The wind whipped past Vasi, pulling her hair loose from its braid and burning her cheeks as the djinni’s horse galloped out of the forest and onto the plains of Beloch. The scenery blurred as they rode impossibly fast. The trees, then rolling hills, and then the valley with walled dukedoms in the distance, passed like water paints running together.

Aksel held her, his strong arm wrapped around her waist, keeping her balanced on the horse although she felt far from stable. The stallion’s muscles bunched and rolled under her legs in swift, strong movements, sending spikes of blinding pain up her spine and into her head, causing her to wince with every step, and she swayed in the saddle.

“Are we going to see my father now?” Vasi yelled though the wind ripped away her voice, and Vasi doubted Aksel could hear her.

Her stomach roiled, and Vasi pushed back into Aksel’s chest, desperate to alleviate the throbbing discomfort pulsing through her. After running on adrenaline for days, every muscle in her body hurt. But she’d done it. Lord Baine was dead. She’d found a djinni, no other than Aksel, and he’d agreed to help restore the fire and save her father. Soon, the djinni would stop the war, and all of her problems would be over.

He pulled the reins, and his massive stallion slowed.

Vasi blinked, and her mouth dried as she tried to make sense of the scene around her.

In front of them, rising up into the evening sky, was a shimmering wall of iridescent flame with a massive gaping hole. The tattered edges flapped in the wind like a burning curtain. Through the ragged hole, an army of tens of thousands marched, their standards whipping in the air.

As Vasi and Aksel approached, she heard the distant sounds of the mounted men in armor bellowing orders at lines of soldiers. Dust sprayed out around them, reddening in the light of their torches and the dying rays of the sun so red it appeared as if Beloch itself bled at the enemy army’s approach.

“Can they see us?” Vasi whispered. “Shouldn’t we find cover? Their army is nearly upon us.” She gestured to the sea of soldiers flowing toward them.

“Humans can’t see you while you ride with me.” He clicked his tongue, and the horse pushed closer to the streaming army.

“What are you doing?” she asked with a gasp, shifting on the saddle to look at Aksel. Why was he taking her into the army? Why make her see this? She stared at the djinni, and this close, the dark tendrils of his strange mask seemed to reach for her with their darkness. Vasi shivered, and her heart raced. “Please,” she whispered, her voice trembling. “Please, restore the Phoenix Fire and push out the armies of Cervene.”

He glanced down at her with his onyx eyes but said nothing.

“You-you said you’d help me? And, we’re here . . .”

His jaw tightened, and he shook his head. He tilted his chin up and stared out over the valley of Beloch with the armies of Cervene swarming in.

“I can’t restore the magic you call the Phoenix Fire,” he said, his voice cold and flat. “My powers are limited because of the curse.”

“Wha—what?” she asked. She gripped his sleeve to steady herself as she spun on him. “Then why bring me here? Why say you would help if you can’t?”

The light from a passing torch lit his face in vermillion and crimson though his mask reflected no light or color. His expression was unreadable though the vein in his neck jumped with his pulse. “You need to know your enemy, Vasilisa, if you’re to win this war.”

“If I’m going to win the war?” she whispered, her voice breaking on the word. “You mean Beloch . . . if Beloch is going to win the war, right?”

Instead of answering her, he clicked at the horse, and Vasi faced forward as they trotted closer to the Phoenix Fire. The collapsing wall burned around them, and Aksel pointed up to a small precipice.

Upon the small cliff overlooking the oncoming army, three figures stood. The twilight was augmented by torchbearers, and a mounted knight stood with a girl dressed in a tunic and hose, leaning on him. The knight was nearly as big as the giants Vasi had seen earlier that day, and he looked every bit as fierce as he watched over the young woman. The third person was a tall woman dressed in a resplendent black gown, her head and neck covered with a fitted wimple.

Vasi narrowed her eyes as the woman’s features shifted from stunning to frightful—worse than the witch in the woods. Instead of smooth skin, the woman’s face was a gaunt, hollowed-out mask pulling tight against her skull and exposing a mouth of jagged teeth. Her sunken eye sockets were pits of darkness, and tendrils of red mist swirled around the malevolent figure. The misty tendrils traveled over the ground and wound about the legs of the young blond woman standing next to the warrior.

