A whippoorwill sang its name somewhere close. The bird's curling poors and trilling wills snagged at Sofia's mind, plucking at the taut strings of her nerves. She clasped her hands in her lap and bent over them. Her chest hurt. Her eyes were dry, opened wide, staring into nothing.

Sir Fair joined them in the sitting room at some length. Sofia rose from her seat and opened her mouth, but words wouldn't come. Sir Fair said nothing, so there was nothing to be said. Sofia collapsed back into herself and the soft whippoorwills. She was aware of Sir Fair watching her, but couldn't muster any interest in his purpose.

Miss Hale had served tea. Sofia reached for her cup, mostly for something to do.

"It has gone cold," Miss Hale said. "Allow me."

Sofia let the woman fix her a fresh cup. She held it in her hands after, mostly for its warmth. Miss Hale nudged a plate of biscuits her way. Sofia found the sight of them sickening, and turned her face away.

A splash of red caught her eyes.

The whillpoorwill fell silent. All things did, lost under a sudden rush of noise at Sofia's temples. Dr. Beaufort was in the room, had walked in without her notice somehow, silent as a shadow and just as grim. His face glowed white. His suit and hands wore a darker, rusted color.

"Please," Sofia said.

Sir Beaufort, too, said nothing.

Sofia was aware of Miss Hale at her side, of Sir Fair looming at her back. She couldn't hear them. She couldn't hear herself but her throat hurt, so she must have been speaking - screaming, the same word, over and over again.

"I am sorry," Sir Beaufort mouthed without a voice.

Sofia's world crumbled.

#

There was a sound. A thin, fragile noise that rose and fell sharply in the still air. It took Valeri a moment to realize it had emerged from the girl's mouth. He felt it resonate in his chest and etch in the quiet space that once thrummed around a beating heart.

"Please," the girl whispered.

He could not speak a word.

Sofia's eyes dulled as Valeri watched. Her skin seemed to pale; her body grew smaller, curling into itself as if wounded. Valeri wished to calm her, but found his mind strangely muddled. Words of comfort, meaningless social trinkets as they were, would not fall from his tongue. He almost welcomed Sofia's mourning cry for breaking the awful quiet.

The girl twisted around, the movement stilted and vicious, and darted out of the room before any of them could think to stop her. The desperate thumping of her feet was cut off by the sound of the front door slamming open. A blast of wind invaded the manor, tangling cool fingers through Valeri's hair. It carried the scent of hunt, of life, of night and open skies.

Valeri blinked at the large hand wrapped around his arm. Eyes like bloody moons rose to the soldier's face. The man met them without flinching.

"Do not go after her," the soldier ordered. Valeri tried hard not to bare his teeth at the man's presumption. "You owe me an explanation, Beaufort."

"I owe you nothing," Valeri hissed.

The stench of the rotten woman still stung his throat. The sight of her—an empty corpse spilled dry on a white bed—was not one he would ever forget. Valeri had seen death, had been death often enough that it should not have mattered.

He hadn't meant for this woman to die. That made all the difference.

"Sir Beaufort?"

Ira's voice was steady. Valeri grabbed at the sound and anchored himself in it, in the manor, in his own skin. The bloodlust left him by slow degrees. The soldier released Valeri and took a step back. His eyes didn't leave Valeri's face, his wide mouth clenched tight. The man's anger no longer roused Valeri to answer in kind.

"Ira. Please, follow Miss Korral," he instructed.

"Yes, Sir," the woman said, and left immediately. The front door shut behind her, enclosing the manor in oppressive stillness.

"You said you'd save her," the soldier ground out. Cast in the shadows of flickering flames, the man seemed a monster in his own right: speckled in gold and glinting metal, his eyes as vicious as those of any beast.

"It did not work," Valeri said. "The poison absorbed my blood. It ate it, like a living thing. Do you understand?"

The soldier shook his head. Valeri's mouth curled in displeasure, the prospect of discussing his failure with one of the Queen's dogs almost as distasteful as the task that had brought the man to his door. He had his own questions however, and no desire to play a part in this sordid case, however circumstantial his involvement. Refusing the soldier knowledge would bring the Queen breathing down his neck in short order.

"My blood was meant to aid Mrs. Korral's body in fighting off the toxins that polluted it. Instead, it—" Valeri ground his teeth, remembering the ugly spread of black poison through the woman's veins. His blood had been of help, but not to Mrs. Korral. "What do you know about the creature that did this?"

The soldier had been watching Valeri closely. For a lumbering mass of muscle, he didn't appear dimwitted or falsely confident. More the pity. "Not much," he answered at length.

