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Rosabel touches my arm and the pressure of her fingers brings me back down to the earth and away from the Heavens. I glance at her, meeting those violet eyes filled with depths that one can lose themselves in.

"I need to talk to you," Rosa says, her breath clouding the frigid air. "I'll tend to your wounds."

I roll my aching shoulder with a wince. "I'll be fine."

"It wasn't a question." Rosabel looks at Galiana. "Make sure my people are helped."

"Where are you—"

"I'll be in the village," she cuts in, an urgency in her tone. She must be plagued by the same thoughts I am after witnessing what we both did. The harrowing reality of this war is beginning to settle into the marrow of both our bones.

I limp after Rosabel as she marches towards the village, greeting her dishevelled people as she passes them. The village has been left unscathed, the battle barely even touching its walls. The thought should reassure me, but it doesn't.

Where is Palmira and the rest of her army?

Rosabel pushes into a hut and inside she moves towards a wardrobe to begin dressing. Inspecting the room, I find a wall filled with drawings of sygils, sketched in charcoal. I approach the wall as rustling clothes sound behind me. The sketch that finds its way into my hands has me blinking back wetness.

It's a connecting sygil. The sygil that connects one person's life force to another. I have them on my own wrist, two that are alight, connecting me to Lilja and Suri.

One of the sygils is dark.

"I went north," Rosabel says and I pin the parchment back onto the wall before turning to her as she buttons up a blouse. "In my other form, I'm usually just an observer. I can't shift back. I can't decide where to go. But I flew north, just like..." A muscle in her jaw tightens and she shakes her head. "I reached Oranday."

"You went that far north?" I question, a touch of awe in my voice.

"I've been further." Rosa turns and grabs a satchel. She tips her chin to the bed and I follow her direction. "At first I saw nothing. People working in the fields, the city thriving as it always has."

My gut begins to churn as I sit on the edge of the bed and Rosabel kneels before me to open her satchel and begin pulling out supplies. Whatever she's leading to can't be good. There's hesitancy in her voice, like she doesn't want to speak it. Saying it out loud makes it true.

"Lift your shirt," she says, continuing to stall with her story.

I take my shirt completely off, knowing that my wounds are extensive. I sit in only a breast-band and Rosa's gaze darts over my body before she focuses again on her supplies. "What did you find in Oranday?"

"People that shouldn't be there," she mutters, pressing cold fingers to my bruised skin. Her fingers are lathered in a bitter smelling substance and it burns my nose.

"Who?"

"The city gates were guarded by far too many soldiers. And there were soldiers in the fields, watching the workers. Oranday is a city made up of mostly freed slaves." Rosabel shakes her head as she swirls a sygil into my skin. "It doesn't make any sense for them to be guarded and watched so closely, like they were slaves once more."

"What colours did they wear?"

"Oranday's orange and blue, but..." Rosabel sits back on her heels, watching the sygil ignite. I draw in a breath as my skin starts to itch and burn before it settles and the pain in my ribs subsides. She leans forward to address my other wounds. "There were ships docked on the coast, their masts down. But those colours I recognised." She meets my eye. "Black and crimson."

"The Empire."

Rosabel's fingers wrap around the wrist of my left arm where she inspects the patchwork of scars that snake along my skin. Beneath, the bone aches with a dull throb as it always does. "What happened?" she asks as she trails her thumb over the veins on the inside of my wrist in a calming swirl.

"I went into the Empire to kill the emperor without a plan. The bones never healed properly."

She hums, tracing one of the long scars where my bone had split the skin. Not even her magic can fix something that has fused back together so wrong. Instead of sygils, Rosabel leans forward and brushes her lips against the old wound, causing my breath to catch in my throat. Then she stands, wiping her hands on a cloth. "Your pants."

"Right," I mutter and unbutton my pants and shift my hips to shove them down my thighs until the deep laceration there is revealed. My mind returns to what Rosabel was telling me, hardly even sparing a thought for my state of undress. "You think the soldiers are from the Empire."

