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The sixth night of Yule had made the midwinter magic drift down from the Otherworld and glitter over the mountains like stardust. I had searched the hot springs, but the area the little book’s map had marked out had caved in decades ago.

Hidden in an alcove, I studied the map again and found that there was a FootPath door marked a few floors up. I was shaking my head at myself as I turned to the staircase. Aster was the reason I had never explored the building properly. Every time I’d thought about wandering, he had appeared with food, a question, a task, or a distraction. I should have recognised it sooner for what it really was. Containment.

I collected my dress, now washed and dry, from the bedroom Aster and I had shared, slipped it on over my trousers and bundled up my tunic. The blankets were still rumpled, and my chest tugged; I wanted to get back in and pull them over my head, stay in the quiet warmth of the workshop and hot springs. Outside the walls of the workshop, I was back to being hunted.

Up and up I climbed, the Skyworld lanterns flickering to life as I passed them and going out as I climbed away. The smooth, mirror-like walls reflected my movements, which made me jump at my own reflection at each turn. I told myself that Torran and Kit had gone, but even the thought of meeting them again in a confined space made me shudder.

As I walked, my thoughts returned to the little book humming in my pocket. Perhaps the journal was madness. One forgotten Rider’s warped perspective. How could there be no living memory of female Riders, or of children born of two Riders? And perhaps there were no more FootPaths. After all, it had been generations ago that the female Rider had written down all her hopes and fears.

The stairs ended at a large wooden door. Kit or Torran had recently opened it, judging by the freshly burned-through lock. With one huge shove, the door groaned open, and I stepped into an immense space. A three-sided hall, its front framed by arches open to the mountains, just like in the hot springs. This space was ten times the size of the main hall below me, and it took me a few moments to realise that it was because it had been built for phoenixes.

Fallen snow blanketed the floor, and an icy wind swept in through the arches. At the far end, a couple of the columns had collapsed with age or avalanche. I prayed that the FootPath entrance wasn’t under the fallen rocks.

Large stone perches occupied one end of the cavernous space, with their rocky surfaces deeply gouged. There were two melted paths through the snow, revealing huge scratches on the floor from the open-sided room to the perches inside the room. So that was where Torran and Kit’s phoenixes stayed when they were in the mountain workshop. In the distance, phoenixes circled and dive-bombed each other in a chaotic dance—the flock of rogues that Kit had mentioned.

The deeper I went, the more unsettled I became. Frozen gusts whipped around me, burning my cheeks. My shoulder heated as a warning—I was not alone.

A stone spur with gargoyles carved along the underside stretched out from the edge of the open-air room right into the night sky. Far, far below were the rocky, snow-covered mountains. Flurries of snowflakes clouded my vision… until I swiped them away and everything came into focus… A trail of footprints on the ground… and then…

A bare-chested man perched at the very tip of the stone.

Torran.

No phoenix in sight.

He was just sitting there in the freezing wind, with snow melting over him. Etched on his back was his WingMark.

I had seen Lex’s bonding mark—WingMark—Lex had huge multicoloured wings which spread across his shoulder blades and down his spine. But I’d never seen one like Torran’s. He had a smoke phoenix, and so his mark was black with hints of silver—he was the very embodiment of the angel of death.

He dangled one leg over the mountains below, and he bent the other up, slinging an arm over his knee while resting his chin on it. It was as if he didn’t have a care in the world—utterly certain that even a massive gust of wind couldn’t push him off. Was he safe because his phoenix would fly down and save him before he hit the rocks far below?

I hadn’t realised that I had walked towards him until I was standing beside the very last column. Catching myself, I shuffled back until my spine bumped into the stone, and a breath escaped on impact. But my eyes were still locked on the huge WingMark and the steam coming off his back as the snow hit his skin. Torran’s fire magic was so strong that he was warm even in the freezing cold. Many believed the Skyworld’s fire touch to be a thing of beauty, but not me. To me, it was the same curse that the phoenixes held.

His attention shifted to the left, and I followed it to the black monster circling a distant tower, two other phoenixes wheeling nearby. Torran remained fixed on them until another phoenix screeched, and he shuddered. He. Shuddered. As if the sound had buried deep into his bones, and he hated it.

The fleeting thought hit me—would there be a way to push him off the ledge and get my revenge? Would that even work? A smile tipped my mouth just at the image of him hurtling to his death—because he wouldn’t be reborn. The curse didn’t allow it. It was because of Riders like Torran that I didn’t want the curse broken. It might get Lex back, but it would also, possibly, bring back all the minds of the enemy riders that we had taken down in the war. All those Barren and Northland Riders that no one ever wanted back again.

Snow settled on his black hair, and his breath puffed out in little clouds of heat. Had his shoulders not risen and fallen, he would have looked carved from the stone he sat on. He represented everything that I hated about the cursed lands—power without consequence.

I forced myself to push off the column, hoping he wouldn’t notice I was there as I hunted for the FootPath’s entrance in the far wall.

“Are you just going to stare?” His voice was a heated whisper in my ear, and yet he hadn’t moved. He was still far out on the stone spur, but I didn’t like what the soft caress of his words did to me. They made me want to lose control. Made my fists tighten and my legs flood with adrenaline, readying myself so that I could run at him and just… push. To watch gleefully as he tumbled down to the rock below and bled out.

A thin wisp of smoke flew towards me, then formed into finger-like shapes and started to caress the scabbed wounds on my neck. A warning.

Fucking smoke magic.

Telling my legs to move, I ducked away from the smoke trails, but I still couldn’t take my eyes off his WingMark. Through the falling snow flurries, the feathers were iridescent in the darkness. As if the YuleMots embraced his Skyworld bond mark. But Riders never showed anyone their WingMark; why was Torran out in the open with his?

Even though he had spoken to me, Torran still hadn’t moved. He studied the tower in the distance and the phoenixes that circled it.

I shuffled back further.

In one swift movement, he jumped up, swung around, and his dark gaze locked on mine. It hardened into a narrow glare. The seconds ticked on… and on. Sweat trickled down my spine. His eyes slowly travelled over every inch of me and stopped at my neck. Then he was in motion—striding towards me at a pace that whipped his hair over his face and made the hot air he emitted shift the surrounding space.

I reached for the pin in my hair—but it wasn’t there.