Her emotions are veiled, so I reach out with my magic. For a second, I get a sense of her. Sadness, anger, love, and . . . desire. She suddenly goes blank, as if a part of her is shoving me away.

“Do not do that to me.” Her voice vibrates with anger. “I’m not one of your ghosts.”

“I only want to understand why you are here. If you need something, I can give it to you, and you can go.”

“What I want, you cannot give me. Not yet, anyway.”

“You desire me,” I say. The quiet splash of water ceases. “I can satisfy you if that’s why you’re here. It’s easy enough and if it means you’ll leave, then I’m willing to do it.”

“Satisfy me? How kind of you.” She laughs, but it doesn’t sound joyful.

“Desire is simple. Like the need for shelter or warmth. And it won’t be unpleasant.”

I hear a soft step and turn, forgetting that she has stripped down to very little. I catch a glimpse of skin, curved and golden and tapering to the swell of her hips. She’s piled her hair on top of her head and her expression is preternaturally calm.

Shouldn’t have looked. I direct my gaze up toward the treetops, which are infinitely less interesting.

“You really think it will be so easy?” She runs a slim finger along my shoulder blades, before her hand settles in my hair and she comes around to face me. She rises on her toes and tugs me close, stopping before our lips touch.

“For me, Elias, desire is not simple. It is not shelter. It is not warmth. It is a fire that offers no light, only heat, ruinous and consuming. The longer you deny it, the hotter it burns. You forget shelter. You forget warmth. There is only that which you want and cannot have, and the desolation that follows.”

Her lashes, I note, are unusually long, but it’s the cool challenge in her eyes that makes me wonder why she doesn’t have the world in her thrall.

My hands move to her bare waist and I pull her closer. But doing so is a mistake, for I don’t expect her skin to be so soft, nor for the press of her body to evoke a cascading wave of heat in my own.

“Is that a yes?” Say yes. “If I satisfy you, you’ll leave?”

I know her irises are gold, but in the darkness, they appear almost black as she searches my face. She sighs so quietly I nearly miss it.

“Never mind.” She backs away, and I don’t need Mauth’s magic to sense her sadness. “No matter what you do, Soul Catcher, it will not satisfy me. Turn around, please.”

I do as she asks, though disappointment lashes at me. I don’t let myself dwell on why.

“In that case, I will escort you from here. Your presence disturbs the ghosts. And there is rot near the river.”

“There are no ghosts, Elias,” Laia says. “You’re doing an excellent job. I do not know anything about the rot. The river is hundreds of miles away, and I entered the Waiting Place just this afternoon. If something is wrong with the river, I suggest you look elsewhere for the culprit.”

Water drips from her washcloth as she returns to bathing, and the scent of her soap wafts toward me, light and sugary, like summer fruit. I used to wonder at that scent. How it clung to her even when we traveled through the muck of the Southern Range, even when all we had to wash with was days-old rainwater.

“Why are you here?” My curiosity gets the better of me. “Why are you traveling through the forest?”

“I need to get to the Tribes,” Laia says. “To the encampments near Aish. I traveled alongside the Waiting Place for a few days, but decided it was safer in the forest than in the Empire. Keris’s patrols still hunt for her enemies.”

“The Tribal lands are soon to be a war zone. And I don’t wish to welcome your spirit here.”

“Your wishes do not matter much to me,” she says. “In any case, Tribe Saif and Tribe Nur are there. I need to find Mamie and Afya Ara-Nur. See if they can help me learn something about the Nightbringer.”

“You can’t linger here. The jinn walk this wood. You saw what they can do.”

“You said they would not sense one human walking alone through the forest,” she says. “And they haven’t. Not yet anyway. You can turn around now.”

She pulls on a shirt and unbinds her hair, which falls in a spill of loose ebony curls across her back. Another memory hits me. An inn, far away. A wall. A bed. Her legs tight on my waist. Her skin smooth and giving beneath my lips, and the sheer joy of getting more than a stolen moment with her. The feeling of rightness—of home.

