The air dropped by a few degrees around Esmera. There was no sunlight to melt the frosty breaths of the snow capping the mountains, no walls to shield her from it.

Esmera shivered as she opened her eyes to find herself, her friends and their familiars standing at the edge of Parnakshi as Anjarah had requested, looking out at a vague outline of mountains against the darkening heavens. The sky was bare of jewellery now that the sun had set, but soon the stars would arrive to embellish it.

Tauram's arm tightened around Esmera, as steady and solid as their footing was precipitous. He must be as nervous about the valley gaping below them as she was, so deep that all that could be seen of it was darkness. With just one wrong step, it would swallow them.

"Come." Anjarah beckoned them after her.

Tauram released Esmera, but she grabbed his hand. He raised his eyebrows. She needed to hold onto something to anchor her to the earth rather than the air, but that wasn't the full truth.

The full truth was that she liked the solid warmth of Tauram Morghis's hand in hers for a reason she couldn't explain.

She said nothing to answer the question in his eyes, only pulled him after Anjarah.

The town buzzed with life and sound. Little of the festivities could be seen from the outskirts, but Esmera could hear the townspeople as if she was among them. She could hear the plates and glasses clinking against tables. She could hear feet thudding and hands clapping as people danced. She could even hear voices murmuring stories to sleepy-eyed children before the sounds drowned her, engulfing all her senses until she broke free of them.

She and Tauram followed Anjarah along the city's rim, beyond where Parnakshi's light reached. Lundas bounded after them while Samier led the way as he usually did. They came to a set of steep stone stairs leading down the mountainside and into the infinite darkness.

Anjarah started down them, her feet steady as if she had descended these stairs at least a hundred times before. Maybe she had, and maybe the habit had made her fearless. Esmera gulped, but with Tauram behind her, with all the questions they both needed answers to, she had no choice but to follow Anjarah into the gloom. This was no place for fear, not when the alternative was the destruction of a kingdom.

They arrived on solid ground that was walled off from the sheer drop into the valley. It felt almost like Esmera was inside a cup. She let out a breath now that she didn't see her life flash before her eyes with every step.

Anjarah retreated into the shadow of a rocky ledge, fumbling about at her feet until she snatched up a lantern. She took a matchstick from her pocket and struck it against the rocky wall. When it illuminated to life, she lit the lantern's wick. It was browned as if it had been used before. Maybe Anjarah did come here as often as Esmera expected.

Without a word, she slipped into the cave mouth that stretched open behind her, dark and endless. Esmera and Tauram took the cue and trailed after her.

Now there was no light, just a halo of brightness around the lantern that turned Anjarah into a silhouette Esmera could follow. She started as a pair of silver eyes stared out at her. She blinked, and they disappeared like a hallucination or a quick-footed creature.

All around them was silence, but Esmera couldn't rid herself of the sense that they were being watched by eyes that they couldn't see.

"What is this place?" Esmera's voice echoed through the cave, louder than she had intended.

"This is where we keep the orphaned familiars. Those who have outlived their sorcerers." Even though Anjarah's voice was little more than a whisper, Esmera could hear her perfectly.

"Don't they need more air and light?" she asked, murmuring now that she understood the amplifying power of the hollow darkness around them.

In the light of the lantern, Anjarah turned her head back. "They don't, surprisingly. Most of them are old and feeble. They like resting in the quiet, cool darkness."

There was a tranquillity about this place. There was no light to disturb sleep, no sound to interrupt the peace. It was the sort of place Esmera might like to come to if she was looking to rest.

She could do without the overpowering smell of dirt and excretions closed in around her. It reminded her of the pet store next to the apartment she had rented after she left Stephan.

It seemed a distant memory even though it was the place she had gone home to for two months. She was already accustomed to the luxury of the Prince's cottage in Milatanur. Its brightness overwhelmed the memory of any other place she could recall. It was closer to the life she must've known before she could consciously remember.

