Tobia wasn’t ashamed to say that, hadn’t it been for Lux, he would still be standing in the middle of the temple basement, staring at the blood on the floor and wondering if that was how his father had gone, too. 

It had been Lux who kept a cool head, Lux who stabilized Deirdre with a surge of healing magic and then guided everyone back toward the singing, writhing mass of people. Throughout the entire process, they’d never stopped talking to the rest of them in a soft, reassuring voice. Their words had tethered Tobia to the ground, wrapping around the leaks in his heart as if to keep the grief from spilling out all at once.  

By the grace of the Mother, they’d made it out of the basement unnoticed. The place had been deserted, save for Deirdre and the man who lay motionless on the ground, and the priests who were taking care of the ritual celebration on the ground floor didn’t seem to have heard a thing. That had left them with enough time to get their bearings and put their masks back on. While Tobia and Marion waited in the shade of the stairwell, Wynn and Lux had gone to infuse their travel lantern with the flames that crackled around the Apostate’s feather. Back in the village that morning, Tobia had thought Marion’s insistence on bringing a travel lantern with them on a simple day trip to the library was strange, maybe even edging on paranoid; he had been dead wrong about it, of course. Life outside of Whitewick still felt alien to him, rough to the touch like unprocessed wool. 

Once outside of the temple, Tobia’s fear had squirmed in the harsh light of the sun. To the folks who looked at them funny as they went, it was Lux who jokingly said their passed-out friend had drunk one pint of ale too many, all the while trying to hide the caked blood from their own wound underneath the folds of their cape. At least it seemed to be just a superficial cut, already half-closed from the dregs of healing magic that Lux must have redirected toward it.

By the time they could hear the alarm bells going off in the distance they were already on the road, taking turns in carrying Deirdre as she slipped in and out of consciousness. Or, well, Tobia and Marion took turns carrying her, since Deirdre was significantly taller than both Wynn and Lux. 

At the moment they were taking a break, huddled in an abandoned shack Wynn had spotted from afar. The place was half-demolished by time, with its dark wooden boards eaten away by bugs and wrenched from the walls by the strength of the wind, but it still created a little bubble of warmth isolated from the outside world. The inside was dusty and sparsely furnished, but it would keep them safe from the worst of the cold as long as the Apostate’s flame burned happily inside the glassy walls of the lantern. 

Once again, it struck Tobia how strange it felt to know his life in this world of frost hinged on the remains of the woman who had caused it all. Her cape lay dormant in the depths of the royal castle, filling Whitewick with its gentle heat, yet only a handful of carefully hand-picked people could boast about having ever basked in its presence. As a result, folks from the city looked up at the slender, elegant castle turrets, stark white against the blue of the sky, and they thanked the King for their prosperity. They forgot all about his original title, the Herald of Winter. Tobia was starting to wonder whether that was by design. 

He snuck a careful glance in Marion’s direction, not for the first time since she had so readily agreed to help Wynn rescue their sister. She’d been out of it during their entire so-called daring escape, present enough to listen to what Lux said but otherwise unresponsive, tuned out from the reality of what they’d done. Much to Tobia’s relief, she seemed to be coming back to her senses, albeit bit by bit. After he’d sat Deirdre on one of the rickety chairs by the table, Marion had taken a woolen shawl out of her knapsack and she’d draped it over her shoulders. Deirdre, slumped on the table, had murmured something intelligible in her sleep. 

“Guess the number of wanted fugitives has gone from one to a whopping five,” Wynn said. Subtle trembles still shook their body despite the warmth of the lantern, but they were trying to hide it by pressing their arms to their chest. Their eyes never once left Deirdre’s face.

“I wonder whose fault that is,” Tobia replied drily. He was expecting Lux to back him up, as an unlucky companion in the was-held-at-gunpoint-by-a-brat experience, but they seemed to be too engrossed in the letter they were writing to pay him any mind. 

Just as Tobia was about to bite the bullet and ask them about that, they started making a quick, chirping sound with their mouth that resembled the warbling call of a bird to an uncanny degree. It took a couple of minutes of that before a small black bird with a yellow beak and orange feet flew through one of the many holes in the shack. It landed in front of them with a flutter of wings far louder than Tobia had expected. Lux chirped at it some more, stroked its head with the tip of their fingers and watched it fly away with the letter clasped in its beak. “I sent word of what happened back home,” they said to Marion. “Told them we’re going to be away for a while.”

Those few words seemed to nudge her further back toward reality, away from whatever dark, bloodied shape must have been eating at her. She fixed Lux with an irritated look that came close to having the usual bite to it. “No one knows it was us who did it,” she said, her voice catching on the word “us”, as if she couldn’t quite bring herself to say something else. “We should just go back now, instead of casting suspicion on ourselves by disappearing into thin air at the time of a murder.”

