“Seven hundred years ago, I watched the world be engulfed by the sea. I closed my eyes on what looked like the end of everything, and opened them again to snow and still air, to a world in which everything I had lived through was forgotten.”

~ Bek Trent, M.A.S.O

Snippets of images flashed before Silver’s memory, but her mind could not comprehend them. They were alien. Stark castle walls, dark stone bathed in moonlight until the glass windowpanes glimmered like red ice and the arrow slits yawned like cavernous chasms that bristled with readied bows. Flames that licked the heavens and billowed black smoke. Scales that glinted lethal beneath a moon red as blood, illuminated by flashes of magic and lightning that rent the air with deafening roars and the scents of burning things and hot metal. These images, however fleeting, were burned into her vision. And yet the world that her eyes saw was one far removed from all of it.

Towering remnants of castle walls loomed over her head; broken mountains crumbling in the still night air with the occasional, moaning rumble of strained rock. There was more rubble beneath her, white and red-veined, stone and marble and ash. Shards of glass so large that she could stand behind them with her arms extended over her head and still not reach their highest point thrust up from the ruins. Behind these, the moonlight became hazy and obscured, casting a rosy glow over the castle remains, the broken wood and metal, and the dark stains that she ignored as she picked her way haltingly forward. It was only when the earth slid out from under her and she caught herself with the object clutched in her right hand that Silver realized she was carrying something – a short, sharply pointed sword with a golden dragon flowing down its spine. Its golden wings spread into the hand-guard, and there was a deep red stone, smooth as glass, embedded in its hilt. Even so, she gave the sword little notice; its weight was familiar, well known to her. She turned her attention forward instead.

Only ruins stretched before her, vanishing into the dark smudge on the horizon that she knew to be the great forest of the beasts, the Issurak. But her mind was muddied. She could not recall what other landmarks should have lain between her and that inky splotch of trees, and what she saw was only more stone and broken wood, and the gleam of water that had overflowed from some source within the destruction. It had pooled among the ruins, making her passage more treacherous.

It reflected the deep red of the moon overhead.

With this thought, Silver turned her head skyward, seeing the moon in all its crimson magnificence for the first time. A shiver went through her body. It was like a great eye looking down over her…

And then, more images crowded into her mind, storm clouds swallowing up the moon. Dark hair, crimson eyes so striking they would be impossible to miss, and yet miss them people did. Again and again. Over and over, in memory after memory, the man appeared, always at the fringes, standing at the farthest edges of a room crushed with crowds of smiling faces and white clothed tables, or leaning against a fountain on a street corner, watching as she passed. He was like a shadow, a ghost that everyone glanced at without realizing what they were really seeing. A vampire…

And his gaze filled her with both fear and longing. The gaze of an observer and of a predator, of someone just like her, and at other times…at other times his eyes grew murky with a darkness she could not name or comprehend. He was alien. A being that should not exist. A monster with the shape of a man.

But it had taken her until this night to realize why she felt that way…

“Silver.”

She felt motion against her shoulders as the name was repeated again – an unfamiliar name. Someone was shaking her even as she became aware of the crunch of snow beneath her, the scent of it wet and frigid in her nose, and the scent of something…someone…else.

“Are you alright? Silver,” someone said urgently.

Automatically, she reached for the person that had touched her, feeling her fingers close around skin even as she turned her head and opened her eyes, looking up into the silver-furred face of a green-eyed wolf. It caught her off guard. Her grip tightened as the world around her suddenly came into sharp focus. Meanwhile, a voice flooded her thoughts and ears.

“She wakes.”

Dragon? Her confusion was not subdued, although she knew the face of the beast inches from her own. Elorian. But who was the other…?

“Yeah, like that’s the face anyone wants to see first thing in the morning. Get out of the way, wolf.”

It was the voice that had woken her, a young man whose name eluded her. For some reason, images of the crimson-eyed vampire flickered through her mind once more, and she sat up so quickly that the wolf nearly fell over to avoid knocking heads with her.

He was dangerous. He would…

She froze inches from the stranger’s face, staring into the pale features and deep bronze eyes of someone she had come to know very well in the previous seven or eight months. Her hazel green eyes took in his sandy blonde hair and unusual clothing – a half-sleeve brown jacket and loose tunic that extended into thick boots – that were the remnants of their ventures into the long-destroyed land of Alti. He had the look of someone prepared for anything and suspicious of everything. Silent in his scrutiny, his expression nonetheless spoke to her.

“Bek.” The name came to her lips even before she had thought it consciously, and her mind barely registered the questioning gleam in his eyes before she winced as he brushed her forehead with the back of his hand. His skin was cold.

