She commands the fire in her to burn the Redcap magick. The fire obeys instantaneously. The Redcaps sense their magick dying and turn to Croi, rushing to kill her, but before they can, they fall to the ground, clutching their chests. They keen, guttural sounds of pain. Croi watches the Redcaps die along with their magick, and she smiles.

She doesn’t burn all the Redcap magick. She keeps just a little bit of it to flavor her own, to give her a bite, to make her a little more dangerous.

The death throes are over in minutes, and the Redcaps are gone. Their magick is less than an echo—except for the bit she keeps. The night crows are smoke, as are the horselike beings that pulled the carriage. Croi sits on the ground, at the center of the chaos, and breathes.

TWENTY

UNLIKE HUMANS, KIN AREN’T BURDENED by the weight of souls. Instead, they have magick. Human lives are meteors in the night sky, but their souls are immortal. On the other hand, kin lives are usually measured in a collection of eternities, but their ends, when they do come, are absolute.

But if Croi doesn’t have a soul, why, then, does she feel hollowed out by the deaths of the Redcaps? If she hadn’t killed them, they would have killed her. And yet, the feeling, too layered to be simple grief, persists.

She kneels among the corpses of the Redcaps, concentrating on breathing. She holds on to the fire inside tightly, knowing that once it leaves, she’ll be severed again. She’ll become broken again.

Dusk is fading. The imprisoned kin are awake and struggling to get out of cages that remain locked. Pain rends her insides with every breath she takes, but Croi remains stubborn, not willing to let go, not willing to break.

She looks at the body of the Redcap nearest to her. He was about to plunge the knife into her when he fell. His pale features, contorted in a snarl, are frozen in death. Are Redcaps truly evil, or are they victims of their nature? Croi felt their hunger; it ruled them in the end. Would she, too, steal the magick of others in order to satiate herself? Would she, too, feast on kin flesh to fill the void that defies filling?

Of course she would. Hunger would give her no other choice. How, then, can she judge the Redcaps for the things they did? For the things they were about to do? Very easily, it seems. She doesn’t just judge them. She loathes them.

The cries of the imprisoned kin get louder, and Croi looks at the forest around them. The trees seem anxious to swallow up the clearing, encroaching on its uneven periphery. What will happen to them when night falls? A lot of hungry horrors must live in this forest. At the thought, Croi tries to get up, but her feet refuse to cooperate.

A frisson of danger lights the air, and Croi stiffens, her hands clenching. She raises her head to see a fae girl rushing toward her. The fae’s red hair is streaming behind her as her long limbs eat up the distance between them. Her skin is a burnished orange-brown, glowing with health, vitality, and magick. A grim look decorates the delicate features of her face, and her mouth moves, as do her hands, readying a spell with which to attack Croi.