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Astra inclinant, sed non obligant:

The stars incline us; they do not bind us

Prologue
The hunt for Hominum chimera

A feral Outsider hunting a feral Insider. There was a rhythm to it. Except Hominum chimera was clever, always travelling north of our beat.

We knew from the outset that though there were many ways to track Lake, trapping her would be another matter entirely. Her powerful Nemean lion prints were clear enough; the North Mountain snow made them gleam like ice-dusted runes, while a brave last stand of arid trees, split and broken by her aggressive marking, pointed onwards like wretched ghouls. From time to time, we also came across a scattering of mountain goat tracks, enough to make me wonder whether her volatile chimera nature was morphing again.

But it was always the long black veins of scorching that offered the real evidence. Evidence that, no matter how buried her humanity, Lake still found comfort in being close to Arafel. Close to us.

I couldn’t voice the urgency I felt to find Lake, but August seemed to understand anyway. There was something deep within me, some primeval instinct that needed to face her and acknowledge our bond. That she was the key to finally understanding the Voynich was beyond doubt – she was Cassius’s alpha weapon of mythical proportions, yet Thomas had somehow bound us with an older connection too. Cassius called it an antidote, a complex protein that would provide some level of control over which of her mythical natures dominated, but I had a suspicion it bore another name, that this was the real legacy for which Grandpa had prepared me.

And I cared. More than I could put into words. Ever since Lake had taken a knife to Max’s throat in the tunnels beneath the City of Dust. Back then she looked just another hungry, scraggy child in a dirty headscarf and smoke-grey tunic – no different from the rest of the Prolet children we were trying to rescue. And yet, her veins pumped with a biology more complex than any other creature of Cassius’s bestiary. Which made her nature a complete mystery because Hominum chimera was also an ancient prophecy. Or curse. Depending on which way you looked at it.

The truth was Lake was entirely unique. And even though Cassius didn’t hold the final genetic coding for the hybrid creature, she was clearly a dangerously close match. According to legend, Hominum chimera was the mother of all mythological beasts, the one hybrid creature believed to be stronger, faster and more agile than her only existing counterpart. Nature. But while Aelia had always suspected the Voynich of hiding a last secret, it was only when August journeyed to Europa that we all learned of Lake’s real potential.

‘There’s an ancient myth that Hominum chimera is capable of triggering a sequence of natural disasters, culminating in the eternal fire of damnation.’

August’s words looped in my head. An eternal fire of damnation seemed so easy to dismiss as mythological rhetoric, and yet I knew better now. There was something in Lake’s serpentine eyes that reached back through the dust of years, to a time when myth and reality were separated by only the thinnest of veils.

Legacy or lunacy, Cassius’s ambition had never been clearer. It was all about power to redesign the natural world, and now that he had The Book of Arafel, Thomas’s secret research decoding the Voynich, it was nearly within reach.

Arafel was nearly within reach.

All that remained was the keyword to operate the cipher and, if he was looking to replicate Hominum chimera perfectly, a certain annotated, aged diagram. It was the same fragile page I’d rolled up and inserted into a certain treehouse dart tube for safekeeping, the last present Max made for me. To get it Cassius would have to slit the feral throat around which it was hung.

I lifted my hand to the precious tiny dart tube. Thomas’s clue had been there the whole time, a simple faint abbreviation on the same page as Thomas’s Hominum chimera sketch.

REQ.

It wasn’t until August mentioned its appearance in the tomb frescos beneath the ancient Colosseum that I guessed at its true significance. REQ was an abbreviation for Requiem, or Mass for the Dead, and a warning, through the sands of time, from the original medieval scribe of the Voynich Manuscript.

Five hundred years later and against all the odds, Thomas had worked out it was also the only keyword to operate the Voynich cipher, the same cipher he drew out on the floor of the first treehouse in Arafel. Our treehouse. I thought of my mother’s living area, of the old reed mat that had always covered what we believed to be our ancestor’s first crude map of Arafel. Little had we known we’d been walking over the only existing key to the world’s most dangerous genetic heirloom.

Now it was a knowledge that burned, in the same way my blood burned every time I imagined Lake’s heavy double-lidded eyes peering out of the crevices and caves of the North Mountain landscape we scoured. Ancient, powerful eyes that watched us track and hunt, from the icy dawn until the fireflies danced.

Biding time.

Chapter 1
Arafel

Raven was the first to spot us.

I watched her slight figure straighten in shock, as I fell into a stumbling run towards the afternoon shift working among the corn. Twice my exhausted feet slipped on the mountainous shale, making me skid and graze my blistered skin, but nothing could slow me. We’d been walking for longer than I could remember, and our conversation had long since worn as thin and broken as our soles. But in the past few minutes, Arafel had finally reached through the mountain mist like a ray of dawn after a nightmare, and Raven’s expression was everything I needed to pull me over the last stretch.

