"Can you teach me how to fight?"

Will didn't even look up from his knife.  "No."

I bit back a curse.  To think I deigned to ask. "Why not?"      

"Because it'll encourage you to run after every opponent you encounter, regardless of whether you can take him or not."

"But I already do that."     

We waited near a brook while Mason caught our lunch.  That welt might have driven me out of my mind, but he did know how to set a trap—I'd give him that. Whatever god had built that boy must have dumped all the foulest ingredients into one human and then decided to make him a skilled hunter so society would still tolerate him.

I raised my hands to my hips.  "Teach me how to protect myself then.  I'll learn offense from someone else."  I had the gist of it down from years of notetaking, just no one to practice with. Not since Tom. "Please."

Will didn't answer, and I thought it was a lost cause, but then he sighed and rose to his feet.  "Stand over there."

I grinned broadly, and he shot me an impatient look, so I quickly shuffled to where he indicated.

"Simple defense should keep you alive long enough to escape. A parry you can handle—I've seen you do it."  He raised my sword at an angle, holding it out in front of me, level with my torso.  "The demons might be stronger, but you're faster.  You can use that to your advantage if you master your footwork."

I looked down at my feet and warned them to behave.

"Your problem is that you swing for anything that breathes, and you give each blow your all.  It leaves you exhausted and exposed." He walked behind me and readjusted my shoulders and stance.  "Control is key.  Hold back. Let your enemies tire first. Watch how they work. Then strike where it counts."

This feeling was different from what Tom had taught me.  Different from what Frost taught in his lessons. With them it had always been strike first and strike hard—kill them before they can kill you.  But this...this was reserved. Distant. I felt like a spring built to pounce but not permitted to.  Maybe that was good. I wasn't sure. 

"I could tell you what I know, the tricks, the tips. But words won't teach you anything."

His hand curled around the hilt of his weapon, and before I could fully process his disconcerting statement, he sent his sword flying for my jugular vein. Stunned, I immediately brought my blade up to block his advance. Instinctively, the way he'd shown me.  Steel clipped steel, and I swallowed the knot of terror in my throat.

He nodded in approval. Like it was normal to suddenly attack people.

I spun the weapon off mine, gaping.  "A warning would be nice. You almost took my head off."

"I didn't."

And with that, the psycho lunged at me again. 

This time he swung over the top, quick as wind, and I panicked. I raised my sword perpendicular to his—a last-ditch effort to parry the blow—but his momentum carried him forward, and I wasn't strong enough to push him off, nor lithe enough to dip away. The impact of our weapons bent my elbows inward, and he looked at me through the junction of our swords, his dark eyes pulsing with amusement and impish delight.

I didn't even know he could make that face.

He stepped back for a heartbeat, granting me a second chance, only to dip his blade and aim for my stomach. I couldn't think of a way to deflect his thrust, so I simply jumped aside and groaned at my own stupidity.

My loss of balance granted him the perfect opportunity to grab hold of my arm and reel me in like a ball of twine, sword at my throat.  I didn't even comprehend how he had moved so quickly.

"You hesitated," he said in my ear, disappointed. 

"I didn't know what to do next."

He let me go.  "Figure out the flow.  It isn't about knowing.  It's about thinking."

That was literally the least helpful advice I had ever heard in my life. 

"Will, if a demon's charging me, I can only defend myself for so long before I have to resort—"

He flew at me again, and I readied myself, trying to think like him, fast like him.  Our swords collided, and he forced me back along the hillslope.

Sword fighting was like swimming, I decided.  I had to make consistent movements to stay afloat, had to work with the water, not against it. Remember to breathe. Just like swimming, there were no breaks; I was always treading water, lest I drown.

He drove harder, and I frantically attempted to deflect him. Splashing chaotically. 

The jerk was enjoying himself!  He was barely trying—toying with me.  And I knew, behind that fine line of his mouth, he was laughing.

"Stop it!"

"Stop what?" he asked, casually snipping through one of the strings in my armor. 

I lost it.

Instead of waiting for his next attack, I threw my sword at an upward angle, grazing his chin. And it was at that moment I realized he'd been waiting for that all along.  For me to fight back, to take the offensive, to lose control.

Because with an opening there in front of me, my victory just a stroke away, I couldn't help myself. I brought my sword down over my head, aiming for the top of his pauldron, and I watched my glorious attack disintegrate before my eyes.

Will deflected my sword with a speedy vertical block, and with his free hand, he punched the air to the left of my hilt. Then he twisted his body and dropped his forearm over mine, pinning my elbows under his armpit and forcing my entire body clockwise. With my balance in ruins, he was able to kick my right leg out from under me and flip me over.

I landed on my back with an oof.

From a distance, I could hear Fudge and Mason's loud guffaws, and I wanted to sink into the river. Dammit.

So I wouldn't have to see his smug face, I grabbed hold of Will's ankles and yanked. He fell to all fours, but he caught himself before eating grass. The boys cheered again.

