Everyone in Ivath was pretending not to panic. Sena felt it in the air the way a Kelthi felt thunder, deep in the gut and humming in the teeth. Brighthand were anticipated from the Southern road, though there were mixed reports of how many days or weeks out they were. And from the north, cutting through the foothills with a speed Sena found personally offensive, came the Lady Catherine and her blades, eager to “restore structure” to the shattered city.

  Two armies.

  Ivath would crack under their boots unless someone stitched its spine together first.

  Sena rubbed a hand over her brow, grateful for the cool press of her palm. Her skin felt too hot today, her pulse too loud. Rhalir watched her from the scavenged table they were using as a map desk, his expression faintly troubled.

  They’d finally moved their quarters indoors, now that they were no longer searching the rubble of the Spire. She’d had to be convinced by Rhalir, who made it clear that no one would survive past three days, not with the cold they’d been having, not while trapped. She had to agree. Now that most of the injured had been stabilized, it was time to find them housing among what was left after so much of the city had toppled.

  So they stood over their map desk and Sena’s tail flicked back and forth.

  “You’re too warm,” Rhalir said quietly.

  She flicked her tail again. “I’m fine.”

  “You’re not,” Rhalir said, and that steady, maddeningly patient look of his made her want to either kiss him or kick him. “Have you got a suppressant?”

  She flushed, furious that he would smell it on her before she even registered it herself – damn Kelthi men. Humans were much easier to fool.

  “Not enough,” she admitted.

  The herbs the Kelthi kept for Heat were scarce here. She’d managed to brew a weak dose with what remained in the old infirmary, but it wasn’t quite spring yet and she would need some fresh ingredients if she hoped to manage the worst of the symptoms. The one she’d made would blunt the edge, but not stop the pull of instinct. And with the city crawling with wounded, hungry, frightened people, both Kelthi and human, her body had impeccable timing.

  Hellen entered then, carrying an armful of scrolls she’d collected from the half-collapsed cloister library. The morning light caught her braid, the green ribbon Sena had tied there, and Sena’s temperature jumped another degree. Hellen was soft, plump, even, and the thought of grabbing hold of that sweetly human flesh made Sena both excited and ashamed to be thinking such dehumanizing thoughts. Hellen was not a pot of stew or a piece of raspberry cake.

  But that reasoning did not affect the Heat in the slightest.

  “Reports from the Glinnel quarter,” Hellen said, setting the scrolls down. “Officer Callahan wants to meet with you.”

  Sena frowned. “The Brighthand wants to meet with Captain Rhalir?”

  Hellen frowned. “No. He wants to meet with Captain Sena.”

  Sena blinked. “Pardon?”

  Hellen and Rhalir exchanged a glance.

  “Have you not noticed,” Rhalir said, “That the people come to you first with questions, Sena?”

  Sena balked. “That’s only because I’ve – well, it’s because I take action, isn’t it? I don’t rest on my laurels when there’s work needed doing.”

  “Yes, clearly,” said Rhalir.

  “But that doesn’t – well, I mean…” but Sena trailed off, glancing between them once more. She hissed between her teeth. “Serpent’s sake. What does the Brighthand want?”

  “He says not all the Order is loyal to the southern Elders,” Hellen said. “The ones here, they’ve seen what the collapse did. They’re afraid of the reinforcements coming. He thinks the Order here might support you. With a few accommodations.”

  “Support me doing what?” Sena asked. “Running the city?”

  “Keeping it from being gutted a second time,” Hellen said softly. Her fingers played at the end of her braid and Sena almost lost herself watching those careful hands before she blinked and looked away.

  Rhalir considered this. “He has influence,” he said. “And he knows the place better than we do.”

  Sena grunted. “Fine. I’ll meet him. But Rhalir is coming.”

  Callahan met them in the ruins of the Spire, where dust still drifted in the morning light like confused spirits. He looked older than the last time Sena had seen him, his cheeks ashen and sleepless, stripped of the rigid Brighthand righteousness she’d once despised.

  He bowed to Sena.

  She nearly snorted.

  “Captain,” Callahan said, his voice less iron than she remembered. “Thank you for agreeing to speak.”

  “I’m no captain,” she said, crossing her arms. Her skin felt too warm; the cold morning air hit her like steam, and this older man was close enough that she could pick up his smell, a hint of sweat and tobacco, and she would much rather not think about the things she would do to him, given the freedom of her Heat. “State your business.”

  Callahan’s gaze flicked to Rhalir, then to Hellen, then back to Sena. He was choosing every word as though they were stepping stones over a river.

