Perhaps one day when the stars are merry and the moon is ripe, you and I will cross paths. Until then, know that you are loved.

Stay well, my son.

Mother.

Octavia folded the letter and tucked it away in its envelope, before adding it to the neat stack on the box lid, but when she reached for another, her hand found nothing but air. She laid back in the grass, watching tufts of clouds creep across the sky. The late afternoon sun stained them shade of burning orange and yellow.

After the last two days' events, she needed a moment alone to clear her head, focus on something besides the scourge, and Claud's letter had provided the escape she needed. While she'd find no clues as to the woman's whereabouts, it was evident from the letters that Claud's mother loved him more than anything.

Many apologies were scrawled on those pages. Apologies for leaving him. Apologies for not being there for him. But there was also hope. Hope that he was happy and healthy. Hope that they'd see each other again.

I have to help them. Even if it meant leading Claud to a corpse. At least he'd have closure.

Octavia packed the letters away in the box. Before she could pick it up, a bird landed on the lid, hopping and chirping before fluffing out its feathers. It gazed up at her, yellow breast bright and beady eyes unblinking.

"How can I help you, friend?" she asked, but the creature continued to stare. "A song, perhaps?" Hopefully, her voice wasn't too much of a disappointment compared to Kaleri's. She sang of springtime, of new leaves, budding flower and budding romance. Of shy lovers and rainy nights. And as she sang, gentle sounds disturbed her music, muted footfalls and the rustle of clothing. Now it was truly a show.

When the last word of the song tapered off, the bird tilted its head at her and flew off, disappearing in the canopy of a fruit-laden tree.

"You can come out," Octavia called.

Sicero appeared from behind a tree, eyes on the ground and hands stuffed in the pockets of his coat. "My apologies. I didn't mean toact so crudely." He cleared his throat. "You have a lovely voice."

"Thank you." She returned her attention to the bird who hopped along a branch it tune to its own song. "I was just about to head back." The words came out like a groan. She stroked the flower bud of a wildflower while frowning at the cold reality beyond her bubble of bliss. The snow hadn't touched this blessed place. Its cold indifference shunned by the stubborn beauty of life. If only she could wield sin and symphony in such a glorious way.

"I can walk you back. If you don't mind the company." Sicero kept his eyes on the trees, ever the bashful priest.

If only she didn't find his shyness so endearing. The way his eyes darkened as his focus shifted to the ground. The pinch in his brow. The quirk of his lips. It only softened her heart further. Misguided feelings, her mentor would've called it, but that old prude was six feet underground where her opinion no longer mattered.

Octavia picked up the box and motioned to the path back. "Lead the way."

For a long while, they walked in silence, an arm's distance apart. Still his spicy scent wafted in the air spurred on by the northern breeze. The frozen trees drifted by them and their branches criss-crossed over their head.

The hairs on the back of her next rose, and she looked up just as he looked away. How long would they keep dancing around each other? Nothing could blossom between them—not romance or friendship. They were on opposite ends of this fight, and soon they may be on opposite ends of the world.

Sicero cleared his throat. "So, how did you become friends with King Jaredeth? If you don't mind me asking, of course. It seems like an odd relationship considering his history."

Octavia breathed a laugh. "I suppose it is from the outside looking in. In short, the Divine City abandoned him and he needed help. I offered aid in exchange for Avaly being turned into a haven."

"Why would the Divine City abandon Avaly?"

"It's a long story, and not mine to tell. Just know that Jaredeth is not the young, naïve king of yesteryear." She smiled and gazed at the clouds once more, wondering what he was up to these days. He'd given her hope in a dark time. Hope that people could change, that humanity could change. She considered Avaly becoming a haven a pivotal step in the growing relationship between necromancers and ordinary humans.

"I see. And a haven is...?"

"A safe place for refugees fleeing the scourge, and for necromancers. Avaly is vast and ripe with resources. Having it as a haven has been a blessing for our cause."

The back end of the cathedral peeped through the frozen trees, along with the horses trotting around in their enclosure. As they rounded the building, the children came into sight. Tallis, Lyra and Arietta sat around the lit fire pit with Claud and Pilar. The Elder woman was regaling them with a story while the clothier poured out cups of tea and passed around cookies.