She lifted her hand, and a sharp piercing whistle filled the air. It was the village alert, the same one we’d all learned as part of our shift training, more usually associated with flagging wild animals among the crops than alerting the village to intruders. But not today.

A dozen more figures straightened throughout the large cornfield, and I could read their incredulity even at a distance.

‘Mum?’ I tried to force the word out between my blistered lips, but there was no sound but the rustling of the breeze through the corn.

I was spent. My body knew it, I knew it, even the ground beneath my exhausted feet knew it. Just a few more steps. The whisper echoed around my head as the field group convened and stood together to await us. And I understood their hesitation. I knew what a sight we had to present: the disloyal, rebellious girl with two strangers – a gladiator and a Cyclops – for company. But still they waited. And although Mum wasn’t among them, dry sobs reached up my throat, racking my body with convulsive pain as I opened the field gate and stumbled in among Arafel’s irrigated crops.

‘Talia?’

Raven’s voice was as sweet as the first rain, and as I barrelled into her open arms I was overcome by her homely scent of apples and cinnamon, warming me a thousand times faster than any knitted blanket.

‘Hush, Talia, you’re in Arafel now … you’re home,’ she soothed, her voice distant and strained as my knees buckled.

My vision shrank, but I was just conscious of Bereg’s thunderous face as he strode past to confront August and Unus, flanked by three machete-wielding hunters.

I wanted to protest, but there was nothing left – just a few hoarse words that spilled over my cracked lips as the fields receded in a blur.

‘Don’t hurt them … they’re friends.’

***

The days that followed were a haze of delirium. I was racked with pain one moment and incoherent with fever the next, but as the world slowly returned, I became aware of two stone-cold facts:

I’d made it home; Max and Eli hadn’t.

And each time I remembered, it was as though I was teetering at the edge of a North Mountain abyss all over again.

August and Unus made swifter progress and became frequent visitors. And if the villagers were wary of my new Insider companions, they guessed my survival was at least due to them in part, and afforded them a cautious respect.

‘They want to know if you’re feeling well enough for the Ring meeting?’ August murmured a few mornings after our return. ‘I could handle it myself but your leader, Art, he’s quite insistent you’re there … needs to hear it from you … it’s understandable.’

He was trying to act normal, to be his old confident self but his iris-blues betrayed him in a way they never had before. His pain was visible. There were glimpses that spoke louder than the iron will forcing his Roman lips upwards, or his tone to be even. It was a vulnerability no amount of Pantheonite training or armour could hide, and then there was our own stalemate, frozen in place by the icy North Mountain winds.

I turned to gaze out of the window. It was the end of winter, so the rains were still heavy and frequent, but there was a hint of the new honeysuckle that grew all around the old wooden frame in spring. A ghost of its scent.

‘Tal?’ August laid his hand gently over mine.

I drew my hand away distractedly, focusing on the forest, willing spring to come and chase away the winter that had settled in my bones.

Because I couldn’t pretend. Not to August.

And the furrow between his eyes told me he knew. He could sense I was watching the world as though I’d never really emerged from the glass river at all. I could see and hear it all in sonorous detail, I just couldn’t touch it. I was isolated – from everyone. And while he did his best to deflect the darting glances and barely contained curiosity, I knew he felt it too. Every second of every day, we were slipping a little further away from each other, and we were both utterly powerless to stop it.

Again and again my dreams took me back to the North Mountains, to the unique magic we’d created in a remote cave, and to what almost happened there. The edges of my thoughts darkened with guilt, the same guilt that forced me into consciousness each time. Because of my best friend Max, because of my twin Eli, because of August’s sister Aelia, and because of Lake and her guardian, Pan. And finally because the spell binding us in the harsh solitude of the North Mountains had been broken. We could no longer pretend we were at the end of the world, that no one else existed, or that we were the only ones hurt by Isca Pantheon. And while our connection had saved us while we were isolated, it did nothing but scorch in Arafel, where ghosts darkened every corner.

‘I’ll tell him you need more time,’ he breathed.

I stared out at the white oak branches shadowing my window, willing the impossible every time it rustled.

‘No.’

I turned back to face him. My head was still hazy with weakness and denial, but in the last few hours one thought had materialized clearly: so long as Max was missing, there was a chance. And while there was a chance, I was wasting time. There was little doubt Cassius was already devising his revenge. After all, we’d escaped Ludi Pantheonares, and set his prized mythological weapon free.

And I’d made too many mistakes to expect any reprieve, but Max deserved so much more. Art needed to know what danger I’d carried through Arafel’s door. And Taskforce, special delegation, army … whatever he decided, I was going to be right at the front. Come what may.

‘I’m ready.’

And somewhere deep in the jungle a lone oropendola bird hissed, stilling the forest briefly.