  “The Brighthand stationed in Ivath are… uncertain,” he said at last. “Of those who survived the Spire, many believed the Underserpent’s wrath was directed at them. At us.” His hands tightened. “They are frightened. And frightened soldiers make disastrous decisions.”

  Sena waited. Rhalir remained a quiet column at her shoulder, not overshadowing her, but present. He had always been good at that, being the pillar that let others move freely.

  Callahan continued. “We know southern reinforcements are coming. They will not treat the city with the care it needs.” His brow furrowed. “They will treat the Kelthi the way they always have: with utmost certainty.”

  Sena’s tail lashed. She kept her voice even. “And how do you propose to treat us?”

  That made him wince. “As partners,” he said. “If you’ll allow it.”

  That actually startled her.

  Rhalir inclined his head, unreadable. “Why her?” he asked with quiet curiosity.

  Callahan didn’t hesitate. “Because the people are already listening to her,” he said. “Dagorlind refugees, Ashborn stragglers, they’re all watching her. And if any of us are going to keep Ivath from tearing itself apart…” he gestured simply. “It’s Sena.”

  “I’m a serving girl,” she snapped. “Hardly a medic, even. Not – whatever political figure you think you’re talking to.”

  Callahan looked at her with a kind of tired honesty. “Serving girl or not, they’ve chosen you. If anyone else in Ivath is trying to pretend otherwise, they are backing the wrong horse. Er, woman. My apologies, I meant nothing –”

  “Easy, Knight-Captain,” Rhalir interrupted, the barest of exhausted smiles on his lips.

  Sena didn’t know what to do with that. The Heat prickled at her cheeks, the tired honesty an infuriatingly attractive look on Callahan.

  But one glance at his oiled forearm cured that feeling almost at once.

  Rhalir’s voice softened, low enough only she caught the center of it. “You don’t have to want it, Sena,” he murmured. “But you are already doing it.”

  She hated how cleanly that settled in her chest.

  Hellen stepped forward. “Officer Callahan thinks he can bring a portion of the Brighthand to our side before the southern army arrives. It won’t be all of them. But it will be enough to keep them from… deciding destruction is easier.”

  Sena stared at her. “At what cost?”

  “To them?” Callahan asked. “Defiance. To us? Nothing. We want someone to trust.”

  Sena tried to decide whether this was some Brighthand trick or genuine exhaustion wearing a man’s face. “I’ll need you to explain, Captain.”

  Callahan went on. “We don’t trust the commanders coming from the south. They weren’t here when the Spire fell. They didn’t see the aftermath. They didn’t dig anyone out.”

  Sena blinked. “Why should that matter?”

  Callahan’s eyes flicked to Rhalir in humbled recognition. “The Kelthi were the first into the rubble,” he said. “Before even the Brighthand who survived the collapse could organize. Your people pulled our children out with your bare hands. You carried wounded Brothers and Sisters on your backs. You stayed for days. Some of ours… didn’t.”

  Rhalir’s expression didn’t change, but his tail stilled, stiff and alert as he listened.

  Callahan swallowed. “And the Underserpent…” He hesitated, as if deciding how much truth to hand over. “It spared Ivath. It could have drowned us all, or dropped the city into a fissure in the earth. If what the survivors say is true, if the Kelthi and the Ashborn helped free it, then maybe it didn’t see you as enemies.”

  Sena made a sound between a snort and a scoff. “Not hard to curry favor with a slave if you have the nerve to set it free.”

  Callahan looked away, clearly ashamed, and Sena had a moment of regret before realizing that the Dagorlind truly believed if the Underserpent wanted vengeance, Ivath would have been gone. But the wyrms weren’t like that. They only killed when forced, in chains, or when called upon by a bell. They may not even be conscious when their behaviors deep in the earth lead to death to those above.

  Callahan added, quieter, “Most Brighthand serve the Dagorlind. But Ivath’s survivors, we serve the city. We can’t trust commanders who will see Kelthi and Ashborn corpses as a cheaper victory. We need someone who’s seen the cost. Someone who knows what it is to dig.”

  He looked at Sena, waiting for her reply.

  Sena pinched the bridge of her nose. “Fine. I’ll speak with your officers tomorrow.”

  “Thank you, Warden,” he said.

  Sena almost laughed. “I am no Warden, Captain. There is no wyrm to be my ward.”

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  “Ah, my apologies. I took it to refer to the dozens of Kelthi and others in the city that you’ve sought to protect. I thought the title suited you quite well, actually.” He gave her a generous smile, weary but open nonetheless.

