Alice's silhouette dissolved between the buildings. I stood there, watching the inn window for a while, half-expecting her to reappear, until I turned and gave Elend a nod to follow me out of there.
The lanterns were lit now, casting a strange aura over the city—their glow blending with the moonlight in a way that raised the hairs on the back of my neck. As we moved east, I noticed the absence of the resin smell I'd always associated with Oakhaven.
I raised an eyebrow but let it go for now. The city wasn't the same anymore, and neither were its people, so it made sense that the air had changed too.
The shuttered windows and the silence confirmed it, and the certainty only deepened as I took in my surroundings: Alice was hiding something. I needed evidence before I treated her as an obstacle. It was the least I owed the girl's grandfather.
The road held for about forty minutes before it gave way to a dirt trail. Jequitibás and imbuias closed in on both sides, and I ducked around low-hanging branches every few steps as the moon climbed high enough to throw long shadows between the trunks.
What exactly was I expecting to find? No idea. But I'd rather walk than stand still.
"Do you have any idea what we're looking for?" Elend asked. "Why exactly are we heading to the eastern village?"
"I don't want to believe the demons came back here right under my nose." I ducked another branch, feeling the bark scrape my shoulder. "But if they did, I'll find traces of corrupted mana. I already caught a hint of it in the city, so I need to get out here and see whether it's contained there or spread across the region. As for whether it was a werewolf—I'll know when I see the site."
Elend went quiet. I glanced back and found him staring at my back.
"You already knew, didn't you?" It came out less like a question than a statement. "That's why you came after me while the emperor went to the Great Forest."
He didn't answer, but he didn't try to deny it either—and that was enough to pull a short laugh out of me.
I turned back to the trail, irritation building slowly and steadily until I couldn't stay quiet anymore. He really thought I wouldn't notice?
"'Demons of the north...'" I repeated his words, dry as dust. "A curious way to rebrand the Unborn. If I had to bet, I'd say you came to me to probe whether my barrier up north was still holding."
"Is there any chance it isn't?"
I looked back over my shoulder, and he met my eyes.
"See, I knew it." I let a faint smile settle. "Some of the barriers and seals I used will hold for a long time yet—at least until your grandchildren are your age. Others are getting close to breaking, but I'll know when that happens."
Elend pressed his lips together, and the breeze from the clearing stirred his hair. I stopped short, forcing him to stop too.
"You've been very quiet since we left the tavern in Abateueba, Mr. Elend." I shifted my weight to one foot. "If you wanted to keep your secret and avoid raising my suspicions, you're doing a terrible job."
"Lady Zara..." He looked up, then quickly back down. "Do you think... the demons might be staging incursions to free the generals you sealed across the continent?"
I drew a slow breath and tilted my head back toward the moon. Of course. It was exactly the kind of thing they'd do.
"So you're telling me you already know they came down from the north somehow?"
Elend kept staring at the ground. I sighed and walked over to a nearby trunk, leaning back against it.
"You can't tell me that—I know." I crossed my arms. "But Syl and I have already noticed the signs. More and more beasts keep showing up across the twenty-six kingdoms, and I've never had this much work, never had this many people trying to hire me. That's what made me realize something was off. So don't worry—you're not going to lose your head for telling me."
His silence said everything. I let out a quiet sound through my nose—almost a laugh.
"What I still don't understand is why you won't tell me your real reason for coming." My gaze dropped to his belt. "This doesn't look like the kind of mission the emperor would hand a red cape—especially not one wearing a gold gong insignia."
It had been a while since I'd seen a gold gong. That small piece of metal told me Elend held the highest rank among the red capes, which meant he could command an entire squadron and issue orders to certain nobles below marquesses.
And yet here he was—alone, following me down a dark trail, not a single soldier in sight, which made the whole thing considerably more interesting.
"I wasn't sent by the emperor." Elend raised his head. "I'm following his orders, of course, but... that's not why I'm here."
I narrowed my eyes.
"There's only one other person who can command the red capes, and she most definitely would not have asked you to come after me."
"Why do you keep traveling?" His voice carried a note of genuine curiosity. "Most stories make up reasons and spread all kinds of lies about what happened in the north, but the majority of the population is grateful for what you did. So why have you never agreed to be part of this empire? Why do you prefer to keep wandering?"
"Elend, do you know the real difference between a demon and a human?"