Chapter 2

‘Friends, we gather here today for two important reasons.’ Art’s grave voice echoed through the Ring’s flickering torchlight.

‘Firstly, to give thanks that the stars and earth have conspired between them, to bring home a much-loved daughter of Arafel. On behalf of everyone gathered here, I would like to offer our sincerest gratitude to Talia’s companions who, we can all be assured, have played a critical role in her return.

‘Commander General Augustus Aquila and Unus of Isca Prolet, you are most welcome.’

I watched as August and Unus, seated to the right of the Ring platform, nodded in acknowledgement. August’s inclination was brief and tight; while Unus’s great pudgy head fell forward in confused embarrassment, his one misted eye focused on the rock floor.

My nerves settled briefly. I owed Unus so much. From the moment we met in the strix-ridden passages beneath Pantheon, he’d proven himself a loyal and true friend. He’d saved my life countless times, but more than that, he’d proven real friendship could come from the unlikeliest of places. In truth, Unus gave me hope. He’d also eased into village life easily, proving invaluable in treehouse construction work. And despite a mistrustful start, fuelled by generations of fireside tales, villagers were now starting to treat him with real respect and kindness.

Much more so than Commander General August Aquila, who remained aloof and harder to know. I dragged my gaze back to his proud Roman face, still over-bright from the raw biting wind of the North Mountains, and so at odds here among my people. He’d insisted on sleeping on a mattress outside my bedroom door for the past week, and barely left my bedside during the long silent days. Yet conversation between us had long since guttered and died, overladen with shadows neither of us could ignore. We were lost. Not only because his presence forced me to face the absences, but also because it meant accepting who we’d become, that the constellation that had aligned over our snowstorm cave had faded.

Our snowstorm cave.

I couldn’t think about what we’d done, of how we’d nearly given in, despite everything. Despite everyone. Every time I closed my eyes I was haunted by a memory of us lying together, the flickering flames shadowing our skin as if inking our shame there. How could we have forgotten the others, even for a moment?

August’s eyes narrowed, reading me, as I dropped my eyes to my feet. The memories were corrosive. He could feel it too – I could tell whenever we made the mistake of catching each other’s gaze.

And the irony nearly consumed me – I’d spent a year feeling like a ghost girl with Max, and now I’d give anything to go back there. Not because I was happier, but because those feelings were so much easier than this caustic pit of guilt. The knowledge that Max, Eli and Aelia were lying pale and lifeless within the glassy Dead City river. Because of me. While I was still here, beside two Insiders instead of my childhood companions, and expected to explain their absence in a way that made it bearable. What could be more impossible than that?

‘Secondly, in accordance with Arafel tradition, when one of our community has been reported missing or compromised, we gather to hear the facts and decide on our collective response.

‘Action or inaction, Thomas’s principles stand as firmly today as they did two hundred years ago. An Arafel hunter believes in natural order, respect for his place in the forest, and taking only what he needs to survive. But if the circle is broken, particularly by forces outside of these four walls, it is up to the rest of us to decide whether to meet that betrayal with earth – or fire.’

I looked up at Art, Thomas’s wisdom echoing around the rock walls. He looked older and more wizened than ever before, and though our return had been celebrated with a whole roasted lamb and two kegs of elderberry wine, I could also see how it changed everything. I’d changed everything.

Cassius had broken the circle, but I had too. I’d brought Insiders here, to our most precious secret valley home. I’d violated the most sacred of rules, and I didn’t need to look around the room. I already knew fear and suspicion would be etched into every single face, all at my hand. I wished Mum was beside me, that I could bury my face in her familiar scent and comfort. But she was seated at the back, shelling peas as though it were just an ordinary harvest meeting, safe inside her own quiet oblivion.

So I locked my agitation inside my knotted fingers, because there was still Max, and that meant there was nothing I could do except tell them the stone-cold facts, and hope the people I’d always called my family didn’t end up hating me.

‘Talia … Commander General Augustus Aquila … Unus of Isca Prolet, I ask you to relate your journey and experiences with us now, omitting no … difficult details, so that we might arrive at the best course of action for Arafel.

‘The Ring platform is yours.’

My chest tightened, and I climbed the wide stone steps, feeling as though my legs had grown as dense and heavy as the rock surrounding us. I’d never felt more alone in the world, and yet there was nowhere to hide either. I’d been dreading this moment, finally facing Art, Max’s family … and Mum. Although she’d stopped asking after Eli, I was all too aware that didn’t mean the truth had reached through the mist separating her from the rest of Arafel. If anything, I was probably about to push her further away.

I turned slowly and surveyed the waiting crowd, recalling the last time I’d stood here – appealing for help to rescue the Prolet insurgents. I’d chosen my own path anyway, and could already see the doubt in their eyes.

Why were they even listening to me? I’d acted rashly, spent innocent lives, and exposed Arafel to danger.

