“RI!” The scream drags me from within my soul vault, and Ran meets my eyes as I blink them open to the chaos of war round us.

Fairies flutter, pitching up shields to protect cloaked assassins and thieves. The shields block plants shooting from the walls and ceiling, fire from hands, and even creature throwing out what looks like clouds and smells like candy. I blink, not exactly believing my eyes, but a slight movement from the corner of my eye brings me back to Ran. She gets up, shaking the dirt from her oily brown caked fur, and pulls her lips back in a snarl, even as her ears prick, her eyes boring into me.

Time to hunt? I ask, setting my hand in her fur and leaning my forehead against her, fighting back the pressure of tears.

A low growl mixed with a pur rose from her chest. She steps back and howls, the sound filtering through the blackened halls of the Underground as we fight Darshius' daughter and the creatures from La'Maciago. My soul sings, knowing how easy it could've been so very different and her cold corpse could have been all that was left of my best friend.

But no, she's before me now. And together, we can do anything.

Time to win, Ran replies, tongue hanging from her lips in a wolven grin as the thread slowly heals. As it heals, it seems… different. A pale rainbow of colors dart around the areas where the green acid ate at the Bond and her thread. The ribbon rainbow thins, pressing itself into the Bond and encouraging growth and replacing the Bond with itself when the thread stops healing.

The ribbon—now as thin as the pinpoint on a feather—

I grin, feeling the edge of hope as my Gift fills me with a shimmering energy, and I reach out and touch the kaleidoscope of colors around me. And I feel her. My Gift. She’s taking it on herself to heal what was lost, to guide back into place what I accidentally began a long time ago, when I first met Ran and Bonded her,

And a small voice, something that is not exactly a voice, whispers, There are no accidents.

I open my physical eyes, a small smile turning my lips as I feel the depth of emotion around us.

There’s a couple fairies fighting with Silver and the… wait, is that the girl we came in with? And Madame Nika fighting beside a bald assassin?

A few of the orbs circle Ran. She stretches and yawns as if she had merely taken a nap and not been injected with some super hoodoo-ish puke green acid trying to steal her soul.

I throw a blade. It hits a creature who almost ate a fairy in the forehead, hilt-first. I was aiming for the nostrils. Momma would be appalled.

But I was just kidnapped and subjected to mind control, so I hope she doesn’t mind everything she taught me flying out my ears.

Plus, it kept the fairy from being ate, so I call it a win.

Wait… that fairy had bright pink wings and hair. Natasha?

Silver shoots a glance back at me, eyes softening as he stabs a creature in front of him without looking. “Finally decided to join the party?”

I raise a brow, trying not to smile. “You call this a party?”

He stares at me.

I grow self-conscious. “What?” I ask, wondering if I’m bleeding or just look that terrible. But come on! I was just taken captive. I can't look gorgeous every day, thanks.

“You’re…” He gestures at me, and I glance down.

I yelp, trying to shake the glow from my arms. “Seriously? Why does this always happen to me?” I whine.

“Could you two quit flirting and help us?” Madame Nika says.

“You,” I growl, stalking toward her, but Silver holds me back.

“She’s one of us, even if I don’t agree with her methods,” he says with a clenched jaw. But even as he holds me, his eyes spark with anger as he glares and glances at me, seeming to question holding me back from the dragoness.

Nika shoots me a saucy grin, holding up a shield she got from who knows where and blocking me and Ran from a fireball thrown from a creature… erm… did he—

My eyes almost bug out of my head as a creature leans over and farts flames.

Ran leaps the shield and tackles the thing as I am still frozen trying to come to terms with my entire life turning inside out and upside down. Wouldn’t that hurt?

Rider.

Right. Battle time.

That’s about the time I hear a voice.

“What were you thinking?”

I jerk around, seeing three creatures fall to the ground, twitching from knives in their eyes.

“Momma?” My body moves by habit alone as I block fangs and stab into a throat, my eyes never leaving my mother.

She’s a bad donkey’s behind with a side dash of horse manure.

Her eyes flash with a wild light when they meet mine, and I wince.

“What the Fifth were you thinking?” she says. “What. Were. You. THINKING?” With each word she takes down another fire farter, a lightning holder, a plant wielder, and one who came at her with sizzling, acid-boiling poison dripping from it’s fangs.

She stops in front of me, cupping my cheek in her black-clad hand. “You’re alright?” she whispers, her blue eyes softening from the hardness of the battle queen for a moment in time to scour me from head to toe.

“I’m… fine?” I say, still attempting to come to terms with my heckin’ mother joining me like this. I—she’s a housewife. She tended my boo-boos as a child and is a midwife and healer in her spare time.

I knew she could fight… but who is this? Who is this? And why is she only showing this now?

She is cloaked head to toe in a body suit that nearly blends with the grey stone. The mottled grey, brown, and an almost green makes her nearly invisible. Her cheeks are still sallow, her body still thin, but as of this moment she looks like a lithe linx and not the sickly mother I left at home.

Who is this?

