As Liv’s father had predicted, the Antrians in the jungle pulled back once it became clear that the Eld were no longer being forced to fight on two fronts. With the eruption of the Garden of Thorns a tactical failure, whoever was commanding the war machines seemed to have no appetite for the prospect of beginning a full scale assault on the fortified waystone. By the time night fell in the jungle, the fighting had completely subsided.

“Tomorrow, we should take council in Al’Fenthia,” Valtteri said, leading Liv, Rose and Wren down from the walls. Airis ka Reimis had remained behind to command the watch, in case the enemy renewed their assault. “So much has happened, in the last few weeks, that we risk information becoming scattered and confused.”

“Before that happens, I’d like you to take a look at two captured scouts,” Wren suggested to Liv. “My people.”

Liv frowned. “How are you keeping them from just changing form and flying away?”

Valtteri laughed, and Wren shrugged, looking away.

“It doesn’t matter what shape they’re in if they’re completely enclosed,” the huntress explained. She led the group over to a pair of barrels, standing upright and under guard by two warriors with the hair and coloring of House Syvä. Half a dozen fresh nails had recently been hammered into the top of each barrel, but a very slight gap had been left between the top of the barrel and the rim.

“You’re kidding,” Rose said. “You sealed them up in barrels?”

Liv frowned. “Couldn’t they just turn into blood and ooze their way out?”

“Most of my people don’t master that trick,” Wren answered, shaking her head. “It’s almost as rare as taking on other forms.”

“Wait, how does that work?” Rose asked.

“You need to hunt the animal whose form you want, and have the blood-letters use its heart's blood in a ritual,” Wren said. “My father can turn into a jaguar, for instance. But that’s not what I brought you over here for. Liv, you saw the place my people were sleeping at Godsgrave. Could you show it to them in a dream?”

Liv considered that for a moment. “I've only made one attempt to use Cei since I learned it,” she admitted. “There’s just been so much else going on – and I wanted Master Grenfell to imprint Sidonie with it, first, so that we could experiment together. ‘We dream’ is easy enough to conjugate.”

“Csun Mæ,” her father suggested. “With me. They dream with me. From there, I would expect your intent to put you in control of the shared dream. But I am only guessing, Liv; that’s a word of power that was lost to our people.”

“I’ll need a place to lie down, and to have them with me,” Liv mused, trying to figure out all the pieces. Jurian had cast the exact spell she needed, but it had been while Liv was already asleep. Her friends, however, had been awake. “Did you hear the incantation Jurian used on me?” she asked Rosamund.

“What your father said sounds right,” Rose said. “And he conjugated it Ea’Ceit. ‘She dreams.”

“Since Wren’s people can’t use magic, I don’t imagine that overcoming their authority will be a problem.” Liv nodded. “Alright. I’m willing to give it a try.”

There followed a bustle of activity, as Elden warriors were tasked with carrying the barrels to Valtteri’s tent, and then setting up a guard outside to keep Liv safe while she was vulnerable. Without being asked, Rose sat on the cot, and Liv laid her head in her friend’s lap. Two warriors pried the nails out of the tops of the two barrels, revealing two groggy hunters. Before they could move, Liv spoke her incantation, wand clutched in her hands.

“To Ceint Aiveh Csun Mæ,” she said, letting the words vibrate up from her belly and wake the new word imprinted at the back of her mind.

Liv let her eyes close, and when she opened them, she stood once again upon the rim of the crater called Godsgrave. The two hunters, who she saw now clearly for the first time, stood with her, spinning about in fear and shock.

“Who are you?” the woman exclaimed. Liv saw that she wore the same purple streak dyed into her hair that Wren had when she first arrived at Bald Peak. She was surprised, for a moment, that they spoke such clear Lucanian – but the dream was under her control, after all, and the entire purpose of the spell was to win these hunters away from Ractia.

“My name is Livara Tär Valtteri kæn Syvä, journeyman of the mages guild,” Liv introduced herself. “We’re in a shared dream right now, shaped by my magic. Nothing that you see here will actually hurt you. Would you be willing to tell me your names?”

The two hunters exchanged glances. “How long do you intend to hold us prisoner here?” the woman asked. “Imprisoned in your nightmares?”

Liv sighed. “I’m not going to keep you imprisoned anywhere. I can’t imagine my father will be willing to let enemies go free, however, and he’s in command of our warriors. But I cast this spell to show you something, and once that’s done I’ll let you go. I have better things to do with my night than spend it with you two.”

With a thought, Liv shifted them into the chamber that Jurian and his friends had found so many years before. She reproduced it exactly as her dead teacher had shown it to her: the cold metal floors, and the walls that hummed. Rows of caskets, forged of metal and fitted with curved panes of glass, which lined the walls. The empty corridor that divided the room at the center. The mess of metal tubes and pipes, connecting each casket to the machinery mounted on the walls.