He blinked, visibly thrown off by the sudden shift.
"Demons aren't exactly mindless beasts—they're sentient beings capable of reason." He gave a small shrug. "But they don't fit as humans either, for obvious reasons."
"The difference isn't actually as wide as it looks. Beyond the obvious strangeness of their appearance..." I slowly uncrossed my arms, my eyes drifting up to the moon. "Demons evolve fast, and like humans, it's impossible to know exactly what they're planning. But if we're looking for a real distinction, it's this: humans are fearful, petty, and irrational—because love is both their greatest strength and their greatest undoing."
I paused before turning to look at him.
"Demons feed only on greed and envy. They're nothing but a cold shell that exists to survive, dominate, and destroy." I tilted my head slightly. "Though when you think about it, that's not so different from plenty of humans. How many lords and nobles have you met who are exactly like that?"
"That's very different from what Lady Aerin says."
"Yes." I nodded. "For my sister, demons must be eliminated at any cost—even if that means destroying half the continent."
I let the silence hang a moment before meeting his gaze again.
"At least now I know she's the one who sent you."
The flinch was subtle, but I caught it. Elend seemed to realize I'd used the entire conversation to make him confess—almost without meaning to—that Aerin was behind this. He was sharp, at least. I let the slow smile come as I looked back at the moon. He went quiet for a moment, seeming to reorder his thoughts.
"So that was it..." Elend murmured, almost to himself, his gaze going distant. "I always wondered why that massive barrier in the north was built. You didn't want the innocent people still living there to be killed by your magic... so the way you found to protect them was to cut off the continent."
I kicked a stone and watched it roll down the path until it hit a fallen trunk.
"Do you really think I'm as powerful as Aerin—powerful enough to have won that war?"
Elend nodded, and that was enough to pull a dry laugh out of me.
"Offensive magic wasn't nearly as developed a hundred and twenty years ago." I raised my hand slowly and called up a soft gust of wind.
The mana burned through my veins, and I felt my fingers tingle—the channels still too narrow from the rebound of the sealing magic I'd used on the northern continent. A few rose petals appeared, drifting between us, and Elend held out his palm as one of them landed there.
"Until about five hundred years ago, magic wasn't used for attacks at all." I watched the scattering petals fade. "My sister kept trying to convince our master to permit offensive spells against the demons, but when Aerin took her place and ended Elsie's era, magic began to be shaped as an instrument of war."
I lowered my gaze to Elend, letting the tired smile surface.
"So you really couldn't have destroyed those generals back then?" he asked.
"At the time, I didn't know how to use them very well." I exhaled slowly, turning it over. "But honestly—it's a strange thing, when you think about it. What people today call basic attack magic was born from the hands of one of the Lord of Shadow's generals."
Frustrated, I looked up at the moon and clicked my tongue.
"Within a few decades, humans had learned exactly how demons wielded mana." My voice faltered, dropping almost to a whisper. "After the sealing of the north—all that blood, all those sacrifices—we thought we'd finally live in the Age of Peace. I believed it. I believed it with everything I had left."
"But more wars followed—only between humans this time..." Elend said quietly, completing the thought.
"So all those stories blaming you—they're really just because you refused to be used as a weapon in the wars that came after?"
I nodded.
"There were so many emperors who tried to force me into being their personal mage and concubine that I've lost track of who started it." I narrowed my eyes. "By the time my sister recognized the mistake, it was too late—she banned the mages of the Association from participating in wars between human kingdoms."
Elend held my gaze for a long moment, and I watched the exact instant something clicked into place behind his eyes.
"So that's why you travel... alone." He murmured it, more to himself. "You're protecting the empire from yourself—keeping clear of the court's games, the way Lady Aerin operates from within. While she protects the empire from inside, you do it by staying out. And my master trained the red capes."
The smile that came was genuine. Now I understood why my sister trusted him. I tilted my head slightly, holding his gaze—and that was when his eyes moved across my face and lingered for a moment on my lips.
I let the smile turn wicked before nodding toward the path ahead.
Silence was the only honest answer I had, and Elend seemed to understand that. The trail narrowed until the canopies of the jequitibás nearly touched overhead, and when the tree line finally opened, the village was there—or what was left of it.
The houses sat in a row along an unnamed street, doors hanging half-open, fences leaning. Weeds had already taken over the gaps where yards used to be.
