The next day, the watchful party arrived at the drop zone for Marshgate. It was a clearing on the road. There were a few tents set up around it. It was a place for the healthy to rest when they came to drop off food, or, in their case, medical supplies. It was deserted.

  “When I go into the village, I’ll become part of the quarantine,” Reign said. “We’ll just unload the supplies into this tent, and I’ll come back and get them as needed.”

  Len looked at him cautiously. “Don’t you think we should wait to see how they receive you in the village? I mean, someone could still want to get rid of you.”

  “I haven’t been murdered by people suffering from the plague yet, so I feel pretty safe about it. Actually, I’m more worried about you driving home with Crimson. You’ll likely get into another fight with a demon on the road.”

  “She can handle it,” Len said confidently.

  “I’m sure she can,” Reign replied, getting his letter for Olive out of his coat. “Crimson, I was wondering if you would do me a favor? I promised I’d leave this note in the herb greenhouse at the Earl’s. Do you think you could leave this on the table there when you get back?”

  Crimson looked at the envelope that was addressed to Olive. Biting her lips together, she took it. “Olive?” she said. “I didn’t think that was an herb.”

  “It’s not, but it would mean a lot to me if you would deliver it.”

  She nodded, but with only the slightest movement of her head. “Are you sure you wouldn’t rather give it to Len since he isn’t going to be attacked by demons every fifteen minutes?”

  Reign nodded. “I’ll trust it with you. You’ll want to go home to your father and family. You’ll get back to them for sure.”

  Crimson put the letter in her pocket and started hauling medical supplies like she wasn’t a spectral being, but an ordinary soldier who had a job to do. Reign watched her. It felt strange to see her move like that. It was like using a solid gold blade to dig a hole. She was so much better than grunt labor, but the fact that she was willing to do it made her completely lovable, if only for a moment.

  The next day, Len and Crimson left early. They took the cart and left Missy with her hurt ankle for Reign at the drop zone. Reign had entered the town the night before. He had spent the night in surgery, removing limbs when it was too late to save them and wiping the blood from his gloves. He had missed the exact moment Len and Crimson rode away, but he still walked out to the drop zone and saw their departing wheels and heads as they disappeared down the road by which they had come.

  He waved to them, even though it was too late to say a proper goodbye. He was about to go back into the town when he saw something floating on the wind toward him, almost like it was carried by invisible fingers. It did not land in his hands, but several yards away. It was close enough for him to recognize it. It was his letter to Olive.

  A horrified sound escaped his lips. How could that be? Crimson was not careless! He could see her; she was far ahead, but not so far ahead that he didn’t think to do something that was completely out of line.

  Dropping to his knees beside Missy, he removed his glove and put his bare hand on the horse’s ankle. Unleashing an unhealthy dose of spirit energy, the horse would feel nothing of her pain, and everything inside would be wholly mended, if only for a few minutes. That was all he needed. He put his glove back on, mounted Missy, and tore off after Crimson and Len.

  Galloping, he soon caught up to them, but he was much further away from Marshgate than he had expected.

  “Crimson!” he called.

  She turned.

  Len pulled up on the reins, and they waited for Reign to catch up to them.

  “You forgot this!” he huffed, out of breath, as he handed her the envelope. It was marked with blood.

  Crimson looked at him wearily, and he suddenly realized that her eyes were a good deal redder than usual. Her eyelids were red, like she had been crying, but that was ridiculous to Reign. She couldn’t be crying. She was a warrior of the highest degree. Why would she cry?

  “Can I even take that?” she asked, like she hardly had the energy to hold her head up. “If it’s covered with the plague?”

  “The plague is not a blood thing. It’s a fungus thing. It grows between toes and under hair. The blood of a plague-infected person is not a problem. This is no more infected than I am. Please. I don’t know how you dropped this, but it is very important to me that you deliver it.”

  Crimson took it between her fingers, and to Reign’s ultimate surprise, she ripped it to shreds and let the fragments of it fall to the ground.

  His eyes were enormous as he breathed the question, “Why did you do that?”

  “It was a letter you wrote to your lover?” she asked, her face becoming puckered and pained.

  Reign took a step forward. “How did you know that? It was unopened.”

  Then, right then, Reign saw the girl who was supposed to be half-demon ugly cry in heaving gasps in front of him. He didn’t understand. Massive tears flowed down her face in waves that were almost oceanic on the shores of her cheeks. Wasn’t she supposed to be indestructible? Was she envious of the other girl? Had her confession the other day meant so much?

