“Whoa,” Nik told him, holding the reins with one hand and supporting my arm with the other.
I untangled my foot, breathing deeply until the pain subsided.
“What’s wrong?” Nik asked. Galen had pulled his sword, and they’d both moved around me to fight against whatever lurked beyond. Or to protect Grim. Imperial horses were probably expensive.
“Aether,” I said, and looked around.
There was no new Aether in the garden or the hills beyond, where workers still moved to their own rhythm. So I walked around the horses, avoiding the kicking parts—I knew at least that much—and back toward the road, following its rise until Ihad a good view of the surroundings. It was early spring, and the air should have been loud with birdsong and the hum of crickets. But it was quiet. The trees were only just budding, which made the sickly green haze that had bloomed over the hills to the west that much more visible.
There were footsteps behind me. “What do you see?”
I pointed toward the north. “Aether. It wasn’t here when we arrived.”
“The practitioner?” Galen asked.
“It seems likely, but I can’t tell from here.”
“I need to check it out,” Nik said. He looked down at me. “You can stay here, or go back to the stronghold. I won’t ask you to fight a battle you didn’t sign up for.”
It wasn’t that I wanted a fight, but I didn’t mind the possibility of a little more adventure. Maybe Wren was right to worry about me. “You can’t fight what you can’t see.”
He looked at me for a long, quiet moment. “All right. Let’s go.”
We walked the horses in silence down the road, the only sound the scritch of rock and sand. We followed the haze as best we could, turning down one side road and then another until we were deep in the foothills and far beyond the stronghold wall.
“It hurts you?” Nik asked quietly. “The Aether?”
“It’s fine,” I said.
“That’s not what I asked.”
“Yes, it hurts. Most of the time, not badly. This—whatever the practitioner is doing—is more painful.”
“Is that common? Among people who can see?”
“I don’t know. There aren’t many who can see these days. Doesn’t the Emperor Eternal know everything about everything?”
“Don’t believe everything you hear,” he said. “Simple lies always spread faster than the complicated truth.”
We reached a squat stone house that stood in a small clearing. The forest was reclaiming it; weeds grew from the thatch roof and the building was half-covered in moss and ivy. There was a single window, the shutter hanging crooked in its frame, and an open doorway. Above the house, Aether swirled like a dust devil, but it wasn’t tinged with sickly green, and my chest carried only a dull ache. The Aetheric practitioner’s haze must have dissipated while we’d walked here.
Within the eddy, three female Anima circled the house, luminous shadows of their former human selves. Maybe I should have been afraid, but nothing in this Aether felt angry or vengeful. Instead, they all looked terribly sad. Their faces were drawn in lines of grief, mouths open to spill out silent wails.
“I don’t like this,” Galen murmured. “It’s giving me gooseflesh.”
It wasn’t the first time I’d heard that. Even those who couldn’t perceive Anima might feel a sudden change in temperature, or an uncomfortable energy they couldn’t identify. And there was a lot of energy here.
Nik stepped closer. “Tell me what you see.”
“Three Anima, circling above the house.”
“Why?” Nik asked.
“I think we’ll find out inside.” I considered calling out to them but didn’t want to alert whoever might be inside.
Nik and Galen shifted their gazes to the open doorway, which gaped like an empty mouth.
“You can stay here,” I told them. “I can go in alone.”
