It took Losa a few dazed seconds to realize that Aindreas was wincing away from her attempts at smoothing down his haphazard swoops of alabaster fur. She blinked the drugged glaze from her heavenly portals and felt an uncomfortable flush bloom over her skin at her own foolishness, this impulsive stupidity she could not control. “Sorry . . .” Her vulpine muzzle drew back toward the white blaze on her chest as she whispered the embarrassed word. It would be nice to blame most of her behavior on the cocktail of drugs still swirling in her veins . . . but shreds of memory flashed behind her irises and a deep sense of shame told Losa that she had always been an imbecile. At least—that’s the truth she discerned for as far as her shattered mind could reach back. One idiot decision after the other, tripping over themselves into a pit, a long and blurry map without direction. Running away from her friends. Running toward monsters. Getting hurt. Hurting others. Falling headlong into the kindness of strangers and disrupting their lives with her selfish, parasitic needs and pathetic issues and the noise of her screams . . .

Sadness coiled itself around her chest like a dark-scaled python, heavy and crushing and slowly choking out every other emotion. Her shoulders drooped downward along with the dejected cast of her eyes; her gaze settled somewhere by Aindreas’ large paws, talons caked with the dirt of travel. Poor lonesome ghost . . . so brave and selfless. He’d saved her. He’d carried her here, as a both a noble knight and trusted steed, despite his own grievous wounds. Had they healed yet? When had Hellene allowed him to leave the den? What if his injuries reopened? Abruptly Losa’s hanging head whipped up, frantic light glittering furiously in her portals as she raked her stare across the ivoro’s sturdy frame. Once more she felt the odd desire to fix the little tufted bunches and tattered feathers of his porcelain robes—messy regrowth obscuring newly sewn flesh—but for some reason she kept seeing scarlet painted over the glistening planes of snow, splashes of color she could not wash away with her tongue. “Should you be traveling in this state?”

Losa’s low voices sounded odd. Distant. What had Aindreas been thinking, going to see his pups? Surely the strain of travel would impeded his healing . . . her unseeing stare slid back toward his paws, toward the soil clinging to his toes and the little ribbons of scar tissue laced up his legs that denoted where teeth had tried to break his bones and she thought she could see a trickle of viscous red dribbling down toward his claws but then she blinked and it was gone and her lungs felt filled with water, breathing labored and sluggish as adrenalin warred with whatever plant compounds lingered sweetly in her mouth.

“Your pups,” the princess blurted, as much to shake herself out of whatever was gripping her as to prevent Aindreas from turning away and leaving her. “Did you . . . did you see them? Where they there?” How typical of her, to break down in the presence of someone who deserved more sympathy than Losa could ever give. It would be better for the pale poltergeist to turn away and rest in another wing of the forest, separate from Losa’s turmoil, but the longer he stood here the more Losa’s desperation grew. When had he crawled out of Aurora to visit Moondown? He wasn’t done healing yet. Rubies beaded around a gash in his abdomen and fell with muted plips to the ground below. Carmine raindrops. Then her eyelids fluttered and the sticky brown-red puddle vanished. Losa shivered. If she stopped talking to him, Aindreas would go. He’d go away. Like Hurricane did. She’d be alone in the den. Alone. Alone. Alone. Aindreas said he had no home anymore. That was so deeply, horribly heartbreaking that hot tears gathered at the corners of the lithe bird’s vision and threatened to spill. “Where will you go now? You won’t leave, will you? I never got to thank you for . . . I’m awful. You were torn apart and you helped me anyway and I haven’t done anything to repay you.”

The anguish heaving in her breast told Losa she should be sobbing. Her spine arched, body drawing inward as if preparing to be wracked with uncontrollable weeping, yet the mad ingénue remained quietly withdrawn, the moisture wobbling in her lanterns suspended above the elegant cut of her cheekbones. She did not want to scare him off with her touch, so she shifted one forepaw close to his own, mere inches away from brushing the curves of his talons. “. . . should you be traveling in this state?” Parroted lyrics spoken in the same tone as before. Her brow furrowed in confusion. “Aindreas . . . you’re bleeding. Aren’t your pups worried? When did Hellene let you leave the den . . . ?”