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That’s what mum always says. If someone is hungry ya gotta feed ‘em, but they have to ask nice.

But he can lop off their head if they try to steal from him.

The first creature attacks and Fenrir is ready, sword waving through the air as he fends off a hundred strikes from a hundred axes all at once. He whoops out a battle cry and leaps up from the ground, landing atop the nearest creature’s head and then using that as a launch pad. From creature to creature he leaps, atop helms and pauldrons and then shields until their general is in sight, bigger than all the rest and with a snake for a tail and an extra set of axe arms.

He smiles when he screams and makes the jump, soaring high through the air like a great big bird so when his sword comes down it—

“Fenrir, I told you, only what you can carry.”

His mother stands in the doorway, shirt stained red and hair flying out of her bun. She’s got a bag over her shoulder and a thin line for a mouth and Fenrir drops the stick before she can scold him, glancing around his bedroom and wondering what he’s supposed to bring if not his sword.

He sees the storybook half buried under his blanket and pulls it free.

“Can I bring this?”

Mum doesn’t meet his eyes. She stares at the book and then at the stick, the hand she’s got on the door frame squeezing so tightly it turns white before slipping down to hang at her hip.

He wants to ask her why it’s shaking but reaches for it instead. When their fingers thread together he ignores the cold, clammy way her skin clings to his.

“It’s okay, Mum, we’re going on an adventure, right? Don’t be scared.”

Finally, she looks at him, and the pale blue of her eyes is darker than it should be, the gray of his room more muted than usual, the dust layering the floor thick enough to almost make it hard to breathe.

Outside, violet tints the horizon, the blackened shapes of the homesteads across the dead field sitting at odd angles, like a wind had come and swept them onto their sides. Dad is already seated on their wagon with baby Alina in his lap and Fenrir climbs up beside him, poking his sister’s cheeks until she starts to giggle while Mum takes a seat atop the strapped-down tarp that protects the family treasure.

They set off with a snap of Dad’s reins.

He opens the storybook and chooses his favorite, a tale about a hero who fights a dragon and wins despite the odds stacked against him. He reads it to his sister while they pass the neighbor’s field. It turned gray a month ago, but now black shapes slip through the eastern orchard, a cackle of laughs rising with a wind that tastes of ash.

He can’t see the fire, but it must be there, and when his mum looses an arrow tipped with a bright orange flame he understands why.

The fire starts small, but catches fast, the gray field eaten up by flames that lick the sky between them and the strange laughter, the oil-slick eyes of a pack of Jackdogs appearing in the quickly closing gaps.

“A little more speed, Eric,” Vera says calmly, bow already re-notched.

Maybe he should help Mum with her arrows. Maybe he could take the reins from Dad so he could guard their treasure. But when baby Alina reaches up and grabs a lock of his hair, Fenrir thinks he knows what’s really important, so he turns back to his book and continues his story.

Chapter V

Crowning

At the foot of the stairs leading up to the waiting pulpit, Fenrir stood at the edge of something far greater than an enormous stage.

“Have ya ever seen so many people at once, Sir?”

Before him, Farris fiddled with a mantle cape the same color blue as the enormous heralds flapping in the wind. The silver piping would have taken days to place, the hand-embroidered emblem meticulously stitched. It hung perfectly from his right shoulder, attached in a way to allow his sword arm free range while sweeping dramatically each time he turned.

Farris had put a lot of work into the garment, and something about that soothed an ache Fenrir had been trying to ignore for the last few weeks.

“Thank you, again, Farris. It’s beautiful.”

“It’s no big thing,” Farris said, blushing. “You deserve it. They deserve it, too.”

Fenrir didn’t miss how his eyes kept drifting to the crack between the stage and the closest herald, knowing what he’d see if he followed Farris’ attention.

People. Thousands of people. All of them there for him and a promise of a future Lore had nearly stolen—that he and Orpheus had saved at the risk of so much more than either of them could define. That Fenrir didn’t want to define. As if not saying it aloud meant he couldn’t lose it—that the fear Orpheus harbored was no more than another worst case scenario Fenrir had built his life defying.

That’s what heroes did, after all: Defied the impossible. And Fenrir was a hero. That was why he was standing here at all. Preparing, as it were, to face a crowd of people he’d already saved once. A whole of an Empire, standing out there because of what he’d done and the life he’d lived and all the choices he’d made on their behalf.