Something was wrong. Even Liraz was squinting at Akiva, waiting. Karou felt a stab of concern. He looked unsteady, even ill, his broad shoulders bowed by some strain. What was wrong with him? She’d seen him look like that before; she’d madehim look like that, but this couldn’t be the effect of the hamsas, could it? Why should they hit him harder than the rest?

With evident effort, he said, finally, “Yes. A beginning,” but there was a hollowness to his voice, compared with the Wolf’s rich tone and strong words, even as he went on to say, “a very bad beginning. I regret this death, and… deeply I regret our readiness to cause it. I hope it can be put right.”

“It can and will,” replied the Wolf. “Karou? Please.”

A summons. Karou felt spotlighted; fear darted erratic in her veins, but she gathered her will and moved. All focus shifted to her as she threaded her way through the host, straight to Uthem’s side. She was standing in his blood. A nod from Thiago and she knelt, unslung the gleaning staff from across her back and lowered it into position, thurible swaying on its chain. A switch alongside the shaft activated a wheel lock similar to a friction-wheel mechanism in an antique pistol; it ignited the incense chamber in the thurible with a report like a snap of metallic fingers. An instant later, a sulfurous tang effused from it.

She felt Uthem’s soul respond. It felt like gray skies and signal fires, the breaking of waves. Impressions flickered and faded as his soul slipped into the thurible and was safe. A half turn to lock it, a flick to extinguish the incense fuse, and she rose from her kneel, taking care to keep her hamsas from flashing any magic at the angels.

All eyes were on her. She glanced to Thiago. They hadn’t talked about this, but it felt right. She said, “I have never resurrected a seraph, but as long as we are fighting on the same side, I will. If you wish it, though you may not. Think it over; it’s your choice. My offer, my promise. And something else.” One by one, she met the eyes of the rank of angels directly before her. “I might not look like it,” she said, “but I am Kirin, and this is my home. So please step aside and let us enter.”

And they did. They didn’t exactly leap to it, but they parted, clearing the way for her. She looked back, found Issa in the throng. Zuzana and Mik, wide-eyed. Akiva’s presence was like a flare in the periphery, calling to her, but she didn’t look to him. She stepped forward. Thiago fell in beside her. The host came behind them, and the Misbegotten let them pass. With blood on their boots, Karou and Thiago led their army inside.

“How did he do that?” Liraz breathed.

The question jolted Akiva, finally, out of his post- sirithartorpor. “How did who do what?”

“The Wolf.” She looked stunned. “I was sure we were done. I feltit. And then…” She shook her head as if to clear it. “How did he stop it?”

Akiva stared at her. She thought Thiagohad stopped it?

He gave a hard laugh. What else could he do? He knew that a pulse had gone out from him—not explosive this time—and whatever it had carried with it, he had felt the soldiers’ collective intention sever. Hehad done it. He had stopped this slaughter from happening, and… no one had any idea, not even Liraz, and certainly not Karou.

While he had reeled in his magic’s blowback, barely able to string a coherent sentence together, the Wolf had risen to the occasion and claimed the moment, and managed to earn himself even Liraz’s awe? What then must Karou be feeling for him? Akiva watched her disappear down the passage at the head of her army, the White Wolf at her side—a striking pair they made—and all he could do was laugh. It ground like glass in his chest. Perfect, he thought. What a perfect backhand from… what? Fate, the godstars? Chance?

“What?” demanded Liraz. “Why are you laughing?”

“Because life’s a bastard,” was all Akiva could say.

“Well then,” was his sister’s flat reply. “I guess we fit right in.”

THE HUNT

Across Eretz, a pulse of magic surged. There was no Wind to presage it this time, no sound or stir, so nearly everyone who felt it—and everyonefelt it—believed it theirs alone, their own despair. It was a wave of raw emotion so potent that, for an instant, it carved out every other feeling and took its place, in its brief passage colonizing every thinking creature—every feelingcreature—with the absolute conviction of the end.

Its passage was swift and bleak; it raced across land and sky and sea, and no creature was immune to it, and no material nor mineral barrier to it.

Far faster than wings could have carried it there, it swept through Astrae, the capital of the Empire of Seraphim, and just as fast was gone again. In its silent aftermath, no citizen connected it with the shattering of their great Tower of Conquest.

But at the site of the Tower’s husk, inside the vast and twisted metal skeleton that was all that remained of it, there stood five angels who did. Seraphim they were, but not citizens of the Empire. They’d come from afar, hunting— hunting hunting hunting—and now, in unison, like compass needles spun by the same magnet, they turned south and east. This overwhelming despair was trespass and violation; they knew it was not their own, and each paused just long enough to sound the depths of its appalling power before thrusting it away. Another taste from the unknown magus who plucked at the strings of the world.

“Beast’s Bane,” they’d heard him called in the harsh rumor-whispers of this craven city. Murderer and traitor, chimaera-killer, bastard and father-slayer. He had done this.

Now, with eyes the color of fire, the five Stelians fixed on the distant Adelphas Mountains.

And Scarab, their queen, spread her wings and said, with perfect wrath, through sharpened teeth, “On with the hunt.”

WARP

In the Far Isles it was night, and the new bruise that blossomed in the sky would not be visible till dawn. It wasn’t like the others. Indeed, it soon engulfed the others—all of them lost in its dark sprawl. From horizon to horizon it spread, deeper than indigo, nearly as black as the night sky itself. It was more than color, this bruise. It was warp, it was suction. It was concavity and distortion. Eidolon of the dancing eyes had said the sky was tired, and ached. She had downplayed the matter.

The sky was failing. The stormhunters didn’t need to see it blacken. They feltit.

And started to scream.