And then more memories flooded back into her. Not dreams and phantoms, but the reality of everything she had seen before Icthuria had offered to ferry them through time. Those final, ruinous glimpses of the dying island of Alti being swallowed up by the sea. She recalled the queen of the grand kingdom of Alti, standing in the path of what was certain destruction, hair snapping in the wind, sea-green eyes burning into theirs as she vanished. Silver recalled Hiyein and Sori and Ren, who she would never see again. She recalled Illian’s death, and the weight she bore after everything she had done in Alti. And Cara…

Silver turned sharply, staring into the snow around them. The boisterous, fiery-haired girl was not with them. And that was what Silver should have expected, was it not? If Icthuria had really brought them back to their own time, Cara had already been there for at least a decade. She had a life, a family, an entire existence outside of Alti.

“The Wanderer seems to have been true to its word,” Seijelar huffed.

“We’re outside the Castle of Divides. We made it back, Silver,” Bek said, not knowing the dragon spoke into her mind.

Silver turned to him slowly, momentarily at a loss for words. Realizing she had not yet released his wrist, she did so. He rubbed it slowly, still staring at her. Could he see the emptiness his statement had filled her with, she wondered? Could he see the bitterness, the hollow in the pit of her stomach? Everyone was gone. They were alone in the woods, shivering in a silent, magic-less world.

And nothing had changed around them in the nine months or more they had been gone. The tree boughs still wove gently beneath the flakes of an eerie snowfall, silent and lifeless in the gloom of a winter dawn. The bark was still gray and dead, coated in a layer of ice and frost. Without magic, the air felt strangely empty. It hung thinly over them, frigid and dry despite the damp scent of the snow.

Tears blurred her vision. It felt like she had lost everything all over again.

“Are you alright, Silver? I’m serious. For a minute there it looked like you had no idea who I was,” Bek asked, peering hard at her.

Silver exhaled slowly, trying to keep her voice from shaking, as she said, “How could I forget who you are?”

“I’m concerned that whatever magic Icthuria uses to travel through time might be having an effect on the magic that sealed your memories,” he explained, eyeing her, “there are a lot of topics we still didn’t cover in Alti. One of them is interference between spells.”

“We should not linger here,” the wolf rumbled at her side, drawing Silver’s gaze away from Bek. Elorian was still so close the wolf’s fur brushed her shoulder. Seijelar was not far away, either, hovering with her brother several meters away. The two dragons – one a striking crimson, with a golden splash of scales across its chest, and the other a stark ebony with two crimson stripes that ran from its nose to the tip of its tail – looked like brightly colored gargoyles leering from the darkened walls of the flame-scoured Castle of Divides.

The castle itself was truly massive, sprawling across the snow like a sleeping behemoth. Its black walls ate away at the landscape like the pall of a dark shadow, and the trees and underbrush – or what remained of the underbrush after the lengthy snows – grew nowhere around it. Where it brushed the sky, the stone was crumbled and broken, touched by time where the rest of the castle was not, so that the eroded battlements no longer cut a sheer line into the world. Instead, they dipped precariously backwards into the tower walls. Like the tombstone of a lost land, the castle was all that remained of Alti…all that remained of the people Silver and Bek had fought beside. All that remained of the land they had tried to save.

“The wolf says we should get moving,” Silver informed Bek, unsure whether Skourett, his dragon, had translated. “She’s probably right.”

“Silver,” Bek’s voice rang sharply in front of her. She turned to stare at him, surprised to see that his bronze eyes were dark with uncertainty. “I told you before and I’ll tell you again, the magic that erases memories is dangerous and unpredictable. You can’t ignore it.”

She half expected him to say more, but he did not. The silence stretched between them until finally he stood, extending a hand for her to do the same. She took it, then checked herself over for all of her gear. She still had her backpack and all of its contents, as well as Izathral and Cara’s rope. She was lucky the sword was invisible, but she would have to leave the rope with the dragons if they went anywhere near an actual city; it looked far too dangerous to be any sort of accessory. Finally, her hand went to her throat, verifying that Zeharial’s Necklace still rested just beneath her clavicle. It had saved her life more than once already.

Bek, meanwhile, was deep in discussion with the dragons. By the time he was done, they seemed to have collectively decided on a course of action. He gestured into the trees as the two beasts huffed sparks into the frigid air. “Unfortunately, we’re going to need to move on foot if we want to avoid anyone detecting the dragons,” he said.

“We must be miles from anywhere,” Silver pointed out, shaking her head slowly. “At least we’re not actually in the mountains, but still…the nearest road must be twenty miles from here. And we don’t have a car.”

She was already moving towards Seijelar, climbing up between the dragon’s sheathed scales. Seijelar huffed at her.

“What need do you have of some human contraption when you have a dragon such as myself?”

