The four weren’t certain which direction to go. They knew the cave entrance they’d entered was northwest of the road, but where this exit had brought them out was anyone’s guess. The rising sun told them where east and west were, yet that still didn’t tell them which way the road lay.

  Edmund suggested they split up. Whichever pair found the road first would fire a signal into the sky. For that purpose, he and Serena would need to separate. Only the two of them could produce an ether blast, and, if Edmund had any say in it, Serena wouldn’t be stuck listening to Filandra the whole way.

  “I’ll take her,” he said, already turning.

  “Please, let me walk with her. I can carry her things, clean her clothes, brush her hair—” Filandra began, but Edmund grabbed her by the arm and dragged her off, her voice fading as they disappeared between the trees.

  “She really seems drawn to you,” Leif remarked as they watched them go.

  Serena’s lips curved. “I almost feel bad.”

  “Let’s get going,” Leif said, “before you decide to run after them.”

  Serena bumped his arm with her elbow, and they set off. The prince headed east while they took west. The forest air was a breath of fresh, literally and figuratively. Sunlight filtered through the canopy in pale shafts, the air cool against their faces, leaves whispering overhead, and, most importantly, they weren’t bracing for something to lunge at them every ten steps. They walked in silence at first until it was broken by the sound of their own stomachs.

  “This forest should still have something,” Leif said as he glanced around. He suggested they find food before going any farther. Thanks to his strange knack for sensing vitality in vegetation, it didn’t take long. He veered off the faint path and led Serena to a bush heavy with berries, and, just beyond it, an apple tree still stubbornly bearing fruit. The two of them hadn’t realized how hungry they were until they started grabbing berries by the handful and shoving them into their mouths like there was no tomorrow.

  They stripped the bush bare, ripe ones first, then even the green ones, before turning on the apple tree next. It might have met the same fate if their stomachs hadn’t started protesting halfway through, forcing them to slow down. After they finished, Leif gathered a few more apples and a handful of berries for the rest of their walk, then they sat beneath the tree to rest.

  Serena leaned back against the trunk, tilting her face up as she let the sunlight warm her skin. Her eyes drifted shut. “That ability is really helpful.”

  Leif sat nearby, drank from his waterskin, then handed it to her. “Sure is,” he said with a small smile. “One of the better gifts of being Alvarynn.”

  He hesitated, gaze flicking to the branches above. “You know… Mother relied on it when she made her way to Aurelith.”

  Serena had only taken a few sips before putting the waterskin down. The story was new to her. “She did? She never told me that.”

  Leif’s expression dimmed, but his voice stayed steady. “Her village was attacked by human raiders,” he began. “She said it was far to the east. Somehow, she escaped, and she just… kept moving west. She followed whatever still felt alive. Fruit, clean water, anything she could sense, anything that could help her survive. It took a while until she finally reached Aurelith.”

  “I didn’t know she went through that kind of hardship,” Serena murmured, her gaze dropping as she handed him his waterskin back.

  “She doesn’t like talking about it much,” Leif said, taking another sip. “Mother said it still hurts, remembering that day. But she always ends it the same way.”

  His expression softened, giving a faint, almost embarrassed smile. “With a pat on my head.”

  Serena glanced up at him.

  “She was carrying me at the time,” Leif added quietly, voice gentler now. “She always says I’m the reason she kept going. That it was me who got her all the way to Aurelith.”

  “Sounds like you’ve been giving her a hard time from the beginning,” Serena teased. She hesitated, then asked another question. “How did she end up at the palace, though?”

  “Her plan was to reach Lunaris,” Leif explained, “the Alvarynn sanctuary north of Aurelith. But after she reached a village in the kingdom, she gave birth to me.” His mouth quirked, half amused. “She didn’t want to keep traveling while I still needed constant care. And, thankfully, Aurelith was welcoming to our kind.”

  “And then?” Serena asked, turning fully toward him, curiosity deepening.

  Leif’s expression grew more serious. “A few years after I was born, Edmund’s mother, Queen Emilie, fell ill. No one understood what sickness had taken her. King Renault grew desperate, so he sent messengers across the kingdom, searching for anyone who might be able to help.”

  “When one came to our town, mother stepped forward,” he continued. “Her gift wasn’t limited to plants.”

  He glanced at Serena, weighing how much to say. “It worked on animals too, and on people.”

  “Did she ever find out what happened to the Queen?” Serena asked.

  Leif frowned, searching his memory. “She told me it was… something about a… what did she call it—parasite? Or maybe she just said it felt like one. I don’t remember the exact word.” He swallowed. “But whatever it was, it was eating the Queen’s mana.”

  “Mana?” Serena repeated, uneasy. “You mean… her soul?”

  Leif nodded slowly. “Something got inside her and started consuming her life energy from the inside out. Mother said it wasn’t something you could cure. The best she could do was keep the Queen alive by replenishing what was being taken.”

  He looked away, jaw tightening. “But it kept getting worse. Eventually, it was draining her faster than Mother could restore.”