"So to reach the moon, she built a flying machine out of her bike. And she pedaled and pedaled, high over the buildings and over the trees. Up into the sky until people looked like ants below her. And she reached up." Pilar stretched a hand high into the air. "And touched the moon."

"That's amazing!" Arietta said. "I wish I could touch the moon."

Tallis made a face. "That's not a real story. You can't reach the moon with a bike."

"Come on, Tallis where's your sense of imagination?" Claud ruffled the boy's hair—much to his chagrin.

Arietta looked their way and grinned. "Miss Octavia."

Octavia winced. Perhaps she should've snuck in through the stables. No, cowardice wasn't something she needed in her repertoire. So when Arietta bounded over, she crouched to give the girl a hug. "I'm just dropping by to say hello. It looks like you're all having a great time."

"The best time," Arietta said. She held up the hem of her red dress and did a little twirl. "Papa let me wear my favourite dress today, and Miss Winslet let us play outside. Oh, and then we got to build a snowman. He's over there." She pointed to a half-formed pile of snow, stuffed with rocks that vaguely resembled a face. "And look, Mister Claud made me this." Arietta touched the circlet of cloth flowers atop her wheaten hair and beamed.

This was the most spirited she'd seen Arietta since she'd first met the girl. On most days the child waned between barely coherent and smiling for the sake of everyone around her. Genuine happiness brought out a brightness in her that rivaled the dawn.

"That sounds amazing. I..." Octavia swallowed the growing lump in her throat. Hold it together. "What else do you have planned?"

"Papa said I can sleep over with Lyra and Tallis tonight. We're going to stay up and tell stories and look for ghosts and..." Arietta tilted her head and frowned. "Miss Octavia, why are you crying?"

Octavia touched her hands to her face, and they came away wet. "I think I got some dust in my eyes."

"Oh." Arietta cupped her face and blew into her eyes. "Better?"

"Yes. Thank you, Arietta." She mustered one last smile for the girl. "I should head in. Quintus is waiting for me." She stretched to her full height and offered Claud his box of letters.

"We can discuss it later," he said, before she could open her mouth to speak.

"Thank you." Octavia turned on her heel and all but ran into the vestibule, not bothering to take off her coat or scarf. Perhaps all of this was karma for some long-forgotten deed she'd done. Maybe that one time she'd Arranged all the books in the west wing of the archives by colour to get back at her mentor for making her scrub the foyer floors.

"Are you all right?" Sicero asked as he fell in step with her.

No. "I'll be—"

A scream pierced the air, raw and primal as a wild animal's call.

Pilar ran into the vestibule. Her head turned as she sped past them, her eyes holding the dark edge that accompanied bad news.

Octavia's blood ran cold, and she sprinted back outside with Sicero in tow.

Arietta lay in the snow next to the fire pit, unmoving while Lyra knelt beside her with head bent and fingers tangled in her dreads. Claud knelt alongside her divesting himself of his overcoat. Tallis hadn't moved from his place on the bench. With eyes wide and face blanched he stared down at his friend.

"I'm not sure if it's safe to move her," Claud said as he tucked his coat around Arietta. His eyes held the same grim edge as Pilar's.

Octavia knelt at Arietta's side, and when she tried to feel for a pulse, Claud shook his head at her. The girl stared at nothingness, not with the bright grey eyes Octavia was used to, but with black abysmal pits with white around the edges.

Her blood turned to ice. They were wrong. She swept a shaking hand over the girl's eyes to close them and shot to her feet. "Get her to the infirmary now, Claud. Tell the medics to keep her there until I get back."

"What is it?" Sicero asked.

She shook her head, backing away from Arietta as her mind raced. Those eyes, those black pits, sat in the forefront of her thoughts, unseeing, yet seeing, dead, yet alive. How could they have been so blind, so presumptuous?

Octavia gripped Sicero's wrist harder than was necessary or appropriate. "We were wrong. She's a cadaver, not the anchor." Her voice was a hoarse whisper, barely audible over her roaring heart. "Get Quintus. Tell him to meet me by the florist shop, quickly."

She turned on her heel and ran for the lake, her back heating up as she summoned her wings. A cloud of snow rose in her wake as she shot into the sky. She raced over the pond, beating her wings until her muscles and lungs burned from exertion.

