SHE ATE DINNER in her own stone house, which was just beyond Archer’s and under the protection of his guard. He had sent the dead raptor monster to her kitchen. Archer was one of very few people who made her feel no shame for craving the taste of monster meat.

She ate in bed, and he sat with her. He cut her meat and encouraged her. Eating hurt, everything hurt.

The poacher was jailed in one of the outdoor monster cages Fire’s father, Lord Cansrel, had built into the hill behind the house. “I hope there’s a lightning storm,” Archer said. “I hope for a flood. I would like the ground under your poacher to crack open and swallow him.”

She ignored him. She knew it was only hot air.

“I passed Donal in your hall,” he said, “sneaking out with a pile of blankets and pillows. You’re building your assassin a bed out there, aren’t you? And probably feeding him as well as you feed yourself.”

“He’s not an assassin, only a poacher with fuzzy eyesight.”

“You believe that even less than I do.”

“All right, but I do believe that when he shot me, he thought I was a deer.” Archer sat back and crossed his arms. “Perhaps. We’ll talk to him again tomorrow. We’ll have his story from him.”

“I would rather not help.”

“I would rather not ask you, darling, but I need to know who this man is and who sent him. He’s the second stranger to be seen on my land these two weeks.”

Fire lay back, closed her eyes, forced her jaw to chew. Everyone was a stranger. Strangers came out of the rocks, the hills, and it was impossible to know everyone’s truth. She didn’t want to know—nor did she want to use her powers to find out. It was one thing to take over a man’s mind to prevent her own death, and another thing entirely to steal his secrets.

When she turned to Archer again, he was watching her quietly. His white-blond hair and his deep brown eyes, his proud mouth. The familiar features she’d known since she was a toddler and he was a child, always carrying a bow around as long as his own height. It was she who’d first modified his real name, Arklin, to Archer, and he had taught her to shoot. And looking into his face now, the face of a grown man responsible for a northern estate, its money, its farms, its people, she understood his anxiety. It was not a peaceful time in the Dells. In King’s City, young King Nash was clinging, with some desperation, to the throne, while rebel lords like Lord Mydogg in the north and Lord Gentian in the south built armies and thought about how to unseat him.

War was coming. And the mountains and forests swarmed with spies and thieves and other lawless men. Strangers were always alarming.

Archer’s voice was soft. “You won’t be able to go outside alone until you can shoot again. The raptors are out of control. I’m sorry, Fire.”