"How do they get food?" Behind Esmera, Tauram's voice bounced off the walls as they funnelled into a passage. "I imagine there's nothing for them to hunt or forage down here, and I don't think they could make their way up to somewhere there is something for them."

Esmera couldn't see any animal past the prime of their lives, unsteady with age, making their way up those stairs that connected this cave to the world above either.

"I feed them twice a day," said Anjarah.

Esmera raised her eyebrows. Anjarah came in here even more often than she had thought. If it wasn't for her, these familiars would probably live forgotten down here until they ceased to live.

The hairs all over Esmera's body stood on end at the scraping of claws against rock, at growls rumbling through throats. Her hand tightened around Tauram's without her meaning for it to.

"It's just me, everyone!" Anjarah called into the darkness as they flooded out of the tunnel and into a wider cavern. "I've brought some friends this time, that is all."

The sounds of agitation faded into the darkness. Esmera released a breath of relief.

Even if she could talk to her father's familiar without Anjarah being here to translate, even if she had decided to come here alone to attempt that, these creatures would've probably torn out her throat before she got what she came for.

It was excellent timing that she and Tauram had met Anjarah when they did, or they'd be spending another evening at home, knowing they needed a plan but not knowing where to start. The timing was almost divine, and Esmera had to wonder whether Jilhari, the goddess of nature herself, was giving them a hand she probably wasn't technically allowed to.

Deeper and deeper they wandered until Esmera lost track of how far they had burrowed into the cave. Anjarah took a sharp right, then stopped.

The flame in her lantern flickered off the uneven walls. Tiny bones lay scattered over the floor. Jammas stirred where she had made himself at home on Esmera's head, giving her the eerie sense that these were the remains of a bird.

This chamber walled off from the cavern was small but not too small for the heap of fur huddled in the corner, blinking in the light that had suddenly arrived in her space.

"Hello, Hira." Anjarah knelt, setting the lantern at her feet, and rested a hand on the creature in front of her.

Beside her, Samier kept his watchful eye on the ball of long, grey-brown fur before them even though she was too lethargic to pay him any attention.

"I brought someone to see you."

An amber cat eye peered up at Anjarah from beneath a forehead marked with black spots. The other eye of the stripy-cheeked face was closed as if it had crumpled into itself.

"Oh, you already knew she was a Finnaz?" asked Anjarah. "How?"

A rumbling echoed at the back of Hira's throat as her eye settled on Esmera where she stood with Tauram and Lundas a short distance away.

"Ah, you smelt her." Anjarah turned and beckoned Esmera over. "That was very clever of you."

If Esmera had had any doubt about who she was, that would've cleared it up. Tauram may be able to logic his way to the truth about her identity, but only the last living Finnaz could truly recognise who Esmera was.

Esmera fell to her haunches beside Anjarah and Hira while Tauram stayed at the edge of this cavern in the network. Lundas remained beside him, his bright eyes fixed on the other cat, uncertain whether it was a friend and ready to act if it was a foe.

"No, Hira, this isn't Lady Yandriya." Anjarah shook her head as she rested a hand on Esmera's arm. "This is Esmera, Lord Hudion's daughter."

The cat's single eye lit up. A crooked smile took hold of her mouth, warped by the scar running down the right side of her face. As lopsided as the grin was, it warmed Esmera's heart. She was an orphan, a needy wife, a burden, and few people in her life had ever been genuinely happy to see her. She had never thought a battle-scarred wildcat in another realm would be one of them.

"I imagine she does look just like her mother. Of course you remember her as a baby." Anjarah dragged her fingers through the cat's long fur. "But she doesn't remember you at all." She turned to Esmera. "This is Hira, your father's familiar."

Before Esmera could reply, Anjarah was answering another of Hira's questions. "No, we don't know how she escaped the massacre."

