“Bal does.” This filled Awa with hope. Djola’s conjure bag weighed nothing again. Riding the crossover rhythm, she rose high and aimed for a faint glow: the light bridge. Stars and cold comets rushed by, and in no time, they stood on a rock by a hot spring. Silver trees nodded a welcome. Deep snow around them sighed and shifted as someone played an ice harp in a cave overhead. Awa pressed her cheek against the giant beehive resting in warm heather. The roar of many wings comforted her.

“Whose realm is this?” Sleet blew through Azizi’s flimsy robe. Breath froze in his scraggly beard. He touched a thirty-foot icicle melting into the steam from the hot spring. Or was it growing?

“A difficult region to find. Almost impossible—” Awa sputtered.

Behind Azizi, a spirit slave with Hezram’s face tumbled from the star bridge to the rock ledge, carrying a bundle of rags. This fiend had trailed them to the seventh region. Azizi turned to see what terrified Awa then shoved her against the beehive. The rag bundle the fiend carried was a limp woman. She’d been in the cell when Soot rescued Meera and Mother.

Fresh blood was quick fuel, not the slow burn of tree oil and blood. The fiend jolted at ice-harp music and slitted empty eyes against bright snow. Light drained from its heart. Awa gripped the viper necklace at her neck as the fiend chomped granite teeth into the woman’s shoulder and sucked greedily. Its heart burned bright again. The woman’s spirit body turned to ash and void-smoke that got swallowed by crystals at the cave mouth. Awa’s lungs burned, her heart ached. The fiend crouched and blinked empty eyes wide. Azizi gazed into endless darkness, transfixed.

“No.” Awa shook Azizi and focused on the fiend’s bright heart. “Don’t lose the speed of thought. We don’t have Bal to rescue us.” She pulled a snake head from around her neck and, faster than thought, flew at the grinning fiend. They passed in the air. As Awa spun around, the fiend pinned Azizi to the ground by the hive and reached down to bite a trembling hand. Awa screamed. A hundred hundred bees burst from the hive, swarming the fiend, stabbing fat, hot stingers everywhere. Several sentinels were the size of hummingbirds and had three or four stingers. Flailing, the fiend snagged a few bees and swallowed their sparks. Before more sentinels perished, Awa raced through the blur of wings and plunged snake fangs in the fiend’s heart. Indigo sparks filled its body as it crumpled. The bees returned to the hive. Awa snorted a puff of void-smoke and let hot tears flow.

“Look.” Azizi gasped.

Hezram’s smirk faded from the fiend’s face. Color returned to the cheeks of a wizened Empire citizen with a knotty white beard. His heart beat lightning bolts.

“A haint dead to the everyday, but free,” Awa said.