It was after Andric had concluded his meeting with his ragtag band of fighters and as the sun was setting that the fox maiden appeared, walking down from higher up the mountainside.

  Andric had dispersed most of his people, splitting them into two groups—one to spy on the bulk of the enemy from a distance and one to track down the pair who had separated from the Army group. He had only four with him as Victoria Twinleaf approached. The same ones who had been with him earlier, his most trusted comrades.

  The leader allowed himself a moment to take in the sight of the woman he had been patiently courting for months. The gentle curve of her hips. Her long, shapely legs. The maiden’s braid she wore her hair in, bouncing back and forth over one shoulder, emblematic of her quiet virtue.

  “Mikkel, Selvig, why don’t you guys go for some firewood?” Andric asked. “Tatiana, Vlad, maybe you could go and check—”

  “No,” Tatiana replied with a sniff. “It’s obvious what you’re trying to do, Andric. You want to be alone with your little friend there. I won’t allow it.”

  Andric let out a long sigh. “Tatiana, do you take a special pleasure in making my life bumpier than it has to be?”

  “No more than I should,” she replied with a little wink.

  I can never read her, Andric thought. Is she being playful or sincerely confessing that she likes pissing me off?

  “Just please give us five minutes alone?” he asked. He was annoyed to hear the slight pleading note in his own voice.

  It was even more annoying to see the look of satisfaction spread across Tatiana’s face. That smug look had etched itself into his mind over the last few days of working together. She was annoyingly pretty—sharp, high cheekbones, intense green eyes, that beautiful pair of wings—but it was all slightly spoiled by her being a little bit of a sadist. Or so she sometimes seemed. Andric could imagine that smug smile of hers would appear in his dreams long after they had gone their separate ways. Or in his nightmares.

  “Fine,” Tatiana said. “Just don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.” Another wink.

  She flapped her wings and took off, following behind Mikkel and Selvig. Vlad, looking like he was trying not to laugh, walked after her.

  Andric turned to face the direction Victoria was coming from again, and he saw she was just twenty feet away now. He resisted the urge to smooth his hair back.

  “Hey,” he said, trying not to look too pleased to see her. “What are you doing here?”

  “Just bringing the latest from Vida,” Victoria said. “How are things going with you?”

  “They could be better, could be worse,” Andric said. “We sprang a trap earlier that—well, you probably already know. Um, what did Vidalia want to say?”

  “I don’t actually know,” Victoria said, her tone somewhere between pointed and playful. “Remember, I’m the sister who doesn’t have visions of the future.”

  “Right, the one who goes outside,” Andric replied.

  The two shared a quiet laugh. That was something Andric thought he had going in his favor. Sometimes he could make Victoria laugh. Not many young men in their tribe could say that.

  “Don’t go after the ones who separated from the squad,” Victoria said after a moment.

  “What?”

  “That’s what Vida wanted me to tell you.”

  “All right,” Andric said slowly. “I see. What is it, exactly, that you know?”

  “Do I have to repeat that my sister is the one who sees the future? Not me?”

  “We’ve known each other since we were little, Vic. Are you saying she doesn’t tell you things? She just sends you to give orders to people out here risking their lives? With no apparent foundation for them?”

  “What I’m saying is more like, she always tries to tell people what they need to know so they avoid getting hurt or hurting other people unnecessarily. Too much information can be as dangerous as too little.”

  “Yeah, I’ve heard that before,” Andric said. “Yet she’s not out here judiciously deciding when we need help. Saving lives with her visions. She could have really helped us out here today.”

  “She’s given you plenty of advice.”

  “Yes, advice, to help us hide! When I want to take the fight to the enemy, for the first time this generation, what does our precious dream seer do? Closes her eyes and covers her ears. At least that’s how it seems sometimes.” He lowered his voice. “I don’t mean to sound harsh. But three men who didn’t need to get hurt died today. Silva, Casimir, and one of the ibex beastmen, a guy named Crim.”

  “I remember you telling me about Silva and Casimir,” Victoria said carefully. “You complained about them, said they were reckless, too eager for a fight, back when you were organizing this band.”

  “Yeah, but it doesn’t matter if I didn’t like them. Reckless is usually also brave. I can’t afford to lose any of our fighters. And each of them leaves behind a widow—or widows. Vida’s not the one who has to explain to them—look, I don’t want to say something I’m going to regret later. Is that really all you came for? To tell me not to pursue their killers?”

  Victoria swallowed. “I know it’s hard to hear. Vida wants you to know the two who left the squad are friendly. When they separated from the group, they were deliberately abandoning the squad to their fate.”

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  “Looked like cowardice from where I was standing,” Andric replied. He didn’t mention that he had been very high up at the time, too distant to see faces or more than general shapes. Certainly not in any position to judge the motives of the two Victoria was talking about.

  “They wanted to help us, but your three fighters refused to listen to them.”

  “Is this you talking, just speculating, here, or is this some Vidalia prophecy stuff? Why doesn’t she come out here herself, anyway?”

  “You know damn well why,” Victoria said. She didn’t raise her voice, but she made her annoyance with that question felt.

  “Yeah, I do.”

  Vidalia is delicate and weak, and if she got captured, she’d be far more valuable to the enemy than any possible benefit we could get by bringing her closer to where the fighting happens. She’s too important to be out in public at a time like this. I get it.

