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running from the horsemen had reached the Penance before the horsemen had covered half the clearing. As the women waded across it, they held their children high and leaned forward against the current’s pull. I scanned the trees on the opposite bank. I could see no sign of the archers who I knew waited on the other—the safe —side of the river.
    I started silently praying, Don’t kill them. Please don’t kill them.
    For those on the run, it must have felt like a moment of false reprieve before the axe’s fall, because just short of the water their pursuers reined in their mounts sharply and came to a wheeling stop.
    The last to enter the river was an old man who ran with a jerking two-step that set his grizzled dreads dancing. As he splashed into River of Penance, he turned to look behind him.
    I saw relief spread across his face.
    He thought the horses weren’t going to follow them across the river.
    He was right.
    *   *   *
    He lived with the hope of freedom for another four or five staggering feet before the archers stepped out from the opposite bank’s tree line.
    â€œDon’t kill them,” I repeated. My lips moved against clenched fist, and my breath bounced back to me. It was warm and scentless for we Fae have no scent.
    Inside me, my wolf began moaning.
    Down in the river, there was much wheeling in dismay and aborted dodges. Two women started splashing downstream, but a rider cut off their retreat, herding them back into the center of the shallow crossing. I had my own instant of false hope then: for a second, I let myself believe that it was going to be a bloodless capture, a comfort that was swiftly shattered when the fleet-footed youth who’d led the rush into the plain raised his weapon.
    His bow was taunt, his arrow pinched between his fingers.
    â€œThere’s too many of them, Varens,” I heard Trowbridge’s despairing whisper.
    Oh, Goddess, don’t make me watch this. Don’t make my mate see this.
    The boy let loose his arrow.
    His aim was off. His missile grazed the Royal Guardsman’s horse high on the shoulder. As the animal reared, front hooves flashing, back legs dancing, Varens scrambled to pull another arrow from his quiver.
    Not fast enough.
    A javelin whistled through the air.
    What followed—the boy wavering, then falling in slow motion to his knees, the cavalryman nosing his horse to his victim intent on spear retrieval, all of that—played out in a dreadful slow motion for me.
    A woman let out a keening cry.
    The youth fell sideways, the long spear still sticking out of his mid-section.
    And with that, I stopped feeling. With a paid observer’s detachment, I noted important details, which later I’d replay in an endless loop. Like how quickly the current pulled the ribbon of red down the river and the fact that Trowbridge’s back had arched as if that spear had gone through his gut and spine, not the boy’s.
    This was the Fae? I thought numbly. These were my mother’s people? Oh, sweet heavens … my people?
    Suddenly the old man lurched sideways. He threw himself at the leg of a rider, grappling to unseat him. The Fae cut him down with two slashes of his blade.
    The other riders surged inward, squeezing the people into a tighter knot. An arrow whizzed harmlessly through the air, blades flashed, and another body dropped facedown in the water.
    It was going to be a massacre.
    I pressed my fist so hard against my mouth I tasted copper.
    *   *   *
    The low cloud hovering over the scene let out an earth-shaking rumble. It was an unnatural noise, too deep for a thunder roll, too loud for a storm clap. One of those children let out a terrified shriek.
    And damn me if that cloud didn’t respond.
    It let loose another hellish grumble.
    The young ones started crying en masse then, and with each sob and terrified cry the murky nebula visibly swelled and darkened,