The city was abuzz with activity when she left the next morning. Word of the Council’s new measure had gone out. Heralds made rousing speeches against the Demon Riders in the city squares, and many citizens declared they would volunteer to fight the menace. Kyra wondered how long this excitement would last once folk started dying. Word was that a few units would be recruited and deployed immediately to test new strategies and start securing the forest, with the main offensive to happen in a month.
Once Kyra left the city, she wasn’t quite sure what to do. There was no point in trying to find the Demon Riders herself. She couldn’t sneak up on a full-blooded demon cat. But she could go into the forest and make herself available to be found, and there was that caravan attack Jacobo the trader had mentioned, the one that had happened just above the upper waterfall. Kyra had wanted to see the place for herself before Idalee’s beating drove it from her mind.
It took her a few hours to walk to the waterfall, and the sound of crashing waters guided her the last few steps of the way. Big blocks of ice were piled at the bottom, though water still flowed underneath. Kyra scrambled up a boulder-strewn track. There was a clearing at the top scattered with young trees, as one would expect from a campsite that had been abandoned a few years ago. Kyra’s imagination kept her jumping as she wandered. Perhaps this scrap of wood sticking out of the snow had been a wagon wheel. Or maybe that glint of metal came from a wheel sprocket. But whenever she looked closer, it turned out to be a trick of the eye.
There were wildflowers here, tall stalks that came up to her waist with cone-shaped clusters of blue, pink, and purple blossoms. They were called forever sprays because they bloomed all year round. Their perfume evoked a memory in which she stumbled through a field of these flowers. In her memory, the flowers grew as high as her head.
“What are you looking for?” a low woman’s voice asked from behind her.
Kyra suppressed a shudder, and she slowly turned around.
A middle-aged Demon Rider woman stood ten paces away, scrutinizing Kyra with a stare that could have sliced glass. She was beautiful, with large dark eyes and an arched nose, an angular face, and long black hair with the slightest hints of gray. She wore the familiar wraparound tunic and leggings of the Demon Riders, though the leather was tanned a darker color than the ones Kyra had seen. Behind her stood a Makvani man about Leyus’s age. His features were milder and less stern compared with the woman’s, and his gaze held more interest than suspicion.
“You’re the halfblood, are you not?” demanded the woman in heavily accented speech. “The one who lets Leyus fight her battles.”
Kyra backed away, unable to make sense of the woman’s words. The Makvani man laid a hand on the woman’s arm.
“She doesn’t recognize you, Zora. You were in your fur.”
The woman was the one who’d attacked her, then. The one Leyus had stopped from killing her. Kyra backed up, ready to reach for her dagger. If they tried to change, she would have an opening.
“Why are you here?” asked Zora.
Kyra did her best to stand tall. “I’ve got a message from the city for Leyus.”
“I don’t mean why you are in the forest. I want to know why you are in this clearing.”
This clearing? Why would they care why she was in this clearing?
The man cut in. “We bear you no ill will.” Given the glare Zora shot at him, Kyra thought he should amend that to “no ill will, for now.”
Just then, a new voice spoke from behind her. Kyra couldn’t understand the words, but she recognized the speaker, and she felt a sliver of cautious hope. She turned around.
Pashla looked exactly the same as Kyra remembered: tawny-yellow hair spilling over her shoulders, proud bearing, and a way of looking at Kyra that made her wonder, always, what the clanswoman was thinking. Their eyes met for a moment, and Kyra breathed easier when she saw no animosity in Pashla’s gaze.