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aila!”

Her name echoed through the tunnel of her subconscious, close enough to hear, too far to reach. She recognised the voice, its gentle timbre, the tender nuance it used to address her.

“Léandre!” Laila shot his name like an arrow through the distance, hoping it was caught. She was swathed in fog, her vision obscured, but she could see him in front of her—a vague apparition, gradually gaining opacity in small increments. “Thank the stars you’re alive!”

He had to be, of course. She wouldn’t be able to dreamwalk to him otherwise. It was always a lot more tricky when the recipient was dead. That and his Lightshield bond was still present, stretched taut between them as a thread of glistening gossamer.

“I’m pleased to see the same of you, princess.” Léandre smiled, his opalescent eyes shifting with colour. “Where are you?”

“I don’t know yet. But for now that’s not relevant.” Whatever became of her body she was certain to know soon. For now she refused to let herself panic. “Did everyone else make it off the ship safely? Did Lyra?”

“She’s fine. Hale and hearty. We all are,” Léandre assured her. “She put up a great resistance but I made certain everyone left before I did. I had intended to come for you but… the occassi…”

“It wasn’t your fault.” Laila said, her heart too lightened with the relief that they had both escaped. “I’m only glad I didn’t lose you.”

“You still have yet to find me, princess.”

Laila swallowed, recognising the truth in his words. “Use the bond to locate me. In the meantime, I will try to find a safe place to wait for you and then… we will have to figure it out from there.”

“Stay safe, princess. We’ll find you soon.”

“I know.”

She awoke in a cave.

The cave was dark and dank, like the inside of a throat. Moisture dripped in the distance, as though it were salivating for its newest arrivals. Laila hugged her damp furs to her and tapped into the reserves of stellar energy in her body to warm herself; a radiant glow expanding from her like the inflation of a bubble.

The orb further rendered her surroundings to light until she could see the rugged outline of Dominus sitting across from her, watching. A fire was crackling between them. She saw the eldritch glow of his pupils before the rest of him, shadows clinging to the gauntness of his cheeks. He seemed to fit inside the cave like a natural extension of rock, unbothered by his wetness.

Laila suspended her glow, uncertain, before deciding to expand it so he was dried too. Then she loosened her mouth to speak.

He was on her in an instant, covering her mouth with a brutish paw, another finger pressed against his lips. He gestured his head to one side so she might look to the opening of the cave where Laila quickly realised: they were not alone.

Shambling along the black sands of the beach were pale figures that had the look of men. One could easily consider they were men if not gifted with the keener eyesight Laila and Dominus both shared. There was something wrong about these creatures. Their eyes were too beady and spaced apart; their limbs long and gangly; their skin a roughened hide that crinkled especially around the gums of their lipless mouths.

Those mouths were constantly baring their endless rows of teeth, stained pink from their most recent kill.

Laila held her breath upon the sight of them, her heart squeezing like a closed fist. What are those things? She daren’t ask.

“Bilken,” Dominus revealed, then he gestured to his ears to indicate their strength—hearing. He gestured next to the front of his face and then the back of his head before shaking it.

Laila nodded in understanding. Keen hearing but limited eyesight. These were things her arsenal of light tricks would allow her to work with.

She gestured for Dominus to watch her as she stood and then, slowly, refracted the light around herself to make her imperceptible to sight. She could make herself intangible too but that took far greater concentration and she lacked the practice to apply it to anyone but herself. She released the enchantment to bring herself back into full view and held out her hand to Dominus.

He took her hand and watched with marvel as it disappeared from sight. He’d never seen anything equivalent to this without the use of a concealing cloak before. Keeping hold of her hand he stood with her, and the two of them edged their way out from the throat of the cave onto the shore.

Laila couldn’t help but hold her breath again once they were exposed, an anxious heat thrumming in her body that threatened to unravel her focus. She timed her breaths in the way she was coached—inhale firm, exhale slow—anything to keep from focusing on the way her heart was pounding on the door of her sternum. She had to move, she had to. Discovery by these creatures was not a possibility she was willing to risk.

Though the moment she took a cushioned step forward on the black sand a lone bilken turned, restlessly seeking meat, and shuffled away from the crowd with a congested snuffle.