  He was looking to Len for guidance when a single rift in space and time opened to reveal a world that was gold and orange. Three figures stepped through it. One stretched, the other yawned, and the last one was someone Reign recognized. It was the demon from the other night. He had finally arrived.

  “Which is the one we’re supposed to look out for?” one of the demons asked. “Is it this guy in the black mask?”

  “No, it’s her,” the familiar demon said as he turned and closed the rift behind them.

  Crimson turned to them. She had actual snot dripping from her nose.

  The two new demons looked at her, and they laughed. “Her? But she’s nothing but a baby! Look at her cry!”

  “She took one of my horns off,” the demon replied, and sure enough, his horn was completely gone. He only had one sticking out a few inches over his eyebrow.

  Crimson gathered the part of her hood and wiped her eyes and nose with it. Then she started loading up her sleeves and notching her crossbow.

  The demons watched with amusement.

  “Can’t you guys do this on a different day?” Reign asked the demons peevishly.

  “I’m confused why we’re doing this at all,” a demon with horns like a mountain goat curling around his ears said. “I’m missing a bonfire for this.”

  “Yeah, Tregger,” the demon with spiraling horns said. “Why are we here?”

  “I’m telling you. I have not been bested in four hundred years. What she did was not normal.”

  Spiral horns started picking at his ear, while curling horns eyed Reign with suspicion. “Hey, I know you, don’t I?” he questioned.

  “You don’t,” Reign answered coldly.

  “Yeah, I think I do.”

  “You’re thinking of another necromancer with a black mask on his face,” Reign insisted sharply.

  “Am I? All necromancers wear black masks. I know,” he said with a very goat-like move of his jowls. His sideways pupils regarded Reign for a minute before he said, “I guess I am. Tregger, I’m done with this. That girl is not a warrior. She’s a woman, and she’s crying. I would have been fine with this if she were, you know, scarier. She’s not scary.”

  “Yeah, she looks like an incredibly fine athlete, but a fight today would be influenced too strongly by her emotions,” spiral horns commented. “Like she’d kick your butt if it was on a different day, or she’d rip your throat out because you picked a fight today. Either way, I think the smart thing to do would be to take her picture and distribute it around the Astral plane so she’s dealt with by the proper person at the proper time.”

  Those words meant that it was the exact wrong thing to say on the wrong day to say it in front of Reign. He couldn’t let the demons back to the Astral Plane if they were going to distribute pictures and start a hunting party.

  Stolen story; please report.

  “Fine,” Reign said, closing his eyes briefly in irritation. He pulled off his gloves and put them in the back pockets of his pants. “I’ll fight you, or you, or all three of you.”

  “It’s just a picture,” spiral horns said. “Don’t be so fussy. How do you know it won’t make her famous in the best way? I hear Amora is thinking of giving up the demon goddess racket in Sap Stone. How do you know your little girl here couldn’t take her place?”

  Reign shook his head in disagreement. “She doesn’t want to be like you, and even if I die, she won’t be.” Reign finished speaking and put his hand out to make a small rift in the Astral plane of his own. He pulled a broadsword free from the translucent waves and closed the trapdoor in dimensions. He knew what was at stake for Crimson, and even though she had literally just torn up his chance to send that particular letter to Olive. No matter what, she hadn’t ended all his chances to be with Olive. There was still hope.

  “Okay, now this is more interesting,” curling horns said. He looked at his companions. “Three on one, or can I just take him?”

  “Three on two,” Crimson said. This time, she had strapped long metal claws to her wrists, and she was stepping forward, lurching a little as her tears were making her whole face redder.

  “Darling, sit this one out and get a grip on yourself,” spiral horns encouraged. “We already said we’re giving you a pass today.”

  “I don’t want a pass,” she said, grinding her teeth together. “This man is a doctor, and he has patients to see. He shouldn’t even be here, and I won’t let you hurt him, no matter how much he has hurt me.”

  “What about that guy back there?” Curling horns demon questioned. “Does he want to get in on this?”

  “Can’t you just leave him there so he can bury me after you’re finished butchering me?” Crimson replied, trying to hide her eye-roll from Len.

  “I like that,” Curling horns boy said. “I like that a lot. I like her. It’s too bad we have to kill her and her doctor.”

  “Let’s get him first,” the other demon replied. “So she can watch. Can you imagine how she’ll cry then?”