I stopped in the middle of the main road and studied the ground before turning to the houses. The dry mud held at least a hundred sets of footprints in tight rows, all pointing north, alongside cart-wheel tracks and two deeper furrows.
I expanded my perception—no unusual fluctuations, no trace of the discomfort or dizziness that corrupted mana leaves behind. I clicked my tongue, frustrated.
I walked to the first house and pushed the door open with my foot. Inside, the table was set for two—spoons lined up, soup crusted to the rim of the bowls. I moved through the front room, the kitchen, and the bedrooms before reaching the cellar door, which stood open.
The bolts were intact. Why hadn't they used the bunkers? I frowned, scanning for any sign of a werewolf attack, but there was nothing—just a place people had walked out of. Exactly like Alice had said.
"This really doesn't look like an attack site," Elend said from behind me. "The tracks outside show that soldiers came through here with a cart and three wagons."
"Yes." I nodded. "If the residents had heard howling, they would've gathered the families in the bunkers—but the door's open and the bolts are untouched."
Elend stepped closer, looked inside, then turned back to me.
"So they might have left on their own?" He raised an eyebrow. "Or been relocated somewhere safe—which would explain why Lady Alice didn't find anyone here?"
I shrugged, and we walked back out. I circled around the adjacent building, taking my time with the tracks. The footprints converged in a single direction, all leading to the same point beyond the village.
"Two possibilities," I said.
"The first might connect to the lie Lady Syllee detected when Alice was talking to us?" Elend asked, getting there before I did.
I nodded. I appreciated people who could keep up, and Elend seemed to have something working behind those eyes besides muscle and that pretty face.
"Do you know the second?" I asked.
He studied my expression, looking for the answer there, then gave up and shook his head.
"The people in the northeast know exactly what to do in situations like this." I crouched and pressed my fingers to one of the wheel ruts. "Someone used this to move everyone to another location. If it wasn't Alice, it was someone with enough authority to make commoners follow orders."
"A noble or a knight?" Elend seemed to be asking himself.
"Whoever it was used the howl to drive these people out."
"But then what's actually happening here?"
"We're at a crossroads." I stood, brushing the dirt from my fingers. "Literally." My brows drew together. "The first possibility is that Alice isn't who she says she is."
"A demon in disguise?" Elend asked.
"It was a possibility—but Syl didn't say anything, so I'm fairly confident that's not it."
"Then what is she?"
"Alice isn't exactly human—she's some kind of creature." I dusted my hands off on my coat. "When I used my perception, I couldn't hear her heartbeat. So either she's dead, or she doesn't have a physical body."
I shifted my gaze to Elend, who stood with one hand resting against his jaw.
"So she's the one controlling the creature?" he murmured.
"No." I got to my feet and brushed the dirt from my fingers. "What howled was a styx—a demon's thrall. There's no way something like that is controlled by a low-level monster, even if Alice is some kind of undead. Logically, there has to be a demon somewhere nearby—or the creature is being controlled some other way. Either way... something still doesn't add up."
"Why did Lady Alice send the request to the adventurers' guild?" Elend finished before I could. "The request letter had the Avá seal on it—but why did she pretend not to understand why I was there?"
I nodded.
"My read is she assumed it would take time before the crown authorized a formal investigation."
Elend narrowed his eyes, studied the tracks again, then looked back at me.
"Given all that—what do we do?"
"We need to speak with the cleric," I said, already heading back toward Oakhaven.
"Shouldn't we go after Alice and find out whether she's a monster?"
"No." A short exhale. "If she's a monster who hasn't shown any bloodlust, it's because she wants us to figure out what's happening here. We follow the trail she left and do what she needs—whatever she is."
Elend processed that in silence. I glanced back at him over my shoulder, and his eyes moved from my face to the clock tower, visible from here, its hands pointing to eight o'clock. Then he nodded.
"You want to examine the remains at the mortuary, then?"
"Yes." I picked up the pace. "If the cleric isn't the styx, he should still have whatever's left of the victims."
"Was that irony or just... experience talking?" Elend asked, his brow furrowed.
"Last time I hunted a styx, it was literally praying to the goddess Aurora." I gestured back toward Oakhaven, and we followed the path. "The most sincere—and hungry—devotee I've ever seen."
Elend laughed, and I couldn't hold back the smile.
