She slipped from his desk, testing her balance. Her wound warned her with subtle pulses of pain, but she ignored those and limped toward the open window.
A wintry breeze rushed toward her, the cold stinging her cheeks and bringing with it the scent of snow and darkness. Linn shivered but leaned forward. Embracing it. My element, she thought, and when she opened her eyes again, the world became the movement of air, the subtle shift in currents and drafts as they circled each other in a never-ending dance.
I am the girl of wind and shadows.
“We go,” she said.
* * *
—
The night swallowed them as they climbed out onto the sill, stars unfurling above Linn’s head in a kaleidoscope of silver. She breathed in deeply, entranced for a moment by their quiet magic and ever-present glow, the light of other worlds glimmering through that vast stretch of fabric of the sky.
A story flitted through her mind—one her mother had told her, of how the stars were formed by the tears of two lovers separated. Their love now lights the night sky, Ama-ka had said, before she brought her eyes to meet Linn’s, just as mine will light yours and Enn’s, wherever you are.
Linn pushed the memory away, and it dissipated as easily as snow in the wind. “This is going to be—” she began, but the word hard dissolved on her tongue as the yaeger cinched something around her waist.
Smooth, transparent fabric, shimmering just slightly to give it existence, draped over her shoulders. She would know this fabric anywhere—just as she would know this contraption around her waist and shoulders. By her side, the yaeger had stepped out onto the stone ledge and strapped himself to her.
Linn’s heart tumbled as she touched the fabric between her shoulders. “Chi,” she said, in her native tongue, the word tasting bittersweet. Wing. “A Kemeiran chi. Where…where did you get this?”
“I’m an Imperial Patrol,” the yaeger replied, looking faintly amused. “Surely I’d have some better method of escape than jumping off the edge of a cliff.”
A strange knot formed in her throat—a tangle of hope and happiness followed by such insurmountable grief that she thought she’d crack open. Her fists clenched tightly around the chi.
The last time she’d flown with one of these, Enn had been taken.
“I don’t know if I can do this.” She tried to keep her voice strong. It came out small.
She felt the yaeger shifting beside her. When she glanced at him, his eyes were trained on her, his gaze as steady as his hold on a silver knife. “It’s all right,” he said, and somehow, the deep tone of his voice grounded her. “I’m what they call a yaeger, after all. I control the flow of your Affinity—I can suppress it, or in this case, I can channel it.” A wry smile came to his lips. “I much prefer the latter.”
Linn stood, and the world dipped, expanding into a stretch of a cliff that sloped down sharply, alternating between shadows and ghost-white snow. Beneath, the pines were only a mass of darkness, as small as grains of rice she could hold in her palms. Her head spun, and the familiar nausea, combined with that cold touch of fear, gripped her. The image came back to her, jarring in all the ways it was wrong: Enn’s body, crumpled, his chi folded in on itself, plunging from the skies.
She sensed movement next to her, and the next thing she knew, strong hands—strong, but gentle—clasped around her shoulders, their warmth shielding her temporarily from the cold of the night. “Look at me,” the yaeger said. She met his gaze; it anchored her. “I won’t let you fall. All right? I won’t. Just focus on me and focus on your Affinity.”
Linn forced herself to nod. He’d been a lieutenant before his expulsion—and she knew from the Wind Masters that power came not only from physical strength but from mental fortitude as well. The best commanders had high sensitivity to their subordinates’ thoughts and knew how to manage their troops’ emotions when needed.
Perhaps she was being managed.
But if she died, then he would die, too. That was cold comfort.
Linn drew a deep breath and closed the gap between her and the yaeger in a single step. He went stone-still as she clasped her hands around his waist, her head barely at his neck.
“Hold tight, and listen for my signal,” she said, hoping she sounded commanding.
Her Affinity leapt to her call and her winds roared to life: triumphant and strong and free. Her heart ballooned with the fabric of her chi, the transparent silk blooming over their heads, buoyed by the draft.