She pushes me down, pulling out a tiny shield which grows in size and takes a blast of light which leaves spots glowing in my vision. Then she takes something out of a pocket and it grows into the hammer I always admired in the hidden basement of our old cottage. She swings it, knocking a creature on its tail, and then finishing it with a knife in its eye.

“Who the heck are you and what did you do with my mother?”

She glances back, her eyes softening at the corners and her lips turning in her understanding smile. “Who do you think made sure you survived your escapades as the Guardian?”

My mouth widens further, then closes with a click of rattling teeth. “Who—he—WHAT?”

Momma shakes her head, her grey hair pulled back in a sharp bun and making her strong cheekbones stand out. “You needed it, hon. I couldn’t stop you, but I daggum wouldn’t let you get killed. Despite letting you be the Guardian, I’m not an absolute failure of a mother.” Her eyes narrow and she pokes at my arm. "You're glowing? Maybe I am a failure, if you've ate a sputnik mushroom and began to glow, it could be you'd explode in, oh, about two seconds," she pauses, then blows out a huff of air. "Whelp, it's not the sputnik mushroom. What'd they give you?"

I blink and blink again, only one word coming to my mind to describe my entire situation, one my father would have my hide for thinking. “Sh—”

“Now, hon, I raised you better. You know not to curse,” her slightly disapproving, nearly baleful glance makes me to shut my mouth, rattling my teeth once more. Oop, that one chipped a tooth. Ow.

Rider, we could really use your help if you're done reconnecting with your estranged warrior mother, Ran says, her voice bordering on the edge of too calm.

YOU KNEW! I accuse.

She mentally scoffs. What kind of wolf would I be if I didn’t know? Now get your head tied on straight, quite being a hard-arsed jackalope, and keep us all from being pulp-smash!

Yep. Sure. I’ll deal with mind blowing events and idiotic people who betrayed me later. Then what Ran said registers.

Arse? I whisper in my mind, a smile turning my lips. That's not a word we hear often, and Ran's never used it or else I would've put peppermint weed in her deer meat.

Shut it, Ran retorts, sounding petulant.

Ooooh. There’s a story there. Maybe it’s a certain wolf pack?

Shut. It.

I grin, but it’s not the time to press.

I take a deep breath, feeling for the threads, a giddy relief budding inside me. Silver’s here with backup in the form of a massive amount of assassins, thieves, and fairies with Natasha in the mix. My Gift is alive and not dead. And Ran is being a sarcastic puss while we battling fairy-eating creatures with my mother.

My life is wicked terrible sometimes, but it's moments like this that reminds me it's also wicked awesome.

The Gift threads around me, touching each thread and pinging them back at me, but instead of pushing them all against me, each comes and goes as I direct… and can handle.

This is going good. Keep going. Don’t let fear overwhelm you, I coach myself, touching and directing the colors and life forces.

“Protect her,” Silver growls.

The fairies, both those from the library—was that cute little Thomas, who lit the library for me all those years?—and those freed here before I was captured buzz around me, putting me in an orb. I can almost see with my Gift as they weave their own threads into a protective covering over me just in time for Farter to throw more flames at us.

I’m done killing. It’s time to find another way.

I watch intently at what the orbs do, drawing slightly on my Gift like Jenny has tried to get me to do. It terrifies me, but I must move past this if I am to use what The King has given. I can’t let the fear of what has happened in the past prevent me from using one of my greatest weapons against the enemy.

My Gift unfurls with cackling glee as I poke her, and then she explodes in color and I wince. I try to focus on the individual lines. The world tilts and I fall to a knee. I almost stop there and fall back on what I know works. I could attack with blades or kill them all… and yet, I know we can’t beat them all and escape without my Gift.

And I can’t exactly master my Gift sitting on my laurels. So I take a deep breath, ignore the way dread pools in my stomach and makes my heart pound at the thought of feelings hundreds of emotions, and continue to dive into my Gift. But I can’t help as previous times of failure race through my mind, times of horror and pain as hundreds of emotions not meant to be felt at once created a boiling tundra within my soul. The time I almost killed Queen Ambrosia.

I don’t want to hurt anyone.

But then I remember what my Gift did for Ran and I. Her gentle brushes, her coaxful silence, her hopeful threads which feel giddy with anticipation. I forget my fear, forget my apprehension, and without even realizing it, I relax the hold on the Gift. She gives a soft sigh and relaxes within me, cooing softly and brushing her warmth against me. Like a horse whose reigns had been bound to tight, once finally released, the entire body of the horse relaxes.

And then I reach for threads. Threads that are blackened with pain and suffering.

I tilt my head, watching the threads with something akin to curiosity. I wonder what would happen if I attempted to give Empathy away?

But now is not the time to experiment... at least anymore than I already am. Instead… I reach and grasp all the threads, and weave my own thread out to each mind with a single goal.

Sleep, I whisper into twenty-seven minds.

And I feel how my thread reaches out, touches them, and they drop.

But I also feel how they are… controlled.

