When Balz just stared at his reflection, Syn recognized the steady-Eddie expression for what it was: evidence that the goddamn bastard was prepared to spend as much time as it took to get what he wanted. The tenacious fucker.

Syn started the water running in the sink and soaped up his hands like he was a surgeon about to amputate a leg. Or maybe that was just wishful thinking on his part.

“I don’t recall,” he said, “there having been any discussion about a female at the meeting. Then again, I wasn’t really paying attention.”

“Back in that alley earlier. Who is this female you want me to get ahold of in the event of your death.”

Syn looked down at his soapy hands. Because, hello, cleanliness was next to godliness, and who wanted to be a dirty bird. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Yes, you do.”

“I was delirious.”

“You can’t be trusted with females, Syn. Not like you are right now.”

“I’m naked.” He indicated his body. “So they’re perfectly safe. Unless you think my . . . difficulties . . . have resolved themselves. Which I assure you they have not.”

Shit, that thing with Jo. He hadn’t wanted it to end like it had.

“We’re coming down to the end of the war, Syn. We don’t need your kind of complications right now.”

“And again, I say unto you, I dinnae know what you’re talking about.”

Balthazar stared at him. “There are limits to what I can clean up, Syn.”

“Then don’t play doggen for me. Pretty simple solution there, burglar mine.”

When the male cursed and walked off, Syn met his own eyes in the mirror. As his cousin’s words rebounded in his head, his thoughts went back to the past—and though he tried to fight it, the memories were stronger than his resolve to deny them.

’Twas three nights following the death of his sire and the onset of his transition that Syn stood in the hut that had been the only home he had ever known. As he looked at the pallet where his sire had slept, and the remains of his mahmen, and the pathetic valuables that were nothing more than containers for rope and fur, and bladders for mead, he knew what he had to do.

“You’re leaving?”

He pivoted to the heavy tarp flap. Balthazar was standing just inside the doorway, the male’s pre-transition face grown up in spite of the immaturity of the features.

“I dinnae hear you come in, cousin,” Syn said.

“You know me. I’m very quiet.”

Outside the cave, the cold wind howled, a harbinger of autumn. Summer was indeed over, and Syn felt in his bones that it would never come again.

Not that it had ever been there for him, no matter how warm any night was.

“Thank you,” Syn said as he went over and picked up one of the discarded bladders of mead.

“For what?”

As Syn sniffed the open neck, he grimaced and knew he would ne’er drink such. Ever. The memories that came with the scent made him cringe. Tossing the empty aside, he went to find another, sifting through the discord.

“Getting the female when you did,” he said. “I would have died.”

“She came on her own.”

Syn looked up with a frown. “How did she know then?”

“You saved her life. Did you think she wouldnae come see about you?”

“She should have stayed away.”

“She had the choice to or not only because of you. She told me what you did. She saw your sire in one of his moods, on the verge of their property. You drew him away. She was home alone with her brother. Fates know what would have happened.”

Syn grunted, for he couldnae speak any further of her, especially as both he and his cousin knew exactly what his sire would have done to such a delicate beauty.

Leaning down, he at last found a bladder that was half full. Lucky. His father rarely left them with anything in their confines.

“You saved her life,” Balthazar said. “She saved yours.”

“Not a fair swap,” Syn said as he took the cork out of the neck. “Not by any distance at all.”

Walking around, he poured the strong, fermented alcohol out, the smell making him choke. Since his transition, his senses were painfully acute, and his body did not feel like his own. He was so tall, his limbs flopping about, his feet too large for even his sire’s old shoes, his hands broad and long-fingered.

He didnae know what his face looked like. He didnae care about that.

“What are you doing?” Balthazar asked.

Syn paused as he came up to the feet of his mahmen. “Why did he keep her here? He didnae care for her.”

Even as he asked that of someone who wouldnae know, Syn himself had the answer. The remains were a visceral reminder of why doing what he was told was his only chance for survival. His sire had had to ensure Syn’s submission. There were many nights and days when the male was too drunk to be able to forage for food. He needed to be attended.

And he had wanted to be obeyed.

