Ana shut her eyes, and that face came to her again: moon-pale, with owlishly large eyes. The alchemist, who’d left the Palace so many years ago, after her diagnosis. It had seemed like a dream—no, a nightmare—to see him there again, a ghost of the past.
But a ghost was all the reason she had left to live. That alchemist was the reason she’d run through that secret passageway in the dungeons that night and thrown herself into the Tiger’s Tail for the second time in her life; the reason she’d crawled onto the shore of the Syvern Taiga, half-frozen on the outside and dead on the inside, waiting for the Deities to claim her. Yet he was also why she’d stood again that night, staring at the Palace and the Kateryanna Bridge in the distance and vowing that she would return only when she had found him.
Yes, she did have a reason to live after all these long years, Ana realized suddenly, her thoughts sharpening into lucidity. She lived to find the owner of that face, to hunt down the person who had murdered her father and diagnosed her with this evil affliction, sealing her fate for ten years past. She lived to redeem herself, to prove that, beyond the monstrosity of her power, she could be good.
I will find you, alchemist, she thought over and over again, like a vow. I will find you.
Ana woke with a start and the ghost of a face scattering from her dreams. It took her several moments to grasp her surroundings: the crackle of a fire burning low in the hearth, the musty smell of old pinewood floors, and the scratch of a coarse cloth pillow beneath her cheek.
She remembered flashes of the evening—the cold, the dark, the scent and silver of snow, a warm bathtub. She’d made it. She’d made it back to the dacha.
Ana clutched the ragged fur blanket tighter, surprise twanging in her stomach. How had she gotten back? She remembered the fall into the river, the feeling of utter helplessness beneath the battering current, and then crawling onto an empty, frozen shore. Her clothes had been colder than ice, and she’d barely been able to move.
Can you walk, darling?
Ana blinked. The voice had come out of nowhere—out of a foggy, distant memory. There had been a forest, an ounce of warmth, and that voice had constantly, irritably dragged her from the comfort of slumber.
Fear seized her. Now she recognized the symptoms of near-hypothermia she’d been experiencing, and how close to death she’d been. That warm darkness had been a menace … and the voice had saved her.
Ramson Quicktongue, she thought, her sleep-addled brain suddenly alert as she scanned the cabin. Everything was just as she’d left it. Her rucksack leaned against the wall, her belongings spread out across the small worktable. No sign of a disturbance; no sign of any intruders.
Ana loosed a breath and pushed herself into a sitting position. Someone had washed the blood off her arm, but the wound was still raw and fresh. She remembered now, a little girl with dark hair, the edges softened by the glow of candles, almost like a halo.
“May?” she called softly. The cabin was utterly still. She leaned back against the wall, trying to quell her anxiety. The con man was nowhere to be seen, either. The remnants of the Deys’voshk were still in her system; she could feel her Affinity beginning to return, drifting in and out of her reach. Trying to use it now was like trying to set fire to wet kindling.
From the wash closet door in the far corner came the sound of splashing water. The movements were too careless for May. A masculine cough confirmed her suspicions.
The con man was still here.
Ana gritted her teeth against a groan of frustration. She’d spent months searching for this man. She’d pinned all her hopes—and more—on him. And he’d fooled her, and admitted he didn’t even have a clue who her alchemist was.
And now she was stuck with him.
The door to the hut creaked open. Her thoughts scattered as a child struggled in with a pail of fresh snow. As soon as May caught sight of Ana, her eyes widened and she dropped the pail, bounding to Ana’s side.
Ana sighed in relief as she buried herself in May’s embrace. “Hey, you,” she murmured. Being with May always, in some ways, felt like being at home.
The darkness in the boreal forest had been absolute the night Ana had run into the Syvern Taiga, though it had been nothing compared to the shadows in her heart. But May had found her and brought her to shelter by the soft glow of a globefire. May had been bound by a contract then, but it hadn’t stopped her from trying to save Ana, unbeknownst to her employer.
May straightened and fixed Ana with a stern gaze. Her eyes were the startling aquamarine of the ocean waters of the Aseatic Isles that Ana had once seen in a painting, sun-kissed and warm. Ana touched her forehead briefly to the child’s, her lips tugging into a smile.
“Did you get the alchemist?” May demanded. Eleven moons ago, when they’d first met, she’d been much quieter, her words a featherlight whisper. Only her quick eyes had told Ana that she drank in the world and gathered it in her heart, and gave back with kindness that had never been shown to her.
“Almost.” Seeing May always cleared her mind and calmed her nerves, and the word nearly felt real. “Were you all right by yourself?”
May nodded, and a copperstone appeared in her hands. “I have three cop’stones left. Do you want them back?” The copperstone caught the shine of the firelight, a small leaf engraved in the center of the coin.
Ana hesitated. She knew what these coins meant to May, who had spent her life accumulating meager sums of money to pay off the impossible amount of the contract she’d been made to sign. In the past, Ana might have spent dozens of cop’stones on a piece of ptychy’moloko milk cake, coins flowing through her fingers like water without a care as to their value.
Meeting May had changed that.
Ana gently curled a hand around May’s, tucking the coin back into the girl’s fist. “We earned this together. Keep it, and let’s buy ourselves a treat at the next town.”
May slipped the coin carefully back into her tunic. “Do you think we’ll find Ma-ma at the next town?” she asked.
Ana paused, studying May’s face carefully, but the child’s hopeful gaze didn’t waver. It haunted Ana that this girl loved so easily after what she’d been through. Over time, Ana had pieced together the child’s story: a long journey from the Chi’gon Kingdom, her home in the Aseatic region, with her mother in search of a brighter future, only to find those dreams shattered and her mother sent away by a separate contract.
And May had been exploited for her earth Affinity and stuck with a debt that kept growing.
With every day, the realization had grown louder and louder in Ana’s head: That could have been me.
“We will,” Ana replied. “We’ll find your ma-ma even if I have to knock on every single door of this empire.”
May’s smile stretched, and she threw her arms around Ana, burying her face against Ana’s shirt. “You won’t leave again, right?” Her voice came out muffled, and when Ana looked down, she caught a pair of bright ocean eyes peering up at her shyly. “Don’t go where
