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he skies were lined with snowflakes large as coins in the coming days, leaving increasingly bounteous piles on the ground below. They spent weeks afterwards huddled in the lodge for comfort, trading images between each other’s minds.

Dominus showed her projections of his home in Malborg Citadel—a muddle of draughty halls, secret passageways and time-worn walls infested with an overgrowth of ivy, submerged in a dim stagnation of candlelight. He showed her how he was a prince away from home, long absent after his fateful battle with the ice whale that led to his imprisonment. How he’d only ever seen the feasts and finery as four iron walls he’d vacate from for periods of pristine peace among the natural world, where he could live like the bestial ancestors that preceded him.

Laila showed him projections of Soleterea—a land of wild strawberries and apple-green fields drenched in sunlight where not a single thing was unworthy of being touched. She showed him the gilt halls where she dominated with her coevals and the fountains where she snuck away to kiss sprite-maids. How she also was a princess eager to go home, away from the treacherous temperaments of this foreign land, where she could live like the celestial ancestors that preceded her.

They showed each other this with his head cushioned between the arc of her thighs. They were surrounded by furs he had skinned from the hides of rare beasts, outlined in the red and orange glow of the fire as it coughed out purple smoke.

Her continued mental unions with him had allowed some of his language to seep through into her own mind, and she hoped she’d be able to sustain it to get what she needed from him.

“Look,” she said in Mortesian. She shared a series of images with him regarding the airship and the storm.

Dominus thought for some moments before he answered. His mind recognised the hue of the flames to come from the stomach fuel of a draconid. He shared an image of the fuel being bottled and kept in the cellars of the Citadel.

“Your family?” She frowned in disbelief. “Why?

“To remain hidden,” he explained, “it’s been the way of things for centuries. No one gets in Mortos and no one goes out.”

“So I cannot leave?” she exclaimed. The concept horrified her.

“I can send you home,” he said, resting his hand on her cheek. “But for that… we will need to meet my father.” He showed her an image of an occasso with a feral likeness to himself.

Laila shuddered before his image but kept it in mind for the event Léandre would reunite with her.

They went hunting in the mornings.

Dominus woke her early so they could trek through the vast oceanic snow drifts. They continued onwards side by side until they found a hidden patch of paradisal green cradled deep in the bosom of the wood.

Laila couldn’t believe what she was seeing. The snow seemed to halt abruptly at the glade’s entrance as though it had met the sill of a doorway and could venture no further.

“What is this place?” she asked.

Dominus shook the birds from his shoulders.

He would not often step foot so near to the Widowlands but the blood sorceresses’ spells ensured the grounds were kept fecund and he knew he would find good elk here. Ones that had been fattened by black juniper and ripe cranberries. He’d eventually pay the necessary blood toll—twelve souls sacrificed for twelve days of access. A hefty price to be certain, but they knew he was always good for a bargain.

They found a shaggy-haired herd in the near distance, nostrils frothing with alertness. They were two-headed and sprouting mushrooms like cysts; a mutated distortion of their regular counterpart, like all else here.

Dominus crept through the wood with canines and claws exposed, using the shadows to hide himself. He would disappear entirely into the silhouette cast by one tree before he emerged in full again. He pounced on an elk like an animal, crunching its spine with a well-placed bite. He came away grinning, his beard stained with festive cranberry blood, hauling his prized catch over his arm like victory.

Laila liked the pursuit more than the catch. She liked to startle the herds into stillness, struck as they were by her like a deer before any light, before they started running. They ran fast and hard, their little hearts clinging to the knife-edge of survival. Laila would skim close, nicking the back of their leg before she let it loose again.

Dominus caught another elk for her in response to her hesitation. She cradled her catch softly like a babe.

They brought both catches to the lodge and laid them out on tables. Dominus taught her how to skin and gut a deer and saw the antlers off. How to salt and treat the meat so it stayed fresh. First he gutted the elk, cleaned it, wrapped the offal in a bag for later. Then he stuffed the loins full of nuts and berries and rubbed a coating of honey on the skin.

He made sure they used all of it: the antlers for decoration, the skins for leather. That this was what was fair.

She still could not get used to the blood on her hands.

They practised craft in the evenings.