Syn murmured something to his mahmen and then he proceeded to pour the mead upon her, the dark liquid sinking into the layers of blanketing that surrounded her skeleton.

When he had emptied the bladder, he tossed the thing upon the pallet.

“Are you burning this down then, cousin?”

Dearest Virgin Scribe, he couldnae stand the stink of the mead. It took him back to nights he had been smaller. Weaker. Glancing behind himself, he saw a broken chair and remembered how he had been thrown into it, his little body splitting the arm and one of the legs.

At least his full set of teeth had come in during his change. His father had only knocked out the little ones.

Syn turned to the fire and picked out one of the logs that was alit. “You need to leave.”

Balthazar frowned. “Were you not even going to say goodbye to me?”

“You need to go.”

There was a long pause, and Syn prayed that the male didnae fall victim to emotions that were best left unexpressed.

When his cousin merely stepped out, Syn looked around one last time. Then he tossed the burning log onto his mahmen’s remains. As the flames flared and spread quickly, he thought of the heat that had torn through his body during his transition. He remembered little of what had happened with any clarity, but he recalled the heat. That and the snapping of his bones as they had grown inches in the course of hours.

He couldnae believe he had lived through it. Or that that lovely, generous female had fed him from her vein until just before dawn. With the approaching sunlight, she had had to go so that she wasnae caught in such deadly illumination. Balthazar, meanwhile, had strung up tarping around the shelter to shield Syn as the transition had continued, his body maturing to its current, unfathomable size.

He had been so weak after it was all over. He could remember lying with his cheek on the hoof-trodden, packed earth, and feeling as though he would never cool down. But eventually, as the sun had gone behind the horizon and the day’s warmth faded, so too had the burn within his torso and limbs.

When he had finally emerged from the shelter, he had braced himself to see the blood of his sire, blood that Syn had shed, the gore and the remains all that was left behind of his father. There was none. It was all gone, as if it had never been. He had asked Balthazar if he had smelled the burning during the daylight. His cousin had said yes, he had.

And after that, Syn had recovered herein this hut for the three days and nights.

Now, as flames flared further and began to spread, Syn closed his eyes and said his goodbyes. He knew not where he was going. He knew only that he couldnae stay in the village for one more night. He had no possessions and only his feet to carry him forth. But there were too many ghosts here, too many . . . people, here. He needed to find a destiny away from who his father had been and what he had done to the male as a result.

The village would know all by now. The female would surely have had to explain why she was gone for as long as she had been whilst feeding him through the change. And as for Syn’s father? The male’s brutish presence would not be mourned, but it would be very much of note.

Syn stepped out of the hut and—

Balthazar was standing just outside the cave, the reins of two strong horses well laden with supplies dangling in his hands.

“I’m coming with you,” his cousin said. “I may not be through my transition yet, but I am fast of hand and smarter than you. You will not survive without me.”

“I have already survived much and you know this,” Syn countered. “I shall be well enough.”

“Then just let me go with you. I need to get away from this place, too.”

“Because you’ve already stolen from everyone in the village and there are none who are not wary of you?”

There was a pause. “Yes. Exactly. Where do you think I got these steeds?”

“From the squire?”

“Aye. He didnae care for them well enough. They are better off with us.” As one of the horses stamped a hoof as if it agreed, Balthazar held out a set of reins. “So what say you, cousin?”

Syn didnae reply. But he took what was offered to him.

As he mounted up, Balthazar did the same. Smoke was rising from the hut, and the crackling of the fire within made the horses twitch. Soon, the blaze would eat through the thatched roof, and orange flames would lick their way out of the cave, reaching up to the heavens.

He had turned the horrible and sad home he had known into a pyre for his mahmen, and somehow, that seemed fitting.

Before they reined off, his cousin said, “Are you not going to say goodbye to the female before you go?”

Syn pictured her in that meadow before all had transpired, running free with her brother, her laughter rising, like the smoke was doing now, up to the stars.

“We are even, she and I,” he said. “It is best to leave things with this resolution.”

Spurring his horse forth, he knew he loved her. And that, more than anything else, was the real reason he didnae go unto her family’s land. It was also the true reason he was departing the village.