Chapter One

Laia

 

What’re you looking at?

Lip curling, I narrowed my eyes and stiffened my spine.

Five minutes ago, I’d been completely alone—and happy to be that way. Now there was a whole crowd, from self-important Northbane shifter guides to eager refugees and yelling kids. When they’d appeared over the hill, it’d been hard to say who was more surprised. I’d been successfully avoiding other Southern Pass travelers for weeks.

However, this close to the Winfyre gates, it made sense that my lonely luck had run out.

Two of the shifter guides were clearly debating coming over, but now they hesitated and exchanged a look. One of them had the nerve to look amused, but his smarter companion merely nodded at me and pulled the other away.

Good boys.

I’d been up since dawn and was starving. I had no interest in making small talk.

However, as the Northbane shifters walked off, that second shifter tossed me a half-sheepish, half-apologetic smile over his shoulder. Unease pitted in my stomach. Maybe I should’ve been trying to keep up some kind of an appearance. Chatting up those guides and my fellow refugees. Seeing where I could replenish supplies. Finding out how much farther Winfyre was.

But my body went rigid at the thought of joining them. I can’t do it.

Not out of fear, but because I couldn’t look into their eyes and keep up the pretense they needed. I couldn’t pretend that I didn’t know what I knew. I couldn’t pretend I was just another refugee, or migrant, or whatever, on my way to make a new life in Winfyre Ridge.

Nor could I quite repress a pang of emotion. I’d lost count of how long I’d been on my own. Once, I’d been outgoing and gregarious, someone who made friends easily.

Now, I was basically a grouchy, feral squirrel-woman.

Settling back on my solitary boulder, deep in the shade of a prehistoric-looking pine tree, I went back to taking my lunch break in peace. Shrugging off my pack, I swung it into my lap, reassured by its weight. My fingers idled along the bottom corner of the bag, finding the hard edge of the object I’d risked life, limb, and sanity for.

The crian shard of the Bloodfang.

A piece of foul Excris magic, something that had no place in our world. Something with the potential to end our world, just as we’d found reason to hope again. During the past few months, for the first time since the Rift, those affected by it weren’t in constant fear for our lives.

Yet this shard could change that—it could turn the tide of the hard-won peace established by the Northbane and their allies.

Worse, it could turn them on each other.

The Bloodfang had to be hunting through all of the Wilds for the shard. I still had no idea if they’d figured out I wasn’t dead. A grim smile played around my mouth. Nor did I care. However, every time I thought of what lay at the bottom of my bag, I was overwhelmed by how surreal it all was.

And I’d lived through the damn Rift.

The cataclysmic end of one world and the start of another. The day when the universe had all but snapped in half and forever altered the course of untold lives. Strange energies had poured through and transformed half the population. Suddenly, people could shift into animals, summon the elements, and who knows what else. However, not everyone was affected. Those without powers were called stasis.

At first, that’s all we thought we had to worry about.

Yet when that crack of energy upended our world, it let out things, too. With magic came monsters. Monsters we now called Excris, with dark abilities and a foul purpose.

The crian shard was merely their latest attempt to poison our world.

Not yet, I thought, my heart pounding. Not if I have anything to say about it.

I’d made it this far. I was in Northbane territory. I still had time to destroy the damn thing.

For months, I’d been trying to track down the one person I could trust to help me. My brilliant wiseass of a cousin, Tristan Llary. Only problem was, he seemed to have vanished off the face of the earth. When I’d heard of the intrigues of the Northbane, it had sounded like something out of my cousin’s head, and I’d wondered if his restless intelligence had finally found a home.

Winfyre, protected haven and territory of the Northbane shifters, was my latest, and last, desperate chance at a lead. But I didn’t know if I was getting my hopes up for nothing. Like I had done so many times before. Either way, deep in Northbane territory was a good place to lie low for a while.

A few months ago, something big had happened here, something that had rippled all the way to where I was, in the southern borderlands. From the borderlands to the Tiselk, all anyone was talking about was the Northbane’s victory. Their honor, prowess, and cunning peacemaking. Even though I didn’t have all the details, I’d taken advantage of the results.

The Northbane had somehow defeated the Stasis Bureau and turned the tide towards peace in the Wilds. It had happened months ago, and the details were still being debated. The only thing everyone agreed on was that it had been the catalyst for the Stasis Bureau’s dissolution and the Skrors’ current spiral towards self-immolation. The catalyst for a post-Rift world safe for shifters, with no Bureau.

The Stasis Bureau had been a twisted government body that had popped up after the Rift. At first, they’d put up a benign front, offering to help people who’d been affected by the Rift. In reality, the SB had been tagging and bagging shifters left and right. The stories out of those places were enough to make your fur fall off.

The defeat and dissolution of the Stasis Bureau had led to widespread upheaval, and had allowed me to make my escape from the Bloodfang.

The Bloodfang, who had once been a ragtag group of rebels, Riftborn, and shifters.