Laila took up knitting by the fireplace, using the pelts of the beasts he’d slaughtered to create hunting gloves and stockings embroidered with flowers, berries and thorns.

The needles were dotted with her ichor, golden as honey.

She watched as Dominus oafishly entangled his yarn in an attempt to make a scarf for her. He presented it to her with a grimace and she enchanted the knots to untangle before weaving them deftly into the garment he required.

Afterwards, she would stay in the sauna for hours and imagine herself back in Soleterean heat. She rubbed peppermint oil on her braids and scalp, allowing the steam to treat it until she emerged glossy and refreshed. She ran a stiff brush over her scalp, used beeswax to combat dryness and taught Dominus how to do the same. Then she oiled his beard and placed winter blossoms in it for decoration.

Dominus gathered the charcoal left from the fire and forged a stylus out of it. He drew her several times, capturing the images she sent him through projections. Then he would make sbiten with the lingonberry jam he had gathered from the Widowlands so she could have a taste of summer.

The glasses were smudged by his fingertips, black as char.

They cleared a space in the lodge to display them all; her stockings hanging on the doors, his drawings on the mantelpiece. Laila adjusted the curtains to let in the light, started to smile often and laughed even more. Her laughter banished the cobwebs from the corners; brought the sweet robins back to the branches. They awoke to birdsong and fell asleep tracing the constellations she taught him in the stars.

He still could not get used to the flowers in his beard.

Then one frosted morning after a new snow came to powder the earth, two visitors arrived.

They moved like sylphs through the snow, just as pale and near as translucent. Lyra led the charge whilst Léandre remained vigilant behind her. They were all that remained of the original party, having lost all others to the ruthlessness of the country’s flora and fauna.

When they approached the lodge, Lyra took out her lightning rifle and loaded its first five charges.

“This is the one,” she told her uncle, pumping the rifle for action.

Léandre glanced sceptically at her weapon. “I would caution against charging in with arms ablaze, Lyra. At least not until we’ve had a moment to assess our surroundings.”

“I respect your counsel, Uncle,” Lyra said, raising up her engraved silver rifle for the ready. Dangling from it were the canines from the last beast she’d slaughtered. “But I’m not taking any chances.”

Léandre sighed heavily in relent. He knew better than to talk his niece down when she was in the midst of a hunt with blood still fresh on her nostrils. He only hoped an altercation wouldn’t reap the worst results.

“Cover me,” Lyra said, and before a word of protest she’d marched over the porch and taken the door down with one swift kick from her boot. She entered rifle first, her eyes sweeping across the room in search of targets and finding none.

“Laila?” Lyra’s boots creaked the floorboards as she entered the kitchen and then the living area. The rooms were dotted with small signs of occupancy: stained glasses in the sink; a dwindling fire; a basket of unfinished knitting.

The knitting was what Léandre had taken particular attention to, raising up one of the scarves in progress and feeling his way along the pattern of stitches. He’d recognise the delicacy and precision of Laila’s hand anywhere.

“They’ve been here.”

“But they’re not here now.” Lyra lowered her rifle in disgruntlement.

That was when she heard it. Laughter. Airy and enigmatic. Coming from far beyond the walls.

“Did you hear that?” Léandre asked, his chest rising in hope.

Lyra nodded and vacated the lodge in pursuit of the enchanting melody. The vapour of mirth grew more limpid in the air, enticingly remote and yet soothingly near.

The sound led from beyond the rooftop of the lodge to the clearing up ahead where Laila and Dominus were at play.

Laila chased Dominus over the snow, beneath the spikes of icicle-pronged branches. She scooped up a ball of snow in her hand and tossed it at his head, watching it explode into icy cinders.

Dominus responded to her with a slow, menacing pivot as he scooped up much larger balls in his hands and chucked them with alarming speed.

Laila dodged them with her lightspeed, tossing another ball, and soon they were in full scale battle, chasing each other around the ice-glazed grounds. Her laughter decanted sweetly in the air like a vintage.

Eventually, Dominus tackled her to the ground and kept her pinned beneath his brutish strength. Laila squealed and squirmed beneath him as Dominus bared his fangs and made play he was going to bite her.

It was at this unfortunate moment Lyra intruded upon the scene and, in seeing their compromising positions, abandoned all prior knowledge of the laughter she had trailed. All she saw was a monster lunging before her mistress and the method to act accordingly weighing heavy in her hand. So she raised her rifle, lined the shot in sight and fired.