Silver patted the beast appreciatively, making a face at Bek. He was already on Skourett’s back, his eyes to the gray skies.

“We’ll be fine. Once we hit the road, we can follow it to the city,” he said decisively.

“Icthuria?” Silver asked.

“No.”

“I’m surprised you don’t want to go straight to Cara; she’s the only one who knows what might be going on. And after that, we need to find Zien,” Silver said.

“First of all, the MASO will have people in Icthuria on a lookout for the two of us,” Bek stated, glancing back at her as the dragons started forward into the dark trees. “Most likely, they suspect that both of us were killed by the Zara, but it pays to be cautious. I would rather not get the MASO involved with our plans just yet. Secondly, we have no idea how much time has passed since we left. Based on how quickly we’re losing daylight, I’d say it’s winter here just like it was in Alti, but that doesn’t mean we actually made it back to our time. And finally, there are things that we are going to need to deal with your predicament. Both materials and expertise. Zien can wait; I’m not as keen to get back to the tree wolves as you seem to be. They sent us to die, whether you think they had a choice or not. Just so you know, we’re both pawns in their struggle to gain some footing against humanity. That’s it. I wouldn’t trust them too much. For now, I need to get home.”

Home?

A shiver passed through Silver, and in her mind, she sat again at the edge of the burial grounds of Libertia. There, in the final moments of a fading twilight, she had looked out on a world not quite of the living, and had finally understood that nothing had ended or begun since she fled the burning ruins of her home. She still imagined, if she was honest with herself, that her family was there waiting for her rather than lost – probably forever. A cold lump of shame and guilt weighed in her gut. That reality was all she had ever known. It was all she could imagine.

And yet, that same night in Alti, she had realized that although she had gone after revenge on the Zara, her heart was no longer hollow and raw with the wounds of her loss; it had warmed with the presence of the dragons and the wolf and Bek, the people of Alti, the homes that she kept in the outpost and Libertia. Part of her had said farewell to her family long ago, quietly given up and moved on, secretly decided that if they would meet again, well…she could not fight forever for the impossible. She had betrayed her family simply by realizing she could live without them.

As she thought, her face paled. What if they were alive and had been searching for her for nearly a year? What if…

“We don’t have to pass your house, Silver,” Bek interrupted her thoughts, glancing back from Skourett’s spine.

“I would like to see what’s left,” she managed after a long moment. The words sounded like a lie to her, but no one called her on it. Even Seijelar, who had no sense of delicacy at all. When Silver glanced at Bek, however, his bronze eyes had grown dark and distant. It was impossible to tell what he was thinking.

“If you’re sure that’s what you want,” he said after a moment. Perhaps there was nothing more to say.

After that, they continued on in silence. Beside Seijelar, the wolf moved easily and quickly, returned to the world that was its own. Its ears and nose quested ahead, and its brilliant emerald eyes glittered with familiarity. For a while, Silver looked around with the beast, following its gaze through the hollowed trunks of dead trees, and across the muddied banks of ponds and wetlands nestled among the snow and icejust as b efore. She had never seen Elorian hunt, though she knew that must be what the wolf was doing when it vanished sometimes. In Alti, she had never had cause to question the wolf’s absence. Or the dragons’, for that matter. Things would be different now.

Eventually, her mind wandered. Somehow, it found its way, again and again, to moments she would rather forget. Illian’s death. The night of the fire. Facing the Zara in the Castle of Divides. And waking up to Bek’s voice, staring at him for that split second where she had no idea who he was. Or who she was, for that matter. Like her mind had stuttered. Like there was a gap in her existence, a moment she had lost but still remembered.

Disturbed, Silver turned her mind to more mundane things. What would they do when they reached the city in their outlandish clothes? Most likely, no one would really care. How would they get home, with no money or means of transportation, or even proof that they existed? They could hardly ride the dragons down the street or through someone’s backyard. Had Zien passed them off for dead long ago, when she sent them off to do battle with the Zara and they never returned?

That seemed unfortunately likely.

Night fell and deepened. Nothing disturbed them. The forest was hushed and dead, its inhabitants snuggled away from the winter chill. As they moved farther from the castle, the tree boughs occasionally swayed overhead, belying the presence of spy or predator, but nothing ever revealed itself to them openly. Bek spoke little as usual, though Silver could not help but notice the way he sometimes glanced back at her, a guarded light in his bronze eyes. There were good reasons for that look – not so long ago, she had basically told him she knew he did not trust her. Izathral was part of the reason. The ancient dragon she had hunted down in the war before the Divide was part of the reason as well. Secrets and questions lingered between them, untouched. It was frustrating, to say the least. If once she had wished he would stop looking at her like a child liable to stumble into trouble any moment, she now wished he would stop looking at her like she might be the trouble he had stumbled into.

