She’d spent long enough staring at them in the glen. She wasn’t sure if she could continue scouring their features before her eyes dried out from staring. Amaris turned her back on them and busied herself with flint and kindling while she waited for an answer. She lit a fire, perhaps only because it gave her hands something familiar and comforting to do. While she was usually intentional about avoiding fires at night, it seemed as though the worst thing in the nearby woods had been slain and that the general and his winged companion were just as terrifying as anything else that might be attracted to their flame.

“We hadn’t intended to,” Zaccai answered for them both. “We’re joining a few others over the hill in Yelagin. Then, after that night by the pond…”

“I could tell you saw us,” Gadriel finished.

“Of course I can see you,” she bit, her voice as sour as her mood.

Amaris hoped they could feel the ire in her words. She knew she should be grateful that they had intervened with the beseul, but what had it cost her? They owed her answers, and though unable to articulate why, she couldn’t bring herself to be afraid of the winged fae. Whether or not they were friend or foe, they didn’t seem to pose immediate bodily harm.

“No,” Zaccai corrected, running a hand through his hair as he looked for his words. “You see us for who we are. The others see…something else. How do I…” His words drifted off as he looked between Gadriel and Amaris. “I’m sorry—it’s been so long since we’ve spoken to anyone south of the border. You saw the way your companions reacted, didn’t you?”

“It’s a spell?” she asked.

It took a while for their tentative nods to confirm.

Amaris narrowed her eyes as she evaluated them. She pushed, “You’re enchanting people to see you as monsters? What sort of defense is that?”

Gadriel was quick to disagree, saying, “This is not our doing. Cai is pretty beastly and wins no favors with the ladies—”

“I do just fine, thank you very much.”

The smoke rising from the fire was comforting, but the flame didn’t warm her heart. She couldn’t explain what she felt, but there seemed to be a glass shard jutting from her most important organ. She’d spent three years cultivating community and family, and in mere moments she’d lost them. Amaris took a half step closer to the flame, willing it to melt the frost that clung to the wound in her chest. Sitting around a fire felt distinctly human, even if no one sitting around its warmth could claim to truly be one. Ash and Malik may blame her for her treachery, but it was Gadriel and Zaccai who had destroyed her life with the swoop of their wings.