II: the heir of all my minutes, the victim of every ramification

And now at my homecoming, the barked elms stand up like sticks along the street.
I am a foot taller than when I left, and cannot see the dirt at my feet.
Yet sometimes I catch my vague mind circling with a glazed eye
for a name without a face, or a face without a name.

- Robert Lowell

Yenifer and Demetri walked through the desert for what felt like days, but the sky never lightened or brightened or grew pale, so Demetri knew that it was still the same night that they had run away from the rebellion. Yenifer had stolen bottles of water from the commissary, and she doled them out judiciously when it looked like Demetri was flagging, refusing to cast away the empties and clutching them to her instead as another girl in another world might hold a ragdoll. In the dark, their shoes sometimes struggled to find purchase on the sand; they had only a waning moon to light their way, and Demetri could not shake the feeling that there were coyotes and wolves and wild things in the darkness waiting to pounce. If it hadn't been for Yenifer, he knew that he would have turned back hours ago, but the prospect of fleeing, of going home, of seeing Liara and Mordred and Set and Ysabel, was too tantalising to resist.

Anytime he tried to ask Yenifer how they were going to get back to Angeles, she shrugged it off like a shawl. "My brother's gonna help us," she said, once and then again. "My brother's gonna help us."

Demetri didn't ask how she had ended up with the General, if she had a brother to go back to. He especially didn't ask how she expected to find him, after so long in the General's custody. He didn't want to be told that she didn't have an answer.

They took only one break, which was when Yenifer handed Demetri the small amount of food that she had stolen, and waved away his attempts to share. It was bread, oddly salty, and a little dry, like it had been baked days ago and left out in the air to harden. Nonetheless, Demetri tore into it, and Yenifer turned her back on him to watch the stars, with the cold intent of one who has an important job to do.

"Thank you," Demetri said, and when she shrugged, he said, "no, really. Thank you."

"For what?"

"For helping me to get home."

She went quiet. "That's okay. Everyone should get to go home."

Demetri was quiet as well. She sounded sad. "Are you going to go home? Afterwards?"

She shook her head.

"Why not?" Demetri thought. "You don't want to? Or you can't?"

She smiled, softly. "Pick one."

"But you have a brother." He waited for her to nod, though she seemed a little hesitant. "He won't let you stay?"

She just stared at the tiny bits of bread that were still on the ground in front of him.

"Yenifer."

She looked at him.

"You can stay," Demetri said. "In the palace. When we get back. If you want."

In the moonlight, her eyes were very dark. "Stay?"

"Of course." He thought of how Ysabel had treated the baby bird that they had found in the garden, the one with the broken wing and the fluffy down, the one that she had carried carefully in cupped hands and fed with tweezers for a month until it was strong enough to fly again. Ysabel loved broken things - she loved to heal that which needed healing, and she loved to love that which needed loving. He thought he wouldn't even need to ask. Of course Yenifer could stay. She was just a child, just a small girl in a big wild feral world. "We're friends, aren't we?"

She looked dubious. "Friends?"

Demetri nodded. They had spent so much time together, him and her and Gabriel. Yenifer had never been very nice to him, but she would not stand for anyone else to be mean to him either. He wondered if maybe she was pretending not to know what a friend was, as she had before, when they were cooped up in the shipping container and he had called Liara his friend, and said he missed her. For so long, he had thought of Gabriel and Yenifer as pale facsimiles of what Demetri had known at the palace, like when Mordred had smashed one of Ysabel's best plates and Liara had snuck in one of Mrs Lee's finest china, as though the queen would not realise that the new replacement was of a different size and pattern. But Demetri was starting to think that it had been a cruel comparison to make in the first place. Yenifer was not Liara, or Mordred, but she was Yenifer - sharp and bold and slightly wild, but she had pulled Demetri up hills and given him all of her water and offered him a way home and looked after him, here and when they had been held by the General. Surely that meant that they were friends?

"Friends," he agreed, and Yenifer looked away before he could see her expression. He hoped she was smiling.

The sky was lightening when they reached the outskirts of the city. In the light, Demetri could make out better how tired Yenifer seemed, how bedraggled her hair, how dark her eyes. She had rolled up her sleeves earlier, when they had been forced to scramble up some sand dunes and press themselves low amongst the tough grass, because Demetri had heard cars coming. She had a red mark on her arm, shaped like this: Ꮬ. Demetri didn't think it was a tattoo. It looked like a scar, but he couldn't tell if it had been cut there, or if someone had burned it there. Not for the first time, he wondered about Yenifer. She had always seemed like she had just been borne from the Wastes, like she belonged to them the same way a wild fox or a coyote might. But she had a brother. Did she? Demetri's head was a little fuzzy. He was tired, he thought. It was hard to hold on to his thoughts.