"I think the soldiers are from the Order."

"Palmira," I breathe. "She and most of her force weren't here."

"My people are taking prisoners. Someone will have the answers about what's happened with Oranday."

I close my eyes as Rosabel works on my leg, dread filling my veins like ice. Erasmus mentioned Oranday. Val wasn't there. Could Palmira have seized the city? If she has... Erasmus was right, Palmira has already succeeded.

Opening my eyes, I look at Rosabel, tendrils of her red hair brushing past her cheeks, her brows furrowed in concentration, her lower lip caught between her teeth.

"You harmed a god," I say.

Violet eyes ascend to meet my black gaze. "Are we in agreement that they're real then?"

"We both saw Raffy."

"Raffy," she mutters, a sneer in her tone. "I didn't know."

I nod in answer. How could she have known? How many years was Ulric on the Empire's throne for, guising himself in different names and years of absence with no one realising that all along it was the same being?

The thoughts constrict my throat as I realise that I killed a god, that Palmira was right.

"That man was already in the village when I brought my people here. Whatever he was here for, it wasn't me."

"It was me."

She wipes the blood from my thigh, cleaning up the wound as it knits itself back together with her magic. "Galiana. He couldn't get into the witch stronghold, but he was after Galiana."

"And then you came, and he discovered something else. He said you have the blood of a god in you."

A sharp breath blows from her nose as she stands and steps back, her hands on her hips. "My mother. Her prophecies. How even her own people look at her like she's an outsider. There are whispers she's part god."

"That's why she wanted to have a child with a shape-shifter."

"To create a witch, god, shape-shifter thing."

I stand to yank my pants up and step before her. Grabbing her hands, I watch the golden markings etched into my skin reflect on her pale flesh. "You're not a thing," I tell her with absolute certainty. "You're a princess. You're the hope of your people. You're a fucking dragon."

Whatever fills me in this moment, bubbling in my chest, urges me to press my lips to her cheek and yank her into a hug.

I know what it feels like to be a thing. Someone else's tool, an instrument that doesn't belong to myself, nothing but an object to be wielded. Rosabel is so much more than that.

"Azura."

"Yes?"

"You're getting blood on my shirt."

"Oh," I murmur and begin pulling away. "Sorry."

Rosabel's arms weave around my waist, keeping me close. "I didn't say I minded."

A smile curves my lips and I dip my head to rest my chin on her shoulder.

Warmth floods through me to just be... held. To know that within this woman's arms, I'm safe. And that she's safe from me. The Order came to destroy these people because of me, yet they fought and survived.

"We have to go to Oranday," she says, her arms tightening around me. "I can't let Palmira do to them what she's done to my people."

"I have to go to Oranday," I amend, pulling back to meet her gaze. "Your people need you here to recover and to get them somewhere safe. The Order knows where you are now."

"We have nowhere to go." A muscle in her jaw flutters and my heart wrenches to see the desolation shine within her gaze. Hope is slowly being stripped from her.

Palmira did this. I hope I find her in Oranday.

"Wymler. You take your people to Wymler. Rashida will help you."

"Can we trust him?"

The question has my head tilting to the side. At this point, I have no idea who I can trust outside of this hut. Rashida claimed to have no idea how deep Palmira's atrocities ran, and I want to believe him.

Regardless, he'll take in the shape-shifter refugees.

"You'll be safe in Wymler," I reassure her. "I'll find you there after I see what's happening in Oranday."

Blowing out a breath, Rosabel steps back, her fingers pressing against the bare skin of my waist. "You're really going then? Alone?"

"It's better I travel alone. We can't know what could be searching for me after Raffy..."

"Flew to the Heavens to bring their wrath. Other gods?"

I drop my head to her shoulder, frustration wriggling under my skin. "I've had enough of gods already."

"They're not done with us yet."

The only thing I can do is nod, all too aware of the trouble that awaits us. This fight is only just beginning.