Will blew a strand of hair out of his eyes as he looked back at me. "Satisfied?"

"This is stupid."

Not stupid. Just hard. Harder than it had ever been with Tom.  Of course, I'd had confidence Tom wouldn't actually stab me in the face.  Will...not so much.

"You were doing fine until you threw a fit," he said, and I scowled some more. "You can't expect to be an expert right off the bat. We'll keep practicing."

I tossed back my curtain of tangles, gaping at his serious expression. Keep? As in, a future promise?

"Really?" I whispered, afraid to hope that a boy outside my family would risk such a thing. Training a woman to fight was as felonious as her passion to do so. Never in my life had a soldier offered to help me attain my dream.

Not until now.

Will nodded, and I beamed at him, truly grateful for his words—in part because I knew he wasn't the type to waste his breath on empty promises—but also because I enjoyed his company, even if I didn't always speak his language.

He blinked back at me, confused by the blatant appreciation on my face, as if he'd never received a genuine smile in his life.

Fudge and Mason approached us, snickering at our expense, and I clambered to my feet. Obviously, Will hadn't offered to help me off the ground, the welt.

"I almost had him," I insisted, and Will rolled his eyes.

"Are you kidding?" Mason exclaimed. "Tooms was running circles around you. Then you got your feelings hurt and flipped yourself upside-down." He froze, realizing the insult had cost him a compliment, and he turned to Will to rectify his slip up. "Took longer than expected though. An untrained girl wouldn't stand a chance against any qualified soldier."

Will tilted his head at the blond, almost like he couldn't believe Mason was that stupid.

"That's funny," I said. "Because I recall fending off plenty of soldiers last night on my way to rescue your useless butt."

"I'll believe it when I see it."

It took all my willpower not to pick a fight with the jerk, and I shoved the rage back down my esophagus. "Well, try not to get kidnapped next time, and you won't miss a thing."

Pure loathing filled Mason's eyes, and with the threatening look he gave me, I thought Will would step in to diffuse the situation before we started throwing fists. But instead, he just raised his eyebrows at Mason in a, 'Well, what's your countermove, Price?' sort of way.

The little instigator...

He just wanted to see me pound Mason into the ground. I was sure of it.

"Uh, Alex?" Fudge cut in, his laughter gone, his tone nervous. "Uh...she's waving at you..."

"What?"

"Turn around."

I stared at the boy for a beat before whipping around in confusion. She?

And there she was, impossibly, her gray hair braided back in a loose bun, her pale dress stark against the canopy.

"Alex!" Nova barked. "You're late!"

"When did you get here?"

Nova set a second teapot down on the table, despite my telling her we couldn't rest long.  "I left the evening we last spoke. Took an old city mare and the buckboard and arrived just a few hours ago. Biscuits, anyone?"

Fudge raised his hand, and she disappeared to her kitchen again.

Nova had brought us back to her little getaway home: a log cabin tucked away in the trees, covered in vines and forest weeds, like something straight out of a fairy tale. Then she refused to answer my questions until we sat down and ate something, not that any of us starving kids put up a fight.

Mason gagged into his cup. "This tastes like water with dirt in it."

"Have you never had tea?" I hissed.

"Have you never shut up?"

I kicked him in the shin.

My gaze flitted about the room, and I took note of the strange trinkets and bottles on the shelves, the wooden grilles on the windows. Cobwebs inhabited the corners of the slanted, sunken ceiling, and I was fairly certain I'd heard a family of rodents in the walls.

The old woman returned with ten slices of shortbread, and the smell of honey and vanilla had me salivating before the platter event touched the tablecloth. Once she'd divvied up the servings and poured herself another cup of tea, she finally sat down and folded her hands on the table. "I sense that something has happened. Something tragic."

"I think that's an understatement," Fudge said.

We filled her in on the events over the last three days, and with each passing sentence, the lines of her face deepened, sinking with dread and sorrow and emotional fatigue. In several minutes, she'd aged a decade.

"I feared something like this would happen," she said after a lengthy pause.  "You must get word to Holly immediately."

I blinked at her, searching her face for hidden sentiments.

Was that...it?

I'd expected more from a woman who'd lived in Belgate for eight decades. Stunned silence, a  slew of follow-up questions. Maybe a few tears for the place she once called home? But her mind was already racing for solutions, much like my father's. No time for the past—we weren't going that way.

"Do you think we're the only messengers who've made it this far?" I asked, though I wasn't sure I wanted to know the answer.

"To my knowledge. I saw no one on my travels, and the roads were barren."

So it depended on us, then.  Two kidnap-prone boys, a cursed girl, a robot, and a pile of rocks. 

Holly was doomed.

I fixed her with a serious look, tired of tip-toeing around the subject matter. "Nova, do you understand what's going on?"

