The King’s Shade looked with pity on Zarraz, curled into a ball in a pile of hay to ward off the cold. “Zarraz, you need to awaken.”

  The small sorcerer groaned and kept sleeping.

  “Zarraz, there is something you must see.” The god could just walk into Zarraz’s dreams, but Zarraz was no stranger to nightmares. Honestly speaking, the King’s Shade preferred speaking to the man directly.

  “I will look in the morning,” Zarraz mumbled.

  “It will be harder to see come sunrise, boy.”

  Zarraz sat up and stretched, looking with frustration at the glowing crimson eyes of the god. “What is it?”

  “I do not wish to spoil anything, Zarraz. Come outside.” And with that, the wraith floated backward through the wall of the Conwell family barn.

  Zarraz massaged the sleep from his eyes before standing. He had been sleeping in the clothes he wore the day before. There were not a lot of options for him since he left Gavundar, and even fewer since Matthew’s failed attack on The Throne. At least he had found the Conwells, though. Specifically Felicity Conwell.

  The girl was a perpetually depressed doll, pining for adventure. Zarraz never thought he would be able to play the role of the “mysterious dark stranger,” but Felicity melted when she saw him. She was high on the opportunity to engage with a frightening visitor. And all the better that Zarraz’s personal fears made him even more strange.

  The Conwells had two large hounds. And because of them, Zarraz could not bring himself to approach the house. Their drooling, slobbering visages would freeze him on the road. Their barks would send him into a state. And so he slept in the barn.

  Quietly, he pushed the large door open. The barn was roughly half a mile from the Conwell family house. There was no way the family hounds could hear him stir. But you could never be too careful.

  Outside, the sliver of moon in the sky did little to illuminate the farmland north of the village of Elmsmith. But there was light in the sky despite that. On the horizon to the south, something was glowing a brilliant orange. The glow was painting a pillar of smoke in various shades of pink, orange, and red. The pillar was not large, and seemed to be dissipating before rising too high, but its trunk had flashes of red lightning surging within. Still, it was likely just luck of air currents that Zarraz could see it at all.

  “So,” he said, looking up at the King’s Shade, who was completely invisible apart from his eyes. “What am I looking at?”

  “Wrath, Zarraz.”

  “Dorvan?”

  “No, another. The scorned wife of Matthew Carpenter.”

  “Is she another apprentice of yours?”

  “In a way. She did not need much pushing to be honest,” the King’s Shade mused. “She was already on the path to releasing her inner strength. She had just told herself she should not, for some reason. Getting around that, though? And she does great things.”

  “What is she burning?”

  “The world, Zarraz.”

  “Um,” Zarraz looked concerned. “I mean, I live there.”

  “Do not worry, Zarraz. You will be spared her wrath. So long as you stay out of her way. She is marching to The Throne.”

  Zarraz’s face twisted. “What is that family’s issue with that place? Damn.”

  The King’s Shade laughed. “Everyone has their vices, Zarraz. And I will allow them to indulge so long as they repay my kindness when the day comes.”

  “Do you really think the War Chief will come here?”

  “Do you think he will not? The man lusts for conquest like that girl lusts for you, Zarraz. Sloan will be here. But you will be ready for him.”

  Zarraz looked at the glowing calamity in the distance. Would he?

  “And that reminds me! Kaitlyn Carpenter has left you a gift. Give her a wide berth and we can get to it in just over two days.”

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  “I have to leave already?”

  “The sooner the better. This family is going to grow bored of your hobo antics sooner or later, Zarraz.”

  Zarraz frowned. “I will take Felicity to breakfast in town and then we can leave right after, okay?”

  The King’s Shade had already left. A small glowing God’s Tear lay in the dirt where he had been drifting a moment before. Zarraz crouched down and snatched it up before sneaking back to the barn, crawling into his hay, and sleeping the rest of the night.

  Sarah had been drunk for six weeks. Since the day she walked away from Matthew, Benji, and that freak with the corpses, she had been drinking her calories from dawn to dusk, only stopping to move away from a tavern that had kicked her out to a tavern that did not recognize her.

