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arius slung his feryaz over his desk chair before he pulled up at the table.

Over the past month he had gathered all he could on the topic of solarites—a vast chronicle detailing their voyage from the rosy skies to the iridescent shores of Soleterea—which he had combined inside a journal for his own personal perusal.

He had become, in truth, obsessed with unravelling the intricacies of delicate stitching so he might separate the simple facts from embroidered myth. The facts being their first arrival to the earth in an asteroid nearly a millennium ago, their exclusively female forms, and the stars that powered the core of their bodies.

It fascinated him how differently they contrasted to the chthonic origins of the occassi, how they held a mastery of life in comparison to their death; light in comparison to their dark; creation in comparison to their chaos. Almost as if some higher, incomprehensible force had seen the occassi and erected their natural opposition as a challenge.

On the subject of defence, his scouts had left no avenue unanswered for. While solarites were formidable on their own terms, they also had allied forces with forest sprites who were adept in the ways of combat and hunting—in particular, monster-hunting, which they had long adopted to be their divine purpose.

The mortal countries, in comparison, were far less threatening and thus, less compelling. In each of the countries there were witches with magical abilities that pertained to the four base elements of fire, water, earth and air. The countries themselves had industries to reflect these proclivities and most were rather mundane.

However in Seraj, the arid fire nation that was close in proximity to Soleterea, they wielded firedrakes that could spew balls of flame at speeds and distances that made a mockery of even the finest archer. With fire being one of the few things occassi were not impervious towards, he gave this information the appropriate disquietude.

Darius doubted his father would like the conclusion he came to, which was that this was a mission best left abandoned. At least until they could have time to gain an upper hand. And Darius felt he knew exactly how.

However, he also knew this would be the point of contention most likely to rouse his father’s unpredictable rage. So it was with caution Darius prepared himself to go to the Eyrie to inform him of his findings.

Lanius was standing before the fireplace in wait for him, the fluctuating smoulder having made a skeletal mask of his features.

“This had better be you arriving with the information you sought.” Lanius’s voice, low and sonorous as it was, had become ominously slurred. Held in the clutch of his fingers was another in a long line of whiskey tumblers he’d downed after dinner.

“I have it,” Darius answered, notably cagier than before.

“Well then out with it, boy,” Lanius demanded, his whiskey sloshing in his grip. He didn’t often drink to the point of inebriation unless he needed to soak away the oppressive bouts of numbness due to his heartless state. Violence and vice being the only things that ever roused him anymore.

Noting this, Darius treaded carefully as a church mouse among traps. “From the information I’ve collated from various sources, I’m going to have to put forward the suggestion that a war with Soleterea may not be the most sensible course of action.”

“Stop mincing around with your riddle talk and say what you mean, Darik.” His father’s eyes were now hooded with a menacing gloom. “You mean to say you think we are too weak to win this fight.”

“Weakness has little to do with it, Soleterea is simply too equal a match for us. To go up against them now, in light of this, would be near suicidal.”

“Suicidal,” Lanius barked the word with a hollow bone-crackle of laughter. “You seem to forget I am deathless now, Darik, courtesy of that venomous pit-snake you have to call your mother. There is very little now that can overcome me, destroy me, defeat me. Let the solarites come with their little sunbeams and thunder-bolts, I’ll tear them all apart limb by limb and still be left standing long enough to eat the throat out of that uppity wench Amira as she screams for me to stop.”

“Your Majesty, you are not listening to reason,” Darius sighed, but he could see his father was too far sunken into the pits of his madness to be reached now. That crazed, manic look in his eye only made an appearance when it was time to fully abandon ship. “Deathless as you may be, that doesn’t quite extend to your warriors. How many of us must you sacrifice in the pursuit of a goal that may not even be realised? Will you edge us near to extinction merely for the sake of your ego-trip?”

