When the misery of humanity is too much, I go to the wilds. However, I find it boring after a while. Beyond animals, who aren't mentally stimulating, and the random iele, whom I prefer not to entice, there is too much silence.

  From the journal of Drago? Buh?scu

  Dragos had been feral for over a week, catching trout with his hands and feasting on the forest’s bounty. He’d found a good place to bivouac, with enough sky to watch and enough shelter from an old maple scarred by lightning, listing at the cracks into an oak.

  People lost their allure, but more, he’d seen cavalarul in the distance, and they seemed to be looking for something. Or, someone.

  They’d stopped a wagon far ahead of him on a road not far outside Stancas.

  Instinct drove him into the woods. He’d been involved with trouble in Sigovara, and it was possible that someone had not forgotten, or forgiven.

  As it was, all cavalarul had to do was get a look at his hands, and then what he hid under his hood. That would be enough.

  The fact that they were out in force, patrolling, made Dragos uncomfortable. Viorica, Prince Grozav, perhaps Fane, if he survived, could have something to do with it. The knights that served the Luminatori were known to hunt strigoi and criminals alike. To some, he was both.

  It could have been something else. Aur spies, maybe. A report of Nerostit? that had nothing to do with him.

  Despite his hollow heart, he stubbornly stayed deep where no men hunted and no ghosts haunted. The days blended, and if not for his journal, he wouldn’t have known what day it was.

  Being alone was both a blessing and a curse.

  In silence he watched the world and caught glimpses of things he’d never read of in books. Motes of something, not from cel?lalt t?ram but flitting through the living world caught his attention, from time to time.

  It reminded him of the sparks he’d caught from the corner of his eye in Dimi, in Ewa, Radu, and Coman. Was it—life? Itself?

  He didn’t know.

  The wanderer chewed on dried fish and spat out a stray bone. It sizzled in the fire pit. Evening was on its way, and another quiet night contemplating the blaze served itself up with growing predictability.

  With little else to think about, the same old things filled his mind.

  “Why does the mountain look like it’s waiting?” Dragos jabbed a long stick at the coals and spoke to himself.

  It wasn’t like anyone would hear him and think him insane. “Can feel it. The wind rings like bells from that way, but maybe it’s just the Um?r, where the twin rivers meet, beyond soil and rock.”

  The spirit blood flowed through all worlds, the vortex any sensitive soul could feel if they stilled themselves.

  His hackles pricked. He scratched the back of his neck, glanced around, and stilled. The wanderer slowly shifted to a crouch as his ears throbbed with the pressure of silence. The forest’s song hadn’t changed. It was not a sound then, but a sense, dangerous yet… familiar.

  He relaxed into a sprawl again, tension drained. Dragos's voice was steady and careless when he spoke.

  “Why lurk? Show yourself.” He called out with cold authority and slammed the fire poker down, sending sparks in the air.

  The growing gloom didn’t shift. No plants rustled, nothing crunched under anything’s feet.

  “Where are you going?” A well-known voice filled the dimming glade, disembodied.

  Dragos dropped the stick and sighed.

  “I don’t know,” he replied, but his chin lifted. A reluctant lightness sprung up in his heart, unexpected, unrequested. “Where’ve you been?”

  “Here and there, wandering, as you do,” Zgavra said, its form collecting into a smoky serpent that flowed over the fire, floating on an unseen breeze. Its massive head tilted, horns brushing past the lee of the fallen maple trunk, orange eyes glinting.

  “I feel less inclined to wander, but I’ve nowhere to call home,” Dragos was surprised by the bitterness in his own voice.

  His eyes fixed on the direction of the school. Spineback Mountain. He had been prowling near the foothills for days, mind churning over the school's ruins within. Why now? Two years had passed. Everyone had fled, or was dead.

  He shook his head to dismiss thoughts of it and flicked a glance at the shapeshifter.

  The zmeu’s incorporeal form flowed to coil beside him, limbs tucking against its incorporeal body.

  “Will you stay a while?” Dragos blurted, then snapped his teeth shut. Why had he missed this monster, who mocked his humanity and teased him for amusement’s sake?

  Because—he did.

  “Yes. I’m bored of being alone,” Zgavra replied.

  “So am I,” Dragos admitted, again not meaning to speak.

