The warming winds weren’t meant to be sat out in and enjoyed like a particularly nice warm season day. They were wild things, with no thought but to steal the snow and ice between one breath and the next. Idiotic and reckless tribe members would stand out in an open field and compete to see who could stay on their feet the longest before getting blown away. Usually a handful of injuries and a broken bone or two came of it, but every few years or so there was a death from a bad fall or unexpected collision.

Our saving grace was the goddess’s protective nature when it came to Her pine trees. Howling winds buffeted the camp all around us but as soon they got near the tips of pine needles they settled down into a strong gust, at most. Which meant Prevna had no business slinging an arm around my shoulders. She was in no danger of being blown away. Still, I couldn’t completely hold the unsolicited contact against her. Not with the eerie babble of shrieking laughter, near intelligible whispers, and humming coming from all around us.

Another name for the warming winds was the Living Winds. No one knew where they came from or where they went once the seasons had been changed over, though some myths speculated at their origin. One myth said they were the voices of the souls whose bodies had become shamblers while another thought they were from the time when the sisters goddesses ruled the world together. Most commonly, however, people regarded them as wind spirits. Associated with the goddess, but not so closely that you had to fear being struck down simply for challenging them.

The bone chimes clattered and clinked against each other as the warming winds rushed passed; the streamers snapping taut as the spirits pulled on their ends before coming unraveled like they were designed to do. Brown pine needles and blue flowers floated through the air while a gust of wind cackled as it flew past. Squad Mishtaw’s banner was no more.

As we watched the ice and snow covering everything disappeared. As if they were erasing the cold season as simply as one would wipe the dust off a forgotten, but usable, tool. The unusual nature of the ice didn’t seem to give the winds any more pause than the snow I was used to seeing them devour in Grislander’s Maw.

A couple of wind spirits became interested in Prevna’s streamer that she had wrapped around my neck and moved to play with it. I knew the instant they noticed my frozen state. Their unintelligible chatter became very animated while a sense of…hunger rolled over me.

Wind rushed over my left arm while the other gust pounced on my right leg. Burning. I was burning and being pulled apart from the inside out. I couldn’t get away. Prickling, worse than anything my mark had ever done, stabbed through every inch of skin the storming wind currents touched.

I was dying. For all I knew that I couldn’t do that, that’s what it felt like. After all, the blaze of my mark was subsiding and it had no reason to do that unless they were sucking its power out of me. I was still fro—

Warmth spread through my arm and leg as the spirits moved on to other parts of my body. My fingers spread and my arm buckled as they were finally released from the position they had been frozen in for days.

Prevna kept me from sliding off the tree as the winds took the remaining ice from me. When they finished, one nuzzled at the crook of my elbow like it was hoping to find one more morsel of ice there. Finding nothing, the pair took off, chattering loudly with Prevna’s streamer twirling between them.

It took me a few minutes longer to fully come back to myself. My first instinct when I did was to jerk out of Prevna’s grasp, but I quelled it. Sudden movement wouldn’t help anyone on the edge of a branch and…she had helped me. Without coercion. Accepting her offer was still dangerous, but perhaps I didn’t need to shove her away out of hand.

I took in a deep breath and let it out, relishing in the simple ability to breathe. My mark was quiet. I hadn’t really allowed myself to believe that the winds would free me, but the truth of my situation wasn’t something I could deny now.

“You can let me go. I won’t fall off the edge now.”

Prevna let me go with a gasp and I pushed myself upright from where I had been slumped over in her arms. She stared at me. “It worked.”

I rubbed my hands together before showing them to her. “It worked.” I couldn’t meet her gaze for the next part. It felt too personal. “Thank you.”

“If I could survive being frozen solid, I doubt I would enjoy the experience. I didn’t think you would, either.” When I still didn’t look at her she bumped her shoulder against mine. “I’m sure you’ll repay the favor in the future.”

Of course I would. Given how reckless and stubborn Prevna could be I’d probably have ample chances to return the favor in the future. And I couldn’t let her die. Not when she might have saved me with her multitude of chimes and streamers.

The air was warm and heavy as we went around and gathered up the chimes and streamers that hadn’t been pulled away with the wind. Warm enough that Prevna and I both stripped down to our basic tunics and pants without even feeling a hint of the previous chill. Prevna didn’t ask if I had heard what she had said while I was frozen and I didn’t tell.

