How many times? How many times have I warned you from taking this step? You push too far, push me too far. If I don’t do something now, you will doom us all. Forgive me.

  -Mother

  Gale is a land of open fields poked with lonely mountains. I skim the ground, feeling stalks of wheat bend as I run my hand over them, giving way like the water might. The wind drags me on, and I move to its tempo. There is no experience quite like flying, the freedom of going any way you might wish, knowing that nothing bars you, feeling the very air push you on faster and faster when you move to dive.

  On a thought, an hour into my journey home, I landed on a hill overlooking a gentle stream. My shadow cut a figure across the water, a huge form blocking the sun. When I pushed growth mana into my wings, I felt them expand and grow heavier on my back as they stretched away from me. The shadow grew, splitting the pond in half in its shade, spooking the cows that sipped from the pool. The strength I possess is barely enough to hold them as I stand, grown three times larger than normal, stretching out thirty feet to either side of me. Jumping into the air once more, power flooded through me, and after the first beat, I never required another. My glide carried me at a blazing speed over the land, the shadow of my glide a spectacle passing like a cloud below.

  Galea kept my heading for me, maintaining a window at my side that showed a map of Gale I had purchased, directing me to make the correct turns. The sun sits low in the sky by the time Westgrove begins to peek out of the horizon, and I bank away, shooting for the smaller copse of buildings to the east of the proper town. The miller’s tower is the first sight, followed by a cluster of six buildings built along a narrow road, the general store the largest of the set.

  Even in the late afternoon, there should be more of a bustle on the road. People should be out seeing to their afternoon duties on the farms, but the fields sit vacant. When I pass a field in which a plow sits half dug into the soil, a long trough of dirt churned behind it, I begin to worry.

  I spot a man, a lone figure hiking down the road with a bag of flour slung over his shoulder. He pauses for a moment, wiping the sweat from his forehead with the hem of his shirt. I recognize him as Dakin, Shet the general store owner’s son even before my eye tells me. No mind is paid to the speed of my approach as I dive from the sky.

  Dakin glances up as my shadow overtakes him, squinting at the sky as I dive from the air. Just above the ground, I roll forward, spreading my wings wide and arresting my dive. My boots clap hard into the earth of the road, the sound followed a moment later by the thud of Dakin’s flour hitting the road.

  “Exeter’s ball,” Dakin swears, making a sign in front of him to ward off demons.

  That catches me up for a moment. Seeing the sudden fear in the man’s eyes halts the words in my throat. He averts his eyes, staring at his feet, inclining his head.

  “If I gave offense to someone somehow, tell ‘em I’m sorry for it,” he says, fumbling at a bow.

  “You’re not in any kind of trouble,” I say. The look of surprise I see when he stares back up hurts my heart. I knew this boy, just a few years younger than me, a good lad.

  He blinks, daring to look up at me. His eyes flick to the side of my face, and I realize that he is looking to see a hint of my ears. Does he think I am an elf?

  “Beggin’ your pardon for misunderstanding, my lady.” He bows again.

  I stifle a groan. “Nothing to forgive. Where is everyone, Dakin? I didn’t see anybody from the air.”

  If he is surprised that I know his name, he does a good job not showing it. “I expect most folk are still at the Teffle farm,” he says. “Putting folk in the ground is done proper around sunset.”

  “Who died?”

  “All of ‘em,” he says. “Maddy, Edis, and their little one Cansa. Was supposed to be nightcreepers got ‘em. At least that’s what I heard. Man came around and saw to the creatures before they could get any more folk, and he said it was nightcreeprs, so I’m expecting that to be it.” He glances up again. “Unless my lady thinks it might be another way.”

  The news hits me harder than I expect. This little stretch of nowhere had the gall to keep going on even after I left it. The Teffles were good people, made most of their money off tobacco and the odd batch of goat cheese Maddy would make. Cansa had only been four when I left.