I will get to that in a moment. But right now, I tap the steel-like threads, wincing when they nearly bruise my mental finger--how the heck can something ethereal be bruised?--trying to determine how to break the fairies from their hold. They need to be free.

My Gift nudges me, and I sense her guiding me to reach out to the fairies for help. I do, sending what I feel of the threads to Natasha. I feel her mental acceptance as she passes it along to the others.

I’m not sure what to do, as I could try… but the threads are too hard. I cannot save them all.

But I may can keep someone from controlling them.

So I follow that controlling thread to a mind.

And there… I don’t know what to make of this. It’s a dark labyrinth instead of the open garden of my soul. The witch materializes before me, eyes narrowed and lips pulled up in a hiss. She taps her claw-like red nails against her thigh.

“You won’t win,” she says.

I shrug. “It doesn’t matter. What matters is that I try.”

She stares at me, opening and closing her mouth like a dumbfounded fish. “What are you?”

“You keep asking me that. I don’t think you’re ready to accept the answer.” Another question pops into my mind, and I tilt my head. “What are you so afraid of?” I ask softly, almost gently.

And a square of emotion pops up beside her, showing me a glimpse of a little girl—she couldn’t be more than four, with bright eyes and a contagious laugh—playing with a lizard-like pet. And a moment later, the lizard is smashed beneath a large boot. “Pets are for the weak,” a voice said, indifferent but haughty. One I’d recognize anywhere. Darshius.

My lips pull in a snarl.

The witch before me covers her ears. “STOP!” she screams, the sound echoing from the depths of her mind to ring in my soul vault, nearly freezing me in my tracks. But my Gift sends warmth through me and helps me move.

And what I feel is not something I ever expected for one as deranged and cruel as her. Empathy.

I never realized what it must have been like having Darshius for a father.

“That must have been hard,” I say.

She shakes her head, her eyes hard, but her lip trembles before she grabs it between her teeth. “No. It was necessary. Now get the Fifth out of my head!”

“I will once you leave my city, leave my people, leave my world alone.” My voice is calm but stern, a fact. A promise.

She shakes her head again, trembling. She hugs herself with her arms, her eyes darting around me. “Always watching. Watching. Watching. Always waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Fear not the time of his coming, but the time of his punishment.”

And with that, she runs into the labyrinth and I’m left standing at the door of her mind with a choice. I could delve into her mind and find the secrets I need. Or I can retreat and find them elsewhere.

And honestly… I don’t want to. I sense there are things in her mind I do not wish to see or hear. Naïveté is its own Gift.

And in the next moment, as I'm hesitating, the choice is made for me when I am shoved from her mind and it's locked tighter than a dragon's voice.

I pull from her mind, instead searching one of the sleeping creatures on the ground. He has very little information, but his mind is much more open than the witch’s.

There are hundreds, perhaps thousands, of these creatures beneath Risia. And they are… odd. This one, he was normal a few months back. I search his mind, seeing a family who was stolen and a choice before him.

I pull back from his mind, my stomach rebelling at what I just saw.

The knight in silver armor who was familiar earlier… I saw him in this man’s mind before he was turned. I search for that thread. Seeking the encrusted blue and gold thread. And I sense the witch retreating down passageways, her mind puffing up like a cat when I come close, but my goal is not her.

I reach past and sink into the mind.

And his mind... it’s strange. It’s like tangled web of strings in his soul vault. Strings which would freeze the tundra with their cold. That’s the best way I know how to describe it. It’s as if someone reached into his mind and redirected thoughts and tangled others until he was trapped in his own mind in a cold beyond anything I’d ever felt.

Red boils through my veins and my heart pounds a painful staccato.

I reach in and... I don’t know what to do. There are so many tangles. Tangles made of tangles.

And as I drift into his mind, following the purplish golden string running from him to me, I find I’m in an underground tavern. I glance around, seeing memories and boxes, in some ways how my mind appeared… but not. Whereas mine were in the cottage where I grew up, his are threaded throughout streets. Some are within buildings, and others float above cobblestone pathways. And all leads to a grand mansion where some of his memories bobble.

And all around are gray, dreary clouds and snow. So much snow it threatens to bury me with one wrong step.

And there—within a bright bubble of icy blue with blood red streaks of all the knotted threads surrounding it—seems to be a man within the broiling mass.

But there is such a web of lies that I can’t even take a step without running into one.

I stand stock still, trying not to brush any. I don’t know what they are, but they pulse with a blood red that makes my skin crawl. They slither to and fro like air snakes, seeking prey to sink their fangs into.

I try to glimpse the person through the tangled snake web, but it presses against me, pushing me further from the man.

I step back, barely twisting to avoid a dark red thread, and the multicolored streaks seem agitated as I strain to see the person.

Unwelcome, booms in my head when I accidentally touch one thread while trying to peer through the mass.

And they part just enough for me to see someone sitting on the floor of a dark cave in the middle of the courtyard. Weird, I know. But this is mind craziness, not the physical world. Ordinary rules don't apply here, it seems.

And his bright blue eyes, rimmed with red, reach through the mass and lock on mine.

“Pa?” I whisper.