The crow led them straight towards the edge of the Talakova. Phoebe struggled to keep up as they forged after it together; a moon of captivity had left her weak, and she'd already fought herself almost to exhaustion while being towed away. Niccola had to force herself to slow for her sister. Each pause brought vivid images of Dinah closing down on Isaiah. Niccola did not want to know what the woman would do if she caught him. If the City Guard around him wasn't enough. If he too tried to sacrifice himself to capture or stop the necromantic.

She owed him an apology for giving him that very same fear. More than an apology, really. She wanted to prove she'd learned what he'd tried to tell her: that while old habits died hard, she was no longer attempting to throw herself away when people needed her alive. No longer trying to prove their worst impressions of her. In her search for agency, she had inadvertently given her doubters the very power she'd tried to wrest from them, and only now was her confidence seated where it belonged.

Unless Dinah told him, Isaiah didn't know she was alive. And Dinah might say the opposite if she thought it would crush him.

Would Isaiah fight back?

The question wrung Niccola's heart, hopes, and fears simultaneously. He'd never fought against his parents, but if he'd taken control of the Calisian City Guard, he must have. And he must have won. She could not—would not—entertain the possibility that he might have gone the other way, and repeated what his ancestors had done at the time of the Catastrophe. He was better than that. Better than his ancestors, his parents, and all the doubters that had ever conspired to make Niccola give up on whatever she and Isaiah had together. Niccola wanted to work with him again. Wanted to find that synchrony: that perfect complement between their natures and personalities, their skills and inclinations. Wanted to rule together from their respective—or combined—thrones.

She wanted him to be okay.

"Niccola!"

She'd pushed too far ahead again. Niccola waited for Phoebe to catch up, her own hands trembling on the half-drawn bow. She forced herself to relax its string again. It would be more efficient to stow it, but she didn't want to let it go. If Dinah appeared, she would let the first arrow fly immediately.

Unless that was too reckless. She would evaluate the situation, and then shoot.

Talakova be cursed, it was hard to unlearn her old habits.

Isaiah would call her out on it, she was sure. But she suddenly wanted him to. To keep her in check and remind her not to fling herself into danger for the rest of their—

No, she didn't even know how he felt about her now. She had to apologize first, and then they could talk it out together. Decide together what they wanted to be.

She'd called herself his partner.

It was the most stupid, useless, distracting thought to have cross her mind when she was chasing down a necromantic in the middle of the deep Talakova with her partner's—her partner's—life on the line. But it crossed her mind anyway, and sent heat shooting to her face. That was enough. Niccola arrested her speeding steps before Phoebe had to scold her, and locked her focus instead into scanning every inch of the forest in the shifting light and shadows of the lantern. And trying desperately not to fantasize about kidnapping Isaiah and taking him back to Varna with her and Phoebe, shooting his parents a profane gesture as she did so. Another thing to talk about. She stashed that one away, too.

"We're almost there," gasped Phoebe.

The first chips of daylight peeked through the canopy that replaced the sky. Niccola was sure her heart would implode if it hammered any harder. She clenched the bow and exchanged a look with Phoebe. They both slowed. Niccola moved and stopped, listening and watching ahead as morning light filtered down to fill the gloom and spare her guttering lantern. It wasn't much further before she heard the clink of metal-scaled armor through the trees ahead. She turned to Phoebe.

"I'm not staying behind," whispered her sister fiercely. Like she'd read Niccola's mind. "I'm not leaving you."

Niccola shut her mouth again. Habits. It was a risk to have Phoebe along, but a bigger one to leave her behind for Dinah to capture again. They'd scarcely gone another thirty paces, though, before the sight of red uniforms through the trees wiped all deliberations of safety from Niccola's mind.

Dinah had gotten here first.

The woman was surrounded. She stood in the middle of a clearing with a knife to Isaiah's throat, holding him hostage against the line of guards that ringed her. Two were attempting to negotiate. Their voices disguised Niccola's approach until the closest guard heard her and spun around. He recognized her.

"You'll want to be around that way," he whispered, nodding to the side of the circle that would bring Niccola face to face with Dinah and her captive.

Niccola turned to Phoebe again. "Now will you stay? I promise I won't do anything reckless."