She seemed to know where she was going once they reached the city. Or at least, it seemed like a city. There were no glass skyscrapers, like in Angeles – everything here was grey and black and smoky. The tallest structures were the slender chimneys that started to belch smog into the air once the sky lightened and the sun began to rise. The ground was muddy and unpaved, and the houses had iron bars over their windows and symbols painted on their doors, like they were trying to ward something away. Yenifer said, "we're nearly there" and Demetri said, "where is there" and Yenifer just shrugged and rolled down her sleeves like she was afraid one of the bow-backed men that they were passing would see it and shout at her for it. Demetri wasn't feeling very well. He wasn't sure if it was the smog or the long walk, but the world had begun to seem very pale, and he could feel his hands and legs shaking a little bit.

There was a small, squat building. It didn't have bars over its windows; it had boards. The boards had the same letter on it: Ꮬ. Demetri wondered if that was Yenifer's family crest, like the one that was embroidered on all the napkins and cutlery in the palace that belonged to his family. Maybe that was what was on the front of all the houses. Maybe that was how she had known how to find her brother. She went up to the door, and knocked on the door, as hard as she could, which wasn't very hard at all, and shouted through the door something that sounded like "Arthur".

Her brother's name? The sound was wavering around Demetri, like he was listening to it through water. Had the bread been mouldy? Had the water been bad?

"Ya khochu uvidet' artura," she shouted.

She sounded tired, and a little proud of herself.

A shadow moved behind the window. Demetri could only see a tiny sliver of a person from between the boards, but something like fear settled over him. He took Yenifer's sleeve. "Maybe we should..."

The door swung open. A very tall and thin man stood on the threshold, with dark hair and very dark eyes. When Demetri tried to look up at him, black spots swum in front of his eyes. He said, "what?"

Yenifer pointed at Demetri and said, rather pointedly, "eto prints demetriy."

Demetri didn't remember much after that. When he woke, he could feel that his arms had been twisted roughly behind him. There was a dull throb in his shoulder. He thought he might have slept on it funny, but as he began to take in his surroundings, he realised that his wrists had been tied together – and so had his ankles. He was sitting on a hard wooden chair. When he tried to open his eyes, he could tell that the darkness was the result of something tied over his eyes, or maybe a bag over his head. Yes, he thought. It was hard to breathe. Not impossible. They had not taped over his mouth.

He could feel his heart, almost beating through his shirt.

He should have stayed with the General.

The sound was muffled; he thought the people arguing must have been in the next room over. There was one voice, low and impatient. That was the thin man who had answered the door. And there was another voice, higher and angry.

"I know the bounty. I saw the price. I want the money."

"Kakaya glupaya suka. I don't owe you anything."

"Don't call me that. Give me my fucking money, Artur."

Demetri strained to listen, hoping that they might say something - anything - that would help him. The rope was rubbing his wrists raw. He twisted his arms and legs, hoping that by some miracle his limbs would just slip free. Did they have anyone in the room watching him? What did they want with him? A ransom, maybe. He hoped. He knew that whatever it was, his Ysabel would pay it.

Or maybe they were just going to kill him.

"You know what? I'll let you in on a secret, little one. Everyone you ever meet is gonna try and take something from you. That's the way this works. They'll scrape away at your bones, drain your blood, cut a hole in you and try to fuck you through it. That's how this works, Yeni. That's how the world works."

Demetri hadn't known a girl his age could have a voice so cold. "You promised to give me money for him. You promised - "

"Promise isn't worth shit in this world."

"Bastard -"

"Listen, I know I told your sister I'd mind you -"

"Don't talk about my sister! You promised her you'd mind her, and you didn't! You didn't stop those fucking soldiers from doing what they did -"

There was a sudden, sharp crack. Demetri flinched at the sound. The thin man had hit her. Artur now spoke low and intense.

"Children shouldn't run their mouths on something they know nothing bout."

Yeni's voice was defiant, but Demetri could tell she was speaking through restrained tears. "I know all about it, you didikai bastard. I was there when they – when they carved her up, when they - "

"Then you know what I have planned for you if you stay." He sounded like he was starting to smile. "You were right to run, Yenifer. If you were smart, you would have stayed away."