A relieved sigh escaped her when they finally drew near enough the road to hear a car horn split the hush. There had never been such a welcome sound. They stopped then, to re-orient themselves. After a few seconds, Silver slid off of Seijelar’s back, slogging closer to the roadway with the wolf at her side.

“I get the sense there are a lot of cars on this road,” she muttered to the wolf, “and it’s usually not that busy. Not enough to stop traffic. Listen to that.” She had paused, listening to the slow churn of car wheels on salty pavement. She did not have to go far to catch a glimpse of the traffic through the trees. There was a solid line of cars, many of them pickups and vans crammed with stuff.

“What on earth…” she said, eyes narrowing. This was more than the holiday rush or the mid-season push for the mountain ski resorts. “Where are they all going?”

A flutter of wingbeats in the trees overhead startled her into looking skyward, finding her stare echoed by a pair of beady black eyes. A crow. It settled in the branches just over their heads and cocked its head down at her, seeming to consider her and the wolf for a moment. Silver felt Elorian follow her gaze, and then the fat black bird chortled as the crows of her era had always done upon seeing her.

“Nonsense,” it choked. Just as before, Silver heard the sound echoed in the trees around them, and more of the birds fluttered into her vision, staring hungrily between her and the cars.

Elorian growled softly. “Nonsense indeed.” For some reason, the wolf appeared to be on edge.

“Because they cannot fly,” one of the crows coughed, as if its comment were somehow an answer to Silver’s questioning look.

“Fat chicks,” agreed another, “but we found the one that speaks.”

“A-ha-caw,” they all croaked laughter again, as if Silver were a joke and an oddball besides, as any human who bothered to speak to the crows had to be. They were an odd bunch.

“What’s all that about?” Bek asked, coming to join her at the edge of the trees. She pointed towards the solid line of slow-moving traffic peeling away into the mountains. Like her, he looked grim. “The crows here are making fun of a collectively wingless humanity.”

“So, they have a sense of humor,” he responded distractedly.

“No fun, fat chick. Dragons rule the skies. The earth breaks,” cawed the crow that had first spoken, and when it looked at the air behind the three of them, she knew that it was staring in the direction of the dragons.

“What are you talking about?” she asked tentatively, feeling tens of pairs of eyes switch to her immediately. Bek glanced up at the crows now as well, bronze eyes dark.

“Corn givers. Always corn,” the birds took up the old song, and she knew it was humans that they were referring to, though the strangeness of the conversation persisted. “Shadows roam the cities. Where will we roost?”

“There are shadows in the cities? Do you mean the Zara?” Silver questioned, speaking slowly. The laughter swelled in the trees again, mocking her.

“Yes, fat chick that speaks. Everywhere, shadows. Cold that stings crow feathers. The earth crumbles.”

“No corn!” one of the birds squawked. Its outburst was met with another song of “nonsense, nonsense,” and the birds ruffled their feathers nervously as one. It seemed they could say some useful things, if only she understood enough to piece together a clearer picture of what was going on.

“At least these crows seem to know who I am,” she informed Bek as the birds eyed her suspiciously from the trees, “that means we can’t be too far from our own time. But they agree there are Zara in the cities. They also keep saying the earth is crumbling.”

“Try to get more details out of them. We’re walking right into whatever all these people are running from,” Bek said.

“You said there’s no corn. That’s a pretty big problem,” Silver said sharply, staring back at the birds. “Maybe I could help.” Another collective flutter of feathers. The birds squawked harshly, their voices rising from everywhere at once. She was surprised how by many of them there were.

“I’m serious,” she said, “I am nerske, the ambassador of the beasts. I will help you.”

“Yes, yes.” The sound echoed through the trees with a hiss like rainfall. “Nerske. Rider of dragons. Speaker of Tongues. Man Among Wolves. We know you. We know. We know.”

“Then tell me what these people are running from. Is it the Zara?” Silver asked patiently.

“The wingless flee east, away from the water beast.”

“The water beast?”

“Greedy beast, steals the corn. Hordes the buildings, crushes them. The corn givers call…” the sound petered out as the birds squabbled amongst themselves, before finally one croaked a word more English than bird and she knew that even Bek, who had been silent as she listened until now, understood.

“Ocean.”

“Ocean,” the other crows cawed uncertainly. “Ocean steals perches. Ocean steals corn.” Silver stared in wonder as the meaning of what they were saying sank in. People were fleeing the city because of the ocean. That must mean flooding, terrible flooding. Or something worse.

“Flee the shadows, fat chick,” the crow that had first spoken warned, “the nameless watch. They whisper.”

