"I have to find you. I have to warn you." The shrieks rose again and she shuddered, her scales clattering. "We have to flee them."

Yet how could she find the others? The north was vast and sprawling, far larger than Eteer. And even if she did find the Vir Requis, would she not lead these demons directly to their door?

She looked behind her again, and she saw him there—her father.

From here, several marks away, he was a glint of sunlight on bronze, no larger than a bead of dawn on the sea. But she knew it was him. He led this army, riding upon a great demon as large as a dragon, a human woman broken, stretched, fed the flesh of men, and shaped into an obscene bat. Even from here, Issari felt her father's eyes staring at her, boring into her, cutting her like his whip had cut her flesh.

My father, she thought, and new fire rose in her maw, fleeing between her teeth. The man who butchered thousands. The man I must kill. The man who tossed me to the demons and will shatter my body if he catches me.

She roared more flame and flew with every last drop of her strength.

So I won't let him catch me.

The clouds thickened above and a drizzle began to fall. In the north, sheets of rain swayed like curtains, and lightning flashed, spreading across the sky like the roots of a burning tree. A forest spread below Issari, thick with oaks, pines, and many trees she did not recognize, trees that did not exist in her warm, southern kingdom. She dipped in the sky, panting, her chest feeling ready to cave in.

She glanced over her shoulder. The demons were closer.

I can no longer flee them in the sky, she thought. My scales are too bright, my scent too clear. I'll have to lose them in the forest, a human again, small and sneaky.

She glided down.

The treetops spread below her, drooping with rain and shaking in the wind. Patches of old snow thumped down like a giant's dandruff. Issari dived lower. Wincing, she turned her head aside, stretched out her claws, and crashed through the canopy.

Branches snapped around her, cracking against her scales. Snow filled her nostrils and mouth. One branch thrust up like a spear, its sharp edge driving under a scale like a splinter under a fingernail, and Issari yowled. She kept falling, shattering more branches, and finally thumped onto the ground.

She lay in the snow, the early spring shower pattering against her. Twigs fell like more rain. Her tail flicked and smoke plumed from her nostrils. When she glanced up, she saw a hole in the canopy, revealing the gray sky. Lightning flashed and thunder rolled, and she heard them in the distance, screeching, laughing, mocking her, flying closer.

A growl sounded ahead.

Issari turned her head slowly.