"Nimue – "

Her words were cut off by a yelp. Demetri slumped back against his chair.

"Take her out back, Lance." Artur's voice was venomous. "She needs to be reminded." He sighed, but there was no sadness there. "The desert air always does tend to spoil cargo."

Over the days that followed, the bag was taken off Demetri's head for only two occasions: once, when a man came in to shave off his hair, leaving little blond curls littering the concrete ground around him, and then when it came time to feed him, when a brute-faced man with broad shoulders slapped a bowl of something grey in front of him. They would not untie him so that they could feed him; instead, Yenifer would come in and be told in that guttural language to help him eat. The first time Demetri saw her again, he saw that they had cut her hair and blackened her eye and given her two long cuts on her right cheek, perfectly parallel to one another, like they had been purposefully carved there. He was angry enough to think that she deserved it, and turned his head away, and would not acknowledge her until she dropped the spoon back into the bowl and walked back out of the room.

She came back once a day, always ushered back in by the same brute-faced man, always after an argument with someone in the next room over. After two days, Demetri was hungry enough to eat, but neither of them spoke, so stiffly did they move under the cold gaze of the guard at the other end of the room. Demetri wondered if they were feeding Yenifer. She looked smaller and dirtier each time that she appeared on the threshold.

At least, Demetri thought that it was once a day. There was no natural light in this space. He couldn't tell if it was day or night, how many days had gone by. He thought that Artur mustn't have asked for a ransom yet. If he had asked, he would have got his money already. Then he would have to let Demetri go. So he mustn't have asked yet.

Once, he tried to ask the guard what was happening, if his Ysabel knew where he was, how much longer he would be here for. The man responded as though Demetri had called him a nasty name – he rushed across the room, grabbed him by the neck, and began to hit him, in the face and in the torso. The chair tipped; the guard had kicked him in the ribs, hard enough that Demetri had felt a crack, and then backed up and called for alena. Demetri had lain there, his head spinning, his lungs burning, every bone hurting, until the guard had come back to haul up his chair. As well as food that evening, his ties had been loosened to let Yenifer bind up his ribs, and put a splint on his fingers. He had been surprised by how gentle her hands were. Her lip had burst; she had bruises on her arms in the shape of fingers. She had said to him, very softly, "stay strong, demusha".

After that, they hit and hurt him a lot more often. Demetri supposed that meant Artur hadn't got his money yet. He must have been angry. Yenifer wasn't let in to help him unless they broke something, or made him bleed very badly. His food portions got smaller, a little more infrequent.

Sometimes Artur came in as well. He always wore a waistcoat, or a shirt with braces, like he was always on his way to or from a formal meeting. He managed to make the ensemble look like a thug's uniform.. Maybe it was the sharp planes of his face, how hungry he always looked, the pallor in his skin and the darkness of his eyes and his hair. He would sit on the floor and order that Demetri's ties be loosened so that they could play a hand or two of cards, playing for nothing and winning nothing. Most of the time, Demetri struggled to even understand the rules. Artur would speak a little, ask Demetri if they had fed him, complain about the cargo or the clients, and address his guards in that guttural language of the wasteland brotherhood. Demetri thought this was the Gildas man's way of receiving progress reports, just as Trajan held audiences in the throne room.

Once, there was a battle outside. He could hear explosions, could hear shouting, could hear gunfire, and thought that it might be his father's forces come to get him, or maybe even the General looking for him, and in that moment he would take either. He started to shout, knowing that no one could hear him, and this time when the guard came back he knocked a tooth out of Demetri's head and put a needle in his arm and when Demetri woke up, he was lying flat and could feel the world moving around him. A truck, he thought. They had put him in a truck like livestock.

Yeni was there as well, looking pale and drawn. "They're going to kill us," she said, rather dazedly, and then, as though she had forgotten what she said the first time, "they're never going to let us die."

Demetri didn't want to talk to her. He forced himself upward and blinked black spots from his eyes. When Yenifer looked at him, he could see that someone had burned her cheek, an angry red scab stretching from eye to ear. It looked like someone had held her by the hair and put her face to a stove.

Something glinted in her hand. She had a piece of broken glass gripped tightly in her palm, so tightly that tiny rivulets of blood were streaming across the surface.

"I'm sorry, Demetri." Her voice was dull. "I'm sorry I didn't… help you. Like I should have."

Demetri just stared at her, and even a boy as young as he could have some idea of what she was considering.

"I'm sorry." Yeni didn't seem the type to cry, but her voice sounded thicker than usual now. "I know that doesn't mean much. But. I am sorry."

