I have a choice?” His voice was raw. “In this empire, if I am not the hunter, then I become the hunted.”
She would never forget the way he gazed up at her, yaeger and Affinite in one. Trapped in a corrupt system.
Your choices, Luka’s voice whispered, but something in her brother’s words was broken now, changed with the year she had spent away from the Palace. Choices were for those with privilege and power. When you had none, all you could do was survive.
She left before he could see how much her encounter with him had shaken her. She’d threatened to kill innocent people. She’d tortured a man.
I did it to save May, she told herself.
But perhaps all monsters were heroes in their own eyes.
News of the fight in the Vyntr’makt had spread through Kyrov like wildfire. Ana hurried along the streets that had only moments earlier been celebrating the arrival of winter. Now the bricks of the dachas glowed bloodred in the setting sun, and the shuttered storefronts gaped at her like empty eyes. She caught snatches of hushed conversation from the townspeople rushing home from a day’s work.
Ana tugged her hood down lower and followed the steady stream of people away from the Vyntr’makt. Exhaustion was creeping over her—the bone-deep weariness that came from using her Affinity—and she needed to leave, now, before that squad of Whitecloaks brought back reinforcements.
She’d—miraculously—defeated one Whitecloak, but she shuddered at the thought of having to fight an entire squad. Her Affinity was a muscle, to be exercised daily, never to be pushed to the extreme for fear that she would lose control. And over the past years, Ana had exercised it too little, and recently, she’d stretched it too thin.
Inside a glass storefront, lacquered phoenixes and icehawks spun, catching the dusk light. She and May had been in that store barely half an hour ago, whispering about Whitecloaks as though they were a distant threat. She whipped her head away as she turned a corner, the ache of tears burning deep into her heart.
She was on a smaller, emptier street. Gone were the beautiful residential dachas, the decorated storefronts and polished streetlamps. Stone buildings with wooden roofs crowded close together, dilapidated and crumbling. And, at the end of the street, was a building with red-shingled roofs. A wooden sign announced in weathered gold letters: The Gray Bear’s Keep.
Something about the inn struck her as off—perhaps it was the lack of music or conversation as she drew near, or the fact that, despite its shabby appearance, its doors were made of polished oak.
Her steps slowed of their own accord, and she came to a stop several buildings away. She’d just started to convince herself that she was being paranoid when the oak doors swung open and two men exited.
Ana swung herself into the shadow of a nearby doorway and peered out. There was something strange about these men, too. One, dressed in a black riding cloak and leather boots, moved with unnatural, predatory grace. Ana caught the glint of not one but two daggers on his belt as he retrieved a bulging pouch from his cloak. A mercenary.
The other, tall and lumbering as a bear, wore a grimy bartender’s apron. He glanced around furtively before reaching for the pouch, the greed on his face unmistakable even from this distance.
The mercenary tossed the bag at the bartender. Coins clinked as the bartender snatched it from the air. He missed—or ignored—the derisive look the mercenary shot him as he pulled open the strings to examine the bag’s contents.
The mercenary tilted his head to the empty street corner. Waiting.
A shiver passed through Ana. Exhausted as she was, she kept her Affinity flared.
As though on cue, a third man appeared around the corner, leading two horses. This man was dressed like the first: black cloak, black boots, and black hood obscuring his face. He turned the horses around, and as the mercenaries mounted, Ana’s stomach dropped.
She’d thought the second horse carried a large sack—but she realized now that it was actually a person. A horrible, sinking feeling gripped her as the horses shifted and the captive’s face came into plain view. Tawny hair, chiseled jaw, and broken nose. Ramson Quicktongue was these mercenaries’ latest haul.
Panic twisted her stomach. She thought of lunging out with her Affinity right there, right now. But her bones creaked in protest, and she clutched the wall to steady herself. There was no chance she could beat three people in her