Laila stiffened, her legs turning numb. Beside her, Dominus regarded the bilken with indifference as it put a nose to the air with a flex of nostrils, each sniff sounding more and more obstructed. As though it fought for entrance.

The bilken soon relented with a suffocated wheeze before returning to the waters from whence it came for a hydrated breath. The rest of them soon followed.

The two took their chance to escape up the cliffside, travelling further up the steep path slippery with frost until they were delivered to safety.

Laila leaned in relief against a large stone that may have once, if one squinted just right, resembled a statue of some sort. Though any traces of distinction had long eroded into obscurity.

She rested both hands against the side of her head and craned forward, breathing until she felt there was no longer a paper sack around her head.

Dominus observed her distress with a calculated brow arched. Should an encounter with one monster provoke such an excessive response then he feared she may prove a liability. The night was host to far deadlier guests than the bilken.

In a dark debate he considered leaving her there and retreating into the night. He found himself preparing to do just that but after the first few steps his legs would move no longer, unable to abandon her. He couldn’t quite fathom why, knowing the bargain he’d made with her had long been fulfilled. He’d escorted her here safely, he said nothing of what would happen once they’d arrived.

Dominus grunted, shrugging off his guilt before he marched onwards into the snow.

“Wait,” Laila cried, darting quickly to obstruct his path. “Where are you going?”

Dominus met the force of her gaze before he sidestepped her. She mirrored the movement.

“You can’t just leave me here.”

Dominus snarled, taking a daring step forward.

She’d almost forgotten how much larger he was than her before he did that. He towered over her like the bole of a hateful yew twisted cruel by age; his stubbornness deep-rooted. He seized her by the arms to deposit her out of his way before resuming his desertion.

Laila watched him walk away from her with indignation and resentment, a fury burgeoning in her that he would dare leave her to rot in this wasteland. However, he was forgetting one very crucial detail—she was the one with control over the shock collar.

She didn’t let him make it far before she activated it with a mere utterance. “Déclencher.” Then watched as the collar ignited with several coils of electricity that had Dominus prostrated in the snow.

She approached his side after, arms crossed expectantly over her chest. How vindicating it felt to see this goliath felled by a girl; the loathing in his eyes as he looked at her through his frenzied convulsions provoking not even a flinch.

She crouched down beside him once his body had stopped shuddering, then reached out a hand to him. “You are not going anywhere until you escort me somewhere safe. Understand?” She reiterated her point through a projected image into his mind, watching as his lip curled in distaste.

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Dominus escorted her through the ossified frames of coniferous trees into the thick of the taiga. The air was stiff as a corpse. No traces of wildlife remained but the lumps of dead animals that had struggled and lost against the snowfall; frozen in their final fleeing pose.

Laila’s heart tugged at the sight of them, eyes following the trail of every creature great and small. The last victim perished just before finding shelter within the arachnid aisle ahead. With each step she took into the snow, the crunch of her boots echoed unreasonably loud in the slumbering silence.

The winter had claimed everything and wiped it clean. Not a sliver of gold could be detected by her aethersight. Even the red berries had been encapsulated—drooling icicles like trails of saliva, sharp and glinting as fangs.

Laila hugged her arms as she followed behind Dominus, eager to find a safe haven to await the arrival of her Lightshields. The bond between a Lightshield and its charge was always stronger on the other end and while she could likely try to track Léandre halfway, her instincts encouraged her it was better to let them come to her.

The night was an inkwell toppled, spilling its tenebrous pigment over the woods like a river with no cap. Laila was solar-charged and leaking luminosity through her pores, shoving the shadows back to the corners with the expanding pulse of her glow. But the night contracted with the elasticity of muscle, creeping on the heels of starlit Laila like a murderer with a knife in the bushes, always and ever-shunned by her luminescent shield.

She glanced up at the sky, hoping even the slimmest blade of light could penetrate through the wiry penitentiary of branches. If she could only make it through the night unscathed, then the odds of survival would be better in full daylight.

