“A wound?” I asked, immediately loosening my hold. I did not let go, though. I raised her arm higher, inspecting the dark mark. No bleeding. A bruise? “When did this happen?”

She gave me no answer besides the curling of her fingers into a fist. I ran my thumb, more gently this time, along the swollen area, all the while mentally reviewing the places I’d touched her since yesterday. Her jaw, her waist, her upper arm... Had I grasped her flimsy little wrist here, too? I stroked the dark mark over and over, back and forth, wondering with something that felt far too much like shame if I’d done this.

The human shuddered, a feverish tremble running up her slender arm. I released her as if I’d been branded. She took back her arm and hid it beneath the table.

“What is your name?” I asked, my voice sounding harsh and hoarse in my ears. I cleared my throat, and the sound made her finally turn her small face back up to mine. “You already know mine. You called me Lord Wylfrael. What is your name?”

She pressed her lips against each other and looked away.

I fought the urge to grab her arm again, to make her face me even if it hurt, to force her to tell me what I wanted to know. It was bizarre – ridiculous – that I cared this much about her insignificant name at all.

But that didn’t stop the wanting.

“I will find out eventually, little human,” I muttered. It would only be a matter of time until I learned her name and everything else I wanted to know, too. In the meantime, I’d already gleaned one facet of information about her, whether she’d wanted me to or not.

As I stalked from the room, it was all I could think about, that blooming secret I’d stolen from her skin:

The hateful, ugly, beautiful colour of her body when it bruised.

I DECIDED THAT GETTING space from my prisoner, as I seemed so desperately to need, meant leaving the castle entirely. I stationed Shoshen outside her chamber and then went outside. I did not use any of my powers to whisk snow away from my path as I walked, instead ploughing directly through it, enjoying the seep of cold through my trousers and boots. I spread my wings as I walked, stretching the flesh, and breathed deeply of the winter air I knew so well. I headed for the back of the estate, pausing for a moment when I saw the remnants of last night – footsteps, and the pile of collapsed snow I’d heaved up to stop the human’s escape.

Breathing out harshly, my breath like smoke in the clear daylight air, I lifted my hand and drew upon my powers, smoothing the snow, erasing every mark. Not quite satisfied but not sure what else to do about it, I kept walking, entering the treeline that stood between the castle and the mountains. Back here, the sotasha barn stood, a broad building made of thick crystal tile that housed the animals Sionnachans used for leather, milk, fur, and meat. I could hear the massive, shaggy white beasts huffing and grunting inside. Beside the barn was a structure much more open to the air. A single sontanna stood there, its antlers and fur snowy silver, its mane a luminous pale pink, like Sionnach’s sky. It watched me warily. Pain hit me, like a blow, when I remembered this sontanna did not know me. Like Aiko, Ashken, and Shoshen, it was a descendent of creatures I’d once loved, and it looked at me like I was a stranger.

If Ashken and Shoshen had done their jobs as Masters of the Grounds, the sontanna would be well trained. I would be able to approach it, to command it, and ride it if I wished.

But I turned from it instead, forging further into the trees, until the silent sontanna, the snuffling sotasha, the castle, and my prisoner, were out of sight.

I did not stop walking until I hit the mountains. My wounds hurt, but I could tell that even the deepest ones inflicted by Skalla were healing well. Slowly, my power was returning. By tomorrow, I might be strong enough to open a sky door to Rúnwebbe’s world...

That thought spurred me on, gave me energy. I bent my legs and launched into the air, throttling higher and higher. Once high enough, I caught the wind, sailing easily among the mountains and over the valleys. I decided in the air I’d visit the nearest villages. I wanted to see what information they had about what had happened while I’d been gone, and to re-establish myself among them. To assert that I was still alive, that I was here. That I had returned, even when they’d all feared I wouldn’t.

The nearest village, even on wings as quick as mine, was nearly half a day’s flight from my castle. It would give me time and distance to think, I reasoned, as I set myself on the path.

But by the time I reached the village, though, I did not feel I’d had nearly enough time to think at all. I’d come to no new conclusions about the various problems pricking at me. I still had to visit Rúnwebbe before I’d be able to speak to the human, and beyond that, I still needed to tackle larger problems – Skalla and the council, the star-darkness, and finding my mate. The issues were bound up together in a tangled web that even Rúnwebbe would envy.

I pushed it all aside for now to focus on my current task, hating how the human’s face was the hardest to push aside of them all.

This Sionnachan village stood on a high, broad hill, bare in the middle of dense forest. At least, it had the last time I was here. It had grown since then, the buildings spilling down the hill into cleared land, pushing the forest back. The village buildings looked so squat and short compared to the spires of the castle I’d come from and the trees scattered around. Sionnachans made their buildings using materials from the trees, but they did not carve up into the trees themselves the way my father had done when he’d built the castle for my mother. Typically, Sionnachan buildings were boxy, or cylindrical, made from crystal tile and bricks, their roofs angled to help the snow slide off and not build up too heavily on top.

I landed at the base of the hill, in the centre of a lane mostly cleared of snow. I walked along the broad lane, which led up the hill. A sled pulled by two graceful sontanna crested the hill ahead of me, beginning the descent. I stepped aside to make way, taking note of the way the two Sionnachan males in the sled twisted to gape at me in disbelief as they passed. Another Sionnachan, who’d been sweeping snow away from her front door, dropped her broom and then hastily flattened her ears at the sight of me. I grunted a greeting at her, which caused her to nearly jump out of her tawny skin. When I took a step towards her, she gasped and fled inside, leaving her broom half-buried in the snow.

Getting answers may not be as easy as I’d hoped, I thought to myself as I retrieved her broom and stood it up against the bricks of her home. Here, beyond the mountains, the trees grew in slightly different variations. There were fewer pink and green trees and many more purple ones, which meant most of the buildings in the village glinted like purple gems among the snow.

I was glad to see so many new buildings. The village had clearly prospered in my time away. And yet, there was an arresting sort of relief that overtook me when I reached the top of the hill and found the main road through the village fundamentally unchanged. When my eyes fell on one of the largest buildings – a broad tiled cylinder shining in the afternoon sun – I knew exactly where it was I needed to go.

If I wanted answers, if I wanted to talk, where better a place to go than the local pub, where tongues were loosened by ale?

I unfurled my wings and flew there, landing at the pub’s door before wrenching it open and stepping inside.

I was right – this was the place to come for chatter. The main circular room of the pub was filled to the crystal rafters with it. More than two dozen Sionnachans ate, drank, and conversed along spiralling benches that curled inward from the rounded outer wall.