The air was sombre and suspicious, I closed my eyes and Pan’s pale face loomed out of nowhere. It was the moment before he stepped into the writhing mass of basilisk, a moment filled with both fear and courage. Human attributes blazing in a creature of Pantheon.

He’d sacrificed his life so Max and I stood a chance of finding and protecting Lake. From Cassius, from the world and from herself. And now Max was gone, which meant the responsibility was mine alone.

It was time.

It was nearly an hour later when we finally finished relating our story. Mum had shelled peas consistently throughout, and the cavern was eerily quiet.

‘We tried everything.’ My voice sounded brittle in the echoing space. ‘We took them to the Oceanids, hoping they would do what they did for myself and the Commander General … hoping they would bring them back … somehow?’

My voice was growing thinner, an invisible fist closing around my throat.

Could they tell I was just about the worst human being alive? That I was the type of girl likely to give in to her darkest desire, even when her best friend was missing and her brother not quite cold in his watery grave?

‘They didn’t,’ August finished for me, ‘or more likely, they couldn’t – not in the time we needed them to.’

His words met with ominous silence, before the uproar began. I was conscious of time slowing, of the mood turning as faces I loved twisted beyond recognition. Until now there had been whispers and conjecture, still laced with hope, but now their worst suspicions had been confirmed there was only pain. And honest-to-God fury.

‘These … Oceanids of which you speak … dare we hope they may yet return Eli and Aelia?’ Art’s face was grave, his eyes straining with grief.

A poignant silence hung on the air before August shook his head. ‘From experience, and what I understand of how the Oceanids work – their therapies either work swiftly, or not at all. So … tempting though the thought is, it is better not to nurse unrealistic hope.’

‘Then I think we have our answer!’ Bereg roared from the back of the crowd, his affable face over-red and raw.

Loud voices bayed their support, their faces leering as unbridled fury pierced my skin like barbs. And for a fleeting moment, I could almost believe I was back beneath the flashing screens and bloodthirsty crowds of Ludi. But how could I blame them? I’d breached village protocol by taking off with Eli and Max in the first place, and I’d breached it again by bringing back two Insiders, instead of two much-loved sons. And August’s defection and Unus’s efficiency with whatever he turned his hand to were no recompense for the biggest danger I’d carried right into the heart of our home. I was a Trojan horse of the worst kind.

‘There are others!’ August’s authoritative tone rose above the din, quieting it momentarily.

‘There are other Outsiders – communities like you – in isolated locations across Europa. The fate that befell Eli, Max and my own beloved blood sister, Aelia, was beyond our control. You must believe what Talia is saying – we did everything we could to save them.’

I stared at the floor, acutely aware he was still doing it. Protecting me by trying to turn the tide, saving me when I least deserved saving. Didn’t he get it yet? There was no reprieve from this. I deserved it all. How could there be any light when the blood flowing through my veins was dark, like Cassius’s?

Black to black, dust to dust.

‘Believe me, I understand …’ his voice faltered momentarily ‘… how you are feeling right now. But there is a darker day than this yet to come.

‘Max, Eli, Aelia … they are just the beginning. Cassius is coming for Arafel; he is coming for each and every one of you. And the reason I know this is because I was a Commander General of Isca Pantheon’s Equite forces, and a senior member of the scientific team for too long. Cassius will not rest until every last Outsider has been eliminated.’

A muted gasp swept across the belligerent crowd.

‘You want revenge on your sons’ deaths, but you would do better to save your energy for those who are still alive. If you march on Pantheon as you are, you will join Max and Eli before the sun goes down. To stand even the remotest chance of bringing Cassius’s Civitas down once and for all, you need strength, speed and numbers. In truth, you need every last Outsider on this earth standing beside you.

‘And I know where they are.’

For a second it was quiet enough to hear the faint call of a lemur outside. And then fresh pandemonium broke.

‘He must be lying … It can’t be true! Where are these other Outsiders? We would know of them. Do they look like him? It’s obviously a lie! How could an Insider know this? We would have known before now!’

‘Silence!’ This time it was Art’s command filling the space, and every pair of eyes levelled with the elderly man charged with making sense of it all.

‘If all of this is indeed true …’ he exhaled raggedly ‘… it is both a dark and wondrous day. We have lived with dreams of finding other communities like our own, but … how do we know they will be friendly or even receptive to helping Arafel?’

‘You don’t,’ August returned baldly. ‘We don’t … at least not yet. But I can tell you they are more like this community than they are different.’

His tone grew gentler as the Ring hushed with new respect. ‘I’ve no idea how many individual communities there may be scattered across Europa. But my own Pantheon mission encountered one that had adapted to a similar climate, and where there is one there must be others. It’s vital to remember that while their Outsider DNA may be as original as any of yours, their culture will likely be very different … We would all need to tread cautiously.

‘Any community that stands beside Arafel will be unpredictable and a risk, until we know otherwise.’