“What do they whisper?” the wolf snarled suddenly. Silver looked at Elorian in surprise, but the crow merely fluffed its feathers, falling suddenly silent. No matter what she said after that, the crows simply stared, their beady eyes wide. Apparently, something had terrified them too much to say more.

“What did they say?” Bek finally asked, staring up with her. Silver looked sideways at him, still hoping she could get the crows to say more. It seemed to be a vain hope.

“Apparently, people are leaving the cities because of the ocean, and we should not go there because of the Zara. Maybe we should really consider heading to Cara first, even if it puts us on the MASO’s radar. We don’t know what’s waiting for us in the city, Bek. We could be walking into a hurricane.”

“How many hurricanes have you heard of hitting the west coast?” Bek said, starting back towards the dragons. “At worst, we’ll see flooding. Come on. And put Cara’s rope in your backpack.”

Silver was not sure she agreed with him, but she followed anyway. If nothing else, she wanted to see the ruins of her home before it was swallowed up by the ocean just as Alti had been.

After that, it did not seem long before they reached the outskirts of civilization and were forced to split from the dragons. Instead, they walked several miles of sanded bike lanes, narrowly avoiding death by car when the snow piled feet high at the roadside and spilled over their precious few inches of walking space. At least no one was going anywhere quickly.

Gradually, the silent, gray-barked trees gave way to sagging buildings that crouched beneath inches of snow – half-suburban buildings that had grown up outside of the cities and included stand-alone fast-food joints and gas stations, ancient looking houses and the occasional stark, neo-gothic steeple of an old church. Salt-smeared windows watched them balefully from behind chipped fences and overgrown lawns, illuminated occasionally by cracked signboards that faded as dawn lit the distant horizon. At least nothing proclaimed the world-ending apocalypse the crows had suggested.

And then the suburbs spilled into the city. Silver found herself staring as if for the first time at skyscrapers that filled the horizon before them; a steely fortress of concrete and black glass, bright with the icy sheen of snowfall. There were shops every few feet, venues twinkling with holiday lights behind vast sheets of solid glass. Alti had been a place filled with natural color, but she was overwhelmed now by ads and billboards and the gleam of electricity. The cars, the lights, the smells, the noise…it was chaos. People crushed past her, clutching multi-hued umbrellas that dipped and spun as they avoided deep puddles, benches, and the odd tree that sprouted from a patch of greenery in front of the department stores. She and Bek were lucky to have the wolf; even grudgingly tethered on a length of rope from Bek’s bag, people gave the beast a little extra space.

“Stay close. The bus stop should be around here,” Bek muttered, “I think it’s after six, so they should be starting up their routes.”

His hand found her wrist as they paused. He was looking up and around the dizzying array of storefronts and gleaming traffic lights as if he might actually know where they were. Leaving him to his assessment, Silver stared instead at the few passersby who wandered past. They were normal people. Some looked drawn, hunted, most simply harried. A few clutched bags of odds and ends that might be last-minute supplies for a planned trip out of town. Most were no different from usual – people out to breakfast, others wandering from store to store with no clear purpose, still others hurrying back to the office for another day of work. A few glanced in her direction, and she smiled thinly. She and Bek definitely needed some different clothes. And lunch.

Alas, lunch was not to be. Neither of them had any cash, or any other means of payment. She was having a hard enough time believing they were going to be able to ride the bus for free without trying to get food, too. Despite her protests, they soon came to a halt at a surprisingly crowded bus stop. When the city bus lurched to a halt before them, Silver gripped the wolf’s rope lead a little tighter and pushed aboard with everyone else. There was some sort of card reader at the front of the bus, and she sucked in a surprised breath when Bek waved his hand over it, fingers curled around what looked like a slip of paper he had probably found somewhere in the city, and it beeped.

The driver ignored them as they shuffled to the back of the bus, coming to rest on a cracked seat with the wolf’s shoulder blades pressed between her legs. The beast was complaining miserably of the scent of gasoline. Silver wanted to ask Bek what he had done, but knew better than to do it where anyone and everyone could overhear. So, she held her tongue.

At least, at first.

When she felt Bek’s magic again as the bus lurched into life, she turned to stare at him questioningly. Once they were on their way, he grudgingly admitted that he had destroyed the bus’s camera system, and then, after a moment’s thought, went on to describe how in excruciating detail. He was explaining, she realized after a moment, how to disarm it with a touch and then with a look, the latter of which required a painstaking understanding of its most delicate components. The back of the paper he had boarded with – an ad for a restaurant they had passed on their way – became his sketchpad, the ink of the ingredients list running to fulfill his specifications until blueprints shifted in the wan morning light that began to filter through the bus windows.