Dominus stretched his hearing wide, feeling his way across the rough bark, the wind’s soft baby breaths, until it skidded across the faint purl of a river. He knew this river and that a village was not far ahead of it should they keep walking through the night. Part of him wondered whether Laila could handle the excursion but he soothed himself with the knowledge that the sooner he could be rid of her, and thus this infuriating collar, the better off he’d be.

So they marched onward, even as the roots from the trees grew larger and more intricate, giving rise to mangled shapes that clawed their way out from the towering oak.

One such root gave Laila quite the fright when she nearly stumbled into it, thinking it mortal. Her mind soon assured her of its insentient state and she side-stepped it gradually without turning her back.

Dominus kept charging until the trees relented, to back away from him into an opening—a grim triumph for his foolish persistence.

The river lay ahead, steaming with a vapour that slathered all the trees surrounding it in a sugar-glazed coating.

Laila moved towards it, intrigued by the phenomenon. She’d never seen anything like this before. Soleterean winters were often mild and seldom saw snow but she’d travelled far enough north in Odaka to know a river ought to be frozen in the winter.

She watched the clear current pass her by, rippling like a dress of fine satin that gathered into tulle-like foam at the cascades. The sight enthralled her and filled her with a longing for home; for the satin slips that had been cruelly set ablaze on the ship she’d been forced to abandon.

Laila crouched down and traced her gloved hands over the water in awe, almost wanting to dip her fingers into it, bathe in it. Anything to cleanse her body of the saltwater still clinging to her skin. She lingered long enough to let the steam’s caress beneath her clothes before Dominus grunted at her, nudging her along again.

Thus it was with water to one side of them and forest to the other that they continued; the dozy rise of the sun dipping everything in broad strokes of twilight blue and obscuring the beast walking alongside them.

It was all muscle and sinew, deep purple veins pulsating along its cadaverous frame. A long forked tongue lolled between its giant canines in a hiss before it retracted; a pair of gleaming eyes bulged from its skinless visage.

Dominus could sense it before Laila did and slowed his walk, predator senses twitching. Laila caught onto the sense of being watched not long after but not before the beast sprung out from the trees with fangs and claws bared, knocking Laila suddenly off her feet and into the snow.

Laila’s head smacked harshly against the sleet, stars swarming her vision. She could scarcely perceive her assailant but for the white gleam of fangs and a hollow maw lunging for her.

A frothing snarl exuded from the back of his throat as he bit her shoulder, releasing a spurt of her delicious ichor. Golden as the dawn.

Laila cried out as the beast tore hungrily at her succulent flesh. She released a pulse of electric discharge, enough adrenaline surging through her to have displaced her leg-numbing fear.

The monster squealed in pain, muscles seizing in convulsion long enough for Laila to try and squirm free when another opponent entered the fray.

It was Dominus.

Or at least a creature with a likeness to Dominus, for his face had degenerated into something unsightly. Gone were the verdant green eyes and the stoic calm in his features which instead had malformed into his true monster face: inkblot sclera with glowing irises of garish green and a writhing protrusion of veins beneath them. His fangs had enlarged and latched into the carotid of the beast, tearing it free, coating her eyes with a warm arterial spray.

Laila swiped it away quickly, revulsion rising in her fast.

The beast collapsed clumsily to one side—whatever demoniacal energy that possessed it before suddenly extinguished.

Laila let out a whimper. It felt as though she had been pummelled with a tidal wave of horror and relief and gratitude and anxiety, each layer of it piling atop her one by one until she was submerged. She didn’t know whether to laugh or weep.

Dominus peered down at her as he lapped his tongue along the black blood staining his jaws, looking no less bestial than the creature that had her in its clutches.

Laila whined softly, wrestling with her tongue for the invocation to his collar.

Dominus leered at her, fangs bared in disgruntlement before he drew back, his face returning to normalcy.

Laila didn’t realise she needed that until she saw it and in turn, she loosened her tongue and let out an exhale in relief. A tear slid down her cheek and she moved her fingers towards it, pausing, then switched to wipe it with her clean backhand. Then she discovered with a start her veins were blackening.

She rubbed frantically at her backhand as though it might scrub away the blight but the colour only spread, snaking its way up her wrists on both hands.