There was a small, spiked knot of anger in his chest, strangling his lungs, but he thought of Ysabel, and of his mother, and of his father, and what they would have told him to do. Forgive, his mother had always said, forgive. Forgiveness is more about you than the other person.

Well, he thought. His mother wasn't here.

"I don't care that Artur tricked you," he said. "But you shouldn't... don't do that." He was looking at the glass. "There's... you shouldn't. You don't deserve to die."

She ran her sleeve across her face. The piece of glass caught the light and seemed to wink at Demetri with malevolent promise. "He tricked me into giving you away rather than selling you."

That almost made him laugh.

"Okay," Demetri said. "You have a point." His own voice was sounding very cold now. Almost strangled. "Okay."

"Nothing about this," Yenifer said. "Is okay."

As it turned out, there was no need for a great escape. There came a day that Artur Gildas returned, and took the blindfold off Demetri, and told him, "we are going for a walk. And if you try to run, I will kill you."

And Demetri believed him, so out they went for a walk.

They were no longer in the barren, arid wastes, but a city - not a nice city, certainly, nothing compared to the glamour of Angeles. Artur pointed out buildings that he owned - and he was a rich man, to own so many, and a powerful man, judging by the number of people that scrambled to escape his path - and then when they came to a street vendor he said to Demetri, "order something," and with the threat still ringing in his ears, Demetri ordered something and Artur brought him to the canal where he sat and ate and watched the water churn in the wake of the speedboats moving up and down the street. After so long blinded and starved, being out in the light and permitted to eat made Demetri want to cry.

Artur said, "everything you have seen today belongs to me. This whole city belongs to me. Yenifer belongs to me. And you belong to me. Like a pack of dogs."

Demetri had been silent.

"A disobedient dog gets tied in the yard. Gets beaten. Starved to make it hungry." Artur had crouched down beside Demetri, and the boy had found himself staring at the thin man's reflection in the rippling surface of the water rather than look him in the eye. "What do you think happens to obedient dogs, Demetri?"

Demetri had just looked out across the water. He couldn't escape the feeling that Artur was about to put a bullet in the back of his head and push him into the water. Father, he thought. Ysabel. Set. Mordred. Liara.

"I'll put you back in the hole to think about that, shall I?"

Demetri could not help but clench his jaw.

"No?" Artur had smiled. "You have an answer already?" He pointed to some of the young lads on the other side of the canal, who were moving crates from a truck. Shaved heads. Tattoos, the same as Yenifer's brand, but placed more delicately, deliberately, less painfully. "Put it this way. You want to be them? Or..." He pointed into the canal. There was a shoe floating by, close enough for Demetri to stretch out a leg and touch it with his foot. "You want to be them?"

"That's not," Demetri said. "A real question."

Artur put a hand on Demetri's shoulder, and squeezed hard. "Now you're getting it, demusha."

He worked for Artur after that. Did you know that? Demetri worked for Artur for years. One, two, three years. After a while, he stopped missing his brother and his Liara. After a while, he stopped crying for his father and for his stepmother. After a while, he stopped dreaming that the General would find him. After a while, hunger and pain married in his marrow and became a new and constant companion, side-by-side with suspicion and savagery. One, two, three years, and maybe more, because really, who was counting at that point?

And he never told anyone how he escaped.

Oh, later on he told Gabriel some story about befriending the guard, convincing him to help him get home, and abandoning him at the Angeles border, slipping away into the crowd. Gabriel wouldn't believe him. Gabriel knew the cost had been greater than that.

But he did, finally, escape.

Not with Yenifer. Yenifer ran without him. He should have expected that, but it still sort of hurt, to hear that the little dark-haired girl had disappeared back into the Wastes. Artur had sent men after her, and they had come back saying that she was not to be found, not amongst the snakes and not amongst the coyotes, not amongst the rebels and not amongst the gangsters, not on the earth and not under it, not so far as they could tell.

No, Demetri escaped - at last - on his own.

With his shaved head and his blackened eye and the too-big shirt, he looked like any of the street kids that hung around the rebellion, offering to carry ammunition and supplies for a meagre allowance per day, to shine shoes and wash clothes, to do any small job that might garner warm food and a roof over their head. The city was big enough to support a meagre amount of traffic, and hanging around the intersections saw a number of cars come and go. Demetri hung around with dour eyes, watching closely, hoping that he might be able to find a civilian to hitch with, hoping he could do so before Artur realised he was gone.