I shove the memory to the back of my mind. “Let me take you south,” I say. I could leave her at the border, near the Duskan Sea. If she is causing the rot, it will fade when she leaves.

“I’m not windwalking with you,” she says. “Besides, I thought I could speak to the ghosts as I traveled. Maybe they know about the Night—”

“No.” I close the distance between us. She gasps at the suddenness of it. But then her face hardens and I feel steel against my throat.

“You will not touch me,” she says quietly. “You will not even think about taking me anywhere without my leave.”

She’s a little breathless, but she holds the blade steady. I do not tell her that it would do no good. That if she plunged it into me, Mauth would heal my body.

“If you so desperately want to keep me out of trouble,” she says, “walk with me. If the jinn come, I give you leave to take me where you like.”

Mauth’s magic twinges, a somnolent snake stirring, sensing a distant threat.

I nod once, in agreement. I give you leave to take me where you like. The way she regards me is—fixed. Yet there is a warmth to it. A sultry heat underlying her determination. What is she thinking, when she looks at me like that? Where would I take her if I could?

The voice imprisoned within answers: Somewhere peaceful. Rain drumming above and a fire crackling, a soft bed and hours and hours ahead.

I turn my back on that voice, and on her.

“I’ll be nearby,” I tell her. “No need to come looking for me.”

Then I windwalk far enough away to collect myself, before she makes me feel any more.

XVI: The Blood Shrike

By the time we reach Delphinium, my arrow wound has reopened and bleeds freely down my thigh. I grit my teeth against the pain as my men drag open the ancient wooden gates, which dump a small avalanche of fresh snow onto my head. When I dismount before the decrepit castle that is the new seat of the Emperor, my legs nearly give way.

“Harper,” I say. His brows are furrowed, his hand half-extended toward me, but I shoo him into the castle. “See that Musa, Darin, and Tas are well settled. I must find Livia.”

The Gens Aquilla flag flies high atop the castle’s steeply pitched roof, as does the hawk-and-hammer flag of my nephew. Delphinium has never felt like the rest of the Empire. It lacks the domes and columns of Antium, or the vast orchards of Serra.

Instead it is a city of thatched roofs and cobbled lanes, tucked into the massive Nevennes Range. The residents are tough and boisterous and less concerned with class than the rest of the Empire. Taius the First was born here five hundred years ago, when it was nothing but a trading post for trappers selling furs and fish.

I listen to the drum messages as I ascend the steps. Supply train attacked north of Estium, thirty dead. Warlock Grímarr spotted in Strellium barracks raid. Seventy dead.

My time away has emboldened Keris and her cronies. I must find a way to wrest the balance of power back.

The men at the front gate salute, and I barely wave them at ease before turning toward Faris, who strides out of the keep to greet me. “The Emperor?” I say.

“Charming petitioners with the Empress Regent.” He glances down. “Shrike, you’re bleeding all over the steps.”

“A scratch,” I say, and when he rolls his eyes instead of smothering me with concern like Dex or Harper would have, I’m thankful he understands me. “The Emperor shouldn’t be so visible. Why is Livia seeing petitioners with him?”

“You can take that up with her.” Faris puts his hands up. “She won’t listen to Rallius, or me. Says the people need to see their emperor.”

Of course Livia would say that. She doesn’t realize how many assassination attempts we’ve foiled.

Dex appears from the hallway behind Faris, in his usual Mask’s armor, but for a blue-and-gold cloak that marks him as Livia’s steward.

“Security is the least of our issues, Shrike,” he says. “There are a dozen Paters making noise about the recent attacks on supply trains. The Empress Regent is to meet with them in an hour, but they might take greater heed of her if you—and your scim—were present.”

“I’ll be there,” I say. Delphinium welcomed us with open arms five months ago. The people here welcomed the Scholars too.

But then Livia freed the Scholars. The Commandant sent assassins for our allies and my nephew. The troops haven’t been paid in weeks. We began rationing to prevent starvation, as Keris has a chokehold on all the roads south of the Argent Hills.

And I bear more bad news.

As I pass him, Faris peers behind me. “Where’s your little archer?”