As the darkness dispersed, Guelder saw a place similar to the shrine in the Kamelands, but on a little clearing in the shade of ancient, towering trees. Her heart twisted with homesickness when she recognised the canopy of the Fierani Forest, back in Kyonin, the homeland she'd left decades ago. Her consciousness alighted upon a rough-hewn statue of Lamashtu, a deliberate rebellion against refined elven art and craftsmanship, and observed through the three dark red garnets serving as the statue's eyes.

  Believers gathered around the altar, wearing simple or downright threadbare clothing, unwilling to ruin their best outfits in what was to follow. A wizened half-elf priestess led the gathering, her face red with some kind of rash, a sign of gracious approval from the Mother of Monsters.

  "Rejoice, brethren! Our sister Falara has given birth to a new cub for the pack, and survived! All hail the Mother!"

  One of the cultists tossed back her hood, revealing pointy ears and light brown hair braided into a single thick plait, and, with a triumphant smile, lifted up a squirming, meowing bundle for everyone to see. Enthusiastic shouts came from the congregation.

  "Glory to the Mother!"

  "Blessed be the fruit of your womb!"

  "Here's to many more!"

  Very unusually in a community of Lamashtu worshippers, the identity of the baby's father was beyond doubt. Moving with a subtle, catlike grace, a male elf stepped beside the young mother, and laid a gentle hand upon her waist. His short-cropped hair was a curious mixture of brown and yellow, and his amber eyes had slit pupils, which now expanded into affectionate dark circles to accompany his proud smile.

  The vision stopped for a long moment as Guelder took in their faces, discovering traits that she saw looking back at her from the mirror Hazel had forced upon her, whenever she gathered her courage and cast a furtive glance at her own reflection. A sudden, stabbing pain in her arm urged her to move on.

  The priestess's incantation turned into a gurgling deathrattle, as a crossbow bolt transfixed her throat. The congregation was thrown into panic. Unarmed as they were, most of them frantically tried to flee or hide, while a few brave souls threw themselves at the attackers and started a brawl, buying time for their brethren to escape. The cat-eyed man was among them. In a matter of seconds, he completed his transformation. Spotted fur covered his body, his spine lengthened into a tail, he flashed fangs and brandished claws, keeping his upright posture all the time, and took the lead of the defence. By the time he was put down by a volley of arrows, he had ripped apart one of the attackers and mangled another.

  The battle ended quickly. The bodies of a dozen cultists littered the clearing. The young mother was kneeling beside the corpse of her mate, calling his name – alas, too softly for Guelder to hear. Two of the attackers beelined to her and pulled her up to her feet, gently but firmly, prying her arms off the baby.

  "You must come with us, Falara. Your family is worried for you."

  "Get your filthy hands off me!" she screamed, clutching the baby to her chest. "My family is here! Dead! You killed them! Curse you! Curse you all!"

  In the next moment, one of the men holding onto her fell like a tree, an arrow jutting out of his right eye socket. The other yelped in surprise, his gaze focusing on something in the shrubbery.

  "You...?"

  Two arrows hit him in the chest as confirmation. The cultist woman looked around, distrustful of her salvation, until the last arrow pierced her neck.

  A chestnut-haired half-elf and a stunningly beautiful, middle-aged human woman emerged onto the clearing, softly arguing with each other.

  "What was that for, Enneo? We were supposed to return her to her father!"

  "No, Flavia. Hell will freeze over before I let the old creep have his way. We only take something to prove that his daughter is no more."

  He lifted the dead woman's arm, and pointed at a tattoo of a death's head moth on her wrist, marred by several furious cuts of a knife or razor, a part of it even flayed off and replaced by pinkish scar tissue. He drew a handaxe from his belt, chopped off the arm at the elbow, and wrapped it into a piece of cloth.

  By the time the man finished his bloody work, the woman's attention was already somewhere else. Her fingers were fumbling to disentangle a bundle lying amidst the corpses. A bundle that was alive. A tearful smile and an expression of utter despair followed each other on her face.

  "Give it to me," said the man. "Let me grant it a quick death."

  "No!" exclaimed the woman, hugging the bundle with both arms. "Just look at her. This baby is special. Too twisted for Shelyn but too gorgeous for Lamashtu, balancing between two opposites and blessed by both. A future peacemaker, if I'm any judge."

  "You're no judge, Flavia. You're a woman desperate for a child but unable to conceive. You're an inquisitor of Shelyn, a sworn enemy of Lamashtu's filth, now being tempted by the demon goddess in the most wicked and cruel way imaginable. Resist, or face abandonment by your deity."

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  "I deserve abandonment if I let you kill this innocent little beauty!"

  "You know what cubs of Lamashtu do to their parents, right? They devour them alive, piecemeal. You told me so yourself."

  "That's what children do, Lamashtu or not. I can deal with that."

  "Listen, Flavia. I promise I will find a way with Pharasma to sort this out. If need be, I will pray for her blessing and father you a child myself. Just put that thing down. There. I won't touch it. We leave its fate to the Lady of Graves. If it is meant to survive, it will."

  "Liar." The woman's voice broke, fighting back tears. "She will not survive. She will die in pain, slowly, abandoned..."

