His wounds do not hurt as much as before. It unsettles him.

The hidden field near the cavern connects to the river below. The young Geherrim uses this track all the time. In summer, Sol remembers a beaten path made for exactly this.

But this is midwinter.

Everything is covered in snow.

To his right, the girl in white crouches over a treetop half-buried by the avalanche, speaking softly to it.

"It is okay, you will be fine. Once the snow melts, you will be able to breathe and eat much easier than before. Be patient, okay?"

Sol frowns.

Did that girl just heal the gaping wounds on his body?

He checks the places where the Nhiven's horns pierced his arms and torso. There are holes in his clothes, sure, but his skin… There should be holes there, too.

He can still feel a phantom sting where the wounds should be.

Or maybe it is just the cold.

Because right now he is standing in the middle of the hidden field with nothing but torn clothes and one flimsy iron dagger, the one Dobsy gave him a couple of years back after stealing it from his own father.

Sol looks at the dagger in his right hand.

The blade is chipped. The hilt is cracked.

This thing might not last another fight.

He sighs.

"Why are you sighing?" the girl asks, voice carrying from her crouch by the snow-buried branch.

"Um, no, it is nothing." The lie slips out easily.

The last thing he wants is to worry her about getting down the mountain safely.

And he still needs to get her to Elm, so people can see he is stronger than they think. Maybe then the village elder will take him back.

He studies the girl, intently now.

Under the early morning sun, he finally sees her clearly.

First, the hair: long and wavy, almost touching her feet, shining with a platinum-silver luster. It looks soft and airy, and the wind does not fight it. It sways, yes, but never tangles.

Then the attire: a simple, flowing white dress, the kind rich girls from Velgarri might wear. But the noble houses of Velgarri are all Geherrim. She is not.

Then the details that are not there: no horns; no sclera rings around her emerald eyes; no elongated fangs. Her body looks slight and fragile. Even the girls in his village carry healthy muscles. Rahzar is an outlier in his own right, but still.

Then her skin: so pale that if Sol loses focus, he might miss her entirely against the snow.

Apparently, she has also been watching him the whole time.

"You lied," the girl says, breaking his thoughts.

"Did I?"

"Yes. You just lied. I can tell. You were worried about our safety because all you had was one flimsy dagger."

Sol does not know how to answer.

"And the road below the mountain is long and dangerous in winter," she adds.

"How…" He hesitates. He knows she has inexplicable power. He saw her shimmer in the night, and he felt his wounds magically close, a form of healing that should not work on a Geherrim. Still, he asks, "How did you know that? Are you a mind reader?"

"Mind reader?"

"You are a human sorcerer, I get that. But are you a Mind Reader? Um, a Telepath?"

She tilts her head, like a curious dog, a small, long-haired thing made of platinum light. "Telly-path?"

Sol frowns again. Maybe he is wrong. He knows she is special, but he does not know how special. Is she a natural-born sorcerer? A Maegi? Can he even bring her to Elm? Will she wreak untold destruction?

"I do not know what a telly-path is," she says. "But from what I remember, I think I was a priestess."

"…Priestess?"

"Yes. I was supposed to ask for help to end the war. The war is going to destroy everything soon, and I was…" She pauses. "…huh. I thought I was going to the Netherward."

"Netherward?" The word is foreign to him. He knows the land as Nhevar. He is Nhevari. The Stake's guardian is the Nhiven, Watcher of Nheva.

How large Nhevar is as a region, how close or far it lies from other lands, he has no idea. The village elder never let him study with the other young Geherrim.

"Yes," she says, "the… um, place where the Seven Lords live."

His ears prick. He knows of the Seven Lords.

"Which Lord of the Seven?"

She goes quiet, thinking hard.

Then she smiles, the innocent smile of a child caught doing something wrong.

"Ehe."

"Ehe?"

"Ehehe."

"You forgot."

"I forgot."

Sol has never felt this stressed in his life. It's a different kind of stress than what he's used to.

In the middle of the exchange, his focus snaps down the slope. There is movement, minute, a flicker at the edge of his vision.

He senses it.

The wind stills. The snow stops crackling. He narrows his eyes, scanning for what changed.

The air tightens. The silence is too clean.

The hairs on his arms rise. Old pack-sense whispers along his spine. A hunter.

He parts his lips and tastes the air. Iron. Wet fur.

Something heavy moves against the grain of the slope, careful, patient, keeping to the shadowed seams.

Neither bear nor elk. The breath pattern is wrong, the weight too deliberate. It could be the Nhiven, dragged downslope by his blood. Or worse, the Snow White Garm circling to finish what the mountain began.

We are being stalked.

They are in terrible danger.