“You have trespassed into the Waiting Place, the forest of the dead.” I step out of the trees. Though I don’t shout, Mauth’s magic carries my words down to a blonde woman fighting back to back with a Mask. To the Scholar with the wights, and Laia. To the soldiers, all of whom gape at me. “You are not welcome.”

One of the legionnaires spits blood onto the beach and glares at his men. “Put an arrow in that son of a—”

He grabs his throat and drops to his knees. His men inch away.

When he is flat on his back, clawing at the sand, I look to the rest, letting the outsiders feel the full weight of the Waiting Place’s oppression. Then I draw away their vitality—all but the child’s—until the soldiers are gasping and stumbling through the shallows back to their boats. I turn to the others, who are still struggling to breathe.

I must kill them. Shaeva was right to leave broken bodies along the border. These constant interruptions are a distraction I can ill afford.

But the child, who is crouched behind a boulder, cries out. His distress plucks at something deep within that I cannot name. I ease the magic.

The remaining outsiders drink in long, shuddering draughts of air. Those four on the beach move swiftly up the trail, away from the soldiers. The child emerges from his hiding spot, wary gaze fixed on me. His companion stalks forward, reaching back for his scim.

“You,” he says. Darin, I think as he bears down. His name is Darin.

“I thought you were a decent human,” he hisses at me. “But you—”

“Now, now.” The tall Scholar steps in front of Darin. His cloud of wights has disappeared. “Let’s not irritate the creature formerly called Elias. He is the one who has to get us out of here.”

“Get off, Musa—”

“I will not help you.” I am puzzled that they think I would. “Leave at once.”

“Not bleeding likely.” Helene—no, the Blood Shrike—appears at the top of the trail. Blood soaks her fatigues and she limps heavily. She glances down at the Martials, who have retreated—but not far. “Not unless you want a half dozen more ghosts clogging up your day—ah—”

“Careful, Shrike.” The Mask catches her, and there’s something about him that makes me stare, some instinct urging me to look closer at him. We mean something to each other. But what? I have no memories of him.

The Shrike stumbles. The pain in her leg is likely hitting her now that the adrenaline of battle has worn off. Without thinking, I hold her up on one side, while the Mask grabs her other arm. The feeling of her is so familiar, the rush of memory so heady that I jerk away.

“Don’t let me fall, you idiot.” She lists forward. “Unless you want to carry my carcass the next hundred miles.”

“Wouldn’t be the first bleeding time.”

It’s not until she grins at me that I realize my voice wasn’t that of the Soul Catcher but of someone else. The person I once was. Elias Veturius.

“Shut it and help me find a place to sit so I can get this arrow out, would you? Laia? Do you have your kit?” The Shrike glances over her shoulder. “Harper, where the hells is she?”

Harper murmurs something to the Shrike and she glances at me, brow furrowing.

“Tend to your wounds,” I say. “Then leave. Go back to the beach. To your boats. To a quick death, it matters not. But you will not enter the Waiting Place.”

“He’s your brother.” Musa speaks up, nodding to Harper. The Mask gapes at Musa, who doesn’t seem to notice.

I cock my head, surveying Harper. His hair lies flat while mine curls at the ends. He’s shorter and leaner than me, and his eyes are green instead of gray. They are large like mine, but curved up at the outer corners. We have the same gold-brown skin. The same sharp cheekbones and generous mouth.

“How dare—” the Blood Shrike sputters, eyes flashing. “Musa! That’s not your—”

“Not my secret? It is if it will save our lives.” The Scholar turns to me. “You’ve been looking at him funny. Your gut’s probably telling you there’s a connection. Your gut is right. Same father. Different mother—thankfully for him.” The Scholar chuckles to himself. “You wouldn’t let your own brother die, would you? You were raised among the Tribes. Family is everything.”

“Once, perhaps,” I say. “No longer.”

“Enough.” The voice that speaks conjures laughter and wonder, molten honey skin and hair the color of night. She emerges from the cliff trail and for a long time as she stares at me, she’s silent.