  “If everyone’s at the funeral, why are you out on the road, Dakin?”

  Dakin gestures to the sack of flour collecting dust on the road. “Had an order to pick up from the miller. My pa asked me to see to it before the day was out.”

  “Miller usually leaves orders out for people to collect when he isn’t there?” It was a question we both knew the answer to.

  “Made an exception this day. Given the occasion.”

  “You steal that flour, boy?”

  A shiver runs through him, but instead of a meek apology, he turns hard eyes up at me. “Ain’t stealing if you take back what belongs to you. Everyone knows Jan cheats the numbers when he mills.”

  That was true as well. As far as I knew, there wasn’t a miller in the world who didn’t change the numbers around a little bit to give themselves a bigger share of the product. Jan was a big man, big enough to push anyone calling him a cheat to do so behind his back and not right to his face. Not that anyone said much better about Dakin’s father down at the general store.

  “Get on then,” I say, pointing down the road. “You got some sun left.”

  He doesn’t need more than the suggestion of leaving to push him to snatching up his stolen prize and hustling off down the road. I watch him go on, feeling something a bit nostalgic in catching a boy stealing flour from the mill. It was practically a right of passage.

  Standing on the road, I inhale the air, tasting the scents of the humid grass, hearing the hum of insects not seen, and smelling the dried dust of the road. I’ve never had a chance before to take in my home with such heightened senses, and it is like a rush of memory. Me and Kendon running down the road, set to work at some errand that would take us the whole day. Walking the roads with his party, my old party, hunting down the weak monsters that called this corner of nowhere home.

  But those monsters had killed three people. Even weak monsters can kill a man. It is hard to make certain I keep that in mind, but important as well.

  Leaping back in the air, I set my glide toward the orchard, cutting overland, following the road in my heart.

  The first line of trees comes into view far sooner than I think it ought to. A row of sweetpears that I know we don’t have on the western side of the orchard. A shack of new and lacquered wood stands between the second and third line of trees, some man I don’t know at work pushing a wheelbarrow of soil out from inside to carry toward the north side of the property.

  More changes stand out as I soar overhead: a wagon trundling in the gaps between the trees with three seedlings sitting in the bed, two couples having a picnic amid the trees on a red and white checkered blanket, a new barn of hard, brown wood built alongside our old one, three new ponies out exercising in the round. It seems that I am not the only one who has been working hard in my absence. Despite the clear prosperity, I find that I don’t like the changes. My home should be the same as I left it.

  I alight more gracefully in the dirt just behind the main house. A variety of vegetables show signs of healthy growth in the dark soil around the back of the house. They look far greener than I have ever seen my mother’s plants look before.

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  “Miss,” someone calls.

  Turning, I see a woman standing amid the garden, a trowel in one hand, a glass of tea in the other. She looks me up and down, spiking the trowel into the dirt at her feet, eyes lingering on the wings sprouting from my back.

  “Yes?” I ask, dismissing the wings to puff away into colorful motes of magic.

  She lingers for a moment, her eyes following the trails of color as they disappear up into the sky. I take the time to hop up the three steps of the back porch, pulling the screen door wide and walking inside.

  The smell of baking pie hits me like a slap in the face. In here, at least things are as I remember them, the same walls painted with a pale yellow, the same furniture that has stood exactly where it is for my whole life, the threadbare carpet that my grandmother knitted before I was even born. The glass table in the middle of the common room is new, and my dad’s old leather chair has been replaced with a newer one, but the feel is all the same. I hear a clatter from the archway leading to the kitchen, and before I can stop myself, I am already at the entryway.

  “Margret, if I turn around and find that you have tracked dirt in here one more time I will have Ylla check your tea for booze. Don’t put me to the…” Daela turns away from the sink, a dish in one hand and a scrubbing brush in the other. My mother stands there, brown apron cinched tight over the top of her yellow dress, red curls pulled tight into a tail at the back of her head. “Can I help you?”