I scanned the faces in the crowd, which had morphed from hostility into something quieter, a grim unified determination. It was a real turnaround, and I knew if it wasn’t for his intervention we would be facing a very different scene now.

My eyes flickered back to meet his. The lanterns were casting shadows across his tapered cheekbones, his dark eyes were hollowed, and the tiny muscle beside his mouth was twitching as though he wanted to say so much more. And yet, even though he’d saved me from clear ostracization, and provided my people with the most fragile of new hopes, I still couldn’t feel anything.

I swallowed, trying to recall my father’s face. I could just see a hint of his smile, and his hunched back as he pored over the old-world maps in his treehouse study, ringing all the valleys in dark red. He would have been euphoric to know his belief and years of work weren’t in vain.

August pulled his gaze away abruptly.

‘You need to gather a legatio, a deposition to locate new communities quickly and appeal for their help. There is no time to waste. I am willing and able to lead this legatio – in Arafel’s name.’

There was a murmur across the crowd as Art nodded, visibly relieved. August already knew where to locate at least one other community, and that whoever travelled as embassy had the huge challenge of rallying them to our cause. He had a natural authority and had just demonstrated his powers of persuasion. There was no doubt he made the perfect choice.

An Insider rallying feral communities to an Outsider army.

It was a bittersweet outcome, and though it was clearly fraught with danger, there was no way back. I’d hurt them all, my own family included, and while August had provided some hope, it was merely a glimmer of light amid the gathering storm clouds.

A war was coming, and my peace-loving people had eyes the colour of revenge.

What, in the name of Arafel, had I started?

Chapter 3

The scar on his face glistened in the sun, while his eyes belied his words. Leaving words.

‘You know I have to do this. It gives the legatio a chance. I know where to go. I can lead them – it’s what I’m good at … Tal?’

Hopelessness, then worse, hurt fleeted across his face as I gave him nothing back. But how could I when emotion was the cause of so much.

‘Feral means free, remember?’ he whispered. ‘That’s worth something even if you let go … of everything else.’

I stared at the spring grass surrounding my leather-soled feet. It looked so fragile and swollen with monsoon rain. There were no dark veins or dust-choked roots. It had no idea of the shadows creeping closer every day. Unlike Augustus Aquila, standing less than a metre away, in my forest home, trying to save any part of us that was still salvageable.

Why didn’t he understand? How could he stand there, alive, thinking of us when we’d watched so many others sink to the icy depths of the glass river … the icy depths.

‘For all Oceanid revivals there has to be a payment of sorts: either a trade of treasure or promise of recompense …’

August’s words never felt more poignant.

Was that it? Had August and I paid the ultimate price? Could our revival have cost us … us?

I swallowed, trying to force thoughts past the rush of blood in my ears. Why would the Oceanids demand such a payment? Yet it would explain so much.

‘The Oceanids are loyal to no one but themselves.’

That they helped us was indisputable, but to what purpose?

Thoughts tumbled through my head, confused and overlapping. I gritted my teeth. It had to be a purpose bigger than us altogether. Was it to make us strong enough to finish what we’d started? To lead the war?

‘It was real for me, Talia.’

And it seemed as though the branches around us leaned in to catch his whisper, and cocoon it within their scrolled leaves.

We both knew the dangers of the legatio meant his return was against all the odds. Leaving nothing. An enormous silence, when so much had preceded it. Which was why no more words made it into the dead air between us.

After all, what was there left to say if we’d already traded it all?

Chapter 4
Two months later

I tensed, Harlo’s slingshot taut and short in my hands. The catapult was larger than my old one, and made of a hard wood I didn’t recognize. Harlo called it camphor when he relinquished it, but a borrowed slingshot made of foreign wood was only the beginning. Arafel had been slowly changing since the new Outsiders started arriving.

Ida’s soft whistle perforated the humid air. I peered through the thick foliage and spied her blue-inked skin gleaming through the giant yuccas a little way off. Lifting my hands, I hooted twice by way of response. Birdcalls were a useful method of communication when the Elders weren’t around to disapprove. They were simple and uncomplicated, which suited us both.

I retrained the slingshot, as a warm breeze rustled the foliage cocooning me. Ida was a Komodo, one of the first Outsiders to arrive, and a formidable huntress, even among her people. I caught the rise of her hand, just enough to say she’d heard, and nodded once. It was always enough.

The arrival of her tribe had stopped everyone in their tracks. Flanked by lizards the size of small ponies, and with midnight bodies and long plaited hair, they looked more like gods and goddesses than flesh-and-blood Outsiders. They were also a people of very few words, and though it was the same Outsider community August had described before leaving, their actual appearance had turned our quiet village into a place I no longer recognized.

August. I exhaled slowly, forcing his image from my mind. It was how I’d survived, volunteering for every possible shift and spending all my days in the outer forest, away from everyone. Denying it all.