“You’ve had your head stuck in the books for too long, Darik.” Lanius glugged down the rest of his whiskey. “But I suppose it’s my fault for not beating that miserable habit out of you sooner. You’ve forgotten what it means to be a warrior, you’ve forgotten how to adhere to the chain of command.” His voice lowered as he stepped forward. “Perhaps I ought to remind you.”

“Striking me down will not lessen the legitimacy of what I’m saying to you and you know it,” Darius countered, his own rage simmering deep down beneath the still waters of indifference he’d hid himself behind. “But if you would just listen to me, you would hear that my books and I might have an alternate solution for you.”

“Oh, and what’s that?”

“You know how long I’ve been studying the subject of chimera creation and mutagenesis. Quite frankly, I’m nearing a breakthrough. If you’d allow me more funding to pursue it then I may be able to craft us mutated warbeasts for the express purpose of surpassing Soleterea’s arsenal.”

“No.”

“No?” Darius challenged.

“How long will it take before your inventions are even near serviceable? Decades? A century? I’ve told you this once before, Darik. Swords and sorcery. That is how we win our battles. All this artificery nonsense is for lesser beings; beings that do not know how to fight for themselves. I simply refuse to cower behind a piece of weaponry and allow it to do the fighting for me. When I fight wars, I fight them with my hands.”

“Then you will lose with your hands.”

It was the wrong thing to say.

Darius knew it the moment the words vacated his lips and his father’s bestial visage burst through the seams of his face. Lanius blurred towards him and smashed his glass into smithereens on Darius’ nose, dragging him by the hair to slam his face against his kneecap before he punched him to the floor.

Darius took each blow as it came, knowing it would be better to wait it out than to fight back, to let his father release his steam.

Lanius rammed his boot down on Darius’ side, smirking as he heard the satisfying crackle of ribs beneath his sole. He moved his boot to his son’s throat next, pressing down hard. “I should’ve ripped out those smart little vocal cords of yours years ago.”

Darius choked beneath him, but still refused to give up his poise. He wouldn’t give his father the satisfaction of begging him to stop.

Lanius cracked his knuckles before he hauled Darius back up onto his feet, about to ready himself for another strike when the sound of a voice gave him pause.

“What is going on in here?”

There stood Laila in a whirlwind of curls, having phased through the door upon the sound of commotion. She’d been searching high and low for Darius to greet him after her return from the sunny shorelands being hotly debated. How unfortunate that her timing had delayed her from being privy to such a crucial discussion...

Her eyes widened in horror at what she saw. Darius broken and bloodied, splints of glass pushing out from his nose as his wounds attempted to heal while his father’s feral stance loomed above him.

It may be the truest image she would ever see of them, stripped back of their cultivated airs to the undomesticated barbarism beneath.

Lanius turned towards her with a hiss, his fangs full on display. “Leave.”

But Laila was deafened to this danger, either too brave or too blundering to recognise Lanius’ hair-trigger restraint. Instead, her attention was all for Darius as she reached for him up on her toes, touching his shoulders.

“Are you alright?”

How strange to be on the receiving end of such unburdened empathy, no terms or conditions necessary, no dangling strings. Just a gentle touch on the shoulder and a crease of concern on her forehead and Darius wanted to melt within it.

“You should do as he says, princess.”

“Yes, fly home, little birdy,” Lanius sneered, lip curling back in disdain. “I wouldn’t want to see your pretty feathers ruffled.”

Laila removed her hands from Darius’ shoulders and turned to face Lanius with a look of utter dismissal, like he was something to scrape off the edge of her embroidered shoe.

“You are not even worth the energy I would expend dignifying your response, you sad little creature.”

Darius understood it. Lanius did not.

However Lanius did not need to be fluent in Soltongue to realise an affront when he heard it and responded by smashing his fist into her face.

“Have you taken leave of your senses?” Darius exclaimed in alarm as Laila crumpled to the floor. Stunned, more than pained. Her lip had pierced to seep a golden rivulet of ichor. Darius crouched before her to survey her face for more damage before turning to his father in disbelief. “Are you trying to cause an international incident?”