  A beat of silence passed.

  “She died not long after.”

  “But the King was thankful,” Leif added. “For keeping her alive longer than his physicians swore was possible. He asked Mother to remain at the palace after… to serve as one of their primary healers. And that’s how we ended up living there.”

  “Did you ever get to know what kind of person the Queen was like?” Serena asked.

  Leif gave a chuckle.

  “She was wild,” he murmured.

  “Wild?” Serena echoed, somewhat surprised.

  “She was a good person,” Leif recalled. “But she had some… odd interests.”

  “She had a habit of riding horses in the palace, and I mean, in the palace, like in the hallways. She liked painting statues, dancing with the soldiers, pretending she could talk to their pets, and, most concerningly according to those who knew her, calling dignitaries… names.”

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  “What kind of names?” Serena asked.

  Leif inhaled, looked around, and leaned closer to her ear, whispering.

  Serena’s eyes widened. “Oh… those names. She sounds like… an interesting woman.”

  “The palace was definitely different back when she was alive,” Leif responded. “Well, I think I’ve spoken enough already. Do you need more time to rest?”

  “I’m good to go,” Serena said, pushing herself to her feet. “Let’s continue.”

  She hesitated, then offered him a small, sincere smile. “Thank you for sharing their stories.”

  Leif stood as well, and they set off again, keeping to the west. They spoke on and off as they walked, about the cave, about everything that had happened since the journey began, even about their first meeting.

  Somewhere between one memory and the next, Leif’s thoughts drifted.

  She had changed. A lot. Not just in confidence, or in the way she carried herself… but in how familiar she felt to him, something he couldn’t explain.

  Ever since the day he first saw her, he hadn’t been able to shake the sense that he’d known her before. And lately, with everything the kingdom had endured, she seemed to have… grown, if that was the right word. Somehow, the resemblance between her and a certain figure from a distant memory had only gotten stronger.

  It was only in his dreams. He’d walked beside a girl in a strange city, and if he remembered right, the place was vast, with glass and brick towers rising so high they almost seemed to scrape the sky. The roads were wider, smoother, and alive with people dressed in ways he’d never seen anywhere in Hemera.

  The girl had blond hair too, like Serena’s, only lighter… and her eyes were green. He couldn’t recall everything she said, only fragments.

  Where should we stay?

  Have we done enough?

  Stop teasing each other.

  He was so caught in his own thoughts that he didn’t hear Serena calling his name.

  When his mind snapped back, Serena was pointing ahead. A lone deer stood among the brush, trembling, trying to move but failing. They approached carefully and saw why. One of its legs was clamped in a bear trap.

  Leif moved first, hands open at his sides. “Easy,” he whispered, voice low. The deer’s ears flicked, its breathing quick.

  Serena came up beside him and gently stroked its neck and head, steadying it with soft touches. Leif knelt, braced the trap, and worked at the mechanism until the jaws finally released with a harsh snap. The deer flinched, then sagged.

  Serena immediately placed her hands over the injured leg. Warm light gathered between her palms, sinking into torn flesh and bruised bone. The swelling eased. The tremor in the limb calmed. Leif gave the deer a reassuring pat along its back. “Go on.”

  It took a few tentative steps, then limped away, only to stop a short distance later.

  The deer turned back to look at them, bleating once. It didn’t run. It simply stood there, head tilting sharply from side to side. And somehow, without a word, both of them understood.

  It wanted them to follow it.

  Reluctantly, they did. The deer moved at a brisk pace, weaving between trunks and ferns.

  “Did we just decide to follow a deer?” Leif muttered.

  “Maybe it knows the way out,” Serena whispered back.

  It pushed on, trudging over roots and stones, until it slipped beyond a thin line of trees, and vanished. They hurried after it, and the forest opened into a small grove. The deer stood at its center, unnaturally still, watching them.

  Nothing seemed wrong. No shift in the air, no prickle of danger. And yet something about the animal itself felt… off. They approached anyway. Step by step, they closed the distance, then the deer’s gaze locked onto Leif.

  Its eyes flared red, and a force like a hammer struck him in the chest. Leif was thrown backward, hurtling into a tree with a sickening thud, his back slamming against the trunk.

  “Leif!”

  Serena snapped toward him, but before she could move, the deer began to change.

  Shadow poured over its body like a cloak. Its form melted, dissolving into pure darkness. It eventually surged upward, reshaping into something else entirely.

  “Much better,” a voice said, eerily calm, almost regal. “Don’t you agree? Just us… in this nice, quiet grove.”

  Serena turned slowly.

  The shadow finished taking shape, the last of the darkness washing off like ink in water, revealing a man standing where the deer had been.

  He was tall, with long, wavy chestnut-brown hair swept back from a sharp, pale face. Beneath a stern, unblinking gaze, his eyes burned an intense red. A single ornate gold earring hung from one ear. He wore a high-collared dark robe beneath a deep emerald cloak, both richly decorated with intricate gold embroidery and trim. And at the center of his chest, beneath the layers of fabric, a bright crimson, gem-like core radiated a steady, unnatural light.

