A denser shadow in the darkness, a body. Drem felt his heart lurch as he approached it, slowly this time, trying to prepare himself to see Fritha’s blonde hair, the pale, fine-freckled beauty of her face. He stood over the body. It was turned away from him, half-buried beneath the shattered door. He crouched down, put a hand on its shoulder and turned it towards him.

It was Hask, Fritha’s grandfather. Eyes and mouth wide open, shock and horror mingled, a huge, ragged wound across his chest, flecks of bone in the torn flesh. Drem heard his da going through the debris, searching meticulously, the consummate tracker.

Drem strode to the hole in the wall, saw a bloody bear-print, the timber floor claw-gouged. More blood.

But no Fritha.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE: RIV

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

RIV

Riv sat in her barrack’s feast-hall, picking at a plate of boar ribs and sweet parsnips. Jost and Vald were with her, sitting beside each other. At any other time the sight of them would have made her chuckle, Jost slim and tall as a sapling, looking as if he was all sinew and bone, and Vald, so muscled that his linen shirt and leather vest were straining to contain him, making him appear squat, which he wasn’t, being taller than Riv.

No, not taller than me now. I must have grown, and quickly. Is that normal?

It was quiet in the feast-hall. Aphra and her captains had been summoned to a meeting with Israfil and the Lord Protector’s council.

That’s not the only reason it’s quiet in here, though.

The mood amongst Aphra’s hundred had been subdued and sombre ever since the afternoon’s judgement in Drassil’s Great Hall had taken place.

Poor Estel, having your wings torn from you – something you have worked and trained your whole life to achieve – and then exiled. No kin, no friends, having to start all over again. And where would she go? Ardain, Tarbesh, Arcona, the Desolation? Where else is there?

Riv sighed, prodding her food with a knife. She knew what Estel and Adonai had done was wrong, an act that disobeyed the greatest of Elyon’s Lores that forbade the Great Transgression.

But they did not actually do that. What were they caught doing? Kissing, in an embrace? Flirting? Riv had seen them at Aphra’s table, thought they were too close, a touch lingering too long, and she’d felt the wrongness of it then.

But does that deserve so great a punishment? Adonai’s wings cut from his back. Estel exiled . . .

She felt confused, and guilty, too, for even questioning Israfil’s judgement.

She could still see the deep crimson of Adonai’s blood, dripping onto his severed wings as they lay in the dirt.

To have flight taken away from you. It must be like losing your legs.

I should have told Aphra, when I saw them. She would have known what to do.