We made it back to Oakhaven at twenty to nine. The city was even quieter now, and the handful of people still out on the street turned to look at us before glancing away the moment their eyes met mine. Fear or recognition—hard to say.
"I have to say, the way people react to you is considerably more... peculiar than my master ever described," Elend remarked, falling into step beside me.
"Did you notice something different about how they're looking at us?" I asked without turning.
"Scared and relieved at the same time." He frowned. "It's a strange combination."
"Maybe they don't know exactly what's happening, but they know something's wrong." I let my gaze drift across the shuttered windows. "Scared people always look for two things: someone to blame, or someone to fix it. Sometimes both—in the same person."
I glanced over at Elend, who kept pace without any effort, and for a moment he reminded me of Alaric. I pushed the thought away before it could go anywhere.
"Your master trained you well." I crossed my arms, looking at his legs.
Elend glanced at his own feet first, then at me, visibly puzzled.
"You noticed?"
"Of course I noticed. Since we left, you've kept your stride exactly matched to mine." I pointed at his feet. "That had to be a brutal training regimen."
"It was. He trained every red cape of my generation so that when we found you, we'd actually be useful." Elend smiled faintly. "Though this time, I ran into you by coincidence—and it's a coincidence I'm grateful to the gods for."
"Why?"
"I'd always heard stories about the Witch of the Requiem." He seemed to think for a moment. "From my master, but also from others. Back in the capital, there are a few urban legends about you."
"What kind of urban legends?" I frowned. "It's been a century since I set foot in Port Imperial."
"Some say you appear to pull the feet of badly behaved children who won't listen to their parents. Others say you show up if someone says your name three times in front of a mirror. And then there's one about leaving food at a crossroads if you want to make a request."
I raised an eyebrow.
"That last one might work for Syl, but me? Not a chance. But people actually believe I'll show up if they leave food at a crossroads?"
Elend laughed.
"That's the only part you're worried about?"
I shrugged.
"Under very different circumstances, the other two have actually happened."
"My master said as much."
"And what else did Alaric say about me?"
"He never talked about you like a legend." Elend adjusted his pace. "He said what you did in the north was the only way the continent survived. That you always liked pulling pranks, sleeping, and drinking. And that you loved it even more when you found someone to share life with—even for a little while."
I looked away toward the road, fighting back a smile. Alaric was always strange like that.
"So all this time he built up what I did for everyone else, but couldn't work up the nerve to say it to my face? That's so like him." A smile pulled at my lips anyway.
"My master also said he owed you his life and felt guilty about everything." Elend sidestepped a puddle. "He never told me exactly what happened in the north, but he always said he didn't deserve to stand by your side. So from the time I was young, I wanted to meet the famous Lady Zara—the goddess's daughter."
"So you're in love with the version of me your master invented?" I tilted my head with a slow, challenging smile. "The divine heroine. Perfect and untouchable."
Elend held my gaze for a beat, a slow curve pulling at his lips as he leaned in slightly.
"In love with his illusion?" He raised an eyebrow. "No, Lady Zara. What draws me is knowing that the woman who left a mark on someone like my master is, in reality, a divinity—and that he had the bad luck of meeting only one of her many faces. Honestly, I like your current phase better: a cynical, shameless mercenary who takes almost any job just to keep Lady Syllee fed."
I was quiet for a second. Then I clicked my tongue.
"You're just as presumptuous as he was—just with significantly less shame." I bit the inside of my lip for a moment. "Are you really angling for an invitation somewhere more private?"
Elend didn't look away. If anything, his gaze sharpened.
"Well, Lady Zara—that's entirely your call."
A low laugh slipped out of me, and I shook my head.
"Don't look at me like that. Fair warning—I'm no goddess, so don't do what your master did and build some idealized version of me." I sighed, pushing a strand of hair off my face. "I only helped Alaric because he promised the emperor of the day would give me a full tax exemption and a lifetime salary."
Elend raised an eyebrow.
"So it was a transaction?"
"Exactly." I shrugged. "I solved his problem, and Alaric solved a few of mine."
He took a subtle step closer.
"Do you still have all those benefits?"
"I do." I held his gaze and tilted my head. "The only problem is that what the emperor promised back then doesn't cover anything anymore. I forgot to ask for the amount to be adjusted over the years, so I have to take on missions to cover basic expenses."
Elend laughed again, just as easily as before.