  Ominous didn’t begin to cover it.

  “Come,” he said, stepping toward her. “Let us have a talk.”

  Serena couldn’t move. She couldn’t even breathe properly. Her mind refused to accept what she had just seen. Behind her, Leif groaned and forced himself upright, staggering back toward them.

  The man’s head tilted, just slightly, as if Leif were an annoyance he hadn’t accounted for.

  He lifted one hand casually and opened his palm.

  Chains erupted from the tree behind Leif. They emerged from behind the trunk, coiling around his arms and torso, yanking him back and pinning him to the tree. He gasped, struggling, metal biting into him as it tightened.

  “Leif!” The shout tore Serena out of her trance.

  She snapped her arm up, ether gathering at her palm, and hurled a blast at the man.

  With a lazy flick of his hand, he swatted it aside as if batting away a gnat.

  Serena’s breath hitched. She drew more, far more, condensing a larger sphere of ether and firing again. It struck the man head-on. For a heartbeat, light flooded the grove, and then the ether dispersed, shredding into nothing without so much as scuffing his robe.

  Serena stumbled back, and in a blink of an eye, he was there, standing close to her. His fingers closed in her hair, and pain flared at her scalp as he yanked her head back, forcing her to look up at him.

  “Fascinating,” he said. “I didn’t think I’d see one of these again, not after so long.”

  “Let her go!” Leif shouted.

  The man’s gaze flicked to him. The bark behind Leif splintered, peeling off. It curled around his jaw and snapped shut over his mouth, sealing his shout into a muffled groan.

  “Silence, young one,” the man said, almost gently. “This won’t take long.”

  Serena thrashed, panic surging. She forced herself to focus, raised her palm as far as his grip would allow and fired an ether blast straight into his face.

  He didn’t flinch, not even a blink. Instead, he yanked her higher by the hair, pain increasing along her scalp and neck, dragging a gasp out of her.

  “I can see how you escaped the Abyss,” he said, voice calm as ever, “and made Varhathor crawl back home, and win me our little wager.”

  At the name’s mention, Serena’s eyes widened.

  Varhathor.

  The demon that had worn Tristan like a mask.

  The man’s expression didn’t change. He grabbed her face, forcing her head still, forcing her gaze into his. “What makes you different, I wonder? Because I don’t see anything particular that stands out.”

  When he let go of her face, his hand drifted down her neck, fingers settling against one side as if he were feeling for something beneath her skin. He squeezed her upper arm lightly, then her wrist, clinical and unhurried. “Your pulse seems normal, for something terrified, that is.”

  He took her hand.

  With nothing more than a glare, a thin cut opened across her palm.

  Leif jerked, a muffled scream forcing its way past the bark sealed over his mouth.

  The man released Serena’s wrist and let her blood drip into his own palm. He raised it closer, eyes narrowing as he studied it in the light.

  “Nothing peculiar.”

  His gaze snapped back to her hand. The wound knit itself shut under his stare.

  Then he shoved her down. Serena hit the ground hard, breath knocked from her lungs. Even so, she lifted her head and met his eyes with defiance.

  “Worry not,” the man said, voice as calm as ever. “We are finished here. My findings will suffice for now.”

  He lifted his hand and aimed it directly at her.

  Serena didn’t flinch. She braced herself.

  Leif’s eyes flicked wildly between them, helpless.

  A dull red glow gathered in the man’s palm, followed by a flash, and then, he was gone. In fact, not just him, but the entire grove had disappeared. Serena and Leif found themselves standing back where they’d first freed the deer. The pain on Serena’s scalp was gone, Leif was no longer bound to a tree, and in front of them, the bear trap was gone.

  Their minds raced.

  Did they actually free something? Because if they did… it definitely hadn’t been a deer.

  Terrified and confused, they looked around, then checked themselves and each other, searching for wounds, bruises, anything. There was nothing.

  “Are you all right?” Leif asked.

  “I am,” Serena said. “You?”

  “I’m fine too.” He swallowed. “But… what just happened? Did you see—?”

  Serena shook her head, just as lost. “I saw the man, but... I don’t know what he wanted… or what he was talking about.”

  Leif glanced toward the direction they’d followed the deer. “You don’t think… those berries were poisoned, right? We didn’t just hallucinate everything?”

  “I don’t think they were,” Serena said. “He felt real. And you would’ve felt that the berries were poisonous if they were.” She didn’t say more, but the mere mention of Varhathor’s name made her certain it had been more than a hallucination.

  Leif rubbed the back of his neck. “Yeah. I would have. Then…”

  Before he could finish, lightning flashed in the distance once, then again, arcing upward from somewhere below the treeline.

  Leif’s eyes widened. “The prince and Filandra found the road.”

  Serena exhaled, voice quiet. “Let’s go.”

  They followed the flashes without looking back, still wondering if it had all been a dream, failing to notice the trampled leaves and disturbed soil their own footsteps had left behind.