“Now!” Linn cried.
The ledge fell away from beneath them—and then they were falling.
At first, that was what it felt like—free-falling, tumbling in a messy tangle of limbs and hair and fabric. Linn tugged on her winds, and she felt another presence descend upon her Affinity in her mind, warm and strong as a guiding hand, pulling with her. Her chi spread like two stretches of gossamer wings above her shoulders, pulling them back, back.
And then they were flying. Soaring, in an infinite sky of stars and snow, the wind whipping their faces and howling past their ears. The ground beneath felt so far away—because she was flying—and the world had stretched into a boundless realm of possibility and hope and…magic.
Something rose in her chest, buoyed by the winds that lifted her, and suddenly she was laughing, shrieking with glee as they soared over the summit of a mountain, its jagged peaks and snow-topped caps reaching for them from far below. The moon was a scythe in the midnight sky, and for the first time in many, many long years, Linn thought she could reach the stars.
Hope unfurled in her chest: tiny, broken wings.
Would she find her way home, after all? Was she still worthy of acceptance from her family, her Wind Masters, and her empire?
They were descending now, and her winds seemed to have taken a mind of their own. They cradled her like giant, invisible arms that extended from the night sky, gently lowering her and the yaeger on the chi that flapped lightly overhead.
The shadows below parted into the tops of individual pine trees, snow glittering silver between them beneath the moonlight. Linn tugged on her Affinity, deftly weaving her winds like pulling strings at a Kemeiran shadow puppet show. They spiraled down, landing in the snow.
The world stilled.
Linn pushed herself to a sitting position. The elation of her flight gone, she was suddenly shivering. Using her Affinity so soon after an injury had hollowed her bones and swept away her energy, leaving her an empty husk.
Something warm was draped over her shoulders. Fur tickled her chin.
“Take my coat,” the yaeger said, his deep voice melding with the night. “You’ve earned it.”
Linn didn’t even have the strength to reply. As she drew the coat around her, she heard the sound of rummaging behind her. A moment later, the yaeger appeared with a cold bliny pancake.
A sharp pang of hunger tore through her, insistent now that her adrenaline had faded. It was all she could do not to snatch it from him. Linn finished it in three bites, the faint taste of fish and cream lingering on her lips.
She glanced around them for the first time. They’d landed in the middle of the Syvern Taiga, with nothing but trees surrounding them for miles and miles.
“We camp here for the night.” The yaeger was already spreading the chi around them, the fabric shimmering just slightly as it unfurled over the snow. This was why chi was the ideal material for Kemeiran windsailer scouts and warriors: It was light as air, thinner than silk, yet possessed tremendous heat preservation properties.
A small ounce of gratitude sparked within her as she watched him spread another blanket over the ground. She didn’t think she could have walked a single step more, and she was glad he didn’t suggest it.
The yaeger sat himself on the thicker blanket, laced with bright colors and intricate patterns that did not resemble anything Cyrilian that Li
nn had ever seen. He nodded at the makeshift chi pallet. “I’ll take first watch. Get some rest.”
Linn dredged up every last ounce of strength left in her and stumbled over to the chi. It was older, stiffer from lack of use, but if she clutched it in her fists and closed her eyes, she could pretend it was the one Ama-ka and her Wind Masters had gifted her after her Affinity had manifested; the same one she’d taken with her when she’d flown with Enn, and they had lain beneath a star-strewn sky and whispered about their futures.
The light of the stars was cold, the night sky as black as her grief. Her fists shook as she wrapped the chi around her, wishing it could cocoon her from the reality of a world in which she might never see her family and her home again.
“Kemeiran girl.” She heard the yaeger’s voice as though from a distance. “I never learned your name. We…started off on the wrong foot.”
The last thing she wanted to do was to answer him. After all, she didn’t plan to go far with him. In the next few days, once she had healed adequately to journey by herself, Linn would leave him.