Vasi blinked, and then the red mist and frightful hag were gone, leaving only the three figures as at first.

“Those a-are Beloch’s enemies?” Vasi asked, choking on the words.

The young woman turned her head, and for a second, Vasi swore that the young blond was looking straight at her. Vasi started as there was something familiar in the young woman’s features, from her heart-shaped face, straight, upturned nose, and bee-stung lips. Despite her obvious youth, there was a fierceness in her stance.

Vasi craned her neck to look at the young woman. “Who are they—these enemies?”

“The Queen Regent and heir of Cervene,” Aksel said, biting out the titles. He turned his steed away from the overhang.

“Oh,” Vasi said, glancing back at the young woman. “She seems so—” familiar. She shook the curiosity away, determined to hate her enemies. “Will you take me to my father now?”

“Yes,” he said. “Hold fast.” He turned the horse to the east.

Vasi found her seat, tugging her skirts free from where they twisted around her legs.

Then they were off. This time the distance seemed much shorter before he slowed the pace. “I can’t stay much longer.”

Vasi swallowed, her heart pounding as she tried to formulate a plan. “That’s okay. If you’ll just take me to my father—” Her mind blanked as they rode into the destruction, and she released a strangled cry. “What is this?”

The darkness of the evening had hidden the ruins until they crossed the broken wall into the middle of the lifeless fiefdom. Corpses littered the street, twisted and mangled at odd angles with mouths agape and sightless eyes staring into the sky.

The clouds parted and the moonlight illuminated the dead, dried blood forming gruesome puddles on the stones and in the dirt. Vasi leaned over and retched, her stomach heaving again as the horse took them past a headless torso and then a severed arm still clutching a sword.

Several horses lay dead with their knights near the wall, but closer in the center of the village were regular Belochians, men, women, and children, all dead. An elderly woman lay outside a home, staring vacantly at her spilled basket of smashed and splattered vegetables scattered all around her.

“My father’s not—he’s not . . .” Vasi coughed and choked as bile burned the back of her throat, unable now to complete her sentence.

“He’s not among the dead,” Aksel said. His stallion continued to pick his way around the bodies as if knowing where his master needed him to go.

Vasi’s eyes burned, and tears spilled and trickled down her cheeks. Her throat clogged with emotion, her heart shredding with the awful horror all around her. The one wisp of hope she clung to was the djinni’s words, but she couldn’t even ask.

Soldiers flooded into the village, men yelling in a language Vasi tried to remember. Cervenish. Her father had taught her when she was young, but she’d used it so rarely in recent years.

“Blood . . . death. Burn . . . wrong . . .”

“What are they saying?” she asked, closing her eyes and wishing she could block out this reality.

“They should’ve burned the fiefdom, but the general in charge left it as a message to the rest of Beloch. This general is unhappy with the breach in protocol.”

Who would do such a thing? Such a horrible, horrible thing.

More soldiers swarmed into the village and began the arduous task of clean up. Men dragged bodies into large piles, and several murmured a word Vasi couldn’t remember.

“Why did you say you would help me? Why show me all of this . . .” She turned in the saddle to glare at Aksel, but her tears made him blurry and almost indistinguishable. “You’re supposed to be powerful—but all you’re doing is showing me what I’ve already lost?”

“You’ve only lost if you’ve given up,” he murmured, and then he pointed into the darkness, back toward Beloch. “And no matter how I feel, Vasilisa, I would sacrifice everything for my kingdom.”

His voice and his words washed over Vasi with the strongest sensation of repetition, as if she’d not only heard the statement before, but experienced him actually saying it. But that was impossible. She shook off the sensation, chalking it up to another delusion.

In a small alcove of the charred remains of a house were two men, both covered in dirt and soot. One of the men worked at something on the ground, and the other hovered nearby, trembling. As Vasi and Aksel approached, she could see the one standing was young, fifteen at most, and he startled with every sound, his wide eyes looking around wildly as he hyperventilated and whimpered. Under the soot and grime, Vasi recognized a decorated uniform of the peacock guard.