His concerns fell on muted ears as his father took another trembling step forward in provocation. Darius turned back to Laila, expecting fear, bewilderment, even upset, only to find she was smirking of all things.

“I shall let you have that first strike, Lanius Rex. As a greeting gift. But should you raise your hand to me again, I’d best warn you: you’ll be in for quite a shock.”

That usage of Mortesian was all the catalyst Lanius needed to step forward.

Darius rose to barricade him. “Don’t,” he warned, holding out an arm to enforce it. His fangs were itching at his gums to descend. “Go and sober up, before you do something you regret.”

Perhaps it was the threat of an obstacle to his violent pursuit or whatever rational portion remained of Lanius’ mind truly catching up with the weight of his actions, but he soon desisted with a snarl and took off out of the room.

Darius heaved an exhausted sigh before he turned back to Laila, holding out a hand to assist her. “Well, that was foolish.”

She stared at his hand in puzzlement for some moments before she accepted it. “I heal fast.”

“I can see that,” Darius noted in wry amusement as he seized her chin and tilted it up to face him. The cut had all but healed except for the glistening smear of her blood on her lip. He withdrew his handkerchief with a flick of his hand and used it to dab her.

“That doesn’t seem like the first time he’s hit you, does he do that often?” She took his wrist in her hand to still it. “Does he hurt Dominus?”

He could feel the radiant warmth of her hand paired with perhaps the softest look he had ever received. He wondered if this was even a fraction of the potency she looked at Dominus with. If so, he could understand his brother all too well now.

“Some stones are better left unturned, princess,” he said, realising that against himself his thumb had started easing its way over her chin in delicate strokes. He dropped his treacherous hand into his pocket, slid his handkerchief away with the other and turned to depart.

“Why do you always shrink away from me in fear?”

Though he knew it shouldn’t, her words halted him. He pivoted around with a chuckle. “I’m not afraid of you.”

“Then why does it seem every time we are around each other you can’t find a quick enough excuse to leave?”

She inched her way towards him until the minimal distance between them was enclosed.

He stared down at her, matching her daring with his own immovable stance. “You should walk away.”

“Why?” Her head cocked to one side in questioning.

Darius thought it would be so easy for him to close the distance between them a little more, take her cheek in his hand and- Ah, what a reckless fool he was! Wanting to scavenge her for crumbs of affection he could easily get elsewhere, should he look hard enough. Yet does she not provoke him? Looking so warmly at him like this? Something at which he could throw off his cloak and nestle beside and feel the comfort of a home for once?

“Because if you don’t then I might be persuaded to do something… foolish.”

Laila’s throat ran dry. She slid out her tongue to moisten her lips. “Such as?”

He let his eyes fall to her lips, his pulse quickening. It took every ounce of restraint in him to refuse this, to prevent what he knew would only ever be a short-term pleasure to a long-term pain.

He turned on his heel to depart. “As I said before, princess. Some stones are better left unturned.”

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Dominus and Vasilisa were coddled beneath the lambent glow of the brass wall sconces, drinking lingonberry kompot and eating nettle bread. The apartment walls were etched with grotesques, built from sleek oak panels used to make casks and coffins.

“Shouldn’t the others have arrived by now?” asked Vasilisa, topping off her son’s glass once he’d finished.

“I’m sure they won’t be long, Mamochka.” Dominus took a large bite from his bread. “But while we have a moment alone I’d like to discuss something with you.”

“Of course,” she said, gesturing for him to go on.

Dominus cleared his throat, scratching nervously behind his pointed ear. “What would you say if I desired to make Laila my bride?”

Vasilisa swallowed suddenly from her glass, coughing when her windpipe filled with kompot. She made a gesture of wellness when Dominus reached to support her.

“Goodness, that’s—” Her words failed her “—that is certainly—”

“Unheard of, I know,” Dominus replied on her behalf. “But I feel right about this. Not only for myself but for the future status of our nations. A marriage could serve to join us both.”