She sighed deeply, trailing her long, thick nails across the tabletop.  "You're well aware of our conflicts with Rhea," she began, waiting for us to nod along. "About a decade ago,the war shifted. My psychic abilities heightened, and there was suddenly anabundance of spiritual energy in our realm. I realized that a portal had beenopened...a mechanism that acts as a bridge between this world and anotherdimension. A gateway between the realms of spirits, demons, and mortals. And acertain victory."

Victory?

"Wait. You're saying someone did this on purpose," I whispered.

"The world does not simply fall out of balance.  Someone or something broke through the barrier and is now using that connection to wreak havoc on mankind."

I stared at her, struggling to comprehend the fact that someone actually wanted this. Someone sought this awful future. It was planned, orchestrated.

Fudge waved his biscuit around as he spoke.  "But who would do this? Who would deliberately kill so many people?"

Nova smiled sadly.  "My dear, revenge is a terrible and powerful thing.  Men will go to great lengths to right a wrong."

"Right a wrong?" I repeated. "What do you mean?" 

"War is ugly, Alex. You know this." She added another spoonful of sugar to her tea, staring deeply at the auburn liquid. "Years and years ago, Ells attempted to seize all of the hospitable continent."

"For natural resources," I recalled. Primarily, the remaining water reserves and irradiated farmland.

"What they don't tell you in the history books is the means by which we did so," Nova explained. "Ells acquired its territory by burning entire villages to the ground.  We contaminated sparse water supplies and inflicted terrible epidemics. Anything to condemn the colonized. Some rumors even boast of targeting children to wipe out an entire generation of foot soldiers."

Will and Fudge blenched at that, but Mason was still unconvinced, too patriotic to identify the bloodied flag we hoisted.

But I'd always seen our country for what it really was: a lie.

All those history books we'd been forced to read, a chronicle. The honor of the "Greatest Civilization" that ever rose from the ashes of the Crash—a fable. At our core, Ellsians were greedy imperialists, just like our ancestors before us. And deep down, I'd always known it to be true. I'd seen the redaction all along.

"Rhea is the last of the unconquered West, and because of that, we've fought the Sterling bloodline for centuries," Nova continued.  "It was only a matter of time before someone turned to dark magic to stop the madness. And I suspect they didn't realize what such a dangerous bargain would entail."

"So Rhea opened the portal?" I clarified. "With...dark magic?"

I'd suspected Rhea had a new ally, but I never imagined the kingdom had partnered with demons.  Two days ago, demons weren't even relative to my daily vocabulary.

"I don't know who has unleashed such evil, or how, but only the upmost abhorrence could channel the netherworld.  And Rhea harbors great hatred, especially the royal family."

Mason leaned forward. "I get why those rats would want to convert Ellsians into those...things, but why are so many of the animals affected?  The lions. The snakes. Even the bugs? That doesn't make any sense."

"I'm not entirely sure," Nova confessed. "I believe when the portal was initially created, a multitude of spirits and demons were released. Accidentally, like a gas leak before a valve is closed. All of nature felt the impact. The animals. The plants. The air you breathe.  It's the reason Belgate and other cities shut their gates to the Range; they had to keep the mystery out."

"You keep saying demons and spirits separately," Will said. "Are they different?"

She tilted her head, contemplating her answer.  "Spirits are the form of any life after death.  They are not harmful, unless their mortal life was deeply perverted.  Demons are the production of sin and darkness in the world.  Infinite, because they represent our wrongdoings, our evils incarnate.  Separate beings, but not necessarily different."

My gaze slid to the window. 

Styx must have been a spirit then, right? She hadn't tried to kill us yet, as far as we knew, and she'd helped us fight the rotting monsters.  On the other hand, she was a faceless mute, so who knew what sinister objectives she concealed?

I caught a glimpse of her twirling in the breeze, dissolving angelically into a cloud of dandelion florets, and I scowled.

...Still suspicious.

"So what now?" I pressed. We were wasting time, sitting here and drinking tea like the world had stopped spinning.

"Now, Alex, your journey begins." A slow smile spread across her face. "All of you play a role in this war. Crucial roles.  I can see it."

Mason opened his mouth to comment on that last bit, but I kicked him in the shin again, and he bit his tongue.

The merchant's gaze shifted to Will, her expression wary. "You will have to make a choice, William. One you've dreaded all your life, but a choice that will make a vital difference in how events unfold. Your past is a tool, not a curse. Remember that."

Will's gaze didn't falter, but his hands tightened around his cup.

"And you two," she said to Mason and Fudge, "you will turn the tables in this war. Together."

Mason glanced skeptically at Fudge, who choked on his slice of shortbread.

"And me? What's the usual?" I said, trying to play it cool even though my throat was twisted up in figure eights.

Nova placed her hand on my forearm and gave a reassuring squeeze. "It's a dark path—for once I cannot see it clearly.  You will face many truths and many obstacles.  But you will uphold your namesake, Alexandria.  That, I am sure of."