“They have us surrounded,” the boy cried as tears streamed through the filth on his face, his nose running.

“Hush,” Vasi’s father whispered as he turned his attention away from the lock on the cellar door to hold a finger to his lips. “I’ll get it open, but you must be quiet.”

He turned his attention back to the lock, his lips moving in a silent plea.

“Papa!” Vasi yelled as she struggled to climb down from the horse.

“Vasilisa,” Aksel said, tightening his hold around her waist. “If you get off this horse, all three of you will die.”

She froze, but the wave of anguish rent through her, and she screamed.

“If your father saw you now, he would fight, and there’s no way he could win, but it isn’t over. Hush, now, and see,” Aksel said as Casimir opened the door with a creak.

“Please,” Vasi begged. “Please help him.”

“We have only a few minutes,” Aksel said, tilting his chin toward Casimir.

Casimir gestured at the young man. “Hurry. You hide, and I’ll lead them away.”

Tears and snot and soot smeared all over the young man’s face, and he hiccupped through his sobs. “You’re not going to leave me, are you?”

Casimir gripped the young man’s arms and looked him in the eye. “Listen. We both have our own missions now, Dmitri. You must survive, return to Rizy, and tell Tsar Baine what’s happened here. I am to go to Cervene and negotiate for peace. We cannot let this horror continue. These atrocities must stop.”

“I’m so scared,” the boy cried as he looked into the dark hole.

“Good,” Casimir said, and the young man jerked his head up to look at the tsar’s negotiator. “If you’re scared, it means you’re still alive. In here,” he whispered, pointing to his head, and then he thumped his chest and added, “and in here. Choose courage.”

Casimir ushered the young man down into the cellar and then closed the latch. He stood, and loosening his collar, he pulled the white tie of his cravat off and tied it to a piece of wood.

“We must go.” Aksel lifted the reins to turn his horse, but Vasi grabbed his arm.

“Wait just one moment, please,” she begged, gripping his wrist as her heart thumped hard.

Casimir took a deep breath at the same time a soldier shouted something, and a group of five of them charged toward her father, swords drawn.

“I am Beloch . . . for peace,” Casimir yelled in Cervenish as he held his white flag aloft. He closed his eyes, like he wasn’t sure if the signal for surrender would be honored.

“He’s going to die!” Vasi writhed, desperate to either free him or die by his side, but the Horseman’s grip was unyielding.

“Wait,” Aksel growled.

Steel met steel, the ring echoing through the air, and one of the knight’s bellowed, “Stand down.”

The rest of the group stopped, and the one who’d stopped the slaughter pulled off his helmet. A handsome young man with warm skin and a dark warrior braid waved to the other men to put their weapons down. “He holds a white flag. Take him to Her Majesty, the queen regent. Anyone who attacks him will answer to her. Cervene will honor the rules of war.”

“I can wait no longer,” Aksel said. With a tug on the reins, the horse spun, and they charged out of the ruins.

Vasi screamed her frustration, rage and desperation filling her. The wind buffeted her, drying her tears as fast as they fell, filling her lungs with new air for every scream. The world blurred into liquid blackness, losing all form as they rode.

They stopped in the woods on a worn dirt path.

Vasi trembled but turned in the saddle and asked, “Why won’t you fix the Fire? Push the army out—”

“The only one with the Phoenix Fire is Baba Yaga,” Aksel said, his dark eyes holding Vasi prisoner in their depths. His voice dropped to a whisper, and desperation infused his next words. “If you want the Fire, you must get it from her.”

“Is there any other way?” Vasi asked, pleading with him.

Aksel shook his head, his gaze dropping. “There is not. I’m so sorry, Vasilisa.”

He sounded like Henryk, but just like the dark prince, Vasi would not let the djinn pity her. She squared her shoulders. “Then take me to the witch. Take me to Baba Yaga.”

If the only way to end the war was to get the Phoenix Fire, then Vasilisa would get it. Even if it meant she had to steal it from the witch.