“Doma,” Vasilisa sighed. She’d always feared this day would return again. After his first brush with heartbreak, part of her hoped that would’ve staved the appetite for marriage off for good. “I can certainly tell you feel strongly about this girl. But Laila, she isn’t one of us. You understand? We know so very little of her nature. Can she even provide you a son? An heir? In the event something happens to you?”

“I am well aware of our curse, Mamochka. But I wouldn’t want an heir off her, at least it wouldn’t be my immediate concern. I wouldn’t want Papa to believe I sought to move against him.”

Vasilisa’s shock took a turn for disappointment. Though she couldn’t blame Dominus his loyalty, it may very well have been that which kept him alive for so long. “Yes, of course. That is… a valid concern.”

Upon seeing her so forlorn Dominus took her hand in his. “This wouldn’t change much. I want you to know that. Regardless of whoever else I invite into our lives you will always be my mother.”

Vasilisa looked up with a smile, curving her hand over his cheek.

Not a moment later did Laila come blustering into the room. She paused before the sight of mother and son, feeling wrong to disturb them, but she was still shaken from her earlier encounter with Lanius and needed the strength of Dominus’ arms around her to moor her to the shore of stability.

“Dominus,” she called out to him as though it were the last breath she had to give in her lungs.

Vasilisa looked up first, her expression guarded. There was something fey and uncanny about the gauntness of her features—all that was porcelain and petal-soft in her seemed to drip away like wax.

“Laila?” Dominus’ brow was furrowed in concern as he made a bid to stand when Vasilisa’s hand snapped over him like an oyster shell. “We’ll only be a moment, Mamochka.”

“Is it not enough that she has had you for one week when it seems I cannot ask for more than one hour?” Vasilisa asked, her tone softly pleading in a way that strummed guilt on Laila’s heartstrings.

“I’ll come back later,” Laila said, pivoting on her heel. There was nothing that stole the wind from her supercilious wings quicker than the will of a mother, even one that was not her own.

“Wait,” Dominus called to her, making her pause. Then he brought his mother’s hand to his lips. “A moment, please.”

Vasilisa sighed softly as the settling dusk. “As you wish.”

“Thank you, Your Highness,” Laila said.

Vasilisa dipped her head in response. She seemed almost gracious in comparison to her husband, a gentle giant.

Dominus escorted her towards the doors and closed them behind her before turning towards Laila. “What is it?”

“We need to talk about your father,” Laila replied, taking a definitive step forward.

Dominus’ brow bent in confusion. “My father?”

“Yes, I went to call upon him earlier and found him with Darius. They were fighting for some reason or another.” Laila’s hands animated with gesticulations. “But Dominus, I’d never seen such violence in him like that before. He was beating Darius. And then when I tried to calm the situation he struck me.”

“He struck you?” Dominus’ expression took a barbarous turn.

“Yes, but, I’m fine. That’s not relevant as of now. Dominus…” Laila moved towards him to rest her hands on his chest, her fingers in his kaftan. “How long has this been going on? Does he hurt you?”

There was a shift in his throat as he looked away from her, moving her hands down from his chest like he was lowering a weapon. “No, Laila, he doesn’t hurt me. But we mustn’t speak of this.”

“Why on earth not?”

“Because this is a family matter and because I do not wish to.”

“Your brother is being beaten and you want me to brush it off as a family matter?”

“You’d do well not to make a victim out of Darius, Laila. Matters between him and my father—they are more complicated than you could ever know.” Dominus raked a hand through his hair in agitation. “In fact, I’d advise you against involving yourself in his situation altogether.”

“What?” A shallow exclamation expelled at the edge of a breath. “Why?”

He did not look at her, almost as though he couldn’t. His green eyes were dense and unyielding; an impassable savanna where all beasts lurked to camouflage themselves from prey.

She made him face her, her neck craned towards him in demand. “Tell me.”

“Because he wants to fuck you.”

Her lips opened, closed. Then she parted them once more to speak.

