“Oh, I wouldn’t worry about another sending,” Valtik said airily, sitting down in the dirt. Her bare feet splayed out before her, soles black as the sky. “The threads have drawn together, all that is ending.”

Dom stood and frowned at her. “A sending?” he breathed, incredulous.

“Care to explain?” Corayne said, looking between them.

“It’s Vederan magic, rare even among my kind.” Dom paced around the witch so he could face her. She didn’t look up from her hands, busy weaving something Sorasa couldn’t see. “Vedera of great power can send images, visions, figures. To carry messages, mostly.”

Valtik tutted low in her throat and stuffed her weaving up her sleeve. She kept her back to the growing flames. “It isn’t just your magic.” Then she checked the pouch at her waist, rattling the bones inside. “Keep an eye out for rabbits, boy. I’m low on knuckle­bones. Tragic.”

Sorasa wanted to point out the absurdity of calling a five- hundred-year-old immortal being such a thing. Unless it isn’t. Unless he is a boy, to someone like her. A Spindlerotten witch. She eyed Valtik again, glaring through the shadows. The old woman was as gnarled like a tree root, her eyes unnatural, blue as the heart of a lightning bolt.

“You sent them.” Corayne’s voice was flat and hard, steely as her face. Her grip on the sword tightened, fingers locking over the leather of the sheath. “The corpses, the ghosts.”

I could smell them: they were burned and broken. I could hear the air gasping in their ruined chests. I could feel them, the heat of unending flame. They were as smoke, real and unreal, before my very eyes. Sorasa clenched her jaw, searching Valtik’s face for some answer. The old woman did not move.

“You sent them,” Corayne said again, her teeth gritted. Cold air rippled over them, a brush of winter. “Did you send my dreams too? The nightmares I’ve had all summer long?”

“Was not I who touched your sleep,” the Jydi crowed. “But something red and dark and buried deep.”

Corayne felt it now, clawing at her throat. The memory of her nightmares nearly turned sunlight to shadow. She swallowed hard but saw no lie in the old woman.

Then the squire jolted like a startled horse, some realization breaking over him. He circled the witch, incredulous. “I have not heard the whispers since I found you.”

“The whispers—what whispers?” Dom’s voice stumbled.

Trelland ignored him. “So many voices, and one like winter. One like yours.” His breath caught. “You’ve been speaking to me for weeks, telling me what to do. Keep the sword hidden, abandon my mother—”

“How?” Dom sputtered. “Whispers? A sending? They were Taristan’s army, the Ashlanders exactly—”

Valtik said nothing, content to watch them flounder. And Sorasa watched her. She crossed her arms, keeping her distance from the Jydi witch, far from the circle of the weak fire.

“I think instead of how, we should be asking why,” Sorasa murmured. “Why whisper to Andry Trelland? Why send corpse shadows after us in the night?”

To her surprise, Valtik’s head snapped up and her grin was manic, unhinged for a shivering second. The kindling crackled at her back, outlining her hunched figure, leaving her face in shadow, half formed. The light played tricks. Her teeth were too long; she went cat-eyed, pupils like slits in the strange blue. The ivy braids gleamed metallic, slick. Sorasa clenched her jaw, willing herself to see what existed and not what the witch wanted her to see.

“You know why, Forsaken,” Valtik said, blinking. She shifted, and the shadows pulled back to show an old woman again. “Something to guide you. Something to guide them. To open your eyes, after where you’ve been.”

Her muscles tightened, taut as coiled rope. “Stop calling me that, Witch.”

“I only call people what they are,” Valtik replied with a half-moon smile. She waggled her feet like a child playing before the hearth.

“And what would you call yourself, Gaeda?” Corayne said, easing herself to her knees next to the witch. Andry tensed, as if he wanted to pull her back from the old woman. But Corayne was unafraid, looking intently into her eyes.

Valtik put a wrinkled hand to Corayne’s cheek.

Corayne didn’t flinch, letting the witch stare into her.

“The North Star,” the old woman finally said, tweaking her on the nose. Then her hand darted into her long cloak, pulling out the twig-and-bone charm still crusted with dried blood. She pressed it into Corayne’s fingers, closing each one over it. “Or bizarre,” she added, chuckling.

“I agree with the latter,” Dom said.

Corayne leaned back on her heels, whirling to him. “You go to sleep,” she said, full of force. He blanched, flushing red over his cheeks and neck. The Elder had probably not been ordered to bed for centuries, if it had even happened at all.

He sputtered, “I am not a mortal infant.”

Corayne stood and shrugged, undeterred by his towering height. “We need you healthy, Dom.”

“I—oh, very well,” he blustered, storming away from the campfire.

Sorasa nearly howled when he lay down in the dirt like a dog, with no cloak, no blanket, no bed of any kind. He simply folded his arms, face to the sky, his eyes dropping shut in an instant. The snore that followed was instantaneous and unbearable.

“Would anyone stop me if I smothered him?” she muttered, scuffing her boot in Dom’s direction. “Joking,” she snapped, catching sight of Andry and Corayne’s disapproval. “Andry, I’ll wake you when it’s your turn at the watch.”

The squire ducked his chin. “All right.”

“And you, no sendings, no whispers—” Sorasa added, turning back to the witch. But Valtik was gone, leaving no trace, not even the odd earthen scent that followed her everywhere.

“Oh she’s gone again,” the assassin sneered, eyeing the darkness. She felt oddly like the darkness was staring back. “Magnificent.”

With every passing day, Sorasa bet with herself. Who would break first and succumb to their curiosity? The next afternoon, she thought it would be Dom, when his eyes narrowed on her with his usual furor. But he never spoke. Corayne was an easy guess. The girl had thoughts about everything, from the strength of the wind off Mirror Bay to the growing season in the lowlands. Certainly she would find the spine to question Sorasa Sarn, the Fallen, the Forsaken. And there was Trelland too, not as blatant as the others. But he stole glances all day long, his interest obvious even to the horses. Valtik already knew and wouldn’t bother. She probably spends all day thinking up rhymes, Sorasa thought, grinding her teeth.