment that Erasmus has to get further away from me. I can't let him go. Not again.

"I came for you." There's a blur of movement from the corner of my eye, and before I can even react, Raffy has yanked the blade from my grip and is slashing upwards. Sharp pain radiates across my face and I cry out, stumbling back.

The gloved hand that I press to my cheek comes away yet with blood. "What the fuck, Raffy?" I snarl, glaring at him.

The man doesn't attack again, his focus on my blade. He inspects the blood on it, blue eyes narrowed. "You're not a god," he says and my gut plummets to the very bowels of Hell. "You bleed like a mortal."

"Yeah," I sneer. "Maybe that's because gods aren't fucking real. But I could have told you that without you cutting open my face."

"No sygils," he continues. "You're not Atari."

I nudge the cut on my face, wincing at the sting, and wait for him to get to his point.

"Perhaps Ulric didn't lie for once. But I need to be certain."

"What—" The word doesn't fully leave my lips before Raffy lunges. His shoulder slams into my chest and the air bursts from my lungs. I slam into the forest floor, my ribs aching with renewed fire. Blinking the black dots from my vision, I struggle to focus on anything other than trying to draw breath. The icy air touching the skin of my hand is quick to yank me back into the moment.

Raffy straddles my stomach, holding my right hand up to his face. The golden markings etched into my flesh reflect on his skin in the darkness.

"The key," he mutters, the same words the emperor once said to me as he faced down these marks.

Rage feels me, searing at my insides. These people claim to know more about me than I do, and they treat me like I'm some prize to take.

I am no one's weapon. I am no one's key.

Flame wraps around my fist, pain and fury flickering in the golden heat. It bursts from me and collides with Raffy's chest. He's flung back, hitting a tree.

Then there's a whoosh, a strong wind tugging at my clothes. Raffy lands on his feet and straightens, rolling his shoulders.

Lips parting, all I can do is stare, struck dumb by the bright masses that stretch from his back. They glow, like they've been bathed in sunlight. Wings. Raffy has wings. Which means he's a...

"Oh, fuck."