The two hunters stumbled and clutched at each other, and it occurred to Liv that when she did something like this for her friends, she would have to warn them before making such a sudden transition from one place to another.

“There they are,” Liv explained. “Dozens of your people, just in this chamber. Who knows how many places like this we might be able to find. They’ve been kept here, dreaming, since the end of the last war. The chamber was buried deep enough, and far enough from the center of the city, that it survived when Tamiris dropped the sky on it.

The secrets she’d learned from Aira rattled around Liv’s mind: not the sky, but a piece of the enormous ring that surrounded their entire world. Not Godsgrave, then, but the city of Corsteris. No need to confuse the conversation, however.

“Wren was telling the truth,” the male hunter murmured.

“She generally does,” Liv said. “At least, in my experience. And I feel like I’ve gotten to know her pretty well over the past year.”

“You’re the Eld she serves, then?” the woman asked, her face twisted in a sneer.

Liv shrugged. “She’s been my bodyguard for the past year, to make up for what she’s done. But I’d prefer to think of her as a friend.”

“Wildcat,” the man said. “That is my name. What do you want of us, Livara?”

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“I’d like to not have to fight you,” Liv said, honestly. “Some of your people have left Ractia. Go join them, and the Eld have no quarrel with you. It would be even better if you could give us intelligence on our enemy, but I don’t think it's a deal breaker if you’d rather just go. But if you turn around and rejoin our enemy, then we won’t show any mercy.”

“You don’t understand how powerful she is,” Wildcat said. “Wren’s been gone a year. She doesn’t know –”

“Don’t trust her,” the woman interrupted.

“I’ve seen Ractia,” Liv said. “I’ve felt what it's like to be in the same place as her. I didn’t know what to call it, at the time, but that pressure – that’s her Authority. And I know she’s taken over the control room at Nightfall Peak. That’s how she’s been linking waystones and causing eruptions wherever she wants. But I also know we’re whittling down her commanders one by one. I’ve killed Karis and Calevis already. I’ve seen Manfred and Aariv fight. We stopped her from getting whatever she wanted at Coral Bay, and we destroyed the Foundry she was using to make more war machines. She’s going to lose.”

“Coral Bay wasn’t the only rift the Great Mother sent teams to,” Wildcat admitted. “She’s building something, some great machine. I don’t know its purpose, but teams are sent to loot ancient workings from all over the world.”

“Stop!” the woman exclaimed, taking Wildcat by the arm and shaking him. “If you betray her, she’ll kill you!”

“Is that the kind of goddess you want to serve?” Liv asked. “The one who keeps you out of fear?”

“Little Crow,” Wildcat said, turning to plead with the woman at his side. “They’ve already captured us. Wren could have slit our throats, and you know it. They could still kill us, or just keep us imprisoned until the war is ended. But they’re offering to let us go and rejoin our people. This is the best chance we have.”

The woman slumped against him, and nodded her head.

“I’m going to take us out of the dream, now,” Liv said. “I’m going to trust that you won’t betray us when you wake up.”

“You have my promise,” Wildcat said.

☙

Liv inhaled a great breath, and opened her eyes.

Her head was still in Rose’s lap, the other woman’s fingers gently stroking her hair, and the tent was lit by oil lanterns. Her father and Wren waited, and two soldiers guarded the barrels into which Wildcat and Littlecrow had been awkwardly stuffed.

“You can let them out,” Liv said. Of course, now was the moment in which betrayal would come, if that was the path the two hunters were determined to choose. She sat up, keeping her wand in her lap, as they pried themselves out of the barrels.

“So?” Wren asked. “Now that you’ve seen it, have you changed your minds?”

“We will fly east, if that is allowed,” Wildcat said. “We will go to our people who have stepped aside from this war, and join them.”

“If my daughter has promised that to you, then I will honor her commitment,” Valtteri said. “But I cannot allow you to go alone, with no guard to ensure you keep your word. Wren Wind Dancer, will you escort these two captives home?”

Wren glanced to Liv before responding. “I can. But I don’t want to leave Liv for too long.”

“When you return here, I will use the waystone to send you to join her,” Valtteri promised. “Wherever that may be.”

“Alright then.” Wren nodded. “I’d like to see my family again. It’s been too long.”

“I think all three of you need a good meal, some rest, and some fresh blood before you set off,” Liv pointed out. “And I’d also like Wildcat to tell us anything he’s willing to about Ractia’s plans. You said she was looting the machinery in rifts across the world to make something?”

Wildcat nodded. “Yes, but I cannot tell you what. Her forces target abandoned rifts whenever they can – most of Varuna is unguarded, and even in the wild places of Isvara, there are rifts that have been forgotten. However much you think you slowed her at Coral Bay, you only denied her a few pieces. The work continues.”

Little Crow sighed. “If we’re going to tell them, I suppose we tell them everything,” she grumbled. “The goddess has given birth to a son.”