  Callahan bowed – again, to her alone. “Until tomorrow, Warden.” He took his leave.

  As soon as he was out of earshot, Sena hissed, “Absolutely not.”

  “You just agreed,” Hellen reminded her.

  “I agreed to talk,” Sena snarled. “I didn’t agree to run the whole thrice-damned city and call myself Warden, of all things.”

  Rhalir touched her elbow, a grounding point. “Sena,” he said gently, “you already are.”

  That was the moment her Heat spiked, sharp and merciless, a rush of warmth along her spine. She sucked in a breath and stepped back, tail whipping.

  “Damn,” she muttered.

  Hellen reacted first, worry brightening her eyes. “Are you alright?”

  “No,” Sena said, too honest, “and yes. And don’t look at me like that.”

  Rhalir’s gaze softened. “We should get you back. You need rest.”

  She laughed. “I don't need rest,” she said. “I need a stronger suppressant and a miracle.”

  “Suppressant?” Hellen asked.

  “For the Heat,” Sena said.

  “Heat?”

  Sena blinked at her. “How could you not know –” but of course the Dagorlind wouldn’t have said. “Hellen. Didn’t Lain ever talk about her season?”

  Hellen shook her head. “No.”

  “Serpent’s sake,” Sena hissed. She gave Rhalir a pleading glance, and he nodded at once.

  “Walk with me, Hellen,” Rhalir said. “There is much the Dagorlind have kept from you.”

  Hellen and Rhalir walked together, Hellen giving one curious glance over her shoulder at Sena before they departed.

  Meanwhile, Sena returned to the shared building that housed most of the Kelthi – some sort of public house, she surmised, though now it was more of a warm and inviting Kelthi den than anything – and began to ask the women for suppressant. It seemed no one had any, or those that did were hoarding it for their own purposes, which she could hardly blame them for under the circumstances.

  She was grateful for Rhalir taking the weight of explaining this to Hellen. But all Sena wanted was to show Hellen with her body what the Heat was, and how it could interact with her touch, and how it could draw her in with such pleasure.

  She needed distance. Space. Cold water. A hole in the ground.

  Instead she had Ivath, which happened to have a rather convenient hole in the ground, come to think of it.

  And then, because Ivath was a city that refused to let anyone rest, music drifted across the broken plaza just as Rhalir and Hellen found there way back to where she was, but now Hellen’s arm was looped through Rhalir’s, and he was saying something with one hand cupped to her ear, and Hellen flushed and laughed, and all Sena wanted to do was climb into that laugh and soak her whole body in it.

  Sena turned to the sound of the music. “What is that?”

  Rhalir’s silky black ear turned to the noise. “Drums?”

  Hellen shaded her eyes against the setting sun. “No… it’s a fire gathering.”

  Sena stared. “What idiot decided now was the time?”

  “People who are tired,” Rhalir said.

  “People who need joy to remember they’re alive,” Hellen added softly.

  She felt the Heat thrum in her as her senses rose, and she was drawn almost desperately to the sound of the music, picturing the movement of bodies and the smell of a small crowd and the heat of hands upon her own –

  “We’re not going,” she said.

  “We are,” Rhalir said.

  Hellen nodded. “They need to see you.”

  Sena growled. “They need to stop making me their symbol.”

  “They need hope,” Rhalir said, his voice gentling for her. “They’re choosing you because you give them that.”

  “I don’t want to,” Sena snapped.

  “Of course not,” he replied. “That’s what makes you right for it, Warden.”

  They didn’t make her speak, at least. Thank the Serpent for that small mercy. Kelthi and humans mingled in the square where broken bricks and stones had been moved to clear a space, a bonfire throwing golden light across soot-dark walls. Someone passed out cups of sour wine. Someone else began an old Kelthi rhythm. Children wove between the adults. A Brighthand guard played a low, hesitant pipe, his uniform mostly swapped now for civilian clothes aside from his jacket. Even his hand had not been anointed this day; there was no oil-slick shine on his fingertips.

  It shouldn’t have worked, but somehow it did; people needed to breathe again, after all.

  It happened the way storms do in early spring: the clouds seemed too distant to ever gather, but then they arrived all at once, and out came the rain of music and dancing.

  A Brighthand uncorked a bottle and passed it around while another stood to dance with an Ashborn woman who’d caught his eye. Sena felt the warmth of the fire, her pulse high and hot. Rhalir’s face flicked to her again, nostrils flaring almost imperceptibly, beautifully. The black of his wool always drew her eye, and the whiteness of freckles across his ruddy skin, and the marbled blue of his eyes; his scales, which were a rich serpentine, did not shimmer in their roughness but were smooth like river rocks on the bank of a seasonal pond, and she wanted more than anything to run her fingers along their surface with a palmful of rose oil and make them shine.