  She was sitting in a small Elmsmith restaurant, her night on the street thankfully ended. The strange black cloud on the horizon was completely unnoticed by Sarah as she shuffled in and complained to the waitstaff for fifteen solid minutes until they agreed to serve her liquor.

  The main source of her depression and self destruction was what she had done to Kaitlyn. She still remembers, vividly, her newest friend, lying on the floor of that church. Blood was spilling everywhere.

  That poor pally. His eyes were watering. He ran to her, apologizing to everyone around for killing her. Sarah knew he had not. Matthew did not look at Kaitlyn. Did not look at whatever was spilling on the floor beneath her. He just looked at the door.

  That bastard.

  And Sarah, the bitch she was, left with him. She told herself that Kaitlyn would be safer with the Church. Maybe they could save that child. Hopefully not, though. The world was shit and bringing a child into it would be an act of pure selfishness.

  Sarah swigged the wine she bought straight from its canter as a couple entered. Sarah did not recognize Zarraz at first. Instead she watched the ditzy woman with him.

  “How old are you, even?” she heard the greasy fanged folk ask.

  “I turn twenty in a month,” the girl giggled.

  “Good.”

  Disgusting. Sarah took another drink.

  She began musing about what happened to Matthew as the waiter came back to her table. He sneered and asked “Need anything?”

  “More wine.”

  “Sure thing, drunk.”

  The waiter moved to the table with Zarraz and took their order and Sarah upturned the current bottle. The one good thing about this part of the March? Good wine.

  “So where are we going?” the girl asked after the waiter left.

  “I don’t know yet. When will you be able to leave?”

  “Well, where are we going? I have to know what kind of things to pack! Why don’t we just wait until after planting? My dad needs the help.”

  “I don’t know if I can wait that long, Felicity.”

  The girl pouted. Sarah watched her fish for the man’s affections just as Kaitlyn would with Matthew.

  Was it the wine, the food, the cold, or the lack of sleep? Sarah was not sure, but she was about to retch. She smoothly rose from her seat and stepped outside of the restaurant, slipping into an alley to be sick.

  After turning out her stomach, she leaned against the wall and allowed herself to cry. It did not happen often, but every couple of days the guilt would shake her. It would squeeze everything from her. She would feel as though she were back in that chapel again and she would tell herself to stay with Kaitlyn. To leave Matthew to die on the road alone.

  And then she would see herself do the opposite.

  She would swear, during these fits, that she would get sober. That she would find Matthew, or whatever was left of him, and destroy it. Better yet, she would drag it to Kaitlyn, if she were still alive, and they would destroy it together.

  But Matthew, that sneaky ass, was probably long gone. And Kaitlyn would likely never want to see Sarah again.

  Once she had calmed, Sarah moved out of the alley, back onto the street and was surprised to see a group of people staring south, shocked. A thick column of black smoke was billowing up on the horizon.

  Maybe it was her emotional pain or the booze, but Sarah looked on the column with understanding.

  It had to be Kaitlyn.

  “Wait, Zarraz, what is that?” the young girl from the restaurant asked as they stepped out into the street, too.

  “That’s what I’ve been talking about,” Zarraz replied. “That’s where I want to go.”

  “You want to go to that thing?”

  “It’s,” Zarraz said, pausing to think. “Like, a friend of a friend. She’s very upset. But very powerful. And I want to see her.”

  “Zarraz, look at that!”

  Sarah was horrified. In a moment of clarity, she recognized Zarraz, but also had her theories confirmed, it seemed. The destruction on the horizon was Kaitlyn.

  But Zarraz was here, too. She could go after him, and eventually, Matthew.

  But Kaitlyn was upset, Zarraz said.

  How would he even know though?

  For a moment, Sarah thought about just going back and getting to work drinking another canter of wine. She looked around one final time. In her musing, Zarraz and that girl had left.

  The guilt was coming back to Sarah.

  She was not going to leave Kaitlyn alone this time.