Her stomach roiled with nausea, revolting against this insidious contamination, trying to root it out, out, out. Her vision blurred the further her body sickened and through the disjointed chaos of her senses she could see a hand reaching towards her.

Dominus observed the last flashes of Laila’s consciousness before she went limp in the snow. He knew it wouldn’t take long for the disease from the monster’s bite to claim her and, seeing an opportunity for escape, he decided to let nature take its course.

He didn’t make it far before hesitation once more set in. There was something about the thought of some other stray beast gnawing at her beautiful face that filled him with immeasurable displeasure. What a waste it would be for a vision so unparalleled to end up mere morsels for fiendish appetites.

Thus before he knew it, he had already taken her into his arms and carried her away to safety—determined for this not to be her final resting place.

Dominus sped through the trees, the cold so sharp it pierced like glass in his throat. There were no words he could muster for how much he had missed this—having his nose so full of the ungroomed wilderness surrounding him. The fragrant conifers and the pungent tang of the beasts who lurked there; the sound of their shaggy rustles in the wind as he pushed himself faster, digging up trenches through the snow.

Among the natural musk of the forest there was an intrusion from the sweet scent of Laila slung like a prize catch over his shoulder, intermingled with the fetor of disease. This alone was enough to keep him pushing forward, for if smelling her so near could drive him to the point of distraction he knew it wouldn’t be long before other predators would be tempted by her too. At least her glow had considerably dimmed, so he could run with anonymity.

He kept his nose to the air, using his impeccable olfactory senses to plan a route to his nearest territory. Occassi could stalk game cross-country through scent alone, able to decipher health, age and emotional state from the unique impression of their spoor. Dominus could track locations just the same, though the methods differed, and by the time he’d taken his First Rite he could travel the land in its entirety with preternatural intuition.

Within the hour he had made it to the snow-smothered porch of his izba. He paused to swallow the full sight of it and digest it for inspection—the webs spiralling the windows and the relentless strain of lichen. He concluded the lodge had aged some, but it was not in total disrepair. He was, therefore, able to determine the length of his absence hadn’t been too extensive. Useful knowledge to store for his future movements.

He took Laila into his arms as he upped the steps to the door, pushing it open with his back turned. The door burst open from its hinges, unleashing a hoary exhale flecked by snow that dusted the threshold.

He settled Laila onto the divan before he hastened to close the door. Then he turned to the stove and fed it blocks of moon wood and pine cones to build a warm winter fire. The flames flickered to life with youthful vigour, expelling the room’s corpse-like chill.

Dominus then pivoted his attention back to Laila and her slowly worsening state. He had not decided what he wanted to do with her yet but he knew he needed to do it quickly. With the fire warm enough, he decided to unwrap some of her layers—first the soft rabbit furs, the fuzzy fleece jumper, the thermal vest—until only the top half of her silk slip remained. He found the infection on her shoulder had spread—her veins became a rigid, black protuberance like twigs, and her golden brown skin had taken an ashen pallor.

It would be easy enough to keep her comfortable to pass naturally and then her body would become its own treasure trove. From her blood, a viscous honey gold, he could make a fine pigment, stretch her soft skin for parchment, and all that coarse, luxuriant hair would make excellent bristles for his brush.

And that was only the beginning.

Growing up as a child of occasional subarctic austerity he had been continually drummed with the merits of conservation—where nothing good could go to waste. He would ensure that nothing of her would go to waste at his hand either. All would have its purpose; its utility.

As he resolved himself to the inevitability of her death, something else niggled at him in a way that was too prominent to mute. For as many times as he considered how her death might serve him, he would soon after be intruded upon by memories of hot coffee and rich charcoals and tender meat drenched in pomegranate juice.

Gifts that he only could have received due to her extending her hand to grant him life.

Dominus swatted such thoughts away in scorn and touched the collar on his neck. He watched the frail death rattle of her chest as it rose and fell and he knew he could choose to do nothing. That he could sit here and watch her breathe her last.

The moment he withdrew for finality was when he heard the unexpected cough and splutter from a Laila who didn’t appear ready to give in.

“Well, well,” he said in marvel, listening to the frantic war drum pulse of her fighting heart. “You really do not wish to die today, do you?”