“Cut here,” he told her, “block here, fuse here, send your magic here to destroy the recordings.” He punctuated each word with the tap of his finger against the ad, and then proceded to tell her what components were common to most cameras, how to spot them from a distance, or how to get close enough to destroy them by the strong-arm method of direct magical contact. She assumed everything he told her would be easier if she were an electromancer like him than whatever she was, but he did not seem concerned with her abilities.

“Magic disrupts electrical instruments,” he said softly enough that the people around them would not hear despite their proximity, “but not in ways you might expect. Recordings become unreliable and skip out if they’re not destroyed, televisions go to white noise or occasionally show images from another place or time, hard drives are wiped clean, lights turn on and off, locking mechanisms fail and of course,” he jabbed at the paper once more, “a surge of magic is no different from an electrical surge in terms of destructive power. As I told you before, there are measures we have to take at the MASO to keep cellphones and laptops functional around magic. You won’t find them in most camera systems, but the really high-end ones…you have to watch out for those.”

Shortly thereafter, they both lapsed into silence, staring heavily out the bus windows. Perhaps they needed a chance to step slowly back into their world, absorbing the faded skies, graying fauna, and looming houses. Perhaps both were wondering into the silence how long it would take the MASO, or someone else, to find them. Silver was pretty sure she was the only one thinking that, for every step she took, there were a hundred more ahead of her. She was beginning to feel as if she were trapped within the Castle of Divides once more, in a never-ending hallway that grew longer the farther she ran. If she had thought that learning how to recognize magic, learning how to control her power to some extent, or studying curses and spells and spell circles in Alti had prepared her for her new life in the modern world, she had been incredibly wrong. In Alti, she had learned how to fight. In her era, what she needed was knowledge of how to hide, how to run, and how to disappear. What she needed was an understanding of how magic had integrated with seven hundred years of technology. The magical world that she had so proficiently come to understand in Alti was entirely different from the one where she found herself now.

“You are gloomy today,” Seijelar spoke to her from somewhere in the distant skies. Silver could make no retort when she was so far outside of the dragon’s hearing range. Luckily, it was the wolf who spoke next, and she was well within range to pull grumpily at its ears.

“Leave her to her brooding. She always snaps back, and at least she hasn’t forced you to sit in a moving box that reeks of everything foul.”

“You could have gone with them,” Silver reminded the wolf testily. Elorian merely glanced back at her, ears laid back.

Half an hour later, they were well away from the city, coursing through the wilds of suburban neighborhoods and open fields. There were stretches where houses crowded the roads, alive with a certain modern neighborhood charm, and others where fields and pastures took hold, gravel roads winding back into the trees. Cars rolled past whenever they stopped to allow passengers on or off, flashing headlights and then break lights before turning up quieter roads.

As they neared the stop that would bring them home, Silver began to grow restless. Seeing familiar stops, familiar buildings, brought everything into sharper relief. All around her, the normal world rang discordant. Which people, she wondered, knew of the existence of magic? Who hid secrets like hers? Who might recognize her, missing for who knew how long?

Then, finally, the bus smoked to a stop on a quiet road near a park-and-ride, and they hurried off without looking back. From there, they walked a distance that would have made her complain once, and that seemed like nothing at all now. When the hill she had walked each day to catch the bus to school finally came into view, her heart quailed and her legs became heavy. Nothing had changed. The houses lining the hill still stood stiff and so much the same that she could hardly tell them apart. They were all painted in shades of gray and white, trimmed with the same dark colors, built to similar designs.

But of course, she was wrong. One of her neighbors had gotten a new car, and the family three doors down had erected a pale wooden fence already beaten gray by the rains. There were no curtains in the window of the woman down the street, and in fact, the house looked strangely empty. Time marched on for those untouched by the fire.

Silver’s eyes were drawn to the void beyond the houses, where her home should have been. She paused, the wolf pressing reassuringly against her hand.

“We’ve been sitting in that bus for hours,” Bek said, watching her from several feet away. “If I were you, I’d give myself a rest first.”

After a long moment, she nodded slowly. He glanced in the direction of her gaze, expression giving away nothing of his thoughts.

“Come on, Silver,” he finally said, waiting to start down the road towards his house until she began to follow. She walked behind him mutely, away from the one place in their modern era she might have belonged.

If it had not already been destroyed.

Silver wondered if he felt anything at all when his house finally came into view. She had no idea which one it was until he slowed, turning down a driveway to a tiny front porch. Snow had piled thickly up against the icy steps. Otherwise, the house was unremarkable, the walls a quaint, crisp blue, the front door a deeply enameled shade of black inset with artful, stained-glass windows.

