She ends up standing at the edge of the firelight, past the last of the raggedy tents. Evie stares into the darkness of Siccluna, a land she seems to know even less about than she did when she killed one of their soldiers for defending it.

Back near the largest gathering of fires, the Elder Company are enacting their own small Revel with what little resources they have, refusing to let the Skrain be the only ones to enjoy the day’s victory. Evie watches from a distance, admiring them, their resolve and their ability to laugh like the masters of all creation even in the deepest of bondage.

It’s not an ability Evie possesses. She walks away from the merriment, intent on finding the warmest place possible to sleep.

She sees the man hunched over the dying embers of several burned logs. Evie stops dead. He’s grown a beard that, while unkempt, is thick enough to obscure half his face. The other half is covered in a dozen tiny blue runes brought about by the blood coins, but there’s no doubting it’s him, not to Evie. His dark hair is longer, but he’s obviously done his best to smooth it behind his ears and into some passable shape with his fingers.

Evie can’t believe it at first, let alone accept it. Part of her wants to look away and then back to see if he remains sitting there, as if he might be a specter or her mind’s own creation.

But he’s real, and he’s sitting no more than six feet away from her.

“Brio,” she says, almost tentative.

He looks up immediately, a new light coming to his eyes.

When he sees her, really sees her, that light gives birth to tears that shine.

Brio rises, slowly and with an obvious pain shooting through one of his legs.

“Ashana?” he asks in utter disbelief, using the name she left behind when she became Evie, when she volunteered to infiltrate the Savage Legion in order to find him, if he was still alive.

And he is.

Unbelievably, impossibly, he is.

Evie nods. “It’s me.”

Brio can scarcely force the words out. “How… how can you be here? What are you doing here?”

“It doesn’t matter how I got here,” she insists, and then, with the resolve of a blade forged in the hottest of fires: “All that matters is that I’m taking you home.”

PART TWO UNRAVELING THE EDGES

THE BLACK EAGLE

IT’S SAID NO ONE IS ever brought before the Protectorate Ministry; they always come to you.

More to the point, they always come for you.