“Don’t deny it.”

She couldn’t, and he knew it. Not when her mind was reconstructing all the evidence before her eyes—all the looks, the touches, the tension. Too compelling a case to be anything other than convicted.

“So because he wants to, that somehow means he will?”

“You know I had a previous lover tell me the exact same words once. Guess what happened? She fucked him. So forgive me if I’m not willing to be made a fool of twice.” He took a step closer, looming over her like the shadow of an axe at an execution.

His rage was smouldering on his features, as toxic as the black exhaust fumes of a coal fire. She felt suffocated beneath it. This ire. All for the spectre of a lover whose actions were not hers to own.

“Take a step back, Dominus,” Laila warned, her body humming with an electric pulse. She would not be caught off-guard twice.

He sucked in deeply through his nose, exhaling slowly, but step back he did. “Tell me you won’t be around him anymore.”

“He is your brother, Dominus, I can’t simply eject him from my presence,” Laila replied, her gaze setting hard and crystalline. “But I think it’s about time we ended this conversation. Come back and talk to me when you’re being less of an intolerable boor.”

She dismissed him with a toss of her honey-gold curls over her shoulder and marched out of the room.

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The morning after had her up and early, roused by the trumpeting blare of daylight. The sky was grey and clustered with clouds that dangled the threat of downpour at any second. Laila almost hoped it did. She could do with some rain, a shower of needles to pierce this bubble of humidity.

Laila could hear her home in her ears as she brushed her hair with an ornate silver brush. Each stroke of unicorn-hair bristles was the shivering of wind through the palm trees. The sound made her feel strangely nostalgic and she wondered, not for the first time, if her mother had been correct at not wanting to send her back.

She considered summoning an audience with her through the mirror but the mere thought of admitting defeat and informing her of what happened with Lanius made her pause, not wanting to face her disappointment.

Outside her door, she could hear the mechanical squeak of trolley wheels and knew Morgana was bringing her breakfast to her. Laila greeted the ghoul at the door and received her tray with a smile.

After she had eaten, she received another servant telling her a visitor had arrived from the Citadel. Laila peered through her sheer drapes to see Dominus had arrived. With a sigh she considered having him sent away but decided it better to go down and face him. Regardless of how she felt about his loutish behaviour the night before she couldn’t risk a row, not when Lanius was still certain to be on the warpath after her.

She made her way down into the courtyard where Dominus awaited on the back of his hippogriff.

He slid down from his muscular mount when she appeared and moved to greet her.

She did not look at him.

“I—” he paused, scratching behind his pointed ear. “I may have been too rough towards you in my conduct yesterday.”

Laila gazed at him like was being seen for the very first time—as though he’d been solidified into being by virtue of her acknowledgement. “Is that an apology, Dominus?”

His eyes lowered in deference, making a remarkably pitiful pup out of this bestial creature.

Laila sighed heavily as she walked over to the hippogriff and reached out to stroke his silken mane, scratching behind his long bat-like ear. “Does he have a name?” She longed to touch his feathers but the moment she reached the glowing iris of the hippogriff’s bloodshot eye dissuaded her.

“Talon,” Dominus offered from behind her. “Have you ever ridden a hippogriff?”

“No.” Laila shook her head. “There’s nothing quite like these creatures in Vysteria. Instead, we ride lions or unicorns. My unicorn is named Polaris.” Her heart swelled with longing at the thought of him.

“I could teach you, if you’d like,” Dominus said, his stoic guard gradually lowering in response to her warmth. “It seems daunting at first but the trickiest part is getting him to trust you. After that, he wouldn’t dare let you fall.”

“Alright,” she said, as her hand moved back and forth over Talon’s lustrous mane.

He moved so cautiously towards her, almost worried she would fragment in his hands if not cradled with the lightest touch. For these hands, while rather adept at taking things apart, were never quite adjusted for the task of putting them back together again.

He took her by the waist and sat her astride the hippogriff, making contact with Talon’s eyes as he did so. Then he mounted behind Laila and wrapped his arms around her.