He tested the temperature of her clammy forehead with a sigh. Then he vacated the lodge in search of the ingredients he hoped he held to preserve her.

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Laila awoke to find her body swaddled in furs, her limbs stiff and embalmed at her sides. The haze of just-woken dew had not yet lifted from her vision and every time she tried to move—anguish. This was not how it was meant to be. Solarite bodies were supposed to heal flawlessly from every scrape, every wound. But this pestilence that invaded her and declared her body its colony was a stubborn strain not easily ejected.

Laila nudged at the furs inch by inch, until an arm was sprung free. She lifted her limb towards her clearing vision and saw the black trail marks along her veins. She rolled the furs down to explore further and discovered that she had been defrocked. She set that concern aside for now and examined the scrawls that defiled her beige skin.

Though she was no physician, this seemed like no natural symptom of infection that she had ever encountered. It seemed like magic. The wicked sort. The kind one could expect to brush shoulders with when they embarked upon a journey to a cursed isle.

Perhaps I had that one coming, she thought and shifted her legs with the same careful slowness until they reached the ground. She had to stop then, for the pain that surged up her legs was so aggressive and unexpected that she thought she would fall if she stood. So for the time being, Laila remained stationary and allowed her eyes to roam around her surroundings.

Dominus had left the fire going and she could smell faint traces of pine cones amongst the crackling wood. She hugged her furs about her as she glanced around the dusty interiors. The house looked as though it had been long abandoned and only recently revived for use.

She wrinkled her nose, almost wishing she could’ve been placed in a grander setting to swoon in sickness, when the sound of the door opening briskly snapped her out of her solace.

Dominus’ footsteps were heavy on the floorboards as he entered.

Laila listened as he walked into one room, dropping off a heavy load with a thud and entered another; his steps grew louder in tandem with her hammering pulse. He stood before her in front of the stove, soaking in all the light that bled from the flames. The light stroked back and forth across his dusky skin and cast half of him in shadow.

She hadn’t expected for him to rescue her, much less bring her to his dwellings. And now, met with the full extent of her vulnerability in his presence, she was even more uncertain of how to feel. She decided the best course of action was to make herself seem as meek as a kitten and hope he would take pity.

“Can you help me?” she asked, not caring if he wouldn’t understand.

Dominus crouched down before her and reached out his hand.

Laila stared at this outstretched lifeline, no more certain of where it would lead, but there was something about the stoicism in his expression that made her want to take the chance. She slid her hand into his and he helped her stand. Her legs were shaking within moments and she gripped onto his arm for balance; he felt steady as a marble pillar in her grip.

He took her into his arms after observing her discomfort, then carried her out of the lodge up the stone pathway to a little house sitting on an incline. Dominus opened the door with his back and placed her on a wooden bench.

Laila looked around the room, seeing nothing but an iron stove and a row of herbs strung up on the wall by twine. Her eyes then met Dominus who was gesturing towards her slip with the implication that it should be removed.

Laila regarded this with a slight nod, for it bothered her not if he should see her body. Nudity was a matter of pragmatism in Soleterea and a solarite’s body was one of their most versatile tools of expression, specifically built so they might indulge in pleasures of the flesh—food, sex, wine and all other sensual pursuits.

During their Kindling, when one crossed the threshold from starlet to solarite, they were able to build upon the foundations their mothers had first modelled—choosing how best they wanted to present their adult bodies. While many of them favoured the archetypal feminine silhouette, others desired to retain the slim hips and smooth chest of functional androgyny.

Laila had moulded ample curvature in her hips, thighs and breast to replicate the holy statues of Asemani she had much aesthetically coveted; a shape capable of creating life itself and satisfyingly filling the hands of her lovers. She’d always seen pleasure as something to give as much as gain.

With her arms too weak to undress herself, she allowed Dominus to slip off her undergarments. He handled them with a delicacy she didn’t think his hands were capable of as he hung them up by the stove. He barely appeared to look upon her, if anything it seemed he was looking through her—beneath the frail sheet of her skin to the blight blackening her veins.

He picked up a jar of salt from the shelf and uncapped it, crunching a handful of the crystals in his hand. The sight of it both intrigued and comforted her for salt was how they warded against malevolent magic in her homeland. To see it had little effect on him was useful to note.