  The Brighthand guard offered her his flask. She took it without thinking, grateful for something to hold besides her own unruly body, and when her hand brushed his, her Heat turned the contact into fire. His brown eyes flashed to her own and she drank, not breaking eye contact. The liquor burned. It helped. And suddenly he was pulling her into the loose circle of dancers, nothing formal, just tired people moving because the alternative was collapsing. Sena danced with a force of will she knew others found attractive, and once or twice she let her tail spine lash the guard, and he seemed both alarmed and entranced – humans were so easy, she thought, as he turned her.

  A Kelthi youth pulled Hellen into the circle, his antlers only thrice tined. Hellen startled, then laughed, the sound bright to Sena’s ears. She didn’t dance well, but she danced willingly, and the Kelthi boy seemed just as thrilled to dance with a human as she was to dance with a Kelthi.

  Sena parted from her Brighthand partner who looked on with immense disappointment as she moved to stand beside Rhalir. He filled his pipe with a small portion of tobacco – he must be running low. The vanilla scent of pipe smoke rose to her nose and she could smell it in his beard, on his mouth, and she would have loved to know what it tasted like on his tongue.

  She started at Hellen, as she swayed and laughed and tripped a little on her own feet.

  “Go,” Rhalir murmured.

  She shot him a glare. “No.”

  “You’re vibrating,” he said.

  “I’m not –”

  He stepped close enough that she couldn’t ignore him. Her breath hitched and her tail gave a tiny, traitorous twitch.

  “You can’t outrun this by standing still.”

  Hellen glanced over her shoulder then, cheeks flushed, braid swinging. “Sena – come!”

  Sena’s throat tightened in want and dread as her feet moved, almost against her will.

  She stepped into the circle again. The dirt was uneven beneath her hooves, the firelight too bright, the air full of smoke and the thin threat of singers on a familiar tune. Hellen reached for her hand, and Sena let her.

  It was a mistake.

  The contact lit every nerve in her palm. Hellen’s smile lived too close to her heart. And Rhalir, Serpent help him, watched from the fire’s edge with a look that was not jealous, not even surprised, but keen in its quiet awareness.

  Hellen’s pulse fluttered where Sena’s fingers touched her wrist. Her robes brushed Sena’s chest. Her laughter spilled warm across Sena’s cheek. When Sena spun, Rhalir caught her other hand automatically, steadying her as if this were a battlefield and she had mis-stepped on broken ground.

  Between Sena, Hellen, and Rhalir, the air grew taut as a bowstring.

  The Heat pressed behind Sena’s eyes. Her breath thinned, her center alive with the warmth of them.

  Hellen, still grinning, tugged her closer. “Don’t stop,” she said, soft and earnest in a way that made Sena’s knees soften.

  Rhalir’s hand hovered at the small of her back, always ready. Then she let herself be pulled.

  And for all her irritation, for all her Heat, for all her desire to keep everyone at spear’s length, Sena moved with an ease she hadn’t felt in weeks. Her body remembered what it was to claim a moment of joy simply because it wanted it. Rhalir used to tease her for this, how quickly she made spaces feel like home simply by stepping into them.

  That part of her resurfaced now, bright as flame.

  She laughed at something a Brighthand said. She guided a staggering Ashborn back into the right rhythm. She ruffled a child’s hair when he darted past her and nearly tripped. She was warm, and present, and startlingly alive.

  Hellen watched her with wide eyes, as if witnessing something she hadn’t known she was hungry for. Sena felt the look, the earnest, startled admiration as it hit her harder than the wine. Sena turned as some instinct in her wanted to offer kindness, the way she had when Lain trembled in the bath, or when she’d braided Hellen’s hair.

  Another shift in the music brought Hellen back to her, who lifted Sena’s hand shyly.

  “Would you dance with me again?” Hellen asked, trembling as if she didn’t expect a yes.

  Sena’s softness emerged before her sense did. “Of course,” she said, thumb brushing Hellen’s knuckles.

  The moment cost her. The Heat flared through her hips, her pulse beating high in her throat. She stepped closer to Hellen, and the music flowed around them, and Hellen leaned with unexpected trust, her shoulder brushing Sena’s collarbone.

  Sena bent her head automatically, Kelthi instinct and old affection braided like Hellen’s hair, and breathed a soft murmur into Hellen’s ear.

  “Do they teach all the Sisters to dance like this, or have you been given special treatment?”