The soft notes of a song reached her ears long before she landed on the main road. Eli sat on the stoop of the florist shop, head against the door and eyes closed as he strummed a small harp. Gentle vibrations followed the tune, sinking into Octavia's skin and fanning the flames of her ire. In the palm of his forearm several red lines criss-crossed each other, forming a symbol, the very one on the bottom of Arietta's foot.

"Night-Blooming Rose. Are you just going to stand there, or are you going to haul me away in chains?"

Her chest heaved and her body shook. A thousand scathing words sat on her tongue, but only one escaped her lips. "Why?"

"Why does anyone do anything, except to serve their own interests? You and I are not so different. We both want a better world. Though our definition of a better world is where those similarities stop."

He stopped strumming his harp and cracked one eye. "Look at you, weathered and worn from fighting for those who don't give a damn about you. Those who'd rather see you dead. You're so stupid."

Octavia scoffed. "And I bet you think you're some kind of visionary for allowing the netherborne to ravish this island."

"No, I'm just a humble researcher. But I work in the name of a visionary. The Dawnfire Lily was years ahead of their time. Bringing the netherborne into this world was a stroke of genius, really. Now we can weed out the weak among us and take this world as our own."

"And by we, you mean...?"

"Necromancers of course. The humans don't stand a chance against the scourge, but it's no threat to us. We have become the apex predators. The netherborne can be a means to our glorious end—a world where we take our rightful place at the top."

"This is not the way, Eli. Destruction and death is not the way."

He sat up straighter, tendrils of hair falling into his face and shook his head at her like was a silly child. "And why not? From death comes new life and new purpose. Arietta is proof. When she died, I saw the opportunity to make this world safer for necromancers. Imagine if we could use a cadaver as an anchor. Plant them in places like the Divine City. The weak amongst us would be wiped out with little effort."

Octavia's stomach turned over, forcing her to swallow a few times before she could speak. "There are safe places for necromancers in—"

"You think every necromancer wants to be cooped up at the archives all their lives?" He gestured wildly with one hand. "Some of us want to travel and explore without fearing for our lives. Don't you think we deserve that? Don't you think we deserve better?"

"We do. Of course, we do, but we shouldn't trample over everyone else to get there. There are innocent—"

"Innocent? You mean those who stand idly by whileour kind are slaughtered? Will you stop being so blind? We were given an opportunity to make this world our own and you're squandering it by consorting with the enemy. The ordinary are beneath us. This world belongs to the extraordinary."

Octavia laughed. "Interesting coming from someone who made his own daughter suffer."

Eli looked down, and his eyes misted. "I loved my daughter, but I lacked the power to save her from her sickness. I mourned her long before her passing."

"And now she's stuck here in a rotting body. I hope you're proud of yourself."

He smiled. "Arietta's suffering is a small price for a better future. And when we achieve that, statues will be erected in her honour. She'll be remembered as the genesis of our new world."

Octavia ground her teeth together and kept her breaths even. Lies. All lies. He didn't care about Arietta. She was just an experiment. If he truly cared about her, he wouldn't have trapped her in this cruel world. She deserved to frolic in the meadows of Eternity, free from pain and sickness, and he stole that from her.

Eli strummed his harp again, its gentle notes filling the space between them and he smiled. The same sweet smile as Arietta. "You wanted to know what you could do to make her more comfortable. The answer is nothing. All your sin and symphony can't save her now."

Octavia lunged forward and caught him by the throat, slamming him into the shop door. Her vision flashed in and out of green hues. "You scum. I hope you rot."

"Go... ahead," Eli said, the words coming out like a cough. "Show... everyone." He wheezed, the sweet smile crossing his lips again. "The monster... you truly are."

The pounding of hooves sounded in the distance, their thunder rolling through the ground and shaking the snow. "Octavia!" A cloud of snow billowed up in her peripheral, and a whinny filing the air.

"Octavia." The voice stroked her ears like a song and a hand landed on her bicep, squeezing gently. "Stop, this isn't you."

Someone scoffed behind her. "Let her kill him."

Eli's grip on her wrist slackened, but his smile remained. He wanted this. He wanted her to kill him so he wouldn't face the consequences of his actions. A true coward.

Octavia relaxed her fingers, and he dropped like a sack of grain. "Just get him out of my sight."