She liked the way the creature’s muscles tensed between her legs, how broad and powerful it felt when she clenched her thighs together in turn. She noticed there was no bridle, no stirrups, nothing to hold onto but Talon’s untameable mass of hair. And so she did, clenching hard, pulling harder, subduing him beneath her will.

“March,” Dominus ordered.

Laila’s stomach soared as Talon launched forward with ungodly speed, throwing off the binds of gravity as though it had no hold.

“Fly.”

He fanned out his wings mid-stride as the clopping of his hooves grew less and less audible the higher they ascended.

Laila threw her arms around his neck, clutching to him tightly as the manor shrank to a microscopic blemish beneath her vision. She’d flown before of course, but it never quite lost the novelty on her anxiety-prone nerves.

“It’s alright, I’ve got you.” She could feel the vibration of Dominus’ laughter through her back. “I won’t let you fall.”

They flew far past the outskirts of Gravissia into the more rustic hinterlands that lay beyond.

Laila could see the way the lichen parasitised every surface as they flew above the treetops, carpeting a dense rug of verdure over every bole of archaic oak. Even the silver birches were shawled with moss and coiling vines that swallowed every glimpse of the sky above like an infestation of flies over a carcass.

Dominus ordered Talon to descend to a trot inside the mire, their skin growing moistened by the wet exhalations of its pungent swamp smog. Laila wiped away the condensation from her brow and noticed a gaggle of antlered maidens known as qarninas. Their arms were weighted with wicker baskets full of mushrooms and berries which they likely plucked in abundance to smother into jars and preserves to last them the winter.

It was unusual for her to see so many at once that were not corpses. She was struck by how charmingly mundane they were with their loop braids and patterned head-scarves bobbing intimately in chatter, the hems of their embroidered sarafans spattered with leaves and dry earth.

Only when she saw the moss-bearded remnants of the lodge in the distance did she realise. This was the forest she began in. This was the same forest trail, the same unfathomable trees. How alien it looked to her now it had shed its white winter coat.

Dominus stopped to a close outside the door and helped her down from Talon.

“Why have you brought me here?” Laila asked, tracing her hand against the furry down of ivy along the wood.

“I always hoped we would return, one day,” Dominus said, scuffing his foot along the underbrush. “I hoped we could go back to the ways things began. When we were happier. At peace. Undisturbed.”

“Dominus.” Laila breathed his name in a laugh as she moved to place her hands on his chest. “We can’t go back to that time. You do know that, don’t you?”

“Why not?” Dominus asked, disturbingly earnest in his tone, “who’s to say I cannot sweep you into my arms right this moment and lock us both up forever where no one would find us?”

“They’d find us here, eventually,” Laila countered, “I can imagine it’s the first place they’d look.”

“Then I would slaughter them, all of them, by the dozens until the forest was soaked black in warning and we would be the only two left.” He smiled at her and it glinted like a knife. “Perhaps I ought to have done that from the beginning.”

“Dominus.”

“I just wish we could be with each other, without all of this. Without politics and rivalries and schemes.” He took her hands into his and there was such tender desperation, such mourning for the expiration of their relational innocence. “Isn’t that what you want?”

She looked down at their hands together, then back up into his eyes with a strained smile. “Why don’t we stay here for a while? And then we can discuss it after. Alright?”

“Alright.” Dominus smiled in relief. “We can go to the little fishing town down south and collect the supplies we’ll need.”

The town of Putrich ushered them in on rugged cobblestone streets, the marketplace still haemorrhaging the overflow of its morning crowd. The place was cordoned with distinguished wattle-and-daub houses in black timber frames. Yet even more crudely fashioned izbas languished away in their shadows from a distance, cast over like a subject of shame no one was meant to discuss.

Laila walked among them, her nose assaulted by the pungent aroma of fish on ice. She purchased a candied apple from a rather insistent merchant and devoured through the layer of warm congealed toffee, her eyes searching for where Dominus had slipped away to.