Good-hearted people working together to stop the Stasis Bureau and the Skrors. The Skrors were a group of raving lunatics who resented shifters and blamed them for the Rift. Cowards, the lot of ’em, trying to cling to a dying world. A world we’d left behind two years ago. A world, nowadays, that most people had put behind them.

But not the stubborn Skrors. Not yet.

Not since the Bloodfang had betrayed their goal of freedom for shifters in favor of power, betraying their brethren shifters by forming an uneasy alliance with those murderous fanatics.

As far as I could tell, all that the Bloodfang and Skrors shared was anger. Anger at the Rift, and anger at the Northern Wilds packs, especially the Northbane. Anger that shifters dared to try and make sense of a post-Rift world. In that anger, they’d agreed to work with the Excris, something no shifter in his or her right mind would do. That’s when the crian shard had shown up.

The dark omen that now lay at the bottom of my bag.

The crux on which the Bloodfang wanted to split apart the peace that the Northbane had worked so hard to establish. The Northbane, who had no idea what was coming.

With each step closer to Winfyre, I’d sensed the pervasive peace they’d established. I wasn’t the only one, either. That’s why the refugees were all smiling, and the Northbane shifters were looking so self-important. That’s why I couldn’t make small talk with them.

This was exactly what the Bloodfang, Skrors, and Excris wanted. To strike at and destroy this tentative, virgin peace. What happened after was anyone’s guess. I don’t think they’d thought that far ahead, but I could see the shadows of that future stretching from the shard.

More bloodshed, more wars, more innocents slain.

With a sigh, I pulled my mind away from deadly plots and back to lunch. Fishing out a small bag of nuts and dried fruit from the front pocket of my pack, I held it up. Making a face, I tossed and weighed it in one hand. Damn, this was barely going to last me for the rest of lunch, never mind the rest of the day. I almost wanted to kill it off now and be done with it.

After rationing off a palmful, I chewed each piece slowly. Across from me, the Northbane shifters were handing out various supplies to the refugees from their hefty packs, stamped with the letters WR. The friendly shifter glanced my way, and I dropped my eyes.

Deep down, I knew I should swallow a sliver of pride and ask for food.

I couldn’t, though. I mean, I’d counted at least ten kids and three babies. Lord knows how long these people had been traveling for. Talking animatedly, many of the refugees swapped stories and supplies, while some dozed in the sunshine. Meanwhile, the kids were tearing into their food with delight, sharing it with each other and grinning. A sharper pang went through me.

No, hold strong. You haven’t needed help this far.

Besides, you know you’d pose a threat to them if…

I wasn’t going there. I’d left it behind in the borderlands.

Either way, the Northbane will know what to do. They can find Tristan if he’s not with them.

The friendly shifter glanced over at me again, and I caught his eye. This time, I forced myself to smile and nod. I knew the guides had to be wondering why I was keeping to myself now that the safety of the North was an established fact.

You don’t want to know, trust me.

My fingers closed on the last almond half, and I popped it in my mouth. Chewing even more slowly, I pushed away the hollow pressure of hunger in my gut and took another look around.

To the southwest was a grassy plain, sloping down to an abrupt break in the landscape: a sheer cliff plummeting some hundreds or so feet to the ocean. I’d stood on it earlier, toeing the edge and holding out my arms. Sucking in the wind and enjoying the heady rush of vertigo.

Even a good half-mile inland, I could still hear waves crashing at the base, hissing and spraying against the patterned sandstone. Part of me had wanted to leap into that cool water and swim away. Another part had wanted to drop my backpack and let my demons drown.

Pulling my eyes away, I looked to the south, the east, and then over my shoulder to the north. Every which way, the forests of the Farthing Mountains reared up. Dense with greenery, they were filled with the hum of midsummer—buzzing cicadas, peeping frogs, and indolent birds.

An agelessness lay over this place, as though the land couldn’t be bothered with the passages of time. Or even a rupture of it.

The territory of the Northbane was breathtaking in an intense, edge-of-nowhere way.

I loved it.

Their territory occupied a corridor of wilderness from the Pacific Coast to the tips of the Farthing Mountains and the vast plains of the Tiselk. Nothing but soaring, rugged peaks of snow, massive, ancient trees, and freedom. And somewhere, just north of here, was their badass sanctuary, Winfyre Ridge.

Badass and sanctuary didn’t usually go together, but hey, that was the Northbane.

According to rumors, they were the first shifter pack to claim a territory after the Rift. Even the least fanciful among those rumors made the Northbane sound like benevolent mountain gods. Honorable, fiercely loyal, and incredible fighters.

I thought I’d learned my lesson about trusting things that sounded too good to be true, yet I couldn’t help but pray they’d measure up.

Shadows streaked through the clearing, and I looked up, watching as a pack of massive birdlike creatures soared through the sky. Creatures that hadn’t existed a year and a half ago.

Proof that the world was changing, and that only those who adapted would survive. The ones who learned the new rules and mastered them. The ones who led without fear.

The Northbane seemed to have grasped that.

If not, Laia Llary is gonna kick down the door and give ’em a wakeup call they won’t forget.