Her regard bothers me. It makes my skin feel hot, feverish, raises memories in my mind of a granite-walled school, and a dance beneath a full moon. Of a trek through the mountains, an inn far away, her body against mine—

“You will grant us passage, Soul Catcher.”

“Laia of Serra.” I say her name softly. “It is not your time. The forest will not abide it.”

“I say it will. You will grant us passage.”

There is a weight to Laia’s voice that wasn’t there before, and a glow manifests near her. That light feels familiar, yet I cannot recall seeing it before.

A cluster of ghosts gathers behind me, but they are silent. Laia lowers her gaze, fists clenched, and I have a sudden, strange thought. She is conferring with someone—or something. As a man used to voices in my head, I recognize when others are listening to voices too.

Nodding as if in agreement with someone, Laia steps past me, into the Waiting Place. I wait for the ghosts to howl, for Mauth to protest. But the forest is still.

The others follow her in. If I do not stop them, something will shift. Something irrevocable. Something that began with that blasted Augur giving me back my memories.

I gather up my magic, prepared to drive them out.

But Laia looks back at me with betrayal and pain in her eyes and I let the magic drain away. An unfamiliar emotion fills me.

Shame, I realize. Deep and gnawing.

XII: The Blood Shrike

The Soul Catcher guides us away from the edge of the forest to a muddy game trail. I glance at him, searching for vestiges of my friend Elias Veturius. But other than the hard lines of his body and the sharp planes of his face, there isn’t a shred of the boy I knew.

We stop in a small clearing, and he watches as Laia carefully removes the arrow and bandages my wound. At the crack of a branch behind me, I draw my scim.

“Just a squirrel,” the Soul Catcher says. “The soldiers won’t enter here. The ghosts would drive them mad.”

My neck prickles. I know there are ghosts here, but they are quiet, far different from the screeching demons that possessed my men at the gates of Antium.

“Why won’t they drive us mad?” It is the first Tas has spoken.

The Soul Catcher looks down at the boy, and his voice is gentler. “I don’t know,” he says. His brow is furrowed. It’s the look he’d get at Blackcliff when the Commandant would send us after a deserter, and he couldn’t settle on how he felt about it.

Forget about Blackcliff, Shrike. I have more important things to think about. Like getting the hells back to my nephew. Figuring out what my next steps are beyond crossing this wood for three weeks.

By the time I reach Delphinium, I will have been gone for two months. Skies know what I will find on my return.

When I mutter as much to Laia, she shakes her head.

“Not if he helps us.” She glances at the Soul Catcher. He hears. He might be some otherworldly servant of ghosts now, but he’s still tied to Laia, still a part of her song, whether he admits it or not.

“You’ll be through by dawn,” he says. “But stay close. The ghosts are not the only fey who walk the Waiting Place. There are older creatures that would seek to harm you.”

“The jinn,” Laia says. “Those the Nightbringer freed.”

The Soul Catcher gives her a brief, unreadable look. “Yes. One human might slip through the forest undetected by them. But a half dozen? They will know you are here soon enough.”

“Can’t you just—” Musa puts his hands around his throat and mimes choking—referring no doubt to how the Soul Catcher can steal away breath.

“I’d rather not.” The Soul Catcher’s voice is so cold that Musa, who lives and breathes impudence, is silent. “I will windwalk you across,” the Soul Catcher goes on. “But there are many of you, and it will take time. We will be pursued.”

“But the jinn were just rampaging across the Mariner countryside,” Darin says. “How—”

“Not all of them,” Musa says. “The Nightbringer takes only a few on his raids. But thousands were imprisoned. And they used to live here. Do they still?” Musa glances around warily. “Do you let them?”

“This was their home before it was mine.” The Soul Catcher tilts his head, and it’s another gesture I recognize. His instincts shout a warning at him.

“We’ve tarried too long. Child—” He reaches out a hand to Tas, whose face falls at the Soul Catcher’s aloofness.

I understand his grief. When Elias turned his back on me in Antium, I didn’t realize what he had become. Not really. Even now, he looks the same as ever. He feels solid. Real.

But he’s put duty above all things. He’s put on the mask and set aside his humanity. Just like we were trained to do.