Liv felt Rose tense behind her, and from the expression on her father’s face, and the way that Wren froze, they were all feeling the same thing. “There aren’t any other Vædim left. Who is the father?”

“I’m sorry, Wren,” Wildcat said. “You have a brother.”

“Half Vædim, half great bat,” Valtteri muttered.

Liv’s mind was already spinning with the dangers. Wren’s people couldn’t use magic, but she couldn’t imagine the goddess creating such a child without a purpose. “We have to assume the – son, you said? – will have blood magic, along with being able to change their shape,” she said.

“Yes, a son,” Little Crow said. “She named him Noghis.”

“Claw,” Liv muttered, translating the word automatically.

“Alright, but even if this kid is going to be powerful one day, we have time,” Rose pointed out. “Fifteen, twenty years to grow up, at least. Right now he’s just an infant. If we can get him away from his mother soon enough, he might even be able to grow up and not turn into a horrible monster.”

Wildcat shook his head. “No. The child grows faster than any babe should. She quenches his thirst with blood instead of milk, and her magic works upon him night and day. Already, Noghis looks like a child of three, perhaps four, when he should still be wailing on his mother’s hip.”

“I need air,” Wren said, and pushed her way out of the tent suddenly.

After a moment of silence, Valtteri turned to the guards. “Bring our prisoners to get something to eat and drink,” he instructed them. “Keep them under watch, but treat them with respect. So long as they do not betray us, they will leave peacefully as soon as Wren is ready to escort them.”

The guards inclined their heads, and led both Wildcat and Little Crow out of the tent, leaving only Liv, Rose, and Valtteri. Liv’s father turned to her. “Will the two of you be staying here for the rest of the evening,” he asked, “or returning to Al’Fenthia?”

Liv looked to the flap of canvas that closed off the interior of the tent from the bug-filled night outside. “I don’t want to leave until I’ve spoken to Wren,” she said. “And I’d like to see her off when they leave.”

“I will arrange a tent for you, then,” her father promised. “And we can all use the waystone together in the morning.”

Liv swung her legs around and stood up, then glanced back at Rose.

“She’s upset. Go ahead and talk to her,” Rosamund said. “I’ll meet you in the tent.”

“Thank you.” Liv slipped out into the warm evening air, and cast about for the huntress. There were tents and soldiers everywhere: cook fires, men patrolling the hastily raised walls, and every apparatus of an encamped army. But Wren wouldn’t want to be around any of that.

Liv set out for the bridge - the road that topped the dam in the Airaduinë river. A gate had been built there, and though it was closed, the Elden warriors that guarded it made way for her. She heard one of them ask who she was, and the other other respond that she was the daughter of the commander. It would have been nice if they’d recognized her simply for herself, but Liv supposed that she’d yet to really fight with her own people. Everything she’d done in Lucania and Lendh ka Dakruim would be unknown to them.

As she’d expected, Liv found Wren outside the camp. The huntress had found herself a comfortable rock on the slope down toward the reservoir created by the dam. “You aren’t worried about mana beasts?” Liv called ahead as she scrambled down to join the other woman.

“I’d like something to show up right now, actually,” Wren grumbled. “Something nice and mean, so I can kill it and drink the blood before the carcass cools.”

Liv scooted onto the rock until she was sitting next to Wren, their hips touching. She thought about how to start the conversation, but couldn’t think of the right thing to say. Instead, she just let the silence stretch until the other woman broke it.

“Whatever that thing is, it isn’t my brother,” Wren spat, finally. “My mother’s dead. My father - whatever that thing she’s keeping is, it isn’t my father anymore. It’s a body that looks like him. A slave. She might have used my father’s body, but – he didn’t have a choice.”

“It seems like she hasn’t changed in a thousand years,” Liv said, quietly. “That’s where my family comes from, you know. Celris raped an Elden woman named Syvä, and the child was my grandfather. If you believe Aira, her mother was alright, but – most of them? They just used people however they wanted. They never cared about who they hurt, or who they left behind.”

“I’m going to kill her,” Wren growled. “I’m going to kill her, Liv.” The huntress body quivered like a bowstring pulled taught and held too long. “She took my father from me. She’s throwing my people into this stupid war. And now –”

Liv raised her hand, gently placed it on Wren’s back, and gently began to rub it in slow circles. It was the same motion she’d used when Matthew was sick as a baby, and Julianne had been too exhausted to hold him any longer.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m sorry all this is happening.”

“The worst part is, it's my own fault,” Wren admitted, her voice breaking. “If I hadn’t stolen that stupid statue, if I’d just left it in Whitehill – how many people would still be alive?”

“Good things came out of it, too,” Liv reminded her. “I’d be dead if you’d never come to Whitehill. We’d never have met.”

“I suppose.” Wren was quiet for a long time then, and Liv sat with her until the moon rose high in the sky.