  He felt the comforting weight of its silence and pulled his cloak closer, despite the summer warmth. Shifting his things, he lay down and closed his eyes. Shapes danced in the dark beneath his eyelids, and though his body was weary from wandering, his mind battled with memories.

  The dark presence nearby comforted, blowing them back with its rhythmic breath, merely by existing by the fire. Dragos’s thoughts faded as he slid into sleep.

  The next morning, they came upon a spring-fed pool. It was shallow and chill, but the summer was warm. It had been a long time since he washed. His fine clothes had holes, and smelled thickly of old sweat and rotten leaves.

  An untended shrine sat beside the rippling waters, full of mossy, overgrown offerings. Food left there had been nibbled at, molded, or shriveled to stones in the sun.

  Dragos spotted a fallen branch and snapped it up. The water. The shrine. An offering should be made.

  Zgavra wandered over and congealed into a child with round red cheeks and a knitted hat. It peered at the items collected on the table of natural stone, erected to appease the nameless spirit to which it was dedicated.

  He paid it little mind. Dragos sat and began to whittle as his thoughts wandered.

  His obsession with the school was Viorica’s fault. He’d been fine, wandering Calruthia, falling into the occasional mishap, but hadn’t thought much about the school itself until her. He’d only wondered about his Cohort.

  Since Sigovara, the possibility of finding any of them seemed real. It wasn’t just some hopeless thing to do to fill himself with purpose.

  The carving took shape; a mermaid, to please the iele that may have guarded the spring. He didn’t sense anything Unspoken, yet wasn’t foolish enough to take a risk of angering anything.

  He thumbed away shavings and blew on the little figure that sat in the palm of his hand. It wasn’t exactly good, but an appeasement didn’t have to be a masterpiece. The energy and focus he put into making it lingered in the wood. It was enough.

  Dragos approached the shrine where the young version of Zgavra tinkered with some beads, corroded green bronze clacked in its chubby little fingers. The wanderer narrowed his eyes at the monster.

  “Don’t play with someone else’s appeasements, zmeu. I don’t need the trouble.”

  The child snorted and tossed the string of ancient bronze beads back on the slab. Dragos lay his mermaid statue on a clear spot. “Str?luciele, accept my appeasement and allow me to become clean in your waters.”

  The pool welcomed his filthy skin. He shed his clothes in the water, scrubbing them against a rock until their fragrance was less offensive. Tossing them up onto the dry, sun-warm boulders, he set to himself. The itch of summer sweat and dirt sloughed away too slowly for his liking.

  He felt vulnerable without his clothes, his skin fish-belly pale and near blinding in the sunlight.

  Zgavra coalesced into its half-draconic form to crouch by the water, dipping claws in and flicking droplets away. It stood up. “I prefer fire for baths.”

  “I’m allergic,” Dragos deadpanned. “I’ll stick with water.”

  A warning vibration stilled him. The wanderer lurched for the edge of the shallow pool, wading to leap just as something slick wrapped around his ankle. Dragos grabbed Zgavra’s scaly leg to keep from being pulled in, a desperate glance shot back.

  A woman’s face crested the surface, her expression quite serene for someone intent on murder by drowning. The iele. Both her hands wrapped around his calf, her smile sweet as honey. Dragos pulled harder on Zgavra’s leg.

  The zmeu didn’t budge, arms crossed over its chest as it stared down with an unimpressed gaze.

  “You’ve sullied my waters, albstrig?. You may pay with your life,” the woman crooned.

  “I apologize. I left you a gift on your altar…” Dragos said through gritted teeth, more or less suspended between the two Unspoken.

  “My shrine was defiled by another,” she accused, her gaze moving to the zmeu. “Dirty males, unable to leave things untouched!”

  “I don’t have time to die right now. What else can I do to appease you, str?luciele?” Dragos asked, his body stretched as another slick something grabbed his other leg.

  “I’ll set her on fire. Then you don’t have to do anything,” Zgavra stated darkly, looking down with red-eyed menace. It was rooted, immune to the water spirit’s pulling.

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  For a long, painful moment, the wanderer wondered which of his joints would pop first.

  Then, the spring spirit hissed, releasing Dragos's leg and gliding backward in the water. More of her body revealed itself, forming from water into a pleasing feminine form. Her dark hair clung to her fair features, well-green eyes staring at the zmeu with a blend of horror and hatred.

