Wren clamped her jaws down, sinking her fangs into the muscular body of the cougar. She could actually feel her venom sacs flex, injecting the wildcat with enough toxins to kill it a dozen times over. Then, with a movement she’d learned from her wolf form, she shook her head, snapping the animal’s back. By the time she returned to her human form, the poor thing’s eyes were already glassy.

  “I think it’s dead,” Blossom remarked, from where she crouched over Wild Cat, cleaning the open wounds on his back by pouring out a waterskin and washing the blood and dirt away.

  Wren made an active effort to relax, unwinding her fingers so that she was no longer making fists. The western sun was just touching the horizon, sending slanted shafts of golden sunlight through the Varunan jungle at sharp angles that cast long shadows. There was time enough to push on to the bridge, if not in the light of the setting sun, then beneath the moon which would rise shortly. Not that bats needed much light to navigate, anyway. They could be back before dawn came to Bald Peak - but not with one of her people wounded.

  “How many years have you been living in this jungle, and you don’t see a cougar before it jumps on you?” she scolded Wild Cat. “How bad is he, Blossom? Will he be able to fly?”

  Her niece held up an Isvaran needle - not made of bone, but steel. “I’ll sew him up once we have a fire going,” Blossom promised. “With a bit of blood, he should be healed by morning.”

  Wren scowled. If they waited through the night, by the time they got to the waystone and from there back across the ocean, it would be afternoon in the mountains. The council would already be in session, and Liv and Keri would be doing their best to fend off this stupid, stupid vote. Whatever plan the guilds had concocted, it would be too late for Wren to do anything about it.

  And after what Ghveris had told her in their joined dream the night before, Wren needed to be back home sooner, rather than later. It was hard to conceive of Henriette as anything more than an infant, but apparently Matthew and Triss’s daughter had somehow stumbled upon a conspiracy to kill Liv.

  Wren wasn’t exactly worried about Liv actually dying – not with Ghveris and Kaija and dozens of royal guards watching over her – but the idea of an attempt happening while she was this far away, and couldn’t do anything about it, was maddening. What if someone got hurt? Liv might be capable of facing a goddess down and walking away, but what about the children? If Rei or Rianne or even Henriette got caught up in whatever the guilds were planning, and got hurt or killed –

  “But tonight’s right out,” Blossom continued, poking at the wound with her fingers. Wild Cat grit his teeth, but couldn’t help let out a hiss of pain while he endured the examination. “The claws tore up the muscles good, and he needs those to make the wings work.”

  Flying Fish, in the meantime, had already begun gathering tinder to make a fire. Out of all the sleepers rescued from Godsgrave, he’d been one of the most committed to learning what it was to be a Red Shield, even going so far as to give up his old V?dic name in favor of one more in line with the tribe’s traditions. With a few minutes of work, he had thin streams of gray smoke rising from a structure of branches.

  Once there were flames or orange and red to work with, Blossom slid the steel needle into the fire, holding it carefully in place to heat the metal. “Professor Arjun says it's important to use clean needles,” she explained. “That there’s all sorts of little creatures that live in the water, in the dirt, and all around us, and that we don’t want to put any of them into an open wound if we can avoid it.”

  Wren touched the hilt of one of her enchanted daggers. She should dress the cougar’s carcass. She’d have to roast it thoroughly to make certain all the venom cooked away, and the meat might end up a little tough by the time she was done, but it was better than wasting the animal or letting it rot.

  “I’ll take care of it,” Flying Fish said, placing a hand on Wren’s shoulder. He knelt down beside the carcass and got to work, leaving her to turn back and watch Blossom sewing Wild Cat’s wound with quick, neat stitches.

  “You can go on without us, you know,” Blossom said. The younger woman didn’t look up from her work.

  “No.” Wren shook her head. “We’ll cook the cougar, give Wild Cat time to heal, and then move out at dawn. Bald Peak will just have to wait for us.” The words felt like admitting defeat.

  Blossom let out a soft huff of frustration. “Not a single one of us is in the jungle for the first time, Auntie Wren,” she argued. “We’re less than a day’s flight from the rift. The three of us can make our way back without you just fine.”

  “You would think that,” Wren said. “But then something like this happens.”

  “Bad luck,” Wild Cat said, with a grunt of pain and a wince. He looked a bit pale, Wren judged.

  “Right,” Blossom said, tugging a black string through the wound to draw the two edges of the torn flesh together. “You knew something was going to go wrong, with this long of a trip. Honestly, if this is our one piece of misfortune, we did alright. Just fly ahead, get back to Bald Peak, and do what you need to do. We’ll only be a day behind you.”

  “I’m not going to tell your parents that I abandoned you in the jungle with a wounded man while I ran on ahead,” Wren snapped back. She knew that it wasn’t actually Blossom that she was angry with, but she couldn’t help letting her temper show.