Laila screamed as a bolt of lightning speared Dominus through the chest.

The shot sent him staggering into the snow where he flailed and convulsed before going entirely still.

Laila sped to his aid immediately, taking his face carefully in her hands before she checked his pulse and sighed in relief when she felt it thrumming. Then she turned in the direction of the assailant with her body humming like a livewire, enough voltage going through her to shock, scald and subdue. Her furrowed brow softened upon sight of Lyra, rifle still at the ready to implement another pacifying shot.

“No, wait!” Laila cried, launching herself into her path; as much for her own safety as for Dominus’. “Stop! I order you to stop!”

“Laila…” Lyra’s eyes were wary and uncertain. As a forest sprite, a steward of nature, it was her divine duty to dispose of monsters and here her mistress was telling her to spare one. “Step out of the way.”

“He saved me,” Laila explained, as though she could condense the past several days into one easily digestible phrase. She turned on her heel and made her way towards Dominus.

He had overcome the initial shock of his attack and was now growling, his features grotesque. How did one reason with a beast when all they saw was raw flesh shambling up towards them?

Laila cupped his face in her hands.

His snarl only deepened, his upper lip curling back to display more of its piercing gleam.

“It’s alright,” she soothed, then she turned back to Lyra. “Lower your weapon.”

Lyra sneered back at Dominus, her expression no less fierce, but she obliged.

Léandre came running into the fray shortly after, his own rifle raised. “I heard a shot fire.”

“We’re alright here,” Laila assured him as she helped Dominus to his feet. She dusted his clothes of snow. “Everything is fine.”

She walked towards Léandre and flung her arms around his neck, taking a moment to inhale his familiar scent before she embraced Lyra. “It’s good to see you both,” she exhaled in relief, searching around them for others. “What happened to the others?”

Léandre could only gravely shake his head.

Laila had them all ushered into the lodge for warmth and hot sbiten which Dominus brewed and served them with nary a word spoken.

Léandre explained in depth the fall of his comrades along their journey. They gave them shallow graves due to the ice and filled their mouths with nuts they’d scavenged as currency to pay the gatekeeper of the sky-realm.

“May their spirits have a safe ascent,” Laila recited the common sprite condolence, squeezing Léandre’s hand in comfort.

Lyra had not taken her eyes from Dominus since she’d sat. The tension between them was taut as a wire waiting to snap. “I suppose the only question is what do we do now?”

“I propose we abandon the mission, leave this place,” Léandre told her. “We can tell Dr Isuka our search was sadly unsuccessful.”

Laila shook her head. “We can’t leave.”

“What do you mean can’t?” Lyra’s eyes narrowed in suspicion.

“Princess, I must beg you to see reason. This land is too dangerous. I think our numbers are more than proof of that.” Léandre’s face softened. “I’m sorry to say it but every sign points to the potential that the Great Northern—and everyone aboard it—has long perished.”

“That’s not what I mean,” Laila sighed. She took a sip of her sbiten to offset the bitterness of her next words. “While you were searching for me Dominus and I happened to grow closer. He shared things with me. Personal things. Bits and pieces of his past.” She brought up her glass for another sip. “It turns out that he is not only an occassi but he is of royal blood. A prince. He also told me that the storm was not a natural occurrence. It was orchestrated to destroy our ship, as is practice for anyone who enters their territory.”

“So we came all this way only to have it confirmed that the Great Northern has almost certainly wrecked.” Lyra palmed her forehead as she shook it gravely. “Well, wasn’t this an utter waste of time.”

“It may not have been,” Laila said.

“And how do you figure that?”

“Because with Dominus by our side we have an opening here. To negotiate. I believe he might be exactly what we need to grant us further immunity from harm.”

“And you honestly believe you can trust him?” Lyra snorted in disgust. “Uncle, are you hearing this nonsense?”

“I have been with him for weeks and he has never once harmed me,” Laila replied tersely, “don’t you think if that was his intent I would already be dead by now? We have an opportunity to broker an alliance here and Dominus is our insurance. We would be foolish to waste this chance.”

Lyra scoffed and vacated the room in distaste.

“Give her time,” Léandre said.