Bek rapped twice on that door, and hesitated before knocking once more. His hand dropped to his side after a moment, as if he had heard someone coming from inside. When Silver looked up at his face, it was to find his expression set in stone. Seconds later, the door slid open. Warm air rushed from the inside, spicy with the scent of cinnamon.

A woman stood in the doorway, peering at them with wide brown eyes. One hand was half-raised, almost defensively, to her chin, the other still tight on the door. There was no doubt she was Bek’s mother. Like him, she had wispy hair - though it was a deep brown that was almost black - an angular chin, and a guarded expression. When she stood very still, like him, they both had the same air of apparent speculation. Then the woman’s brown eyes narrowed, her lips pursed, and her brows shot down so quickly that Silver barely had time to register the change in expression before she realized what was to come. Bek’s mother and he were alike, but where Bek had become impassive, it was clear his mother was not about to hide her feelings from anyone.

She glanced at Silver once, grabbed Bek’s arm, and hauled him into the house; no small feat for someone who stood at least six inches shorter than he did. Silver followed half for fear of being left outside and half because she simply did not know what else to do. The door slammed shut behind her and the wolf.

“Bek Lezarias Trent, where have you been?! Eight months,” the woman was half-shouting, her nostrils flared, “do you realize it’s been eight and a half months since I heard word from you? Six times the MASO’s coming knocking on my door, asking me where in the world my own son has gone off to. Your grandfather wanted me to believe you were killed. And graduation…do you realize how excited I was when you finally got assigned to a normal school, thinking my only son would finally have his chance at a normal graduation. And what do you do. Gone. Poof,” she fluttered her hands as if to emphasize the word, and her long sleeves billowed with the motion, “That’s two graduations you’ve skipped. What does that make you? Is that a drop out?”

Bek could not have answered even if he had wanted to before the woman rounded on Silver. “And you have a girl with you. Eight months and you show up with a girl. A girl! Did you run off with her? Don’t tell me you’ve done something you can’t take back. The agents who came to find you said they thought you’d gone looking for her, hmmm, but that’s hardly what it looks like now.” Silence fell.

Bek was watching the woman, and to Silver’s immense surprise, that ghost of a smile was on his face again, echoed in his bronze eyes. It irritated her, for some reason. His mother did not look any less irritated than Silver was as the woman sucked in a great breath of air, stared hard at Bek for about three seconds, and then suddenly threw her arms around him.

“I thought you were never coming back, Bek.”

Silver realized the woman was sobbing softly. Bek looked down at his mom for a moment, hugging her gently in return, and then up at Silver. Their eyes met, but she still could not tell whether this was a scene she was meant to see or one he would rather have kept from her. As it was, he really had no choice. She had seen. She had and she wished she had not, because now she knew what he had given up to betray the MASO, and what he would be giving up if he continued to help the beasts or herself. Unlike her, Bek Trent had something to lose.

Without thinking, she reached for the wolf’s head, fingering its velvety ears. Something to lose…there was a reason she had to help the beasts now; the only things she had to lose were the wolf and Seijelar. The vampires no longer scared her as much as the thought of losing them. Neither did the Zara.

As she stood in silence, her eyes no longer on Bek, but on the room behind him – an immaculate space with walls the color of the winter forest, cream carpet that had never seen a stain, and bamboo everywhere – his mother finally straightened and pulled away from him, taking a deep breath. Her shoulders still shook slightly as she turned, fixing Silver and the wolf with a look that was equal parts embarrassed and uncertain.

“I’m Silver,” Silver introduced herself after a second, “and this is Elorian. I…I didn’t run away with anyone, just to clear that up. It’s partially my fault Bek has been out of contact for so long, so…” She felt like a fool for stumbling over her own words a bit; it had been a long time since she had spoken English to anyone other than Bek.

For a moment, the woman regarded her in silence. Then she smiled a little sadly. “Elise. I know who you are, actually. I was there…I was the one who called Bek the night of the fire.”

Silver felt her mouth drop open slightly, but she could not bring herself to say anything.

“Food, showers,” Elise said then, looking them up and down, “I might have something that will fit you, Silver. Where on earth did you get these clothes? They look like you sewed them yourself.”

“Mom—”, Bek started, but she cut him off.

“I can already guess that it has something to do with your father. We’ll talk about it as soon as you’re settled. There are things I need to discuss with you as well,” the woman said as she gestured briefly towards the far end of the room, where a comfortable-looking couch turned in on a coffee table and a mounted television. For the first time, Silver noticed the suitcase open on the table, half-filled with books.

“I can see that,” Bek agreed. Since he did not press, Silver assumed his mom was not the type to get side-tracked. She was already steering Silver towards a winding stairwell. Bek followed them, his bronze eyes curiously still, and she wondered if he was speaking to Skourett. She turned her eyes away.