  “I’ll tell them,” Blossom said. “I’ll tell them we sent you on ahead because we’d been delayed, and that Liv needed you. They’ll understand. And it’s not like you're leaving just one of us behind, all alone. We’re Red Shields. We can survive one night in the jungle.”

  Wren hesitated for just a moment longer. “You all go directly to the rift,” she ordered. “No detours, no hunting between here and there. And from there right on to Bald Peak. I’ll make certain they send someone to get me as soon as you arrive.”

  “Yes, yes,” Blossom said, leaning in so that she could look closely while she tied off her last stitch. “Go on.”

  Wren ground her boot into the soft earth of the jungle floor, then leaped up into the air, shifting as she moved. Her wings caught what passed for a breeze this far below the canopy, and she beat for height until she was up above the trees, heading east into the falling night. It was a relief to have the decision made, even if all it did was trade one set of worries for another. She simply could not be in two places at once.

  The leaves of the jungle trees passed beneath Wren in a blur, until the greenery broke and she moved out over the southern edge of the lake which had been created by the ancient dam. If someone activated the waystone now, she would be able to see the column of light stretch up into the sky, and the thought of how close she was made her push even harder.

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  Perhaps that was why she didn’t see the swirl of blood-red petals spiral up from the brush at the edge of the lake until she was in it.

  Wren tucked her wings and closed her eyes, diving down toward the shore, but instead of passing through the crown of petals and out the other sight, she found that they clung around her. She shifted back to her human form and tucked her shoulder, rolling across the sand at the edge of the lake and coming up in a crouch, with an enchanted dagger drawn in either hand.

  “Those won’t be necessary this evening,” Ractia said, her body assembling from the top down, so that she was able to speak before her bare toes dug into the soft sand. The petals came together in a flurry, like snow blown by a storm, and where they touched they melted into liquid blood, joined together, and then transformed into pale skin, dark hair, and a dress of Dakruiman silk. “I’m only here to speak to you, Wren Wind Dancer.”

  “The fuck you are,” Wren spat, activated her enchanted boots, and blurred into motion. Sand sprayed up in her wake as she blurred across ten feet of shore, closing on Ractia before the goddess could react with a spell. She made one slice at that pale, elegant neck, and a stab with the other hand at a gap in the ribs, where Wren knew that she’d be able to reach the heart of a human woman.

  Ractia exploded into petals of blood again, leaving Wren’s knives to swipe right through the air without meeting the slightest resistance. She was moving so fast that she stumbled as she came around, only just managing to keep her balance.

  This time, rather than form an entire body, the cloud of blood-petals swirled about above the surface of the lake in a miniature cyclone, which somehow arranged itself into an enormous semblance of Ractia’s disembodied face.

  “You can’t kill me with a few hunks of sharpened metal,” Ractia said, her voice that same chorus of a dozen or more languages that she’d used atop Nightfall Peak. “Now sit still, child, and listen to what I have to say.”

  “I don’t see any point in that,” Wren panted. “You’ve got nothing to say that I want to hear.” Had they triggered some sort of enchantment at the rift, something that alerted Ractia to what they were doing? Had she been watching them the entire time, waiting for a moment when Wren was alone, when she was separated from the others? Wren didn’t often wish that she had magic: shapeshifting was something she was comfortable with, something that felt natural. And very rarely – especially since she’d taken a wyrm form – did she feel helpless, or incapable. But right in that moment, she would have given a lot for a word of power that would let her light Ractia on fire.

  “Don’t I?” Ractia asked, and somehow that face of swirling blood-petals raised delicately arched brows. “Not even if I offered to release your father back to you? Not even if I gave your Antrian his body back?”

  Wren felt like someone had cut away whatever tether or cord connected her mind to her body. Her legs gave way, and she fell onto the sand, sitting down hard enough that she felt the impact in her spine.

  “So there is something I can say that you care about, after all,” Ractia said, those fluttering red lips curling in a smile. “Which one of those do you care about more, Wren Wind Dancer? Having your father back, or finally getting to hold your lover in the flesh? Don’t look so surprised – after almost twenty years of carrying on, you can’t actually imagine that it’s much of a secret, can you?”

  “It isn’t possible,” Wren gasped. “There isn’t enough of him left. Arjun said that even with the healing enchantments on the ring –”

  Ractia laughed. “Your mages are like ants crawling on the surface of a telescope. They know it's there because they can feel it; they can touch it; they can even see the sun glinting off the glass, and wonder over it. But they don’t have the slightest idea how to actually use the thing, let alone how to make one of their own. Did you truly think your friend can define the limits of what is possible for me?”

  “If it was possible, you would have done it the first time,” Wren protested, shaking her head. “You wouldn’t have put your general in a shell of metal if you could’ve just healed him.”