  “Can’t be uglier than what we’ve already seen.”

  “Shut up!” the demon called Tregger said. “You take him. I’ll keep her busy.”

  The first blow to their brawl was Crimson uppercutting the demon with the spiral horns. No one except Tregger had expected her to make such a decisive move. He had moved to stop her, but he was simply not fast enough. She was wearing claws with ten-inch blades on them, and two of the three blades went through his jaw and straight up into his brain. The blood was minimal for a fatal wound. She fended off Tregger by putting out her right hand to block him, which made three distinct cuts across his cheek. He backed off, and she shook the demon from her hand. He fell to the ground in a heap while Len cheered from the safety of the cart.

  Crimson left the curling horns demon for Reign and went after Tregger. He had summoned a shield from the Astral plane and was using it to fend her off. The demon had a long sword as well, but a lot of good it did him. He wasn’t getting any hits in.

  On the other side of the road, Reign was not doing well with the demon with the curling horns. Not only was Reign very rusty when it came to combat, but he had known when Tregger appeared the first time that he was not a good match for a demon of Tregger’s strength. Yes, Reign could fight a demon as he also existed in both spaces, but he didn’t have the boost they received from the demon god they served. He glanced at Crimson. He had to fight harder!

  The demon Reign faced was a blunt force trauma kind of fighter and had not summoned a weapon at all. Reign was fending him off using his broad sword as a shield. So far, it had been effective.

  From Len’s perspective from the cart, Reign and his opponent were at a stalemate. He thought they were very equally matched sparring partners, and from Reign’s stance and control with his weapon, the fact that he was hanging on by a thread was not apparent to Len.

  Crimson had better control in her fight, but she was going to wear herself out if she kept attacking with such fury without scoring any real points off her opponent. The only time she’d really hit him was when she sliced his cheek.

  The fighter who broke the soonest was the goatman with the curling horns. He kept glancing down at his friend, who lay dead on the ground. In one of those moments, Reign hacked off three of his fingers, which was the exact moment when the trouble began. He saw his mutilated hand, jumped backwards, and started performing a ritual which would open a much larger rift to the Astral plane. Reign ran to stop the ritual, but he wasn’t fast enough.

  In a peculiar turn of events, an enormous cat leaped and clawed the goatman with such fury that he was thrown out of his summoning circle, and as he bounced across the distance until he lay unmoving next to his friend.

  Reign looked at the cat and wondered exactly what he had to fear from the new arrival. The cat was not looking back at him; he was moving fast to catch Crimson’s opponent, but did not make it in time to stop Tregger from again vanishing behind the cloak of the Astral plane.

  Crimson screamed in frustration at having lost her prey again. She was crying again, and her face was so red it was hard to tell which hue of red was the swollen blush of her temper tantrum or the splatter of blood on her face. She did not attack the cat. She let her arms fall wide and fell flat on her back. She screamed again, the sound piercing the air in unbearable decibels.

  The cat had a strong reaction to the sound and fled the scene to hide behind a tree until Crimson screamed herself out. She stood up and yanked on the straps holding her claws in place. “I can’t even!” she yelled. “I can’t even!” She stepped over to the two very dead demons and kicked them until she was all kicked out.

  Reign just let her kick, and instead followed the cat to where it was haunched beside the tree. It was then that he saw that the enormous cat had not come alone. There was a young woman with it. The girl was the most beautiful dead person he had ever seen. Her eyes were liquid black, and her skin was a grayish pink blush he had only dreamed a woman could possess. Just under her jaw was written the words, “Don’t get too attached, handsome.”

  “Thank you for your intervention,” Reign said to the cat, who promptly became a man sitting with a fern branch covering his groin. His hand held his head like he was undone by something that had just happened.

  “Were those demons of Taurus responsible for the outbreak of plague here? Is that why you were fighting them?” the man asked.

  “I have no idea if they started the plague. They were here to kill her,” Reign answered, pointing toward Crimson with his chin.

  The dead girl stepped forward. “I’m Bianca, and this is Tris. We’re looking for an explanation as to why the plague is here.”

  Reign looked confused. “I don’t know if there is an explanation.”

  “But you’re a plague doctor, aren’t you?” Tris demanded.

  Reign nodded.

  Crimson was still carrying on her temper tantrum on the other side of the road. Len was standing with her, trying to stop her from further mutilating the corpses of the fallen demons.