  Dragos climbed out and scrambled to his clothes, still wet from washing. He threw his sodden cloak around himself and tugged his hood up. Only then did he stand beside Zgavra, still staring at the str?luciele. The spring spirit glared back. As Dragos returned, it hissed again.

  “Defilers!”

  The zmeu wavered like smoke in wind, stretching into its full dragon form, dwarfing the spring with its shadow. As it drew in breath, Dragos held up a hand. “Stop.”

  Zgavra’s teeth snapped down on the stoking flames within, and an accusing eye turned to the wanderer. “Why?”

  “This spring feeds the land. Her death could mean the death of all things for miles, since the snow runoff is done.” He squinted and knelt beside the small pool, gaze following its shimmering surface to the trickling brook beyond.

  “Oh, defilers,” a voice agreed, somewhere in the thicket.

  A pale figure loomed between the trees. A woman in simple hemp robes, face framed by unwashed dark hair that straggled in the woman’s familiar eyes.

  Dragos was struck dumb. She was like an apparition, but as she picked her way closer through the underbrush, she couldn’t have been. What were the odds?

  “Lavinia?” Dragos breathed. The semblance of a smile tugged at the stiff corners of his mouth.

  The woman stopped walking and stared at him. Her sleeve rose, and she brushed her hair back with her forearm. The gesture was awkward, and Dragos couldn’t understand why at first. The sleeve hid it, but the shape of her hand was wrong.

  Her dark eyes lit with recognition. “Dragos? And not a ghost Dragos, but a flesh one? Well, well!”

  Dragos found himself nodding like a fool. He didn’t know what to do with himself, other than to pull his cloak tighter. “I’m glad you made it.”

  “Are you?” Lavinia squinted, her gaze flicking to the zmeu, who hadn’t taken its eyes off the str?luciele. Raptly attentive. Predatory.

  “Why wouldn’t I be?” Dragos asked, his pleasant surprise at the chance meeting wilting with sudden confusion.

  Lavinia stepped closer, her doubtful stare returning to him. Lingering. Silently waiting for something.

  He couldn’t guess what.

  “What’s all this?” She asked as Dragos stood dumbly like a scarecrow harried by the breeze.

  He shot a look at the monster beside him, and the iele. “Zgavra, a travelling companion. The str?luciele is angry with us.”

  “Zgavra is a woman’s name,” Lavinia stated bluntly, then laughed. “Then the str?luciele will curse you.”

  The zmeu’s face soured. It snorted. “I’ll devour it, first.”

  Lavinia’s brow quirked. “Interesting.”

  The spring spirit hissed at the zmeu, her green eyes hateful, but when Lavinia appeared, something about her attitude shifted. Lavinia came up beside them and crouched beside the water’s edge.

  “Make me a bargain, str?luciele.” Lavinia said. “Let him go, for now. Leave his life in my hands and do not curse him.”

  A watery face pressed to the surface murmured, “And what will I receive?”

  “How about a name-gift?” Lavinia said warmly, a wicked glint in her eye.

  The water iele gasped and disappeared into the pool.

  “Do you live in Fantana Rece?” Dragos asked, glancing at the smoke in the distance.

  “In a sense.” Lavinia’s head tilted toward the Spineback. “I never left these foothills, though you obviously did. Look at you.”

  Dragos looked down at himself. He was bare beneath the cloak, but the clothes he’d left on the rock told his tale. His boots, though well travelled, were not the wolfskin furs he’d worn to flee the mountain. Only the cloak was the same, lacking the silver embellishments of the school. He’d sold those precious metals early on.

  Lavinia had snuck up on him while he was considering the changes. Something hard and curved flicked at the scarf on the rock. “Purple? Color of nobility. When did you become a boyar?”

  Lavinia’s sleeve slid enough to show a wooden hook where a hand should have been. A sharp inhale caught in his throat. When he saw her last, she had two hands. A flick of a glance at her other arm showed a similar shape beneath the long sleeves. She’d lost both.

  He stammered, “It—it was a gift.”

  “Hmm.” Lavinia paced toward him, ignoring the zmeu, poking at Dragos here and there with the curve of wood. He flinched away.

  “Some fat times, some lean times, by the look of you. Still haven’t got any chin hairs, I see,” Lavinia smirked briefly.

  Dragos briefly rubbed his chin and scowled. “Enough poking and prodding.”

