I meet her rattled gaze as the rain needles down. “Corrupted Mage runes,” I answer, conflicted over drawing her and her family into my doomed orbit. I glance at her sickly mother and small sister. The little girl lets out a rattling cough and the incredible realization circles down—their situation is so dire that traveling with the Black Witch, hunted by a multitude of powerful forces, is likely their best shot at survival.

“I need to get to the Wyvernguard,” I tell the teen.

“Why?” she asks, her heart-shaped face tensing.

Lightning forks across the sky and thunder cracks overhead.

Because I’m the Black Witch, I almost respond in fearsome challenge. And I want to subvert the Prophecy as spectacularly as possible.

“My brother is in the Wyvernguard,” I say instead. “He can help us.” I motion toward the blade in her hand, gratitude welling. “You saved my life.”

“You saved ours,” she rejoins, as if that settles the matter.

“What’s your name?” I ask.

She hesitates, her stance becoming confrontational. “Nym’ellia,” she answers, and I immediately guess why this fierce girl feels the need to throw her name out like a challenge. Such a distinctly Urisk name. Bestowed on a girl who has the black hair, shimmering green skin and forest green eyes of a Gardnerian. Who looks completely like a Mage.

I’m unable to keep from noticing the ears that poke through Nym’ellia’s stringy, unwashed hair. Jagged scars run atop edges that were obviously once pointed but were likely cropped in the West. Cruelly cut off by a mob like the one that attacked Olilly. I glance at Nym’ellia’s fever-stricken mother and sister, lifting my brow in question.

Some of the girl’s belligerent air draws down. “My mother’s name is Emberlyyn,” she offers with a worried frown, seeming to sense my line of inquiry, “and my sister is Tibryl.” She eyes me levelly. “They have the Red Grippe.”

“I know,” I say. “I had it when I was a child.” I spare another glance at Emberlyyn, who is slumped against one of the enormous purple trees, loosely embracing her child. Both are flushed with fever, spots of the Red Grippe illness cruelly fixed around their mouths.

They need Norfure tincture, and soon.

I turn back to Nym’ellia. “Your course is set for Voloi?”

She nods and draws her gold compass from her tunic’s pocket. “We’re less than a league from the Zonor River.” She reads the compass, then jabs her finger toward a line of forest ahead. “That way.”

East.

I sheathe my weapons and inhale. “Well, then, let’s go.” I give her a pointed look, drawing courage from the feel of warm, tingling energy rising once more from the Wand sheathed at my calf. “Let’s get to Noilaan,” I say. “We’ll find my brother and get your mother and sister some medicine.”