Kirastasia’s children were growing up. Little Lotus, Crusoe, and Ambrosia offered her hours upon hours of breathless entertainment, amusing her like little actors upon a stage. Their endless curiosity . . . the excitement that lit them up like stars when they discovered something new . . . their incredible, constant energy, buoying Kira up like champagne bubbles even on the darkest days. Having pups amazed her! Delighted her! She wondered sometimes why she hadn’t bothered to seek out a male earlier, to enjoy this beautiful experience. Once, her precious children had been so small she could balance one at a time on her paw; soon, they’d be lanky teenagers tripping over their own paws. The eyes that she’d gazed into would lose their birth-color, and blaze the same heavenly blue as Drizzt’s. They would claim their birthright as true Tempests. And they wouldn’t bother her anymore.

Yes, that’s right—bother her. Oh, Kirastasia loved her children. Loved them very much. Probably more than she’d loved many things in her lifetime—and Kira had always been free and passionate in her affections. The fae possessed a massive, vivacious heart overflowing with oceans of adoration . . . and yet, that glorious heart was chipped somewhere, a tiny crack from which these immense feelings eventually leaked and drained away. One moment, she was rolling around with her puppies, nuzzling them between their small, perfect ears and breathing in their warm puppy-smell and rubbing her face on their magnificent soft fur and adding to their peeling giggles with her boisterous laughter. And then, unexplainably, they’d bore her. Irritate her. And that’s when the snowbird simply up and walked away, sometimes for days at a time, until she was ready to love her children again.

This morning, saturated with the scent of storm clouds and veiled with a sky of velvet blue, Kirastasia needed a moment to herself. She’d unwound her sleek frame away from the cocoon of peacefully sleeping bodies warming her den and trotted out past Wudubearo’s border without a backward glance. That was yesterday. Another twenty-four hours found her skipping through the woods and into the fields that swathed the pack’s southernmost walls—reinvigorated. A fresh energy bubbling in her veins. It felt as if she could breathe once more, unbound by the suffocating weight of children and their petty desires. Frost teased the atmosphere—winter giving its first warning on unsuspecting spring—and already the scales dappling the damsel’s limbs had started to grow dull. When she’d first grown her armor, it had horrified her with its alien brilliance: snowy-grey and dark-black beads that glimmered rainbow in the right light, beautiful and awful and strange. Eventually, Kira discovered that she did not hate the mutation that plagued her. No one had shown her aversion—the opposite, actually. Her snakeskin won her various awed compliments, and Kirastasia ate up attention voraciously. It worried her to imagine that her decorative limbs would lose their glimmering brilliance . . .

“Oh, my . . .”

Her paws had been crunching along the cold-crystaled grass when she saw it: a gleam of bright gold sluicing through the plains. Perked ears caught the music of running water—the river—and her amber eyes widened in surprise. No such metallic color shone in the sky . . . so whatever had set fire to the river must be in the river itself. Tail wagging with excitement, Kira raced forward to examine this new and fascinating development.

“Why—it’s another magical phenomenon!” Ribbons of purest molten gold spiraled in the raging current, glowing so brightly that Kira’s fur felt warmed by the light when she drew nearer. The first eruption of magic in Blossom Forest had been a violent, terrifying thing; this was lovely, and it pulled Kirastasia close—like a song whose music moved her. The longer she watched the river, the more magic flooded its waters. Ribbons turned into sinuous ropes. Ropes became the wriggling bodies of fish—gigantic monstrous things that struggled furiously against each other. Amazed squeals broke from Kira’s smiling maw. Her ivory hackles lifted like startled feathers along her spine. And then—a great splash of molten sunlight hit her right across the face.

Her laughter shattered into a high shriek. It felt as if she’d been sloshed with acid. The agony lasted only a heartbeat, yet that was enough to knock the wolfess flat on her haunches, clawing at her burning façade. Furious tears poured from tightly shut portals . . . and then it was over. The pain switched off, leaving her in a state of silent shock. What . . . had happened this time?