I did learn that the whisper women that had brought her were supposed to return at sunset which was still a couple hours away. If the warming winds hadn’t saved me then she would have returned with them alone and I would have had to wait on the unlikely chance of being given a hearth stone, frozen and all alone. I tried not to think about that possibility.

I also learned that Breck and Ento had made it through the wave assault. They were back in the Seedling Palace finishing their healing. Apparently, there had been whisper women in the camp who had been able to deflect and slow down the wave when it came, so that most of those in the healers’ tent and the commander’s tent had been able to escape or get to higher ground before the wave fully hit, and when it did its strength was diminished.

I filled Prevna in on how we got the winds back and the sea snake fight. She looked at me like I was insane when I told her I leapt into the snake’s mouth. Now that the rush from the fight was gone and I had time to think it was more than a little annoying that I couldn’t disagree with her.

It had been logical at the time.

Once all of her items were gathered I wanted to climb to the top of the tree and check if we could see if the coast was still frozen. Prevna was more of the mind that we sit and rest. She kept glancing over at where I had been frozen.

I crossed my arms. “I can climb a tree.” When she didn’t look entirely convinced I added, “I’m not going to randomly refreeze.”

She huffed. “You were frozen for over a week. Your muscles could lock up or something.”

“I feel fine.”

She crossed her arms. “You don’t need to fall out of the tree right after I saved you to prove a point.”

I started to argue before cutting myself off. I wasn’t going to fall out of the tree or anything else painful and stupid, but there wasn’t any point in yelling at her about it. That wasn’t the real issue here.

I gestured to the branch we were on. “I need to move, Prevna. Remind myself what it’s like. And I don’t particularly want to stay on the branch I’ve been stuck to either.”

Her face softened for the briefest of moments before hardening again. “Fine, but you don’t get to complain if I stay close to you.”

She stayed just far enough away that she wasn’t constantly crowding my personal space. I had to bite back a few annoyed remarks and glare at the tree bark rather than her, but otherwise we made it to the top of the gigantic pine without incident.

The root wall still blocked most of our view, but we could make out the glitter of the ocean as well as the glare of sunlit ice on the shore. From what we could tell, the goddess had directed the warming winds to free the camp and Her forest behind us from the cold season’s clutches, but everything else along the coast had been left frozen over. I tried to spot frozen fish among the ice, but the distance made it difficult to discern anything.

We made our way back down in time to meet up with the whisper women squad who stepped from the shadows just as the sun began to dip below the horizon. They were more than a little startled to find me up and moving around. I kept catching glances as Prevna and I bundled up our things, and the buzz of gossip that noted everything from my trial mark to recent ordeal was hard to miss as well. The whisper woman who took my hand to pull me into the shadows was surprisingly respectful.

I didn’t look back when we left the main camp. I had had more than enough of the place, and if the Lady Blue wasn’t content to leave things as they were for awhile then that was the commander’s problem, not mine.

I wasn’t entirely sure where to expect to be taken on my return to the Seedling Palace, but the healers’ nests was a place I should have guessed, but had instead entirely ignored. I hadn’t wanted to end up here, not after everything, though I had neglected to tell Prevna that my leg had started to hurt again on our way up the pine tree.

The sounds of bone chimes, healer’s beads, and a storyteller in the middle of telling about an epic battle filled the air. Streamers waved lazily from thin branches and the tops of the domed sap dwellings, some intact and some pulled to nearly nothing by the wind spirits. There were the sounds of wounded too along with the thump and grind of medicines being prepared. I could smell the fresh scent of herbs coming from the clusters of amber domes that filled the offshoot branches that connected to the wide one we had stepped onto. Black handed healers were everywhere. Transporting patients or medicine or ingredients, conversing with each other, enjoying a break on the new warm season day—though the temperature at the Seedling Palace was the same as it had been during the cold season as far as I could tell.

I glowered at them all while the two whisper women who had brought us to the Palace led Prevna and me to a dome near the end of the branch. Then they left us in the care of a healer I didn’t recognize. Both of us were throughly checked over, even though Prevna wasn’t hurt, before my bruised leg and other minor injuries were treated. The healer was competent, I’ll give him that, though I sorely resented the fact that he was able to perform the craft when I had nearly been condemned for saving Melka. Once we were taken care of the healer let us know that we were supposed to wait, which didn’t sound promising, before he left the dome. Given that I had no idea how to get back the Seed Landing from here, and Prevna wasn’t willing to say if she knew or not, we waited like he wanted us to.