My bag, containing both my journal and the ritual book, was slung over the saddle. Miro had the lantern, the packs, the food, and my pen. All I had to my name was the wilted bloodrose tangled in my hair.

But I was willing to sacrifice the books to get home. Because we were in Foria now; I turned my head away from the mountain and mineshaft with no small effort—every inch of my body screamed at me not to turn my back on that gaping hole in the mountainside—and looked out over the enemy’s territory.

It was like the gods themselves had drawn their hands over the earth, raising mountains between the misty, green coolness of the Rift and the blasted ruin of Foria itself. Before me was a sea of waving grasses, baked brown by months of summer sun. There were few trees, and what little there were grew stunted and gnarled.

I narrowed my eyes, seeing deep grooves in the earth, places where the grasses gave way to rocky embankments and old walls.

“That’s where they fought,” Miro said, taking a deep draught from the waterskin. “This was a small sliver of the battleground. Most of Foria’s western border looks like this now; if anything grows, it looks poisoned. We can thank the bloodwitches for that.”

He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, sourly surveying the dead-looking land. He must be well again, if he was back to lecturing me on the evils of the war Foria had started to begin with.

I got to my feet, knees still weak as I brushed dirt from my skirt. I motioned to the waterskin and Miro handed it over willingly enough. I was valuable to him, which meant I needed to play that up, collect supplies while I could.

Despite the dryness of my throat, I took the most perfunctory possible sip and tied the waterskin to my belt while his back was turned. If he asked what I was thinking, I would simply tell him I’d done it out of habit.

Then I kicked my ankle leash aside and stepped towards him, meeting his eyes and touching my stomach, miming taking a bite of something.

A slight smile touched the corner of his mouth. “How can you be hungry after that?” he asked, but he lifted the flap of a saddlebag and dug around, pulling out a small package of oilskin. He unwrapped it, revealing strips of toffee. “Well, I suppose it’s been at least a day since I fed you. Here.”

He passed me two strips of the toffee, and I took one bite, chewing slowly, making the caramelized candy last. The rest of it I tucked it into a deep pocket while he was replacing the oilskin.

“We’ve got a few miles to go before we make camp. I want to see the creek before we stop for the night.” He buckled the saddlebag, shielding his eyes from the setting sun as he gazed into the distance. “Hakkon will find us by the signal-fire.”

I nodded, as though I were complicit in my own kidnapping. As though I wanted him to take me. As I turned my back on the mineshaft, a violent shiver coursed down my spine, sending the sensation of cold water trickling through my veins.

It was violent enough that Miro noticed, turning to give the shaft a dark look. He mounted the horse again, reaching a hand down to me. “Too damn right. Come on. We’re wasting sunlight.”

I took his hand, allowing him to pull me up sidesaddle once more, my thighs protesting after that long, tense ride, and gathered the loose coils of the tether, holding them in my lap.

Miro nudged the horse to a walk down the mountain, following a worn switchback path cut in dirt.

I looked down, picking out distinct shapes pressed into the path. Paw prints bigger than a man’s head, elongated and deformed.

Light save me.

The route through the dark had worn both of us to the bone, and the anxiety had clearly gnawed away at Miro’s chatty good mood of earlier. He was silent and watchful as he guided the horse down to the flatlands, aiming for the northeast. My fingers itched to pick at the knot of the tether, but he kept one arm around me, his hand resting loosely on the pommel, fingers covering the knot.

So my chances remained near zero as we moved through the grass. Day became evening in sullen silence, the sun sinking below the mountains and casting long shadows over the grasslands.

Miro swore under his breath, using the last stray rays of light to move the horse faster, and it was only when I heard the trickle of water that he slowed.

“Here,” he said gruffly. “Get down.”

I dismounted, legs aching, and leaned on the saddle for support, watching like a hawk. He would want light, and while he lit the lantern, I would jump back on the horse and make a break for it the way we’d come.

But Miro gave me a nasty sort of smile as he dismounted, and he kept the reins looped around his arm as he untied the tether from the saddlehorn. I thought about baring my teeth in a snarl, furious that he couldn’t be stupid and careless even for one minute, but kept it to myself.

Kept my expression pleasant and neutral, even as he led me to one of the spindly, stunted trees and tied the tether to the base.

“Pull down some of those branches,” he instructed me, turning his attention to the lantern. This time, he got the match lit on the first try.

The tree was so short, stunted and dry that it was easy to snap the lowest-hanging branches off, which I did in a desultory way as Miro cleared a small ring for a firepit. He tied the horse to another tree about ten yards away, leaving it just enough room to crop the grass around it, then lined the pit with stones and dry grass. But he kept one eye on me as he did it, ensuring that I didn’t have time to tackle the knot he’d made.

I found myself hoping that his little fire would set the whole countryside ablaze, and I’d either perish in the flames, thwarting his plans, or find the opportunity to run to the horse. But he cleared it carefully, taking my collected twigs and branches, and shoved a ball of tinder under the pyramid he made from them.

In the next ten minutes, he had a fire blazing merrily in the dark, the saddlebags set off to the side as he chewed a mouthful of dried meat and berries, and I was crouched on the other side of the flames.

Miro also had my bag, and my journal was open in his lap. I stared at him sourly through the leaping flames, wondering if he’d sleep at all, because I sure as hell wouldn’t. What I would do was curl up and pretend, and hope he drifted off on his own.

But for now, he had my full attention, because he was prying into private things that didn’t concern him.

“‘Her name is Cirri, and she is pretty’,” he read aloud, making a face. “By Wargyr, be serious. How can you love this… this absolute shit poetry, and then look at my paintings and say they’re just fine? Fine? In comparison to this?”

He threw back his head and laughed, but I had to suppress a smug smile—because that laughter was entirely manufactured. He went through the motions, but there was genuine bitterness and irritation in it.

I was glad that Bane’s small, silly poem, the words that had brought me so much happiness, were able to get under Miro’s skin and nibble him to pieces.

Good. Be eaten alive by envy, you puffed-up, self-obsessed ass. I hope you choke on it.

I would have liked to say it to him, but Miro made no move to return my journal or my pen. He flipped through the pages idly, the cap of my pen glimmering in his breast pocket, and I watched him and let my mind turn over quietly.

I could leave the pen and the journal; I remembered enough of the lexicon on my own that I could recreate it. The poems, the conversations, I would miss those deeply, with an almost physical pain, but in the end, they could be sacrificed.

But the ritual book… that I could not leave.

Once Miro succumbed to sleep, I would have to get my own hands dirty. I’d never before been in a position to have to consider taking another person’s life. I’d never wanted to be a warrior like the Silver Sisters; violence had never appealed to me.