Everything about Elise’s home was beautiful. The staircase had a lovely mahogany railing that continued to guide them as they turned a left at the top of the stairs, and then walked into what Silver immediately guessed must be the master bedroom. It was, as seemed to be the case with much of the house, gloriously decorated. Bamboo blinds cascaded down the windows, matching the darker furniture pressed up against the walls. A king-sized bed dominated the room, strewn with enough matching pillows Silver wondered what anyone could possibly do with them all. Despite the fact that Elise was well ahead of her and Bek was nowhere in sight, the bedroom door slid slowly closed as soon as Silver was inside.

More magic. Of course, it would have been strange if Elise were not a magic user like her son.

“Silver?” Elise was poking her head out of what appeared to be the master bathroom. “Shampoo is here, and you can use either of these towels. Take your time. I’ll put a few things on the bed for you and just wear whatever fits. I’ll be downstairs.” Silver tried her best to smile as the woman spoke. Elise seemed to understand when Silver faltered, and despite her fastidiously clean house, said nothing as the wolf continued to hover at the backs of Silver’s knees, watching everything through eyes bright as stars.

After making sure she did not have any questions, the woman left Silver to the shower, closing the bathroom door softly behind her. The wolf settled in front of the toilet on a rug the likes of which could never have existed in Alti. Silver hesitated, staring at the modern bathroom, the metal and tile and all the familiar things she had not seen in months. Then she cranked the water up until it roared down over the slick tiles of the floor, squirming out of her dirty clothes. When she closed the shower door behind her, she closed all of the steam in, and when she stepped into the water, she released a breath she had not realized she was holding.

Within minutes, she had her hair in a lather and her eyes squeezed closed as she allowed the hot water to beat against her back. A part of her was half-dreaming of cold river water, smooth rocks beneath her feet and the silvery fish that sometimes lived beneath the glassy surface running against her legs. It was a part of her that the water beat away and washed down the drain, until the smell of Alti was all but gone from her. The sea spray that had coated her hair as they watched the ocean rise up over Alti was washed away in the scent of cherry blossoms and lavender.

Then her eyes snapped open as an unwanted image flashed before her eyes. It was a silvery blade raised high above her head, red magic burning like fire along its spine. Warm liquid dripped from its tip, running downwards across her hand and arm, now drowning her until she was awash in it, and it steamed up the glass around her, filling her with its metallic scent.

Silver swallowed, breathing deeply of the steam and willing her tensed muscles to relax. After that, she did not dawdle. It took her no time at all to rinse off and towel dry, nudging the wolf softly with a wet toe, and giggling when it grunted grumpily. Her gaze swept upward, towards the fogged mirror.

And she felt her grip on the towel go slack.

There, before her, was the girl that she feared most of all, staring back through the fog of the steamy mirror. Against her hazy outline, she could see the dark brown of her wet hair, the freckles that ran across her pale cheeks. And her eyes. Bloody crimson, stark against her skin, the black pupils shimmering like ink in the bright room. Magic pulsed through her, fiery and vibrant, threatening to drown the girl that stared it down. For just a moment, her mind went blank. She stood in the white room, her hand outstretched and fingertips a hair’s breadth from the glass.

I’ll destroy it.

The thought was like fire in her, spreading and catching anything nearby that could possibly burn.

This world…

In her mind, she already saw the splintered glass, reflecting an otherwise unscathed room at a thousand angles. Magic surged through her, and her fingertips tingled. Her eyes narrowed. Then something drew her back in time to see the gleam of emptiness in her gaze. There was no feeling in that stare. No hint of emotion.

The magic died. Instantly. Ice water drowned the fire in a hissing pool. The magic flared and was gone, and the light in her eyes went with it. She was left staring at a hazel-green-eyed young woman whose expression was anything if not tortured.

Afraid to look on any longer, she turned away.

The wolf was watching her intently, hooded ears flared forward, nose aquiver. But it said nothing as Silver cracked open the bathroom door and picked an outfit from what Elise had left to her; a dark-colored T-shirt and stretchy, fitted jeans. There was even a bra, wonder of wonders, and socks that were not full of wool. The modern fabric felt so soft, so clean, that she hugged it tight to herself, unmoving, for a long time before she collected her backpack and Izathral.

“What do I do, wolf?” she finally asked softly. Elorian pressed under her hand, head resting on the bedspread.

“Just keep going,” the beast seemed to say.

“But to where? To Zien? To the vampires?”

“When you took up the name of nerske, these were the burdens you shouldered,” the wolf agreed, rumbling softly. “There is nothing to gain from misery and worrying.”

Silver choked on a sad laugh, rubbing the beast’s eyebrows. She knew the wolf was right. She only wished that knowledge could be enough to drive all her worries away.