“Friend or foe?” Wren asked.
“Not a friend.” There was a sharpness to it, as if the Aether’s edge had been honed to a fine blade.
Sparks fired at the edges of the magical haze as the pale outline of a wide-winged moth fluttered toward us. “Luna,” I said quietly as the soldiers continued marching.
The moth shuddered, then expanded into a new shape—the hazy outline of a slender young woman with pale skin, straight blond hair chopped at the chin, and eyes that swam with silvery magic. An Anima—and our friend. She was the only thing from the Aetheric who didn’t cause me pain. Maybe because we’d known her for years, or maybe because she was a Guardian, a kind of emissary between our world and hers, and with more skills and power than a standard Anima.
She nodded a greeting at Wren. Anima, if they were powerful enough, could choose to be visible to humans who couldn’t otherwise sense them.
“What is it?” I asked.
“Someone is manipulating Aether,” Luna said in the silent language of gestures she’d created and had taught us to speak. Anima used Aether to appear in this world. Creating sound required even more power than being seen, so speaking with her hands allowed her to conserve her power; it also helped her stay hidden.
“That’s not possible,” Wren said.
For nearly a century, the Aetheric god had roamed Terra for his amusement—seeing the sights, dining with the Terran gods, spilling Aether into our world. Humans had learned to use and manipulate that magic, and they’d called themselves practitioners. He disappeared suddenly a decade ago, apparently weary of humans. Without him, Aetheric magic all but evaporated. Even the ability to see Anima and detect Aether was relatively rare.
“Itshouldn’tbe possible,” I corrected.
Luna nodded. “A practitioner has been revealed.”
“I just wanted a little damned sunshine,” I muttered. “A few coins.”
“Instead you got a prince too scared to show his face and the first Aetheric manipulator in years,” Wren said sourly. “Lucky you.”
I looked at Luna. “Where is the practitioner?”
Luna shook her head. “Hiding from me. I’ll keep looking,” she said, and disappeared.
“I don’t like this,” Wren said, and slipped her small blade into her hand. She’d learned how to fight as a child, when that had been her only way to stay alive.
Someone ran through the alley, pushing past us to get to the road. It was a man in the usual tunic and trousers of astrongholder. But the hands that shoved me were hot enough to burn, and a river of Aether flowed behind him.
Its color was wrong. Not the color of new leaves, but of rotting ones.
He rushed into the market proper, toward the marching lines of soldiers. And then he simply disappeared. None of the soldiers had seen him.
“Did a man just run past us,” Wren asked quietly, “and then disappear?”
“Yeah,” I said, relieved that I hadn’t imagined him. But where in Oblivion had he gone?
He appeared again from nothing, three strides closer to the second carriage, still hidden by twilight shadows but for the glow of the magic that trailed him. And now he held a short sword.
I had to make a choice. And I had to make it fast.
Maybe I should have stayed in the alley, safe and hidden. Even if our fates were mostly decided, our choices might add new threads or snip old ones from the tapestry. But if you snipped too many, the tapestry might simply unravel.
Doing nothing was a choice; ignoring someone in danger was a choice. So I snipped the thread that held me to the shadows and hoped I’d survive. I ran into the road screaming, “Assassin! He has a sword!”
“Protect the prince!” someone called out, and the carriages jerked to a halt.
Soldiers unsheathed their weapons, but the man disappeared. The soldiers nearest me—who’d seen no other trouble—turned in my direction, thinking I was the threat.
“Not me!” I watched the faint wisp of green move in the air above the entourage. “He’s going for the carriages!”
The man appeared again, crouching atop the second carriage.
“Second carriage!” I shouted.
