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Thea felt its call in her bones, her magic coming alive within her, thrumming in anticipation for what chaos would be unleashed next. She inhaled deeply through her nose, plucking her throwing stars from the table, the lecherous man’s fingers still splayed between them.
Glancing at him, she removed her dagger from his groin, where a wet patch had spread across his lap, the stench of urine filling the air. ‘Talk about me or another woman again like that, and…’ She gave a savage smile and cast a pointed look at his crotch. ‘Well, use your imagination.’
Another fork of lightning speared the sky outside and Thea took a step towards the window, the men and their poisonous words forgotten. She lifted her eyes skyward. Thick, dark clouds had gathered, blocking the sun, another rumble rolling through Harenth as more thunder clapped.
Wilder was at her side. ‘Thea…’ he said, his voice low in warning.
‘It’s not me,’ she whispered.
Her Warsword’s eyes widened. He glanced back at Wren, who was still sitting in the booth with the others, talking quietly with Kipp.
‘Then… it’s just a normal storm?’ he breathed, peering out at the downpour.
‘Doesn’t feel normal.’ Thea couldn’t explain the lure of the bedlam beyond the tavern, only that she recognised a part of herself in it, that it beckoned to her.
Without thinking, she was moving.
‘Thea —’
But Wilder’s voice was distant now, and as Thea left the Laughing Fox, the door swinging in her wake, she was completely untethered from herself, sealed away from the midrealms and locked in the lawlessness of the storm.
Her legs were moving, but she didn’t know where. Thea simply followed the pull of the tempest as it caused a vibration across the realms, offering a symphony of brilliant white light and thunder.
It sang to her, and coaxed her magic to the surface, a strange, primitive power, as old as time itself.
Thea found herself on the top of a small hill, overlooking the lower end of Hailford, which was clouded in the haze of the storm, rattling with the full fury of the gods.
The lightning quartered a tree.
And Thea fell into a vision.
* * *
The Veil towered at the edge of the world, a wall of impenetrable mist that hugged the earth before stretching up into the clouds, as though part of the sky had fallen in. It muted whatever lay beyond, and contained whatever lay within, a divider of realms.
A creature stood before it, tall and proud, membranous wings tucked in at its –her– back.
A woman.
Of sorts.
Her hair was shaved close to her skull and she wore simple, boiled leather armour across her lean frame, a hand resting on the pommel of a sword at her hip.
Thea was there, staring at her in wonder.
A brutal scar sliced through her right eye, from above her brow to halfway down her cheek.
Anya.
She was the fiercest thing Thea had ever seen, the most terrifying.
Shadows leaked from between her wings, from the hand that hung casually at her side as she turned her back to the Veil, facing the unit of half-humans and monsters behind her.
‘My people,’ she called, her strong voice projecting to the far lines. ‘We have fought long and hard these many years.’
A ripple of agreement passed through the unit.
‘But now we must fight harder. Now is the time we must come together, stronger than ever before,’ the woman called. ‘Do you know what they have done? To our brothers? To our sisters?’