"Was Hira there when they died?" Esmera's voice broke at the end, but there was steel in her words she had never heard before.

Her family had been murdered 23 years ago. It had sounded like a legend, a tragedy that had befallen someone else until this moment, when Esmera gazed upon the last remaining Finnaz other than herself.

"Too terrible. The betrayal. An eye for an eye. The trap was set." Anjarah voiced Hira's words.

The cat fixed her single, sad eye on Esmera. Tears scratched at her throat.

Hira must've lost her eye fighting that battle, a battle she had never expected would cost her the family she knew and the sorcerer she valued as much as her own life. It had cost Esmera as much, and she had gone over two decades without knowing it.

The pain of all those years flooded through her in one gasp, clawing at her chest.

Why did tracking down the past hurt so much? Why did the pursuit of fixing it merely sharpen the pain?

But there was a way to make this better.

"Who did it?" Esmera asked.

She wanted to know what had happened, who she needed to track down and tear apart. At the same time, she wasn't sure that she should know.

Vengeance could destroy people, but it was also the only way to heal grief.

"The trap was set," was all Anjarah said.

Hira tossed her grimy, unkempt head, agitated. Anjarah stroked her. Her lantern's light emphasised the "no" she mouthed at Esmera.

These questions wouldn't get any answers out of Hira, only upset her. A gentler approach was what Esmera needed, even though a fury she never realised she felt clenched her fists.

She loosened her hands and reached for Hira, looking to Anjarah for permission. The other woman nodded.

Esmera rested her hand on Hira's back. Her fingers were lost in the piles of grey fur. Beneath that, she could feel Hira's warm skin, but it was too tightly pulled over the curved, bony line of her spine.

Hira purred at her touch. Where he still rested in Esmera's hair, Jammas tossed. She felt blindly until she found his head, then patted it to reassure him that he had no reason to be threatened by this wildcat.

"Hira, can you tell me where the Finnaz weapon is and how to wield it?" asked Esmera.

Hira nodded, hissing out a reply.
"Take a memory walker to the Finnaz estate. Everything you need is in the past."

Esmera frowned. She looked over at Tauram. He was nodding as if he understood what Hira was saying through Anjarah even though Esmera didn't. Maybe he would even know where the Finnaz estate was. After all, he had been engaged to the family's daughter when she was just an infant.

"What's a memory walker?" asked Esmera.

"It's exactly what it sounds like." Anjarah kept her gaze on Hira, running her hands through her fur. "They are sorcerers who can walk through any given place and explore its memories through touch. It sounds like Hira saying you need to delve into the history of the Finnaz family to get information about the weapon."

Tauram nodded his agreement where he stood among the shadows in the cave.

Maybe the memory walker could help Esmera find out who had initiated the whole attack. It didn't seem like Hira remembered. If she did, maybe it was too painful to recall, or her mind was too scrambled to tell Esmera.

This was an answer she would have to get herself.

The wildcat let out a shuddering breath as terrifyingly fragile as life. Esmera touched her lips to Hira's grey-furred head as Anjarah turned the rumbling in the back of her throat into words Esmera could understand.

"Avenge me, Esmera Finnaz. Avenge us all." With a final exhale, Hira went still and silent.

Her single eye stared glassily into the lantern illuminating her dark abode. Her warm body and old bones no longer stirred beneath Esmera's hand.

Something inside Esmera died with Hira, and something else came to life. Something blazing, something angry, something Esmera wasn't entirely sure she could contain.

Someone in Milatanur owed Esmera the blood of her family, and once King Ruagu had been defeated, nobody would be able to stop her from finding them and getting what she was owed, even if she had to bleed them dry herself just to do it.

"I will avenge you," murmured Esmera, even though she knew Hira couldn't hear her.

The truth sunk in like a weight dropped into a restless sea.
Esmera was really the last Finnaz. Her family's vengeance fell to her and only her.

She couldn't change the past, but the future was hers to control.