Karinna doesn’t resist the magic. She hardly notices it. I expect that she’ll ache for forgiveness perhaps, or love. But I feel only agitation from her.

And fear.

“She’s gone.” Karinna says, and my head spins as I try to follow her ceaseless movement through the trees. “My sweet lovey is gone. If she still existed in this world, I would know. But she wouldn’t leave without me. Never. She would wait. Have you seen her?”

“Karinna.” I take a different tack. “Will you tell me how you died? Perhaps if I know, I can help you find your lovey.”

Usually ghosts are still thinking about their deaths—even discussing them. But for as long as I’ve been in the Waiting Place, I’ve never heard Karinna say a word about her passing.

She turns her face away. “I thought we were safe,” she says. “I’d never have gone, I’d never have taken her if I didn’t think we were safe.”

“The world of the living is capricious,” I say. “But the other side is not. You’ll be safe there.”

“No. There is no safe place anymore.” She whirls on me. The air crackles with cold, the rain hardening to sleet. “Not even beyond the river. It’s madness. I will not go.”

Beyond the river. She means the other side. “The other side is not like our world—”

“How do you know?” Her fear sharpens and settles around her, a poisonous miasma. “You have not been there. You do not sense what crouches in the beyond.”

“Other ghosts pass through and find peace.”

“They do not!” she shrieks. “You send them to the chasm and they do not know what awaits them! A maelstrom, a great hunger—”

The dream. “Karinna.” Urgency grips me, but I do not let it show. “Tell me of this maelstrom.”

But my grandmother’s spirit stiffens and spins east, toward the river. Seconds later, I sense what she does—outsiders to the far north.

“Karinna—wait—” But she is gone. Skies only know when I will find her again.

My ire at the outsiders is fueled by her departure. If they hadn’t breached the Waiting Place, I could have gotten some answers out of her.

I windwalk north, considering whether to kill them or simply frighten them. When I reach the River Dusk, I do not slow. To the spirits, the Dusk is a pathway to the other side. To me, it is just a river. But today, as I cross, the midmorning mist rises and brings with it a swirl of memory. The ghosts’ memories, I realize. Joy and contentment, peace and—

Agony. Not physical, but something deeper. A wound of the soul.

I have never stumbled when windwalking the Dusk. Stepping across it is like hopping across a rivulet instead of a river wide enough to hold a dozen Mercator barges.

But the pain shocks me and I plunge into the freezing water. Something grabs me—hands, pulling, pressing so hard that I can feel the skin break on my arms, my legs—

Jinn! I fight my way to the surface, sputtering, and swim for the far bank. The past few months of training have made me strong and I break free, kicking violently.

A low trick, ambushing me in the water—but one I should have been prepared for.

At shore, I look back, steeling myself for another battle with the jinn. But the river is quiet, moving swift and sure. There is no sign of anything that might wish me harm. I inspect my arms, my legs.

No marks. Though I was sure I felt blood leaking out of me.

I’m tempted to return to the river, but the intruders await. I streak northeast, frost collecting on my wet clothes, my hair, my eyelashes as I travel. The wind whips against me, fey and angry until, for the second time in a week, I walk the border of the Waiting Place, prepared to drive out whoever is foolish enough to enter it.

The fools, it turns out, are manifold.

Nearly a hundred, in fact. There are soldiers in longboats, most of whom sling arrows at a group of people clustered at the water’s edge, on a short spit of beach. Those few are locked in close combat with a dozen more Martial soldiers.

The beach backs to the cliffs, with a few treacherous paths leading up to my domain.

“To the woods, Tas, run!”

The man who speaks is tall and sandy-haired, his brown skin matching that of the young woman next to him. Her armor is piecemeal, her cloak in tatters. She’s hooded so I cannot see her face. But I know her. I know the way she moves, and the color of her skin and the set of her shoulders.

“Laia! Watch it!” a Scholar man with dark skin and long, black hair calls out. He holds off three legionnaires with a scim, a short dagger, and—I squint—a cloud of hundreds of wights who befuddle his foes. They defend him with a vicious protectiveness that wights aren’t known for. Laia, meanwhile, spins, nocks, and shoots a soldier creeping up on her.

“Get Tas out of here now,” she shouts. The sandy-haired man grabs the child by the arm and drags him up the trail, directly toward where I’m standing.

The forest groans. Perhaps Mauth is occupied, as the Augur said. But he still feels the assault on his territory. And he doesn’t like it.

“You have trespassed into the Waiting Place, the forest of the dead.” I step out of the trees. Though I don’t shout, Mauth’s magic carries my words down to a blonde woman fighting back to back with a Mask. To the Scholar with the wights, and Laia. To the soldiers, all of whom gape at me. “You are not welcome.”

One of the legionnaires spits blood onto the beach and glares at his men. “Put an arrow in that son of a—”

He grabs his throat and drops to his knees. His men inch away.

When he is flat on his back, clawing at the sand, I look to the rest, letting the outsiders feel the full weight of the Waiting Place’s oppression. Then I draw away their vitality—all but the child’s—until the soldiers are gasping and stumbling through the shallows back to their boats. I turn to the others, who are still struggling to breathe.

I must kill them. Shaeva was right to leave broken bodies along the border. These constant interruptions are a distraction I can ill afford.

But the child, who is crouched behind a boulder, cries out. His distress plucks at something deep within that I cannot name. I ease the magic.

The remaining outsiders drink in long, shuddering draughts of air. Those four on the beach move swiftly up the trail, away from the soldiers. The child emerges from his hiding spot, wary gaze fixed on me. His companion stalks forward, reaching back for his scim.

“You,” he says. Darin, I think as he bears down. His name is Darin.

“I thought you were a decent human,” he hisses at me. “But you—”