At the time of day Zeke and I traveled the meadow path to the copse of trees where Gleamholt hid, the pale wood and yellow birch leaves glowed pale and luminous between the darker maples. Zeke tipped his hat up with a raptorial foreleg, looking around with what I assumed to be interest. Not much about his mantis-like face changed to show awe or alertness.

  “Like this place? Pretty, huh?” I said, making small talk as I looked for the spot to break the illusion to Gleamholt.

  “Sure is, partner,” a mechanical voice made my shoulders twitch. I glanced back at Zeke to see him fumbling with a small device clipped to the inside of his vest. The voice, for all its robotic sound, somehow still carried a hokey western accent.

  “Handy,” I muttered, pulling the slim prism out of my inventory.

  “Clock’s right twice a day,” Zeke said, the voice following a random click and hum from his mandible region. I had decent hearing as a half-orc, but there had to be a range beyond even my ears, because I’d barely heard a thing from the giant bug.

  I held my prism up, opening the illusion. I couldn’t exactly gesture for him to walk through with my gimp arm, so I tipped my head in the direction I wanted him to go. He figured it out and skittered past me, his big old thorax and bigger abdomen passing me. I watched the top of his hat until he was past the illusion, then followed.

  We marched up to the door. Different guards, same shit attitude. This time it was a centaur and a unicorn, and I prided myself on how I resisted the urge to ask if they were dating. I pulled Baneheart out of inventory and showed it to them. The centaur’s spear drew back, but the unicorn eyed me like it would have preferred stomping my face. Its eyes rolled at Zeke, who clicked at them—some kind of admonishment. The unicorn stomped, snorting at him.

  The complex posturing was beyond me. “C’mon, Zeke.”

  We wound our way to the throne room at the top of the tree, my stomach mildly churning by the end of it, as always.

  That motherfucker wasn’t there. Not in his fancy magically grown throne, not out wandering the circular balcony. Nowhere. For one paranoid moment I wondered if the Killer got him. Then I shook my head and grinned. No way. Ashwynn was probably the most powerful lord in the city, even stronger than Zayan.

  Some newbie probably showed up to do his stupid Kindness Trials, and he was holding the feast. That was a setback. Zeke stood in the center of the throne room audience chamber, head ticking as he looked around, antennae waving. They wagged in my direction.

  “Somethin’ gotcha down, partner?” Zeke asked in his John Wayne-meets-robot drawl.

  “He’s not here. I think I know where he is,” I muttered, passing him on my way back down the spiraling nausea of stairs.

  Halfway down I spotted a sprite buzzing frantically up the core and waved at her. “Where is Lord Ashwynn?”

  “Murder! Murder! Lord Ashwynn is murdered!”

  Fuck.

  I started taking the treads by twos and threes, leaping down the turns. With a hideous buzz a hundred times worse than a sprite’s, Zeke dove past me, wings flashing. I ran faster, but he beat me down to the ground level, bypassing the stairs altogether. We blasted out the door past the guards, leaving their snorts and stomps in the dust.

  Zeke led the way, his antennae more sensitive than my nose or ears. My stomach twisted as I recognized the path to Verdance. This was like a dumb horror movie, and I fell into the trap of playing the cocky jock that gets murdered pretty early on. I broke one of the rules of horror: Don’t split the group. Stupendous.

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  We dashed into the serene village to find a bloodbath. Its pool of water still trickled merrily, but windchimes gleamed on the ground beside splatters of blood. A patch of vines on a stone house had decayed from Akilah’s magic. Glasses lay against the door of a building, holding his guts in with his hand, gasping. Lord Ashwynn knelt in the town circle, the round flagstones sparkling with blood and shattered silica.

  He looked up, great horned head rising, an arm wrapped around his stomach, his other hand pressed firmly to his neck, where a trickle of blood ran. He smiled, blood dripping from his lips, teeth smeared red.