  Lavinia rounded him. Her arms dropped, the sleeves enveloping the wooden hooks on her hand. After a moment of silence, she demanded, “Where were you on the night of the fire?”

  For all he was used to the suspicion of strangers, he was not accustomed to it from his classmates. The fluttering moment of pleasure at finding another from the school vanished at the accusation.

  Zgavra crossed its arms, giving him the same suspicious glare. Dragos scowled back at the creature. As if it had a place to judge him. Would-be cerel eater.

  “I was in my room. I crawled out the window vent,” he explained. The memory of that space—near immobility, arms extended and inching forward by fingertips, the twitch of elbows and flex of toes alone—he exhaled a hard breath and shook his head.

  Lavinia looked him over again, squinting at his shoulders. “Surprised you fit.”

  “Almost didn’t,” he confessed, wanting to smile like it was a joke. It wasn’t. He couldn’t.

  To change the subject, he flicked a look at her hooks and asked, “Did that happen then?”

  The woman clacked her hooks gently, the fabric of her sleeves softening the wooden thump. Instead of answering, she asked, “Hungry?”

  “Always,” Dragos admitted. He wasn’t starving, but he’d carefully dried his last catch when he’d found himself angling toward the mountain during his foraging. “I’ve got a bit of smoked fish.”

  “We’ll add it to the pot,” Lavinia said. She shot the zmeu a glance, paused, and sighed, “You too.”

  Lavinia waved a hook and set out, back the way she’d come.

  Zgavra unfolded its arms.

  A breath of mist lifted from the plants, broken by their passage as Dragos and the zmeu followed Lavinia home.

  “Who is this?” Zgavra asked, coming up behind Dragos, weaving through the brush like deer with Lavinia in the lead.

  “Lavinia, Cohort of Serpents,” Dragos said, as if that were enough. He assumed it was. The zmeu had asked about his school on their travels.

  “Ah,” Zgavra said, curious gaze on the woman ahead of them.

  Lavinia led them a small distance from the village, to a hollow near a spring-fed stream. The trees bowed over her little house like a second roof. The scent of herbs mingled as they drew close to the rough boards stacked and lashed. Exiting the canopy’s dimness, Dragos recognized a riot of useful plants in the clearing.

  The door had a simple latch, and within was a small bed, a hearth, and dangling herbs drying everywhere. A pot bubbled on the fire.

  As Dragos stepped aside for Zgavra to enter, she gestured from the zmeu to the pot.

  “Alright, in you go,” Lavinia deadpanned.

  Zgavra stopped and glanced at Dragos. The stunned blink and aghast maw forced the wanderer to look away, chuckling. The zmeu huffed.

  “That had better be a joke,” it said, supremely unamused.

  Lavinia snorted, “Of course it was… unless you’d like that. Nice, hot, brothy bath. How could you resist? How long does it take to cook zmeu, Dragos?”

  “Centuries, from what I’ve heard,” Dragos said, playing along.

  Lavinia was just like he remembered.

  She tossed a hook in the air and huffed. “Pish, not worth the wait. We’ll make do with the Owl’s fish.”

  “It’s not funny,” Zgavra grumbled and shuffled a basket of dried mushrooms aside to sit, scaled legs crossing, clawed hands flopping over onto its lap in a visible gesture of disdain.

  “Oh, not funny,” Lavinia nodded in a caricature of concern. “Not funny at all.”

  Dragos pulled the flat, thin sheets of fish out of its pouch and shredded it over the pot. He took up the large wooden ladle, which seemed to have a few clever holes notched into its stem. He tipped it at her, a brow arching.

  “A hemp farmer found me up the mountain. He carried me down. Luminatori have a shrine to the northwest. One happened to be in town.” She made a sharp whacking gesture with one hook to her other. “He took my hands to save my life. The farmer helped me build this place. There are good people in Cold Well.”

  “How did it happen?” Dragos asked, his voice barely louder than the crackling in the hearth.

  “I tried to save Hana. She was on fire, can you believe it? A Solomonar, master of elements, consumed in flame.” Lavinia shook her head, her lips pursing.

  “Viorica thought it was a powerful Unspoken summoned by Necaz,” Dragos said.

  Lavinia paused, a teapot dangling from her hook. “Necaz? Maybe.”