  The question is like a punch in the gut. She doesn’t recognize me.

  Daela puts her dish down in the water. She narrows her eyes at me, and I am shocked to see that she has to look up to meet my own. When did I grow taller than her?

  “Charlie?” she asks, a hand moving to her hip.

  “I’m home,” I say, moving fully into the narrow kitchen. The words catch in my throat, and the rational part of my mind groans at my emotionality. Can’t my mouth just work how it is supposed to? “I know I left a little…”

  “Piss poor?” Daela shakes the scrubber in my hand, sprinkling water on my face and stopping me in my tracks. “Bad enough we got three kids that run off on us, but it has to be my own daughter that couldn’t find any manners in doing it? Send your brother to us with a note.”

  “I’m sorry,” I say. “I had to leave in a hurry. We had a long way to go and they weren’t going to wait on me.”

  “Pffah,” she scoffs. “A good horse will get you from Westgrove to here and back in a day. Don’t tell me you couldn’t have come to say goodbye in person. Your father seen you yet? Course not, your hide would be tanned if he had.”

  “I’m not a child.”

  “Child of mine. No child that I bore is too old to have a good tanning if they do something foolish. Parent’s job to keep them in line and make sure they know what is proper.” She flicks the scrubber again, splashing me with a sprinkling of water. “Don’t know where you abandoned your sense.”

  “If you don’t want me here, then I can leave. I have no shortage of things to be about,” I say.

  Daela rolls her eyes. “Given that this is where you want to be the least, I don’t expect that is true.” She motions to the countertop as she turns back to the sink. “There’s some fresh bread I made this morning in there. Cut it up for supper. We have more mouths to feed around here than you are used to, and I need to get the work done before the sun is all the way down.”

  My body seems to act on its own, hopping to the task. The carving knife set out on the countertop is too dull to cut good slices from the bread, and I need to see my way to using one of my spares–not the poisoned one, of course.

  “I really am sorry for leaving that way,” I say to her, cutting into the loaf, parting it easily like…well, a knife through soft bread.

  “I expect you are,” Daela says, working at some stubborn grime on the plate. “But I taught you that sorries later aren’t an excuse for hurt given today. Broke your daddy’s heart reading that note. He was still holding out hope that you would take the farm from him one day.”

  “I don’t think I ever wanted the farm,” I say.

  “News to me. You never showed much of what you really wanted. Worked well, but never had your heart in it. I suppose you were just waiting for a good opportunity to come along. Can’t fault you for that. Taking the opportunities you find is important. Next time, we’ll make sure the child knows that this farm is going to them, won’t leave no questions about it.”

  “Next time?”

  “That’s right.” The tone in her voice pulls me from cutting the bread. I glance over at her, finding her patting her stomach. “Got a new one on the way. You’ll finally get your chance at not being the youngest.”

  The shock on my face sets her to scowling. “You’re pregnant?”

  “What of it? Don’t think I can still pull your da into the bed when I want?”

  “No, it’s just…” I know the words are so bad, so wrong to voice, but they come anyway. “You’re old.”

  She scoffs, splashing me full in the face with the dirty dishwater. “I’m not even half of the way through forty. Got a body more fine now than when I was half my age, and by all talk it's only going to get better. I’ll bear myself a full litter if I want to, and you won’t be calling your mum old then.”

  “You know I didn’t mean it that way. I’m just…surprised…happy is all.” My hand comes up to my face, and I feel another rush of tears threatening. She won’t like that.

  “Don’t you dare.” Daela’s hand whips out, not particularly quickly and I decide not to evade her. She pinches my arm, hard.

  “Ow!”

  “I’ll have no tears in my house. You want to cry over losing your spot as your daddy’s favorite, do it on the road.” Daela looks out the window. The sky past the barn has become a brilliant shade of burnt orange, the purple of twilight coming on behind. “Go get your brother. I’m assuming that he’ll be drinking at the miller’s with the rest of the men after the ceremony. You heard that Maddy and her boys woke up dead at the hands of some beasts a few days back, I take it.”