  “You make powerful enemies, Dathai Orc-kin,” he murmured. Pale, crimson-stained hair slid along his shoulder.

  “Healers! Someone!” I shouted, looking around. I had paltry healing potions that would barely touch his life pool… My gaze shifted to Glasses. I could save him. Ashwynn wasn’t near death, but Glasses only had a sliver of life left. It could make the difference.

  I dashed over and pulled a potion out of my inventory, popping the cork with my teeth and holding the small glass vial to his lips. “It’s not much, but it will help with the bleed effect.”

  Glasses swallowed the potion and made a face. He gasped, and struggled to fix his spectacles, askew on his face. I fixed them for him, then pulled out the other potion and tore the stopper free. I fed him the other one. His breathing came a little easier, after that.

  Meanwhile, the danger seemed to have gone, so the sprites, elves, and fauns left their hiding places to gather around their lord. Swirls of magic gathered around the Heartland Lord as those with healing magic summoned their power. In minutes, Ashwynn was standing again, as proud and nearly naked as ever.

  His hand came away from his neck, and he brushed at the blood with his palm, a wry look twisting his perfect, bloodstained lips. Akilah leaned out the window of the house Glasses had blocked with his body. She kissed her teeth when she saw me.

  “Late again, Dath,” she sniped. Elora’s hand waved from beside her, and I saw the hint of green hair. Fig.

  “You three alright?” I asked, looking at the little village square.

  The paths of blood spoke, now that I could see the results. Glasses had probably shoved them in and blocked the door with his body. Ashwynn arrived before the Killer could drag Glasses out of the way. The sparkling shards of silica on the ground… what had Ashwynn used as a weapon?

  I looked at him to find him looking right back at me. Awkward. I avoided his gaze but felt the weight of it. With all the grace of an elven lord’s thousands of years, he closed the distance to me and put a hand on my shoulder in a way that was less friendly than it was controlling. “I suppose we should talk about this trouble you’ve brought to my home.”

  What had I been thinking? How was Ashwynn less domineering than Zayan? Skaama.

  I looked up, but all I could do was nod once, curtly.

  We didn’t go far down one of the meandering paths, past fluffy gold grasses and into a hollow between trees, where high above us boughs arched, stirring in a gentle breeze. He paused on a lawn of springy moss, his slow gaze sweeping the area. His hand flicked. A brief shimmer surrounded us. His arms crossed over his chest, chin tipped down to study me expectantly.

  I explained the ambush and the scramble to the sheriff’s office. Then I had to backtrack and describe why I didn’t want to stay in Thorn Ridge. It was a risk to tell him, but it only earned me a smirk from the district lord.

  “Most would settle into their districts, live quiet little lives, and not stir such commotion, Dathai,” he said, gaze dropped to my wounded arm, nearly useless at my side.

  “It tempts me,” I admitted.

  It did. Being just Dathai, living with Alga, training with Voj’Kasak, raising Loogie. Sitting around the Colosseum with my friends, laughing about nothing and just getting by was tempting. More than tempting. Time would stretch forever—until it all went stale as bread with a hole in the bag. I wanted something different. We all did, or we wouldn’t have agreed to join together to fight the System.

  Ashwynn’s eyes slitted, a serene look of gratification crossing his stunning features. He was pleased. His clear understanding unsettled me. It bothered me more that I liked that he got me. Dick.

  “What’s your plan?” He knew I was a schemer. Thought I was smarter than I was, actually.

  I glanced at my arm, anger stirring my blood and twisting my lips. “Get my arm fixed, then go over ways to catch this shiny jerk. Seems like he’ll take a risk to get to Elora.”

  “What draws it to her?” Ashwynn asked, watching my emotions play out with interest.

  So glad I could be entertaining. It didn’t matter. If it amused him to help us, all the better. “Not sure yet, but I have an idea.”

  The Heartland Lord’s lips curved, slow and predatory.

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