Yvan’s fire. Close range.

He’s alive, he’s alive sounds out with every beat of my heart.

Hugging the ship’s shadows, I round its prow, the fire aura twining around and through me like a molten lasso, stronger than anything I’ve ever felt from Yvan before, even during his most passionate kisses.

“Where is the Elfhollen woman?”

I skid to a halt in response to the woman’s commanding voice, my gaze jerking toward the clutch of Vu Trin soldiers standing just across the street with the restauranteur Zosh Lyyo. Breathless from Yvan’s all-encompassing heat, I slink toward them under the plum trees’ dark cover, the trees’ ire instantly ramping up.

Black Witch!

“There,” Zosh Lyyo angrily jabs a finger toward Mora’s rune ship. “There’s a Mage girl there too—a bastard with Urisk blood. Mother whored herself out to the Crows.”

“The Elfhollen woman you reported,” the soldier presses, pointedly ignoring the rest, “when did she come? We’ve launched a citywide search for her.”

My pulse jumps into a more violent rhythm, my mind racing with the implications as the fire pull from the north intensifies.

“Showed up this morning,” Zosh Lyyo growls. “Brought by a Vu Trin. A green Urisk woman, not Noi.” He gives the three severe-faced soldiers a knowing, vindicated look.

“Is the Elfhollen woman still there?”

He nods enthusiastically. “Been there all day. Bastard Mage girl too.”

My palm instinctively reaches for my Ash’rion blade. These soldiers...they wouldn’t be looking for a single Elfhollen in a city awash in Western Realm refugees if they didn’t suspect exactly what I am.

Yvan’s fire burns hotter, my vision lighting up gold as the feral will to live and fight and get to that fire seizes tighter hold. I slink over Mora’s low fence, keeping to the street’s darkest shadows as the Vu Trin booms out, “Halt!”

My pulse skyrockets and I break into a sprint, throwing myself into the Sixth Tier pedestrian and foot traffic, desperate not only to escape, but to lead them far away from Mora and the others aboard her ship. Swerving around pedestrians and carts loaded with purple wares, I dive toward every crowded spot, following the fire’s pull north as the sorceresses’ cries of “Make way!” go up.

Blazing with incoming aura-heat, I hurl myself into a crowded side street, rows of purple-glowing runic orbs strung across it like haphazardly thrown up necklaces, everything cast in their otherworldly purple glow. I launch into a faster sprint, racing down purple-rune-orb-lit street after street, dodging carts and pedestrians as hostile pear and plum trees vibrate their venom and the Vu Trin cries fade into the distance.