There was something about this place. Something cool and calming that called to Merik, begged him to enter the pool and find release. Before he even realized what he was doing, he had stepped in. Ice swept against his shins. Another step, it reached his knees. Another step, it gushed into his boots—and that finally startled him back to the present.

He lurched around, panic slicing through his brain. His footing failed. He splashed into the pond. A frigid dunk that reached his chest and left him floundering amidst the cattails. Come, sang the water, pulling at him. Come in and find release.

But Merik was not ready for that kind of release. Not yet. He wanted to stay alive—very much so—and to escape by another way. Truly escape.

Cam and Ryber were still out there, and Merik would get back to them. And Kullen … the Fury … Merik hadn’t given up on him either.

Merik floundered to his feet, water splashing and reeds slapping, and scrabbled from the water. He was running by the time he reached the shore, and he kept on running until the pond and the corpses and the waters that sang to him were well out of sight.

On he walked, freezing now with the pond’s waters soaking him through. He was still damp by the time he reached the outskirts of Poznin. The moon was halfway through its descent, and open pasture spread for as far as Merik could see. Here, stone buildings remained mostly intact, only wind and storm and rot to tear away the wood.

And here, the chill wind bit twice as fiercely. These were the Windswept Plains—an ocean of grass and air currents that should have stirred at Merik’s magic. Should have coaxed it to life and thrummed within his lungs.

Instead, he felt nothing.

More Cleaved awaited him on the plains, spaced out now. One every fifty paces, skeletal figures that shot up from the grass. He saw no end to the rolling hills, and no end to the Cleaved either.

Until at last, just after dawn, Merik spotted the shrine he needed nestled in the sloping lowland between two hills. Beside him stood a final Cleaved, a hulking man with tattered furs and heavy boots. He looked like a Northman, like the tribal hunters that lived on the outskirts of the Sleeping Lands, where the tundra still remained habitable. As Merik had with every other person he’d passed, he wondered how this man had gotten here. He wondered if he had any family.

Either way, the man was nothing but a walking corpse now.

Far on the horizon, smoke feathered. A village or farm, perhaps, and the urge to run that way, to beg for aid—it squeezed in Merik’s empty belly. It burned inside his feet. This hunger wasn’t like the pond that had sucked him in against his will. This was his brain and his body in concert, and it was the true release, the true escape he sought.

But only if he was fast, only if Esme did not follow—and of course, she would. She or the Fury would follow no matter where Merik went, and that truth was as guaranteed as Noden’s watery end. So long as this collar bound Merik, he was Esme’s favorite toy.

Merik left the Cleaved Northman behind and stumbled down to the shrine. Please, Noden, he begged with each step. Please, let there be food. It was all he thought of as he picked up speed, almost sprinting by the time the hill flattened into lowland.

The standing stone towered larger than the one from the forest, and no grass clotted its base. Only dark soil, churned by feet and hooves. Merik had eyes only for the food, though. Fruits, bread, a wheel of cheese, and even a dried pork leg … Merik chased away the bugs and feasted. He ate so much, so fast, that he made himself sick. Still, he kept eating, gulping and swallowing until his stomach bloated and nausea grew thick in his throat. Then, he crawled to the central standing stone and slouched against it.

He lost all awareness of time, even dozing off at one point. It wasn’t until a cricket landed on his head that he startled awake. The sun had moved; the stone’s shadow stretched across him. He trembled from the cold, yet Esme was not inside his mind—she had not come at all today.

Merik didn’t know what that meant.

He hauled himself up, legs aching. He had a job to do, and it was best to do it before Esme finally checked in, with fangs bared. Gemstones, gemstones, gemstones. That was what she’d wanted, so that was what he would get. By the handful, he scooped them from the dark earth and dropped them into a drawstring satchel she had given him. They glistened everywhere, all colors and sizes. This shrine was even more beloved than the last. So many offerings for a goddess Esme claimed did not exist.

Funny that Merik had not noticed how many items were here. All he had seen was the food. Now, though, he noticed dolls and bowls, flowers and rush-woven mats. And now, he noticed the knife.