  “Wouldn’t I?” Ractia asked. “He was a wonderful opportunity for an experiment. Antris and I were confident that we could make him into something so much more dangerous than a mere shapechanger. We never had the time to finish, unfortunately, but the fact remains. Everything necessary to grow Ghveris a new body is written in a single drop of his blood. And I remain, little girl, the Lady of Blood. Believe me when I tell you that out of anyone in this world, I can give him to you.”

  The face of swirling, wet petals leaned forward, so that it towered over Wren and nearly leaned down into her. The air was thick with the scent of blood.

  Wren grasped about the sand for the hilts of her daggers, only now realizing that she’d dropped them when she fell back onto the ground. “Why would you do that?” she demanded. “I’ve never once seen you do anything just to help someone else, not since the moment you came back. It’s only ever about what you can get for yourself.”

  “I stand to gain something out of this, too,” Ractia told her. “You helped bring me back to life, Wren Wind Dancer. Now help me again, and I’ll give you what you want.”

  Wren was already shaking her head, but the goddess simply kept talking.

  “I don’t need you to fight anyone or kill anyone,” the V?dic Lady said. “Not your friend Livara, or anyone else you care about. I don’t need you to steal any more statues. In fact, I don’t need you to do anything at all. I simply need you to make certain that, when the time comes, your little alliance does not come to attack me.”

  “The time for what?” Wren asked. Ractia had already made it clear that Wren couldn’t hope to fight her alone; but she’d also shown no indication that she was here for violence. If the goddess truly had come just to make some sort of offer – not that anything she said could ever be believed – that meant she would be willing to let Wren walk away from this conversation. And if Wren could get back Bald Peak, every scrap of information she could bring back to Liv might help them figure out what the V?dim’s plan was.

  “You don’t need to know the specifics,” Ractia said. “But suffice to say that all of the raids, all of the machinery my people have taken from the rifts over the years, all of that is finished. I have what I need, and there is no longer any reason for me to concern myself with your petty little world. You can have it. Your friend can be the sole goddess for all of these little people if that is what she wants to do.”

  “So you’ve finished whatever weapon you’ve been building,” Wren said.

  Ractia laughed. “I have no more need for weapons, unless you and your alliance push me,” she promised. “Hear me clearly, Wren Wind Dancer. The only war that comes from this point on will be one that is started by you and yours. I have what I need from your world, and so far as I am concerned, this will be an ending. All I need you to do is to carry this message to your Lady of Winter, and convince her that if she simply does nothing, she will never need to deal with me again. And if you can do that one simple thing, I will give you your father back, and I will give your lover a body of flesh and blood once again. Rather generous terms, I would say. But I feel as if I do owe you something of a debt, for helping me to live again.”

  “That’s it?” Wren asked. “We just agree not to attack you, while you do – what? What have you built?”

  “That’s none of your concern, save for my promise that what I’m doing won’t affect you or yours, one way or the other,” Ractia said. “Your world will go on, for as long as such things do. Long enough that you, Wren, drink as much blood as you like, will be dust and ashes before it ever ends.”

  “Would I have to bring them to you?” Wren saw the angle as the words left her mouth, and she pressed it immediately. “I’d need to know where you are, then. Which sigil, which rift –”

  “No.” Ractia shook her head of fluttering petals. “You can leave your father right where he is; I will simply end the spell I cast upon him. As to your lover – if you accept my bargain, simply place a single drop of his blood upon any waystone, step back, and say my name. Pray to me once again, Wren, my daughter, and I will hear you.”

  “One drop of blood,” Wren repeated. “I’d have to –”

  “Open up his armor, yes. I promise there is enough left of him in there for you to get what I need, though I admit that it won’t be pretty to see it,” Ractia said. “But it would be worth it, I should think. Just imagine having him able to hold you in those arms for real. Isn’t that worth what I’m asking of you? I really don’t want so much.”

  “How will I know when?” Wren asked. “Whatever you’re doing, how will I know it's happening?”

  “You’ll know,” Ractia said. “Don’t worry about that, Wren. What I’m going to do will be utterly impossible to miss. Remember: a single drop of blood, and a prayer, if you accept.”

  The night wind kicked up, lifting the cloud of blood petals up toward the stars, until they were lost to sight, and the goddess was gone.

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  Bones in the Dark, if you haven't already. Ester is a lot of fun as an MC.

  Dramatis Personae

  Blossom - Red Shield Tribe. Daughter of Soaring Eagle and Calm Waters. Putting those college classes in healing to use!

  Flying Fish - Red Shield Tribe. Was not the one who messed things up!

  Ractia, V?dic Lady of Blood - The Great Mother, mother of Noghis. Here to f*ck everything up. [??? Rings of Mana]

  Wild Cat - Red Shield Tribe, formerly in service to Ractia. Making dumb mistakes.

  Wren Wind Dancer - Daughter of Nighthawk, cousin of Calm Waters. Not actually equipped to fight a goddess, it turns out.