She found something else instead.

The sight of a large black carriage swelled into her field of vision like a blot of ink as it sped across the cobbles. The driver was going like a bat out of the abyss, momentum near tipping the car off its wheel as it swerved a sharp turn before the residential houses.

Two occassi slipped out from either door, their hands burdened with whips and chains. They went from house to house with methodical synchronicity, hammering the doors with a hollow thud before they opened.

Each time they entered they came out with a single qarnun led in bondage. They did not discriminate with their plundering—their haul encompassed both male and female, parent and child.

Laila could not take her eyes off of them, her attention tethered to the scene like a snare.

It happened so quickly, so smoothly, as though it were commonplace. Something to shrug off with ease. She kept glancing about her to see if anyone else was noticing but the sellers carried on selling and the market-goers went about purchasing their wares with dulled faces.

She herself was about to turn away too when a shrill cry of a qarnina sliced through the air and pierced her ears.

“Please, you can’t take him.”

Laila looked up again with swift deer senses and saw the qarnina running through the door after the uniformed occasso. Her husband caught her at the threshold, pulling her back as she kicked and screamed.

Shivering in the custody of the occasso was a young boy no more than fifteen.

“You know the edict,” said the occasso in a blasé tone. “Only three exemptions before we come knocking.”

“Mama, don’t let them take me!” The boy’s face had crumpled with a sob as he reached back for his mother, causing a ripple in the chain link that jerked the arm of his escort.

The occasso snarled cruelly as he wrapped the chain around his wrist, yanking the boy up to the carriage even as he cried and pleaded.

“You fiends, you monsters!” the qarnina cried hysterically, but her venomous curses fell on the ears of indifferent demons. “Let him go. Please, just let him go.”

Laila could take it no longer. She stepped forward, intent on putting a stop to it.

“Don’t.” Dominus reached out a hand to stop her.

The qarnina’s shrieks were a dire sound and yet the world remained unmoved to her pleas. She tore free of her husband’s grip in desperation to launch herself at her child’s captor.

The occasso smacked her down with the ease of a ragdoll and she fell, caving her skull open on the cobbles. Her antlers shattered to pieces. Blood and bits of brain swirled out on the stones.

Laila cried out in horror.

“No!” yelled her husband as he ran to her aid. He cradled her body to him as her broken skull weeped its last.

The occasso didn’t bother to turn back, flinging the boy into the carriage with the others. His partner retrieved her body from the grieving clutches of her husband and carried it, oozing and dripping along the cobbles. He tossed it inside with the others and barricaded the door. Then they both slinked back into the vehicle, tearing off into the horizon.

Laila slapped Dominus’ hand away with a bee-sting swat. Her body was rippling with rage. “What on earth was that?”

“A misfortune,” Dominus replied, eyes solemn. He shook his head. “She shouldn’t have tried to fight it.”

“Shouldn’t have tried to fight it?” Laila echoed in disbelief, unable to believe her ears. “They were stealing her child?”

“That was an honour he was bestowed,” Dominus said, gesturing to where the carriage went, “he was the holy hare, a sacrifice made to appease Calante for a fertile summer.”

Laila shook her head violently. “I can’t believe what I am hearing.”

“This is a natural thing,” he persisted, “as a shepherd herds and culls his sheep so do we rule over the lesser beings here. Their deaths serve a higher purpose. But you don’t have to worry.” He brought his hands to cradle preciously around her head. “Remember what I told you? About hunting? None of him will go to waste. We never let the qarna go to waste.”

Her chest seized at his words. “Y-you mean—” She thought of Dominus with the knife in hand, cutting away the antlers, cutting away the skin, preserving the meat for later so it did not perish. Only when she looked over his shoulder it wasn’t a deer on the slab, but a white wraith that reared up with an airless scream. “The ghouls.”

“His suffering will not be in vain.”

His words were all too much for her.

She shoved his hands from her head. “I need to leave this place.”