I tucked the slingshot into my leather rations belt and climbed higher.

The Komodo tribe were some four hundred in number, and brought whole families of naked, inked children with them. Within a single day the outside forest had looked and felt like an entirely new world. They set up ad hoc camps, cut down mature trees for shelter and baited large food for their unusual guard – the dragons, who were also the tribe’s symbolic alter ego.

The Komodo dragon lizards tested everyone. The huge, lumbering reptiles were constantly hungry and aggressive, particularly to children, so Art insisted they were herded into pens in the outside forest. It had sparked the first real confrontation. The tribe were unwilling to be parted from their reptilian family, and unable to return to their Europa home without stockpiling provisions from Arafel’s forest.

Art called an emergency Ring, and counter-proposed bringing the newcomers into Arafel, where food and shelter could be shared and a war strategy agreed. The lizards would remain in pens, while the tribe would have the protection of the North Mountains instead.

There was a long, heated meeting but the motion was eventually passed, and there was no doubt it was a good compromise. The tribe moved into the village, while the lizards stayed in the outside forest, and if they mourned their separation, the pens were built sufficiently close to the river stepping stones to ensure any lovelorn tribe member didn’t have far to go.

The simple truth was, we were all acutely aware that the Komodos’ arrival was a powerful show of solidarity and support – and that harmonious living was essential if we were to stand any chance against Cassius.

Yet the new integrated living brought sharper edges to Arafel none of us could ignore. While the tribespeople were an undeniable asset to our hunter army, their physique an easy match for any Pantheonite gladiator, it was less clear whether the outside forest could keep up with their significant drain on resources. It wasn’t helped by the fact the tribe were focused ground hunters, and preferred to work alone when it came to securing a kill, which was too often outside our regular village shifts.

Another muted whistle reached through the undergrowth, the warning call of a green turaco. I scanned the bushes, but couldn’t see Ida. It didn’t matter; the call was her warning to keep my distance, that she had a scent or a lead. Today, I was content to oblige. I scurried up a few more branches and lodged myself in a fork.

Everyone knew the new rate of consumption was unsustainable. Our stockpile of grain and pulses had depleted at a frightening rate, even though the Komodo tribe’s diet was predominantly carnivorous. Their survival philosophy was different to ours too. While we tried to strike a balance with nature, their approach was territorial. Food was there for the taking, until it wasn’t. Then they moved on. Art and the Council remonstrated, pointing out that their approach wouldn’t work within a fixed community like Arafel, but there were still too many unofficial dawn raids to number.

At times, the differences seemed bigger than the similarities. While my people had long, sculpted limbs, adapted for swift passage through our forest trees, the Komodos had developed a muscular physiology that almost matched that of their dragon friends. The tribe had also travelled their lands nomadically for more than two hundred years, while Arafel had been our home since Thomas’s discovery. The Komodo considered hunting to be a right, while Arafel people considered it the blessing of a healthy forest.

And yet, there was one binding commonality that put us all squarely on the same dirt ground. The Lifedomes of Isca Pantheon. Their ancestors had also passed down myths about the Great War, how the Lifedomes were supposed to be a refuge before the trapped population realized they couldn’t leave. It explained their swift arrival, their unquestioning solidarity and was the first sign the legatio might actually succeed.

I reached out to pick a few rare bunches of ripe blueberries and add them to my foraged roots and oranges. I’d only discovered two other blueberry bushes in the outer forest before and they’d quickly disappeared. Max would be impressed with this particular crop, especially now the outside forest was supporting so many more.

I popped one into my mouth, before dropping the rest into my bag. While the Komodos were the first to arrive, they weren’t the last. Less than three weeks after their arrival, two more Outsider communities arrived. First there was a pale-skinned, northern hemisphere tribe calling themselves Lynx – they didn’t say why but I had a feeling their green eyes and shy, nocturnal habits had something to do with it – and they were swiftly followed by a large party of peace-loving Eurasians. While the Lynx had built a life hunting fattened seals and ice-diving for fish, the Eurasians were much more like us – forest dwellers with farming and pottery skills. And it seemed each new arrival built new pillars of hope, yet August was never with them.

Another turaco warning call whistled through the leaves, followed by the swift and soft impact of an arrow about ten metres away. Seconds later, Ida’s athletic form crept through the clearing below. I watched as she retrieved her arrow from a twisted baobab root and swiftly cleaned it, before melting back into the trees. Hunting was often like this now. The forest animals seemed to understand they were under greater threat, and that the old balance was shifting.

It was a permanent heated agenda item at the open leader meetings. Art’s diplomacy and leadership were tested more than ever before, and for the first time since Thomas’s days, a penal code was resurrected. The Council called it a temporary measure while communities grew and integrated. But we all knew it was a by-product of the new conflict that was unlikely to disappear, and while the Ring had been nominated as a place where disputes could be resolved – the village grazing field stood in for those who couldn’t wait.