  “We should find somewhere else to talk,” Reign said, watching the dust fly in the air with Crimson’s every stomp.

  “The plague spreads the way all fungus spreads. It matures as a plant, and if you can remove it before it lets off its spores, then you’re home free,” Reign explained. “But if the root system gets too entrenched in a person’s body, then the only thing to do is to cut the limbs off.”

  “I’m sure that’s very comforting for the person who gets it on their head,” Tris said cuttingly, as he paced back and forth in the tiny village of tents that made up the drop zone for Marshgate. He was dressed, wearing clothes that were very characteristic of a prince from Forest Spire, but very off-brand for a prince from Sun Vine. All cravat with buttons down the centre of the chest with no cross-over tie at the front. Tris flicked the loose cravat out of his face. “But how did the plague start?”

  “It’s a fungus!” Reign stressed. “Lots of fungi grow on people.”

  “Look,” Bianca interrupted. “He’s concerned that it didn’t spread to Frondwick on its own. A witch approached him and wanted him to commit a war crime for her here as an Archpriest of Tigrix.”

  “As a cat?” Len laughed.

  Reign rolled his eyes. “She’s referring to the act of torching an entire kingdom with a flick of my tail.”

  “Dang!” Len explained.

  Tris stopped pacing, crouched, and rested his elbows on his knees. “The witch couldn’t control me, but I don’t think she gave up on the idea of conquering Frondwick the easy way. I think she found a different way to go about it than setting it on fire. She found someone else to help her. So, when did the outbreak take place? Was it fewer than nine months ago?”

  “It was five months ago,” Reign confirmed.

  “So, who can encourage this kind of fungus to spread?”

  Reign groaned. “Anyone. That doesn’t even take a magician. Someone knits some socks and dips the toes in a draught of the stuff, then they sell it, or even leave it by the side of the road. They do the same thing with a hat. People are itchy, but they’re itchy anyway, so they don’t notice the change at first. You even say the word ‘itchy’ and everyone…” Reign paused in his speech and watched all four of them start scratching some part of their head. “If you’re worried you’re infected, go wash up!”

  “I think I will,” Len said, disappearing from the group.

  “I need to find who did this,” Tris insisted, getting up again and pacing like a caged animal.

  The others spoke more, but Bianca had stopped listening. She had been thinking about something they could do, but she didn’t like to suggest it. With one hand, she absently undid the buttons on her cuff. Using her index finger, she pushed up her sleeve two inches and saw two words written in black on her wrist.

  ‘Kill her,’ it read, and Bianca didn’t need her skin to specify.

  “What was that?” Crimson said, speaking to Bianca for the first time. “What did you just do?”

  That caught Reign and Tris’s attention.

  “I was just thinking that we should go after the witch, Tris. Maybe we shouldn’t have left her in that castle. Maybe we should have…”

  “Gone back inside the prison after I waited so long to flee it?” Tris supplied angrily. “The witch pushed you through the trap door and slammed it shut. There’s no way she was trapped there.”

  Bianca, fed up with feeling like he was talking down to her, got up and started yelling with ladylike gusts of breath. “She didn’t stay there! We already confirmed that her plan has not changed by coming here and seeing the conditions. She is bringing Frondwick to its knees. We need to find her. Where do we start?”

  “At a ball,” Tris answered. “Unless she has completely forsaken all attempts at political grace, she will be at a ball trying to keep the wheels of her country greased.”

  “And where is the next ball?” Bianca flared.

  “It will be in Sun Vine,” Tris said drolly. His expression was curious. All of the most awkward parts of their plans were to take place in Sun Vine. Was he looking forward to the myriad of lies they were planning to tell? Unless she was mistaken, he was.

  Bianca suddenly smiled. It was the way all princesses were taught to smile, even when they hated what was about to happen. She was nervous. His way of doing things would change her reputation forever. A girl couldn’t go through life as a maiden, never letting anything happen to her, but Bianca was nervous. These things never affected a man’s honor the way they did a woman’s. Tris hoped he would be careful enough not to drag her name through the mud.

  “I wish you weren’t being so secretive about which witch was doing all this,” Reign complained. “I have known a lot of witches. I’m particularly unpopular with them because what they do to cure the plague is at odds with what I do. If you wouldn’t mind, a name would be most useful.”

  Tris and Bianca hesitated.

  “Rose Trine,” Crimson said, reading the words off the edge of Bianca’s ear.

  “I know her,” Reign answered, much to the surprise of the rest of the group.