I push the wolf down, not banishing him, but leashing him just enough. I let calm bleed outward instead—peace, steadiness, grounding—threaded carefully through the space between us.
She answers with chaos.
Her body jerks and twists as she fights the living branches, arms wrenching against the vines that bind her to the trunk. Her legs kick wildly, heels striking bark and root, the forest groaning in protest as it tightens its hold.
“Do you remember the day you stole my horse?” I ask gently. “When I chased you down?”
There is the slightest pause, barely a hitch in her movement, but I see it.
“It was a test, wasn’t it?” I continue, voice calm and steady. “Your skill against one of my kind.”
She doesn’t answer, but her struggle slows, just a fraction.
“You fought me then, do you remember? I thought at first you were giving it your all and that you meant to kill me. Only later, after you kicked my ass off my own bloody balcony, did I realize you had more skill than you let on. You were feeling me out, weren’t you? Seeing how you measured up to an immortal.”
Her lips peel back in another feral sneer, but it lacks its earlier fury.
“You’ve been training for a long time to kill us, yes? But how would you know you were capable of it until you actually tried to do just that?”
Her movements falter again.
I press gently, weaving my power deeper, slipping between the cracks in her defenses. Think, little one, I murmur into her mind. Breathe. Remember what you hoped to prove that day.
Why did you steal Calixis?
To best you.
Her believed truth.
I shake my head.
“No,” I say softly. “I don’t believe that.”
As I quiet the storm inside her, I keep speaking, anchoring her with memory and familiarity. “I showed you my true form that day. Something I hadn’t done for anyone in a very long time. Do you know why?”
Her breathing begins to slow. Her eyes flutter shut for a heartbeat, her head tipping back, then shaking as if she’s fighting something inside herself.
“Soul Serpent,” she breathes.
“Yes.”
She’s coming back to herself.
“Do you know why I appeared to you that way?” I ask. “In my true form?”
She shakes her head weakly.
“Because I sensed something in you,” I tell her. “Something I didn’t understand then. Something I didn’t say.”
Her eyes snap open, glowing white fire rimmed with darkness, and they steady and hold on me.
“Every time you entered my city,” I continue, stepping closer, slower now, “every time your soul brushed against mine, it felt familiar. As though I’d known it before. Possibly in another lifetime.”
Much closer now, I slow in my progress toward her.
“Do you believe that’s possible?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she says, but the thought that flickers through her mind betrays her. A road. Wheat. A woman in a frock and a familiar portal.