Still, he had saved her life. She owed him this.
Linn pushed past the ache in her throat. “My name,” she said, “is Linn.”
Sleep came to her, its edges jagged with the promise of uneasy dreams. Dimly, in the twilight between wakefulness and dreams, she thought she heard his response.
“My name is Kaïs.”
Snow fell, dusting the world in an eternal gray.
Ana brought her valkryf to a stop, her breath curling in a misty puff, the pain in her back muted in the cold. Up here on the mountains the air was thinner, the conifers frozen beneath a coat of white that offered little shelter against Cyrilia’s unforgiving winter storms.
On the other side, though, was the start of Southern Cyrilia—and her destination, Goldwater Port.
The regular route to Goldwater Port was around these mountains, on the main road that merchants and trade wagons frequented. It would also be crawling with Imperial Patrols. Injured and alone, Ana had made for the quicker and far more dangerous path: the notoriously difficult Ossenitsva Cross.
Overhead, the sky had turned a shade of dark gray that promised snowfall.
She pressed a hand to the small of her back. She’d found a flesh Affinite healer who’d closed her wound in a remote village, asking no questions about the scarf Ana kept wrapped tightly over the lower half of her face. But the flesh was still raw and puffy as it settled into a puckered scar, and she’d been instructed to clean it each night. The constant ache still drained her, slowing her pace considerably.
The Ossenitsva Cross should have taken her less than a day’s time to pass. But night was falling, and still the maze of conifers stretched beyond her sight, icicles clinking erratically in the wind.
She should stop and make shelter before true night fell and the temperature plummeted.
And yet…
She had heard stories of the Ossenitsva Cross, where the Deities’ Lights pressed low against the mountaintop and, in the darkness, turned to a magic more vicious and haunting. Hunters and traders and excursion scholars had disappeared up the frozen roads, never to return.
Ana squinted at the distant horizon, where the last light of the sun drained a cold, ice blue from the sky, yielding to night. She was so close to the bottom of the mountains. Another hour or two and she should be there.
Ana clicked her tongue and dug her heels into her valkryf. The steed huffed and began to steadily plow ahead, its clawed hooves finding grip through the snow more easily than any other horse, its milk-pale gaze cutting easily through the dark. Ice had frozen to its thick white mane; snowflakes clung to its long lashes.
By now, Ana had thoroughly given up on brushing or shaking the snow off herself. Her fur cloak, varyshki boots, and leather gloves were iced over, the scarf she’d wrapped over the lower half of her face frozen from the humidity of her breath. It scratched her cheeks as she swayed astride her valkryf, the world blurring into a mass of darkness and pale gray.
Her valkryf snorted.
Ana blinked, unsure of when she’d fallen into a stupor. It was easy to become drowsy in the cold, and in the days when she’d traveled with May or Ramson, they had kept each other awake and talking.
Phantom laughter flitted through the trees.
The hair on her arms rose. All around, a strange silence had fallen to replace the howl of the winds. Snow fell, in agitated flurries. The air thickened.
Her valkryf gave a shrill whinny. The sound raised gooseflesh on Ana’s skin. Her steed had slowed and begun tossing its head, the whites of its eyes rolling. Ana tightened her grip on its reins and flared her Affinity, searching for traces of blood in the storm.
Nothing.
It was then that her valkryf screamed, and Ana heard it: a high-pitched howl, threading through the vast, empty mountains.
Beyond the blinding curtain of snow, something moved.
Her horse shrieked again, and Ana reached for her dagger. “Steady,” she murmured. She spoke as much to herself as she did to her valkryf, gripping the reins tightly to stop her hands from shaking.
Two pinpricks of light appeared ahead—a sickly, pale blue, the color of the dead. They moved too steadily to be torches or anything human.
Wind gusted past her in a howl, and the childhood stories and rumors of creatures that haunted the distant mountains of her empire swept through her mind. Too late, Ana realized what it was—and that her dagger held not even a modicum of use against this type of creature.