  She was silent a moment, and in that moment, Dragos felt his gut shrink to the size of a pea. Why had he said her name?

  “Viorica? Where is she?” She used both arms to lift the pot to the hearthstone and nudged it in close to the heat, then rolled to sit on the warm hearthstone, elbows balanced on her knees.

  Viorica’s name slipped when he hadn’t meant to speak it. Best left behind. He only hoped it stayed behind him, as he opened his mouth to say something generic about the Stag in Sigovara. He never got to it.

  When her eyes came up, they were frank. “I thought maybe it was you.”

  “Me?” Dragos choked, lips peeling back in a snarl not borne from anger but disgust. He avoided the other question easily, since she’d said something offensive. Viorica’s fate was left behind in the wake of this new turn.

  The woman shrugged. “It’s those dead ice eyes of yours. Hard to read.”

  “As if yours are different,” Dragos said defensively.

  “Mine are dark and therefore different,” Lavinia said, then shrugged. “But I suppose I can see your point.”

  Zgavra, in the meantime, had taken to raptly listening, his affectations of offense dropped to watch the discussion. He snacked on a chanterelle from the basket beside him, orange eyes flicking between the two with undisguised amusement.

  “You could go back and find out,” it suggested.

  Dragos faced the zmeu, lips opening, but nothing escaped them. He snapped his mouth shut and brushed at the air, as if to wave the idea away. “The entrance arches fell. I’m not crawling back in through an air vent.”

  “You wouldn’t have to. I can get in.”

  Lavinia frowned at them, head tilted thoughtfully. “... and how do you two know each other? Dragos, you’re not Solomonari.”

  “It wanted to eat my foundling,” Dragos smirked.

  “All in the past,” Zgavra stated, its face unsuited to charming expressions, but its tone affecting that of someone who had left bygones behind ages ago.

  “You have a foundling?” Lavinia waved at Zgavra and pointed at the basket.

  Zgavra passed the basket and said, “Had.”

  Lavinia took the basket with her forearms and dropped it into her lap. Snagging a mushroom, she popped it in her mouth and then asked, “Did you eat it, then?”

  “No!” Dragos scowled, frowning at Lavinia. She was far too comfortable talking with a zmeu, as if its power was nothing. Of course. The same could be said for himself.

  “I helped him find it a nice home,” the zmeu stated primly, sitting up a little straighter as it spoke.

  “How sweet of you,” Lavinia replied. Her gaze rose to Dragos. “So, are you going back to the school?”

  He took a long breath and shrugged. The mountain called to him, when he was alone. The school had been prominent in his thoughts lately. Perhaps it was a sign, or just another indication his mind was still broken by that time, and he had to face its current reality, not its memory.

  “I will,” Dragos said reluctantly.

  “Stay with me for a while. Prepare for the climb,” Lavinia said.

  “If it’s no trouble,” Dragos muttered.

  “Trouble? I have none.” Lavinia laughed, as if she feared nothing. “Who would bother the woman in the woods with hooks for hands? Only children who want to catch a glimpse of the scary hook-handed lady.”

  Dragos snorted and grinned. Who, indeed?

  (Ka-va-LEH-rool)/ (kah-vah-LEHR): Knights beholden to the Luminatori

  (loo-min-ah-TOR-ee): Order of monks that worship the light

  Strigoi (stree-GOY): All manner of creatures with wounded souls. It could refer to the undead, to witches, or ghosts, depending on the context

  Nerostit? (neh-ross-TEE-teh): Calruthian word for all things unnatural or strange, synonymous with Unspoken. Places, events, and situations can be referred to as this, as well as beings

  Cel?lalt t?ram (chel-uh-LULT tuh-RUHM): The other realm where never living spirits are spawned

  Boyar (bow-yaar): land-owning lord

  Zmeu (zmyeh-oo): a form of dragon. A shapeshifter that travels between the world of the living and other realms. They are known to steal fair maids to be their wives. Suffers great hubris. Very powerful monster given to chaos, born of the Umbregrin. Solomonari wizards ride them when controlling weather patterns.

  Str?luciele (Struh-loo-che-eleh): iele of spring waters

  (YE-leh): Nature spirit

  Albstrig? (ALV-streeguh): White witch. Barn owl. A pale ghost or evil spirit.

  Cerel (TSEH-rel): Infant/young child. Living human form of Copiii ceruli.