Anji panted through the chaos, the reaping storm heralding her end, eyes clenched so tight her temples ached. Shuddering with fear and cold, she retreated into memory, like she had all those lonely nights on Linura’s streets, in the hollow hiding places she’d found to tuck herself inside. The images stung like open sores, but she let them fester, allowed them to blanket her mind, better by far than facing the truth. Better to think of better things, to take herself away.

To an afternoon on the low brick wall behind Mudtown’s best bakery, her parents to either side, her father still in his knee-high fishing boots, the bells over Laurelside Square clanging as factories loosed their tired crowds. Tearing into brown seedbread still warm from the ovens. Her mother shoving a piece in her father’s ear and both of them laughing like idiots. The glow of sunlight in her father’s green eyes, the gap in his teeth she’d inherited from him, which he’d stuck his tongue between when he’d been thinking hard or annoyed with her mother. The conversation they’d had, faded to unintelligible words like music playing in another room. That feeling of warmth, of belonging and love and exactitude that she would kill to get back.

Then it was over.

The crawling sensation ceased. The wind died to a whisper. Stray hailstones clattered among those already fallen, then stopped altogether. Thunder cracked, far off and sullen. The tent flapped around them as Anji exhaled a ragged breath and got to her knees.

The Hawk rose with her, chunks of ice clinking overhead as they pushed the fabric up. Anji sidled through the maze of damp canvas, wafting her aching arms toward the tent’s opening.

“Wait,” came the Hawk’s voice from within the folds. Anji spun around, disoriented, panic at being so confined building in her chest. A wave of dizziness and nausea hit her. She pushed down the acrid taste of bile. The Hawk’s lithe form crawled forward and pushed the fabric away from the tent’s clasped opening. “Do you hear anything?”

“I need to get out of—”

“Shut up. Listen.”

Anji wanted to scream and vomit and cry all at once. She wanted to slap the Hawk and tear through the tent with her filthy nails. Her lungs pleaded for fresh air. She noticed a damp warmth between her thighs and realized she’d pissed herself. But she listened for the sound of chittering legs.

Nothing.

“I think they’re gone.”

The Hawk loosed the tent’s opening with a deft flick of her fingers. Anji scrambled through into the light, stumbling to all fours, and sucked in a lungful of cold, clean air. Inhaling stung at her nostrils, at her raw throat, but she didn’t care. She leaned back on her calves, eyes closed, soaking in the feeling of empty space.

“Gods take it,” came a husky voice at her side.