Past a cluster of birches, a twisting pine with a trunk like a face, and a boulder she had engraved with a dragon rune, she saw him.

Her brother.

Prince Sena Seran.

He hung from the tree, his belt around his neck. His bloated tongue protruded from his mouth, and his eyes stared at her, blank, bulging. A crow was already pecking at his ear.

Laira lost her breath. She couldn't even scream.

A choked whisper finally left her lips.

"Why?"

The crow tore off the earlobe and swallowed, snapping Laira out of her paralysis. She ran forward, tears in her eyes, and she wanted to toss a stone at the crow, but she didn't want to hurt Sena, and the bird wouldn't leave, and she tugged her brother's feet, trying to pull him down, but she couldn't, and finally she simply fell to her knees, hugged his dangling feet, and wailed.

The others must have heard her cry; she heard their feet thumping down the hill, and arms wrapped around her, pulling her back. Tanin was embracing her, stroking her hair, holding her as the others cut down the corpse.

"Why, Tanin?" Laira whispered, held in his arms, trembling. "I thought . . . I thought he was happy here, I . . ."

The brown-haired young man held her close. He said nothing; perhaps he did not know what to say.

Tanin's sister—the gruff, golden-haired Maev—stared down at the body which now lay upon the grass. The wrestler crossed her tattooed arms, spat, and shook her head in disgust.

"Bloody bollocks," Maev said. "I flew halfway across the world to save the damn boy's arse from his prison. And now, when we finally bring the bastard to a safe home, he hangs himself? Stars damn—"

Maev's father—the burly, shaggy Jeid—cuffed the back of her head and glared at her. "Show some respect, Maev." The bearded Vir Requis, the first King of Requiem, turned toward Laira, and his eyes softened. He approached her slowly, knelt, and joined her embrace with Tanin.

"I thought he was happy," Laira whispered, tears streaming down her cheeks. She let the two men—a father and his son—hold her in their arms. "I thought he'd find joy among us."

She lowered her head. Perhaps she had always lied to herself. She had been exiled from Eteer as a toddler, too young to remember much of that realm across the sea. But Sena had grown up among the white towers and golden palaces of that warm, southern kingdom. He had fled into these cold hinterlands as a young man, soft and afraid. On his first day here, Sena had tried to take Jeid captive, to betray his own kind—to do anything to gain acceptance back into his father's court.

My father, the cruel King Raem, hunts Vir Requis, Laira thought. I've been suffering from this truth all my life, but Sena . . .

She looked over Jeid's shoulder at the body of her brother.