  Halford’s here? That makes a certain sense; Dakin had said that a man came through and killed the nightcreeprs that got the Teffles.

  “Alright.” I do my best to hold back the tears threatening me with the heel of my hand. “I’ll be there and back in a jiffy.”

  “Best be. Got some good pork roasted and I don’t intend for anyone to miss it, make waste of all my work.”

  “Right.” I breathe in hard, blinking, and turn to the door.

  Before I can leave, arms wrap around me from behind, squeezing me tight. “I’m glad you came back, girl,” my mother whispers into my back. “Damn glad.” Then she is pushing me out the door, and I hurry along, making sure no tears fall inside her house, just like she asked.

  It’s full dark by the time I make to the Jan’s. The man has a large storehouse out on his property that he uses to serve drinks during the off-months. The big paneled doors stand slightly open as I land outside, and the buzz of conversation from inside tells me just how full it is tonight. I stop, coming around the corner, almost calling a weapon to my hand at the sight of a heavily armed woman standing just outside the storehouse.

  She sees me the same time I do, violet eyes turning in my direction, a stern expression looking out from a face heavily painted with dark cosmetics framed by straight, black hair. In an instant, I note three daggers on her left hip, a half blade laid across the small of her back, and the hilt of a heavy bastard sword peeking out over her shoulder. She stands in the early night, ringlets of chain draping her and giving off the telltale sign of powerful magic.

  Janna Kaffeleon, High Secretary of Grise

  “What is your business?” she asks, her head lilting to the side.

  “I’m looking for someone,” I reply, pulling myself to stand straighter. Despite her appearance, my eye tells me that she isn’t a magician; I shouldn’t let her cow me. It is a bit easier given that she is human. Best to practice here before I try with a real noble.

  “There are plenty of people to find,” she says, motioning back to the storeroom behind her. “But men are drinking inside.”

  “So?”

  Her eyes narrow again. She huffs out a breath, moving aside to allow me a way to the door. I keep my attention firmly on her as I pass her by and catch her muttering something about propriety as I make it to the door. Ignoring her incredibly insulting words, I slide open the door, smacking it closed behind me.

  Hardly anyone notices my entrance, the business of drink having long captured the room. Groups of men crowd about, some sitting at a table and playing at dice, three standing near the wall and throwing darts into a painted sack of unmilled grain. I angle for the largest crowd, a group of at least fifteen standing in a half circle around the long bench that Jan calls his bar.

  “And the hardest part was finding all the little bastards,” I hear a voice ring out from the crowd. I need to shove people aside to make my way into the press. “There’s a reason they call them nightcreepers, fuckers have a tendency to scatter when the sun comes up. Found three over at the fence, gnawing at the Fiddlers’ posts. They would have been there the next night. Piss poor thing Timmian hasn’t kept them out like he is meant to, piss poor thing.”

  A grunt and a bark of protest marks my passage into the middle of the crowd, but what I find makes me pull up short.

  “Oh, and who is this fine young thing?” The man sitting in the middle of the crowd of men asks.

  Everyone gives him a respectful distance as he spins his tale, letting him sprawl relaxed against the bar as he swirls a glass of amber in his right hand. His left arm is absent, the sleeve of his crimson finery buttoned up short on that side. One eye burning a fiery red looks me up and down in a slow and deliberate leer, a smirk of early drunkenness gracing his beautiful face; the left eye is covered by a black patch. Crimson hair spills from his crown, curling at his shoulders where it is cut, the color perfectly matching his long coat that is accented with gold. Power wells about him, invisible to my eye, but I can feel it like a physical force against me. What sparks my memory, what brings me to recognize him, is the easy confidence that rests on his face.

  “Corinth?”

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