The truck that rolled carefully up beside him shortly before dusk did not disgorge rebellion soldiers, or any of Artur's henchmen. Instead, the dust-encrusted window was rolled down, and a boy stuck his arm and head out, looking casual. He could not have been much older than Demetri, just in his early teens. "Easy there. You look like you've had a rough time of it." He cast his eyes across him, the bruises and wounds still etched deeply on his skin.

Demetri stared forward. "Yeah," he said laconically.

The boy smiled. "The name's Täj," he said, rather gregariously. He gestured in the direction. "You headed towards Pongoton? It's such a hot day. I can give you a ride, if you want."

Pongotown was a hub. Pongotown would have Crown forces. Pongotown might even have a commander stationed there, with a direct line to the king. "Sounds good."

"You got bags?"

"Nah."

He climbed in. They set off. Demetri was trying to remember if he had ever seen Täj before, hanging around any of Artur's warehouses. He could not see the Ꮬ symbol anywhere on his skin.

"What's your business in Pongotown?"

"Visiting my brother," Demetri said automatically. "Lee."

Täj didn't say anything for a little while, but Demetri could tell that he wasn't completely sold on this story.

"They have a checkpoint set up outside the city," Täj said, after a very long moment. "Just outside the city proper. You won't get through without papers."

Demetri's brow furrowed. "What makes you think I don't have papers?"

"Do you?"

His silence was answer enough.

Täj seemed to be trying to decide whether or not to trust him. "My little sister works at a diner just outside Pongotown," he said, finally. "I'm sure you can crash in the backroom for a few hours while I sort something out for you."

"Why would you help me?" What ulterior motive could he have? Would he try to sell Demetri, just as Yenifer had?

"Do you need help?"

"Why would you break the law for a stranger?"

Täj smiled to see the suspicion on Demetri's face. "We do not recognise the laws of the Crown or the Kingdom."

Demetri frowned. "You guys are Anchorites?"

Täj nodded. "My people have lived beyond Illéa since the damn kingdom was founded. This whole rebellion is just a nuisance, if you ask any of our elders. They've tried before and they'll try again, but the Crown is latched on to this land as tight as any parasite."

Parasite, thought Demetri.

"Tayna says that she sees more fake papers than real ones, where she works. I'm sure she can rustle something up for you. You seem like a kid in trouble. You should be allowed to get as far away from that trouble as you can."

Kindness? Demetri almost smiled. Well, he didn't trust it a damn bit. Even as Täj spoke, he eased his hand into his pocket and wrapped his hand around the butt of the revolver he had stolen from Artur, right before he ran.

He held it like he knew he might only get one shot off, if it came down to it.

And it was good that he did, because Yenifer pulled a gun on him when she saw him. She was behind the bar, cleaning glasses with an taller girl, and before Demetri could blink, he had his revolver pointed at her and she had a pistol aimed at him, and the boy who had introduced himself as Täj was shouting "hey hey hey" and the taller girlwas jumping back and throwing up her hands and shouting something in a language Demetri could not speak. Yenifer was calling Demetri a dog and Demetri was calling Yenifer something decidedly nastier, and all in all it took five minutes for either of them to lower their guns, and even then Demetri could sense that Yenifer was keeping her finger wrapped around the trigger, just behind the bartop, ready for a quick draw if it came down to it.

Täj knew better than to ask. He indicated Yenifer with a wave of his hand ("you two seem to know each other") and introduced the other girl behind the bar as his younger sister, Vardi Tayna, who was, Täj said, sure to be able to help them with papers. Tayna went away to rustle up some food for the small, angry boy in the doorway and Yenifer skulked along the staircase at the back of the bar, looking rather like a trapped rat, casting glares at Täj and Demetri alike.

There was some small part of Demetri glad to see that she was alive. There was a larger part of him glad to see that she was alive, because now he would get the chance to kill her.

Tayna returned with soup and a whole loaf of bread ("don't eat to quickly or you'll split your stomach") and let Demetri tear into it while Täj went to make enquiries about papers, good enough to get him to Angeles. Täj had been enlisted, Tayna explained, and fled; they were all fugitives here, in a way.

At that, Yenifer scowled and went into the backroom to move kegs around very noisily. Demetri burned his mouth on the soup and listened to Tayna sing off-key as she rearranged split bottles on the shelves. They didn't have a spare room, she told Demetri, and wouldn't have given him one if they had it, but later that night they put a blanket and a pillow into the storeroom, which was warm and smelled of fresh barley, and let Demetri settle there with the promise of escape in the morning.