An icewolf stepped through the snow.
It towered over her valkryf, carved wholly of ice, its weathered body veined through with frost, fangs of icicles longer than her forearms. Most terrible were its eyes: corpse white and dotted with a tiny blue pupil.
Her valkryf was thrashing desperately against her reins as it retreated. Yet Ana was shaking so hard that she couldn’t move, the muscles in her legs gone soft.
They’d encountered ice spirits before, she and May: harmless syvint’sya that took the form of wild animals and small snow flurries. But there were other places in the world where the gentle magic of the Deities’ Lights turned into malignant spirits that prowled deep within the Syvern Taiga and frozen tundras of Cyrilia. The icewolf was one of them.
The myths said that the only way to defeat an icewolf was to kill the syvint’sya at its core: the pinpricks of glowing blue light in its eyes. The easiest way was by fire.
Ana’s fingers were cold as she rummaged around her pack. She’d run out of globefires; she’d rationed them out over the past few days, and she’d calculated for today to be her final travel day.
No fire. Blade it was, then.
The dagger felt heavy in her hands. Her grip was unsteady even as she raised her hand, the wind pounding at her. In this weather, chances of her aim sticking were slim to none. And her Affinity was useless against a spirit of ice and snow.
But, Ana thought suddenly, there was a way for her to combine blood and dagger.
She angled her knife toward her own thumb and slashed. Blood began to run; she ran the tip of her finger over the blade, leaving a trail of red that immediately froze over the metal. Her Affinity stirred, the crimson seeming to glow brighter as her power latched on.
A snarl distracted her; she snapped her gaze up. The icewolf watched her with eyes that emitted an untamed and utterly wild light.
Without warning, it sprang.
Ana lobbed her dagger and flung out her Affinity. She closed her Affinity’s grip over the blood on the blade. Focusing on the icewolf’s eerie blue eyes, she pushed.
Her dagger hurtled forward. Its aim was true.
The icewolf twisted in midair and uttered an unearthly scream. When it turned its gaze to Ana again, the hilt of the dagger protruded from one of its eyes. The light had flickered out. Blood
dripped from the socket.
Its other eye, though, still blazed blue.
Ana swore as the ice spirit’s growl blasted through the trees around them. Blood—she needed blood—
Her valkryf screamed, and Ana’s world tipped sharply off-balance as her horse bucked her off.
She slammed into the snow and lay there for a moment, stunned and winded. She felt the thumping of paws on the ground as the icewolf broke into a run toward her; heard its snarls, growing closer. The forest around her grew blindingly white. Snow and ice lashed at her from all directions. Frost pressed up her clothes, her shoulders, her neck.
Ana lifted a hand. Her vision blurred; her Affinity wove in and out of her focus as she grappled at the blood that clung to her thumb and wrist in frozen spirals. There wouldn’t be enough for her to make it into any semblance of a weapon to fight with. And she had run out of time.
The icewolf pounced.
Ana screamed.
And the night exploded in fire.
Flames, bright red and searing orange, swept through the snows, arcing triumphantly against the shadows of the frozen pines all around. Ana closed her eyes against the piercing brightness, pressing her face to the ground as powerful waves of heat tided over her. The mountains shook from the impact.
Through the roar of flames, she heard an eerie screaming sound, half-animal and half-phantasmal, followed by the hissing of water tossed into fire.
Ana twisted to look.
Against the night sky, flames coiled serpentine around what was left of the icewolf. The vapor around it was so thick that Ana could only see a shadow of the beast, its howls fading into ghostly moans and, finally, nothing at all.
In the silence, the only sound was that of water vapor rising from the gently steaming ground where the icewolf had stood.
The fire had sputtered out, shrinking and outlining a dark silhouette behind.
“You weren’t easy to find,” Yuri said, blowing at his smoking fingers. “Hello, Ana.”
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