It was Raven who suggested using Arafel’s story nights as an opportunity for communities to exchange stories and history. There was plenty of scepticism at first, but the evenings bred a little ease as we learned about our new brothers and sisters. And each new community arrival meant one certainty to me: August was still out there, still breathing. Which somehow still eased my own.

A spotted tiger beetle scurried across the dirt floor before disappearing beneath a pile of large maple leaves. There was a momentary lull, before the telltale rustle, and a young corn snake slithered out looking satisfied. I watched unmoved. It was the way of the forest, from the smallest to the largest. Each and every species had its natural predator and check – all except, it seemed, for Lake.

I pictured her vast, scaled head and grey spiny body as I swung myself up between the thick fringed leaves of a papaya tree, intent on reaching the fruit weighing down the topmost branches. Her existence had been harder to explain to the Council.

‘Lake is believed to possess extraordinary strength, speed and agility. Cassius intends to recapture and use her against us.’

The Elders were still reeling from August’s bombshell about outside communities, when I shared the news that an unstable draco-chimera was also living among the mountainous peaks above our quiet valley. And their initial scepticism was rapidly replaced with palpable fear, even though I was careful to provide only as much detail as they really needed.

‘I’ve kept Lake’s chimera coding safe,’ I whispered to Grandpa, touching the tiny dart tube resting against my chest, just to reassure myself it was still there.

It was a small consolation, but one of the few I still had. Grandpa had entrusted the legacy of the Book of Arafel to me, and the circle of knowledge had grown so much since then. I had to trust that protecting the genetic coding of the Voynich’s oldest secret, as well as Thomas’s original cipher, would thwart Cassius, until the day he brought his war.

And found an army of freshly trained Outsiders waiting.

One of August’s key instructions, before he left, was that training and weapon instruction should take place in the outside forest. It was also where a skeleton shift of Arafel hunters, Komodos and Lynx warriors kept careful watch on the fringe of the forest every day. If there was to be a battle, it would be in the outer forest, away from Arafel, our home and the only real retreat we had. And there was no doubt we had a formidable Outsider army now with a wide range of skills and weaponry.

Training was intense and overseen by Bereg, Ida’s father, and a sharp Lynx captain called Marta. I assisted where I could, describing Cassius’s creatures and training some of the younger recruits in darting and knifing, but I escaped to hunt and forage whenever I could. It was the only time I got to escape, and pretend.

Somewhere above my head a lemur called a warning as a green lorikeet swooped low. I lowered my borrowed slingshot and watched its silent dive towards the forest floor, before it flew up and out of sight. There were still some compromises I couldn’t make, though we were trying to widen our diet as much as possible.

I leaned back into the fork of the gnarled papaya, and reached into my leather rations bag. It was still there, my lucky apricot stone. I withdrew it and rolled it around in my fingers, drawing some comfort from its mottled, wizened surface. It reminded me of the stone I’d rolled into the cage of the little apricot monkey; a seed from the outside world offering comfort and hope through the bars of Isca Pantheon. It was a promise I was determined to deliver.

A young monkey swung through the cedar branches opposite, and Ida’s turaco call followed. I frowned. We were asking the other outside communities for so much, but there were rules about the infant animals.

At the same time, a series of thin branches snapped in the bushes directly below me. Medium-sized … bold given its proximity … wild boar? Years of hunting had equipped me well when it came to assessing a potential meal and I focused on the bushes intently. A single bigger kill would keep everyone happy.

I drew Harlo’s slingshot back, my eyes narrowing as a swift silver blade suddenly flew through the opaque sunlight beneath me. A hoopoe cried its warning seconds too late as the blade impacted softly halfway up a neighbouring tree, while my intended quarry rustled away through the undergrowth.

Scowling, I watched as Ida’s different target swung through the low branches, screeching its distress. We’d made our feelings about young monkey meat clear, and while it was a Komodo delicacy, the forest couldn’t sustain the rate at which the tribe wanted to feast on them. Instinctively, I leapt into action, running swiftly through the neighbouring trees until I reached the baby bonnet macaque, which seemed frozen to the cedar trunk above the gleaming blade. My arrival startled it back into life, and it scurried swiftly up to the topmost branches, where a mature macaque chattered her relief.

Satisfied, I yanked the blade out of the trunk and dropped to the ground, just as the low grunting of a confident predator filled the air. I swung up into the nearest fork and swivelled to glance at the snorting creature, which was only a stone’s throw away. It had to be the same wild boar, and by the way it was squaring up to me, a hungry adult male.

‘First rule of the jungle: never hesitate or show doubt.’

Bereg’s training was entrenched in us all and his voice echoed through my head. Stealthily, I levelled Harlo’s slingshot just as a second flash of silver flew past and buried itself in the boar’s neck. It dropped forward onto its knees, eyeing me reproachfully, before collapsing in a growing pool of its own dark blood.