It rested atop one of the smaller stones, sheathed in wood with beautifully intricate leaves carved across it.

Merik wanted that knife.

He glanced around, as if Esme might be mere paces away, ready to pounce. Ready to punish him for daring to handle a weapon.

He saw nothing within the grass. He sensed no voice inside his brain.

Cautiously, he picked up the blade by its sheath. Wind scraped against him, tugging at bright red tassels on the hilt. Then steel hissed on metal as he slid the knife free. It shone in the afternoon sun, sharp and beautifully forged. A master’s weapon.

Oh, Merik wanted this knife.

He glanced at his boots, at the spot where his breeches tucked in, filthy but whole. Maybe he could tuck it in there, out of sight and where it wouldn’t interfere with his movements. He bent and pulled his pant leg free.

A shadow lengthened over him. A shadow shaped like a man.

Merik jerked upright and spun, heart shooting into his throat. Then he stumbled back a step.

The Cleaved from the hilltop gaped at Merik, mouth working as if he wanted to speak. But of course the Cleaved could not speak, and of course, Esme must have sent the man. Merik lifted his new knife. He would kill a Cleaved if he had to; he’d done so before.

Except the Cleaved was not attacking. The Cleaved simply stood there, swaying, shivering, and trying to work his throat.

Something was wrong. Something was off.

At last, a sound like paper ripping tore from the man’s lungs. A sharp breath later, the man repeated that sound.

He’s speaking, Merik realized, and in that same moment, he realized the man’s pupils were no longer black but iris blue. And his skin, his veins—all shadows were gone, leaving only a natural, weathered texture behind.

The man was no longer Cleaved.

Merik straightened at the same instant the man reached for Merik, beseeching. Then the former Cleaved crashed to the grass.

Merik rushed forward, dropping to the man’s side. “Are you all right?” A stupid question—the man hadn’t eaten in countless weeks, and he had somehow, by some miracle Merik could not fathom, come back from Esme’s cleaving.

Merik left the man and clambered around the stones. The bowls he’d seen earlier had been filled with rainwater. Fresh rain, he guessed, from the storms last night. Certainly fresh enough for a dying man.

He found one bowl, a massive, hammered bronze creation, and, careful not to lose a drop, he staggered back to the Northman. After setting the bowl on the earth, he hauled off his coat, then his shirt. The wind attacked; his bones shook against the sudden frost. Then he got the coat back on.

After dunking a shirt sleeve into the bowl, he brought it to the man’s lips and gently squeezed. Evrane had done this a hundred times when Merik was growing up. A hundred hundred times, bringing the sick and the injured back from the brink of death. She’d done it for Kullen too, after his breathing attacks. And every time, Merik had watched on, hands wringing and terror bright in his chest.

That same terror shone brightly now. This man had somehow survived cleaving; Merik would not let him die.

Time trickled past, moving in time to the water dropping off the cotton. Slowly, the man’s shivering subsided. Slowly, he regained control of his throat, rasping strange words that did not sound like language. Eventually, the man managed to sit up.

The sun was halfway across the eastern sky.

“I cannot understand you,” Merik told him after the man tried, yet again, to communicate. The man pointed as he spoke. First at the stone. Then at the hilltop.

Merik shook his head, trying Cartorran: “I cannot understand you.” He tried Marstoki after that, and Dalmotti and Nubrevnan too. It wasn’t until he attempted Svodish that any comprehension finally marked the man’s face.

“Where?” the man asked, now in Svodish. He pointed again at the stone, at the hilltop.

“Arithuania,” Merik answered.

A frown, more confusion than horror—but the horror came soon enough. “When?”

“Year…” Oh blighted Hell, how did you count double digits in Svodish? Merik couldn’t remember, so he settled on, “Year ten and nine.”

Now the shock came, and with it bile. Before Merik could grab the man and help him, the Northman lurched around and heaved. Water first, in great sprays, then dark bile, and finally nothing but choked air. By the time he finished, tears streamed down the man’s cheeks, tracking pale lines amidst the dirt.