  "I'll come up with something, okay? In fact, I already have an idea. Will you trust me on this?"

  "Can I?"

  "You must. Come. Let's go."

  The woman reluctantly obeyed. Sobbing in silence, she rose to her feet and followed him.

  Hours went by. A murder of crows alighted on the corpses and started to feast. Some of them hobbled to the baby, watching, assessing, wondering how her eyeballs would taste. But before they could rip a beakful of flesh out of her face, the birds were flushed from their dinner. A leopard arrived at the clearing with a leap. The big feline nuzzled the cat-eyed man's corpse, then made her way straight to the baby, grabbing the swaddle carefully with her teeth and carrying it into the shade of a bush covered in clusters of white blossoms.

  Two elves stepped out from among the trees, one dressed in a heavy robe of undyed wool and leaning on a gnarled quarterstaff, the other wearing hunting leathers and a bow across his back. Guelder recognised them.

  "This is the place the Wanderer mentioned," said the bowman. "Remind me, Master Thalion, why are we here again? To bury the dead? Are we not supposed to leave that to Nature?"

  "He said we would know when we got here. Mysterious, as usual."

  Their conversation was interrupted by the growl of the leopard venturing forth from her hiding place to scare them away. The bowman reached for his weapon, and the old druid took a fighting stance. The baby fussed, sensing danger.

  "By the spirits!" exclaimed Master Thalion in horror, realising what the beast was trying to protect. "Put it down, Firiel."

  The bowman carefully laid his weapon on the ground.

  "Not the bow, you moron. The beast. We must rescue the child."

  "Are you sure, Master? It did not hurt the kid so far. Quite on the contrary, as much as I can tell."

  "Do as I said. We cannot take risks. It breaks my heart, too, but we have to prioritise."

  It only took one precise shot to finish off the baby's guardian. Master Thalion stepped over the carcass and took the screaming bundle into his hands.

  "Poor thing," he said. "How could she contract lycanthropy at such an early age? We must treat her before the next full moon. Perhaps there is still hope."

  A last stab of the dagger, followed by a twist, ended the vision. Guelder's consciousness plummeted back into her bleeding body with a prolonged groan of agony.

  "You have your answers, ruler of this land," said Tsanna matter-of-factly, letting the last drops of blood drip from the blade onto the altar in thanksgiving. "Now be on your way, and do not detain me any longer. Remember the grace the Mother bestowed upon you tonight."

  Guelder wrapped her arm in a makeshift bandage, then reclaimed her cloak with a trembling hand, breathing puffs of vapour into the cold, humid air. Even the blood on the dagger seemed to steam.

  "Take care, Tsanna," she said. "I know you will not comply with my sentence of banishment, and I do not hold it against you. Keep a low profile and hide as safely as you can, along with what remains of your congregation. The people want a scapegoat to blame and punish for the plague, and as you could see for yourself, my grip on them is tenuous at best. I shall do my best to find the root cause and defuse the situation as soon as possible. Until then, may the goddess keep you safe."

  Guelder set out on her journey back to the lodge, bloodied, broken and exhausted. Eventually she would have to heal herself up before returning to the others, but she decided to offer Lamashtu a little more of her pain in gratitude for showing her the truth. She shapeshifted again, hoping to avoid the feline male gaze as long as she didn't do the mating call, and focused on getting back to the lodge. It felt better to be an animal for a while, since her heart was too raw inside to contemplate the wealth of knowledge she'd been flooded with. Enneo. Master Thalion. Lamashtu. Urgathoa. Falara. Falaris. Her family. A grandfather who'd sent out a kill team to retrieve his wayward daughter. A mother, dropped out of the frying pan into the fire. A nameless father, the source of her curse. A leopard acting as her stepmother, if only for a little while. A Shelynite woman who'd almost become her stepmother... if not for Enneo, who'd murdered not only Jaethal but also Guelder's parents. It was all connected in a jumble she was not yet ready to sort out. But one thing was certain. Her home grove's fate had been sealed the night they'd taken her in.

  And that could only mean she was, indeed, cursed.

  After a long homebound journey, she arrived at the lodge at night. She found the kitchen's window open. Dumra, the dwarf lady who ran the place, was still trying in vain to banish the smell of Tsanna's nostrum from the kitchen. Guelder jumped in through the window, made her way on soft paws to the bearskin in front of the fireplace, and curled up there. She was too tired even to lick her wounds, and definitely not ready to meet her companions right now. Especially not Hazel, whom she'd tricked so cruelly into letting her go.

  Sleep was about to claim her, when she heard the landlady grumble in the guttural language of her people. She had been spotted. Dumra was drawing near with a broomstick in hand. Guelder yawned, showing off her full set of formidable teeth. Please. Not this. Not now. The last thing she wanted was to resume her elf form and embarrass both of them. Her yawn ended in a sad little sound.

  The landlady thought better of it, seeing in what shape the poor beast was. Putting the broomstick away, she poured some milk into a bowl, set it down at a safe distance from Guelder, and shoved it closer to her with a foot.

  Guelder hadn't even realised how hungry she was, for sustenance as well as for kindness. She lapped up the milk with a thankful purr, putting the eventual digestive consequences out of her mind, then drifted off into slumber.