“So you believe me?” Laila asked, hopeful.

Léandre cast a glance at Dominus. “I believe he has had ample opportunity to turn on us and hasn’t. That isn’t to say I trust him, princess. But I am willing to follow your lead.”

“Thank you, Léandre,” Laila heaved a sigh, reaching forward to kiss his cheek.

She turned to Dominus next to rest her hand on his cheek and projected the image of the Citadel.

He glanced up at her in silence. Then he uttered the first word he’d ever spoken in her tongue, “Come.”

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He led them down to a village in the distance.

It was a small, somnolent place tucked into a cliffside, populated by coastal docks and broad-shouldered wolf-women carrying nets of squirming fish. These were the last dregs of the lupari tribes, pushed out to the coasts after almost being stamped from existence during the occassi’s brutal conquest. The sight of their shaggy hair and lupine features put the sprites on slayer alert. Lyra kept her hand on the butt of her rifle.

One of the wolf-women dropped her net the moment she saw Dominus, a stark fear causing her canine snout to froth as she descended to her knees in deference. She spoke rapidly in a language Laila still couldn’t quite decipher, but it sounded like she was pleading with him.

Dominus didn’t budge from his austere stance; he was broad as an oak and seemed just as unrootable. He spoke a few subtle words and commanded the lupari to her feet. They exchanged more complete sentences before she pointed in the direction of an inn with one shaky, knobbled claw: The Rex’s Arms.

Dominus nodded to her in gratitude and then gestured for the others to follow him.

The debossed wooden sign of the inn whined and creaked in the winter wind as Dominus shoved open the door partially ossified by frost. It cracked open like the seal of a bottle top and allowed a raucous fizzle of noise and laughter to burble through the doorway.

The slickness of slush-soaked wood greeted their boots as they entered. Dominus allowed that to tinge his judgement for the rest of his establishment, though the interior showed much the same meticulous skill of Mortesian architecture. Spinal arches bridged the way between the grim figurines that appeared to be lurking from inside the walls.

Laila’s eyes swept across the room in fascination, having never before seen interiors that were quite like this. The furniture, along with the architecture itself, looked as though it had been carved from bone. She felt as though she were standing in the stomach of something ancient.

The moment they entered, another white-haired lupari behind the countertop dropped her ale mug in surprise.

“Oh!” She quickly wiped down her furry paws on her apron and hobbled out towards Dominus. “W-welcome, good sir.” She made a slight dip on her crooked knee. “What an honour it is to have such a magnificent creature patronise our establishment. W-what is it that I may do you for today? Could I fix you a room?”

“She’s terrified of him,” Lyra whispered in her uncle’s ear. She let her guarded stance relax, remorseful that she could say nothing to ease the creature’s mind.

“That won’t be necessary,” Dominus replied, pulling on the edge of his glove. “What I require from you is merely transportation. I notice you have a hippogriff stable out back. I would like to relieve you of them. Carriage included, of course.”

“O-oh,” the innkeeper replied, snout flexing and ears peeled back. “That’s quite a request, sir. It’s only—”

“Will there be a problem?” Dominus asked.

The innkeeper swallowed hard. One never refused a request from an occassi and lived to tell it after. That had been a creed long passed from mother to babe and she wasn’t about to be the first to tempt her fate. “Not at all, sir. Please make yourself comfortable and I’ll-I’ll speak to my mate.”

“But of course,” Dominus said, a smile ghosting across his lips.

Laila observed the interaction with a sense of unease. It was as though the kindly creature who, with such care and attentiveness, had aided her survival through this unforgiving wilderness had vanished into the ether and the shadow of the brute in the padded cell had stepped into his place.

But as soon as she’d thought to mourn his departure, he turned to her with all the sharpness in his features blunted. With an arm outstretched, he led her to one of the nearby booths and pulled out a seat for her.

She accepted, hoping this more domesticated version was one she could maintain. He may be her sole chance of escape and she wasn’t about to squander it.

Dominus picked up one of the menus on the table to peruse it. “Oh, and bitch?”

The innkeeper halted immediately in her tracks. “Yes?”

Dominus reclined in his seat with the imposing spread of someone who believed every square inch of space was his to invade. “I’ll desire a couple bowls of your ukha. And some mead.”

“Of course, sir. Coming right up.”