Valeri fought the desire to bash the man's large, bald head into his body. "Tell me," he coaxed instead. "Perhaps I can be of help. We agreed to share knowledge, besides."

"Very well," the soldier said at last. He spoke slowly, obviously thinking every word through, "A body turned up in Aras six months ago. Its throat had been savaged, the flesh bloated with black rot. Investigation revealed it the third of its kind on record."

"How many since?" Valeri asked.

"Nine, now."

Valeri privately noted the number as closer to thirty. The Amith Capil would not dispatch a team for a measly dozen - scores more died by the month across the kingdom, at the claws of vicious beasts and each other's hands.

"You are not cooperating with the Dvor." It was not a question. Valeri would have been made aware of the case, had his kin been assisting with the search.

"We inquired," the soldier said shortly, "And were refused."

Relief tempered Valeri's disquiet. The creature must not pose a threat of a kind necessitating supernatural involvement, if the Dvor had not seen fit to mobilize its own forces. "And so you entered my territory, without official permit or notice."

The soldier didn't have the courtesy of shame or fear. He watched Valeri with cool, pale eyes, by all appearances unconcerned by the gravity of his situation. Valeri could tear him to pieces, and no man would be able to hold him accountable. Humans lived by one set of rules, Valeri's kind - by another. The Amith Capil was bound to both.

"The Queen's word is enough to light my way," the soldier said.

"It might have been, once." The droll of it all hit Valeri suddenly - the absurd words, the book-perfect bravado. He could not even be angry. The soldier was a remnant of a time Valeri himself held dear, a time when those who ruled did so justly. "I want nothing to do with this," he decided.

"We expect no help from your kind," the soldier told him.

Valeri held back an ungainly snort. Had they not? The Dvor had refused them, not the other way around. "Your team," he said, and watched the man closely, "Where are they? I will not tolerate more unexpected visits." The Amith Capil hunted in packs of three. Valeri had been bitten enough times to put that particular detail to mind.

"They have their own tasks," the soldier dismissed. Under Valeri's steely gaze, he added, begrudging, "You need not fear. We are not here for you."

It seemed pointless to push further and risk riling either or both of them to bloodshed. "You will find this nightmare," Valeri ordered, "Preferably before it drags any more bodies to my doorstep."

"I will do my best," the soldier said drily.

Valeri nodded. "That will do. Now, kindly take yourself and your Queen out of my sight."

#

Ira found Sofia by the stream. The girl was a small, lonely spot of gray huddled amid mud and tall grass. The water chortled as it ran by her, as black as the sky above them. The woman approached slowly, making plenty of noise. Once she was within a few steps of the huddled body, she stopped walking entirely and waited to be acknowledged. The girl seemed to be drawing in the mud with her bare hands. Her shoulders twitched with the motion. A bag lay in the grass some feet away, and something glinted from within.

Sofia's soft breaths grew more haggard, the movement of her arm agitated. Ira wasn't at all surprised when the stilted tension exploded in a flurry of motion, not startled at all to find the girl's face inches from her own.

"Leave me alone!" the girl screamed.

The sound of her was terrible. High and cold with hate, Sofia's voice rang in Ira's ears with awful familiarity. Ira had sounded like that, once. She had smelled of salt and terror, had screamed with rage over pain that would never be eased.

Ira caught the fist that swung at her face and wrapped her arms around the growling girl, pulling her close. "You are too weak for what you mean to do."

Sofia tried to wrench away, but Ira held her tight. When the strength to fight finally left her, the girl sagged against Ira with a broken sob.

"The thing that killed mom is still out there," she whispered, voice shaky, "it's still out there, and no one believes me, no one sees."

"I do," Ira said.

Sofia looked at her with eyes red from crying. "Do you?" she challenged.

"I lost someone dear to their kind, a long time ago," Ira said. "No one believed me, either."

The girl searched her face, distrustful and desperate. "What did you do?" she asked.

Ira's smile was rueful. "Something foolish. Come, now. Let us go inside. There will be time enough for vengeance."

Sofia's lips trembled, but she gathered her bag and took Ira's hand when it was offered.

Across the river, the dense shadows of the woods gained bright, golden eyes.

Ira's breath caught. She ushered Sofia forward, and looked back only once they reached the door, the girl safely beyond the threshold. The eyes were gone. The forest rustled and cooed with the song of night birds, as if coming out of a trance.

Ira closed the door on them all. Beaufort Manor wrapped around her, protective and possessive.