He was unsurprised that Yenifer came to him in the night, unsurprised and somewhat gratified, but what did surprise him was that she wasn't carrying a knife when she did. The door swung open - light spilled in - and Yenifer came in, and sat down with her back to the wall, and said, "god, they broke you" and he said, "nice to see you too" and she said, "would you believe me if I told you I thought about going back for you?", and he said "no", and she said "every day and every night I thought about it", and he said, "can you even tell when you're lying anymore?" and she said, "ah, so you've learned", and handed him a bottle of whiskey she had stolen from the bar.

In the morning, Tayna came in with fresh-squeezed orange juice and more homemade bread, this time fresh from the oven and steaming into the crisp morning air when Demetri ripped it apart with his bare hands. She said, "there are royal patrols outside. Maybe best you stay hidden," and Demetri, still tasting liquor on his tongue and breath, had to bite back the easy response that a royal patrol was exactly what he was looking for. But they wouldn't recognise him like this, he reasoned. They wouldn't believe him if he claimed his own name.

Tayna shovelled eggs and bacon onto his plate with another warning note to split his stomach, and as she left, a vaguely hungover Yenifer made a sound like a dying thing and rolled over under the blanket to set her head against the cool concrete wall and say, "she didn't make me any breakfast."

Demetri flicked a bit of bacon at her. It hit her hair, and then the ground, and Yenifer was shameless about picking it up, flicking bits of dirt off, and eating it in one piece.

"You are disgusting."

"It's called survival, demusha."

It sounded like a curse, the way she said it, and indeed it may have been, for no sooner had she finished speaking than the door to the bar was kicked in and they heard Tayna screaming and soldiers ordering everyone out, out, out, into the square, now.

Survival indeed.

They separated the groups out into boys and girls, and Demetri was pulled away from Yenifer again, and he was about to shout for her when he saw the man patrolling along the lines and all thoughts of calling out utterly fell from his mind. Tall and broad-shouldered, bearing the epaulettes of general on a coat of the deepest moss green colour, this man had pale white-blonde hair and pale green eyes, like the colour of his coat filtered through ice. He had a mouth that Demetri was more accustomed to see turned up in a wry smile, and broad hands criss-crossed with scars that Demetri had spent hours tracing and of whose stories he had often been regaled, and, around his neck, the golden wedding ring that had belonged to King Trajan Dunin.

The golden ring that had belonged to his father.

A new gold ring glittered on his finger, however.

Jostled on all side by villagers, Demetri had to elbow his way through the crowd in an effort to get closer to the front, shouting for his uncle, but Set's gaze swept impatiently past him, and before Demetri could call out for a final time, he heard the commander speak simply and tersely. "Leave none alive."

Again, any time Demetri told this story, he stopped talking here. Most people realised the scar on his neck must have something to do with this memory, that he must have earned it in this time between the order and the aftermath, but no one ever dared ask.

That was another secret shared only between him and Yenifer, one of many. Whenever he spoke to Gabriel about it, the story skipped from the order rang out straight to the next part, which always started, I found Yeni in a mass grave, pretending to be dead.

They both crawled out of a sort of damnation that day, and wound up sitting in debris, remembering abruptly that they were children and the world was large and there were scythes swinging.

"My uncle," Demetri said dazedly. "Set. He... they killed all those people."

Yenifer's face was small, and pale, and drawn, and unsurprised. "This is war, demusha."

Demetri thought of Uzohola, of Gabriel, of the other young boys and rebels that he had left behind in the Wastes. Would Set have murdered them just as coldly, with just as little care? "This is war," he echoed.

"We have to go." Yenifer was searching over her shoulder. Demetri wondered where Täj was. If he had got away. If Tayna had got away as well. If Set had murdered them all and dumped them all in the same mass grave, despite their kindness, despite their refusal to participate in any of this bloody madness. Was Täj already rotting beneath the earth? "We have to go."

"We?"

Yenifer nodded. Her fingers dug into his sleeve, very tightly. "We," she said firmly, and pulled Demetri from the ground like she was dragging him out of hell itself.

And years later, when Ysabel asked Mordred how, how, how did he know that the false king was not his lost brother, he had to bite his tongue against spitting out the venomous words, about spilling out all the poison that he knew: that Set had murdered his nephew in a little dusty outpost in the Wasteland years ago, mistaking him for just another rebel in the wastes, and that Demetri was rotting under the earth somewhere, bones bleached, maggots in his chest and flowers growing from his skull.

No, Mordred kept that to himself.