  It didn’t make it any less annoying, this maiden trying to give him commands from a distance when she would never see a drop of blood in combat herself.

  He let out a sigh. I’m letting myself get riled up. Completely unnecessarily. I can’t look uncool in front of Vic.

  Andric closed the distance with Victoria and took her hand in both of his.

  “I’m sorry about the way that came out. Look, we’re all tense over here. I get that Vida’s trying to help. It’s just—I’d be more inclined to listen to her if she wasn’t silent so much of the time. When we were teenagers, it was pretty clear she was getting visions every night, or at least on demand.”

  His face darkened slightly as he recalled Vidalia mentioning some human man she had met in those dreams, before she withdrew socially and stopped talking about her visions with people outside her family.

  “She still has the visions,” Victoria said. “That’s the basis for this advice.”

  “It would be a lot easier to listen to her,” Andric said, “if she’d help me fight this war my way.”

  “Vida knew you’d say that,” Victoria said. She smiled sadly. “Honestly, so did I. She wanted me to say that if you help these two make it to the village, they’ll win you your whole war. Not just this one little battle.”

  Little battle? Andric felt annoyed, suppressed it as best he could, let out another long sigh. These two maidens were too much sometimes. It was hard to imagine what life would be like being married to them one day.

  But it was his destiny. The best thing for himself, them, and the tribe.

  He looked up at the sad, pale oval of Victoria’s face, composed in an expression of peaceful understanding.

  At least they’re beautiful, even if they’re headaches.

  “Vic, you can’t be serious,” Andric said softly. “Not just spare them, but take them in?”

  “I thought you might say that too,” Victoria said. She pulled her hand gently from his. “Remember that I’m just the messenger. I understand why you’re doing the things you’re doing. Just—Vida has a larger vision. You mentioned that the two soldiers running away looked like cowardice to you. But your vision was just your point of view, in a single moment. Subjective. Vida sees everything on a much bigger scale. Pieces fitting together that you and I can’t understand.”

  There it was again. Victoria’s hero worship of her sister.

  “She’s lucky she has you, you know?” Andric said quietly.

  “Yeah, we’re both lucky, I guess.”

  “No, really. I know she’s helped us from time to time with her powers, but if she didn’t have you to go out selling her ideas—”

  “Then a lot of our kind would die,” Victoria finished. “I wish people would listen to Vida and just trust her.”

  “They’ll listen to both of you,” Andric said. “When you’re mine.”

  He took her hand in his again.

  “Andric,” Victoria began.

  But he was leaning in to try and kiss her, and he didn’t pause for her to interrupt him.

  His face got within a few inches of hers, and then her palm slipped in between his mouth and hers.

  “Stop,” she said firmly.

  “Right,” he said. He pulled back. “Sorry.”

  “I’m—”

  “Not ready yet,” Andric finished.

  “I don’t know if I’ll ever be ready,” Victoria said. “This decision is one that Vidalia and I have to make together. I’ve told you that.”

  Yes, again and again, he thought. He had tried to be respectful. The beastfolk were a sexually conservative people. But the wait had strained his patience by this point. If she had given him even a single kiss, showed just a hint of passion toward him, that would have gone a long way…

  “You can’t form any unwise attachments,” Andric said. He couldn’t keep a hint of sarcasm out of his voice. He would be village chief one day. Not long from now, his father would step down, and the village elders would surely confirm him in the post. There was no one in their tribe who could reasonably challenge him.

  Who could be a better attachment than him?

  Together, his status as the chief coupled with the power in the Twinleaf bloodline could bring about a new era of prosperity for all the beastfolk. Or so he liked to imagine.

  “It’s unwise of me to form any attachments,” she said. “Until my sister and I confirm together the man who is to be our husband.”

  “Just know that I will not wait forever for you to make up your minds.”

  He couldn’t allow himself to be made a fool. The whole village knew he had been courting Victoria—which as good as meant he was courting Vidalia, too, given the longstanding beastfolk tradition of sisters in a family marrying to the same man.

  “I’ve never asked you to wait,” Victoria said. She pulled the hand he had grabbed back again. “You should do what your heart tells you.”

  She turned and began to move away. He didn’t go after her. He knew better than that by now.

  “Vic!” he called out. She was still close enough that he could have gone to her if he wanted to. Close enough that whatever he said would still be private, not spread all over the mountain by the whipping winds that predominated out in the open at these elevations.

  She half-turned back.

  “I won’t go and rush after my people to stop them from taking revenge for our dead friends. You let your sister know that. She has to understand how these things work in the real world. I know as well as you how fallible her power is.”

  If Vidalia could see everything, your parents would still be alive, Andric thought. Something he had often said in his heart but could never express out loud.

  Victoria gave him another one of her sad smiles. It tugged at his heartstrings for a moment until she spoke.

  “It’s on your head, then,” she said softly, just barely loud enough for him to hear. “My sister might not be perfect, but she does see what’s to come. Remember that Vida and I tried to warn you.”

  As he watched the willowy figure walk away, Andric felt a chill deep inside his chest. He snuffed it out as best he could, but he would look back on this moment and wonder, as he wondered in that moment: Should I have done it differently?