Phoebe's resolve had softened again in the presence of so many reinforcements, as though the promise of safety threatened to break down the walls she'd put up to protect herself from the horror of everything she'd been through. Niccola gave the guard a meaningful look. He nodded back and slipped from the circle to stand with Phoebe, shield up and weapon ready to defend them both. Niccola herself circled the guards' ring. It was clear now that the squadron had been forewarned of her arrival. When she tapped their shoulders, their startles turned to the same covert greeting. They let her through.

Dinah's gaze snapped to Niccola the moment she stepped into the circle. It took only a glance to see the woman was desperate. A hysterical laugh escaped her as she pressed the knife tighter to Isaiah's throat.

"Brought your sister, I see," she said. "Thank you. Turn yourselves over now, or he dies."

So that was her plan. Leave Phoebe for Niccola to pick up, and then force them both to surrender once she had them together again. Niccola wondered now if Dinah was also on a timeline. Perhaps she realized she had to act now if she wanted to survive. Her cover in the Talakova was blown. Realms would evacuate their citizens and post their Guards at the Talakova's edge, ready to shoot Dinah on sight. Her game was up. And she was willing to make sacrifices to preserve herself now that she had nothing left to lose.

And how couldn't she, after so many years of running and hiding, abandoned by her realm and her family? Driven to extremism by fierce Calisian paranoia, image fixation, and suspicion of barrowers? Niccola felt for her, in a way. Dinah had been born into another time, and suffered under the Calisian palace's way of doing things. The only thing that stopped Niccola's sympathy there was how much more suffering Dinah had brought to others. How many people she must have killed over the years she'd spent poaching human life from the edge of the realms.

Niccola was not the only person with a bow trained on Dinah, but none of the guards had shot yet. Niccola searched Isaiah's face for any trace of a plan. His expression was carefully neutral. Dinah likely wouldn't kill him unless she had to. Not with so many Talaks lurking around, just waiting for the chance to receive prey and raise their baseline demands from someone who already gave them so much.

"Let him go," said Niccola, more to let Isaiah know she was here than to actually ask it of Dinah. She knew the woman would not comply.

It paid off. Isaiah, against all odds, shot Niccola a covert smile. And with that, she knew. He'd planned this—Dinah thought she had him, and he was playing along. And there was only one reason he could have told the Guards to hold off on firing, when there were several who could shoot Dinah in the back before she drew her knife across the prince's throat. Niccola swallowed hard. She knew what had to be done, but it was going to hurt fiercely all the same. She wished she had the luxury of choice. She wished, in a twisted way, that nobody cared for her so she could do whatever she wanted. But that was not the way the world or the Talaks worked. And seeing Isaiah here, smiling, waiting for her, only cemented it.

Dinah was firing off her demands again, but Niccola wasn't listening. Her mind worked to shape words into the code she would need to tell Isaiah what she was doing.

Dinah's laugh brought her back again. "Poor choice of you to pick this one to come rescue you."

She was talking to Isaiah. Heat boiled through Niccola's body to see him—and herself—so disrespected, but she could not let that anger show. Instead, she smiled. Dinah's words gave her the entry she needed. "Oh, I don't think anyone needs rescuing here. Just a kick in the seat to figure out what we really care about."

And with that, she lowered her bow. Isaiah's smile twitched wider: he'd caught the code. I'm here because I care about you. Dinah's face, as hoped, drained of colour. She wasn't reading vocal tone; she'd been apart from people for too long to do that. She wasn't reading the code. To her, Niccola looked dismissive—enough to make the Guards around her bristle. The trust they were willing to extend Isaiah on this was obvious in the fact that none cut Niccola down on the spot.

Dinah yanked the knife tighter, voice pitched up in mounting panic. "I'll kill him! Turn yourself and your sister over!"

Niccola shrugged. "I wouldn't give my left foot for him. If you want my cooperation, you picked the wrong target—you'd have done better with shooting birds. And you already gave me back my sister."

Isaiah used another yank from Dinah as cover to shift his foot aside. Niccola whipped her bow up and shot Dinah's unprotected foot. The woman screamed. Isaiah snatched her knife arm by the wrist and spun it around, freeing himself. He ducked to safety. Guards rushed to cover him. Dinah crouched and looked around her with the wild, trapped look of a cornered wildcat. Her eyes flicked to the canopy overhead. Niccola readied another arrow.

"Charge," said Isaiah.

The guards rushed inwards. Dinah leaped into the air, transforming as she did. Niccola drew the bowstring to her ear and shot the fleeing crow straight through the chest.