Dominus scattered the salt along her body until she was mostly submerged. Then he added coal to the fire and filled the room with steam so oppressive Laila could hardly breathe from it. She allowed her lungs to stop struggling for shallow breaths, knowing she would suffice without them, and resisted the urge to shudder with every creepy-crawling trail of sweat travelling down her skin.

Dominus took off his clothes and wrapped himself in a towel. Then he sat beside her on the bench, his head reclined, eyes falling closed. For a moment he remained so consistently still that she worried he had fallen asleep. But as soon as the fire ran low his eyes were opened and he lifted her up once again. He carried her over to the wooden tub in another room of the house, plunging her inside.

“Oh my—” Laila choked in shock as Dominus dunked her head beneath the cold water. The water felt newly melted, glacial and clear, like it had been fetched from the sterile bowels of an iceberg. Pure water was another ward against dark magic where she was from, particularly when blessed. She resurfaced from her unholy baptism with a gasp of disgruntlement, discovering that the water had been sullied.

Laila lifted her arms in puzzlement to search for dirt, realising that it was her veins that had been disinfected. She turned her hands back and forth to examine the emerald fjords that had grown anew over the sickly black earthworm burrows.

Laila rounded towards him in gratitude. “Thank you.”

Dominus grunted, an evasive sound. He used a wooden bath spoon to wash through her hair and down her neck.

He took her out of the bath afterwards and whacked whatever remnants of the infection was left with a birch branch. This part of the process was something she was less than familiar with and Laila grit her teeth in preparation for each blow as he struck down, feeling her body mending with every sweep of the leaves.

She plucked the branch from his hands when he was done and gestured until he showed her his back.

Their eyes met for an extended pause but show her his back he did. She lifted the branch and lashed between his shoulder blades.

They retired back to the lodge where she wrapped herself in the furs he gave her. Dominus poked and prodded at the dwindling fire and fed it new logs to burn.

He went into the kitchen next and unwrapped the seaweed from the lobsters, shrimp and oysters he’d managed to pilfer along his excursion. He set a pot to boil on his stove, adding sprigs of dill, salt, dill seeds and beet sugar. He dropped the live lobster into the broth and watched it succumb to the heat before he removed it with a pair of tongs, adding the next.

Once both had been cooked and left to cool, he split them in two and gutted the claws for additional meat; arranging them into the shell. Then he smeared the meat with dill and chive butter.

The shrimp he arranged inside a glass filled with a sauce he’d prepared with his haphazard ingredients. The oysters he poached and garnished with pickled cucumber and roe.

He served them all on a platter of seaweed. The fruit of the underworld. The platter was served alongside glasses of tisane in a metal holder that he’d brewed from a samovar.

Laila sipped it, tasting mint, and set the glass over to one side. She tried not to question why the mint tasted so fresh or where he was able to get such large hauls of shellfish. She could recall seeing no gardens or villages here.

She took his glass of tisane and set it aside on the table before reaching for his neck. “I want to express my gratitude to you.”

Dominus moved back in suspicion of another mind invasion and she paused, her hands hovering just out of reach. Her eyes met his, the unspoken question left lingering.

She reached for him again and he didn’t pull back, didn’t move away. She put her hands on his collar and murmured a few words of enchantment. The lock sprung open with a click before she withdrew the collar and placed it on the table.

“You’re free,” she whispered, hopeful this gesture would establish trust and inspire further benevolence.

Dominus touched his newly bare neck in disbelief. Then he caught her hand and kissed the inside of her palm.

Laila giggled softly, allowing her hand to rest inside his own. “Can I stay?”

She raised her hand to his cheek and shared the image of her request. Though not her original plan she was no more eager to brave the wilderness having experienced a taste of what awaited. Léandre was sure to be following the link of their bond and until they reconvened, she would make the best of her situation. At least here she had shelter, warmth, food and someone she could influence to provide a steady supply of all the above. Neither she nor her magic would last long without it.

Dominus nodded in understanding.

“Thank you.” She smiled. Then she nestled against his chest and lifted one of the oysters from the tray to share with him.