Lux clicked their tongue. “Counterpoint!” they said, wagging their pointer finger in the air like a displeased conductor. “You and I disappear into thin air all the time, ‘cause you won’t let me go exploring on my own. On the other hand, if we waltzed back home with two more wanted people in tow, not even Granny’s influence would keep some of the nastier folks from prattling about it to the authorities. You know some of those bitter old creeps really want her seat in the council.”

Suddenly, Lux’s early reassurances about Astra’s influence felt a lot less reassuring to Tobia. He decided to leave them and Marion to their argument, though. Right now, thinking about his family would only worsen the unease that gripped him like a vice. 

He could still feel the cold phantom feeling of the hilt of the blade, the press of the metal against the skin of his palm. It terrified him, how quickly he’d drawn it. One moment the same ringing from the library had resonated through him, and the next he was swinging the blade at the automaton behind Lux, not a shred of hesitation in the movements of his body. Shaking the memory out of his head, he turned to Wynn. “You said you only had orders to arrest me, right?” he asked. 

As if sensing his worries, or at least a glimpse of them, Wynn said, “I’m sure the King would love to see both your mother and your little sister behind bars too, but for some reason you’re the one he’s worried about the most.”

Tobia could have sworn their eyes flitted to the side where his blade rested as they spoke. It made his blood run cold, as if time itself was slowing down. Thankfully, though, something happened that distracted Wynn from commenting further. Next to them, Deirdre stirred awake with a telltale intake of breath whistling through her lips.

“Fire!” was the first thing she said; she bolted upright, swayed dangerously from the blood that must have rushed to her head, and sat back down with a thump when her legs gave out. With her eyes darting around in confusion, she looked much more like an alive person than she’d done when she was linked to the temple security system. She was still as pale as a spirit, and her short white hair looked unkempt now that the long blue locks had reverted back into her cape, but her gaze had a vivid spark in it. 

They all waited for reality to filter back into her, not daring to move a muscle for fear of startling her, just watching quietly as she took in her new surroundings. “... Where are we?” she asked Wynn in the end, her voice raspy. “What did you do?”

Wynn had been looking at her with a half adoring, half apprehensive expression for the entire time, but the accusing tone of the question seemed to prickle them. They screwed their face in a frown, pink flowing to their cheeks in anger. “I—We rescued you!” they said. “The bastard’s dead, and thank the Mother for that.” Their voice dipped lower, almost choked-out, when they added, “We’re free. For real this time.”

Deirdre blinked slowly, looking down at the dried blood stain on her tunic. She didn’t scream this time, but she hugged the shawl closer to her. Then, as if realizing what she was clutching in her hands, she stared at the fabric in puzzlement. 

“That’s, um, mine,” Marion said. She wasn’t quite looking in Deirdre’s direction, which struck Tobia as unusual, at least from what little of her personality he had managed to pick up in the few days that had followed their first meeting. She’d nearly broken his ribs then, which didn’t sound like the most auspicable circumstances for a future friendship. “You can have it,” she continued, “I don’t mind. I mean, I’ve got other clothes. It comes with herding sheep, there’s always more wool to turn into shawls.”

Tobia turned to the others with a bewildered expression. Is she rambling? he wanted to ask, but no one was looking his way. At the very least, it seemed that Marion had finally shrugged off the dregs of her nightmares. He could only hope that was the case, even if it turned out to be a short respite from their grip.

“Oh, thank you.” Deirdre smiled, which made Marion mutter something akin to how welcome she was, and that it was no trouble. Tobia would have loved nothing more than letting this unexpected little dance happening in front of him go on indefinitely, sitting quietly and trying to forget about his own nightmares while the warmth of the shack seeped into his bones. Lux seemed to have other plans though. 

“I don’t mean to dredge back unpleasant memories…” they started. Their voice sounded uncertain, streaked with guilt, much like the time they’d asked Tobia if he was from the capital on the first calm night he and his family had enjoyed after escaping Whitewick. They were picking at the hem of their black cape, rolling the cloth between their fingertips in rhythmic motions. “Just—could you tell me why you said ‘fire’ just now, when you woke up? Nothing was ablaze when we found you.”

Wynn and Marion looked as if they were giving some serious consideration to shoving a generous helping of snow down Lux’s throat, but Deirdre’s smile didn’t waver. She merely tilted her head, looking askance as if she was trying to remember something through a haze. 

“You know,” she said, tapping her lower lip, “I think I saw the Apostate.”