  Hellen let out another surprised laugh. Then, after a moment: “Rhalir explained… about the Heat, I mean.”

  She turned Hellen before bringing her close once more, thrilled to finally have Hellen’s softness pressed against her. “Do you feel you have a better grasp of the world now, Sister?”

  “Yes.” Hellen’s hand tightened at Sena’s waist. “And a better grasp of you.”

  Sena chuckled. “And? Do you find me indecent?”

  Hellen shook her head fiercely. “I find you fascinating. I want…”

  But before she could finish, Rhalir stepped forward, bringing them cups to drink from. They raised them in a cheer, swallowing it all down. Sena reached and steadied Hellen’s waist as she swallowed in the absent, caretaking way she always had with the vulnerable. And when Hellen brought her empty cup away from her mouth Sena inhaled Hellen’s breath – the tart wine, the warm and frightened scent of a woman wanting and not knowing how to take – and their mouths moved only a gasp apart.

  Hellen’s lips parted.

  Sena’s hand tightened on Hellen’s waist.

  “Sena,” Rhalir murmured.

  Oh the fury she felt at his reasonable intrusion, the pillar of awareness always blocking her path.

  But she pulled back a fraction anyway, breath catching. Hellen startled, blinking up with confusion and a flicker of almost hurt. Sena cupped her cheek with her thumb, again instinct more than intention.

  “Forgive me, love,” Sena whispered, voice rough. “But we can’t do this here.”

  Hellen nodded quickly, embarrassed, though Sena suspected she didn’t fully understand.

  Rhalir let a hand fall on Sena’s shoulder, steady and unintrusive. “We should get you inside,” he said softly. “Before the Heat decides for you.”

  Sena swallowed. “Yes. Please.”

  They left as a tangle with Hellen shy and flustered and Rhalir fiercely watchful. Sena was pulled taut between want, instinct, and the strange resurgence of her old tenderness. Sena felt the cold night only as a thrilling shock along her overheated skin. Her body was alive with wanting. She walked between them, shoulders brushing theirs, every point of contact an ignition.

  Rhalir guided them without a word toward the abandoned stone house they’d claimed two nights earlier, a private shelter with its hearth repaired and its single room cluttered with blankets and the remnants of their makeshift supplies. Sena hadn’t noticed the direction until they reached the door.

  Hellen hesitated. “Thank you for dancing with me,” she whispered, voice shy as a prayer. “You made it feel… different. Good.”

  Sena’s heart clenched. She brushed Hellen’s loose bangs back from her cheek with a gentleness she did not remember choosing, and every place her fingertips touched came to life.

  “I’ll take you dancing again,” she said. “When the world isn’t ending.”

  Rhalir watched them both with something deep and steady in his gaze, carrying an understanding neither of them had asked for.

  “Sena…” Hellen said.

  Sena sensed what she wanted, feeling it as keenly as instinct and as bright as Heat. Her eyes flicked to Rhalir. Awkwardness hung for one fragile moment.

  Then Rhalir lifted a hand to Hellen’s back and guided her gently, deliberately, straight into Sena’s arms.

  The kiss happened as naturally as stepping into warm water. Hellen’s mouth was soft and eager, her breath trembling into Sena’s gasping inhale. Sena knew by instinct, by scent, by the way Hellen clung that if Hellen had ever kissed anyone before, it had been in secret, those kisses arriving as quiet, starved little things stolen in hallways. Never like this. Never wanted like this.

  The Heat surged. Sena nearly pulled her inside the doorway, nearly let instinct shove everything else aside, but she caught herself, panting, too fond and too undone to trust her own hunger.

  She drew back with a foolish, breathless grin that she immediately tried to smother. “Tomorrow,” she said hoarsely. “We can… talk. Tomorrow.”

  Hellen blinked up at her, lips parted, breath unsteady. She turned to Rhalir as though for confirmation – and gratitude, perhaps, or permission – but what she received was something steadier. A quiet yes.

  Rhalir reached out to fold a hand around each of their wrists.

  “No,” he said, gently as a bow drawn slow. “Not tomorrow.”

  Sena’s breath hitched. Hellen went still, caught between them as in the space between notes.

  Rhalir stepped forward, closing the small distance between their bodies, and guided them both across the threshold with one hand on Hellen’s back, one curled around Sena’s arm.

  Inside, the dimness enfolded them.

  Hellen’s eyes lifted to Sena’s, fragile and blazing.

  “Hellen,” Sena said. “Is this what you want?”

  Hellen inhaled sharply.

  Rhalir breathed out, low and certain.