The bushes parted a moment later and Ida, clad in a leather sarong and beaded tunic top, strode past me, her long plaited ebony hair glistening in the iridescent light.

She reached down and placed her palm over the animal’s forehead as a mark of respect, before retrieving her knife and tucking it inside her leather waistband. Then she shot me a questioning glance, the painted seasons on her forehead and forked tongues around her oaken eyes crinkling with satisfaction. I swallowed my frustration and nodded; it was a clean kill and we were all hungry.

Together, we strapped the boar onto a short length of hickory using a mixture of rudimentary signing and gestures. It hung there, unprotesting, and now that I was closer I could see why it hadn’t run when it could. It was starving. I suppressed another frown as Ida lifted her trophy over her strong shoulders and melted back into the bushes. Then we set off at hunting pace, and I took my last forage into the trees among the leaves and birds.

The Komodo knew how to ground-run, even wearing a kill, and I had to concentrate to forage while keeping her dark silhouette in sight. A lone hoopoe’s echo rang among the branches as I ran down a twisted kapok branch and leapt into the tree opposite. It was an easy leap, and one Max and I used to navigate without blinking.

I set my teeth, refusing to let the memories consume me, as two fat pheasants ran out of the bushes below. I raised my slingshot instinctively, and within a heartbeat they were still. Relieved, I dropped to the forest floor and grabbed their scrawny legs, just as Ida pushed through the bushes. I held up a count of two, and it was her turn to nod, her lips parted in a garish smile that displayed her impressive Komodo teeth chiselled into tiny points.

Deftly, I strung the pheasants to my tunic belt, alongside my leather rations bag. It was full of wild roots, blueberries and the small papaya. The wild roots would provide an alternative stock to our usual cultivated vegetables, and now there was the boar and pheasant. It had been a good early shift. The sun was glinting through the dense foliage, casting longer shadows across the forest floor, which meant it had to be approaching breakfast time. I gesticulated at the sky and Ida nodded.

We set out again, two hunters from different communities bringing food to share. It was progress, I told myself as a jaybird darted low in front of us, dropping the remainder of its meal onto the forest floor.

In a breath, the jungle melted away, and I was free-falling towards the glass river with its slow snaking arms and muted starlight. My eyes closed briefly and I willed it to consume me, to take me back to oblivion. But the jungle loomed back anyway with its coarse sunlight and unapologetic life. I was conscious of a rush of disappointment, before a cool palm on my cheek. I longed to fold into it, to take the comfort my silent friend offered, but I’d learned the hard way that caring led only to pain.

I quickened my pace. We’d stayed too long today.

Chapter 5

‘Astra inclinant, sed non obligant.’

August’s whisper was barely there, but his pain was as clear as a monsoon moon.

I tried to resist the dream but it fought back, tightening its hold, and trapping me inside my own memory. I told myself that I would wake soon, that I should focus on breathing, but each inhalation drew nails over my lungs. Raking in and raking out. Shouldn’t it be easier than this now?

‘The stars incline us … they do not bind us,’ I whispered, a hazy echo of Grandpa’s wisdom reaching through.

August watched me, his silence saying nothing and everything all at once.

‘I am not bound by this,’ I repeated, staring at my aching, blistered fingers as clearly as though we were back there.

I was bluffing though.

We both knew it. It was the thing that always undid me, his unerring ability to read my thoughts, no matter how hard I tried to block him out. I fixed my gaze on the flames, feeling none of their warmth. We’d come so far over the mountains together; and yet the distance was growing.

If August hadn’t gone to Europa, if I hadn’t asked Max to save Aelia, if we hadn’t run after the Prolets, if I’d stayed with Eli …

The charges went on, the guilt was asphyxiating and yet every cell of my disloyal body wanted to steal inside his battle-worn arms. To let him take me far away from the perishing mountains, Isca Pantheon and everything we knew.

I stretched out and let my fingers rest over his as I stared into the dancing flames. I didn’t need to look at him to know the fresh lines the North Mountains had etched in his face. He didn’t need to know how his vulnerability weakened me, and made me remember the first time I saw him look like that back in Aelia’s cave in Isca Prolet. That time.

His fingers closed over mine, and even though it was a dream, I could feel their question as clearly as though he’d whispered the words.

Unus had ventured out for firewood, and was likely to be a while given the sparse mountain shale. And this tiny mountain cave tucked away from the harsh, unforgiving elements had created a brief reprieve none of us had expected. It was precious time together, perhaps the last we would ever have.

Suddenly I felt like the naive girl he’d smuggled into his rooms in Pantheon. Trapped, uncertain, doubting everything he said and yet wanting so much to believe him too. His eyes crinkled as a ghost smile played across his lips.

‘I think the stars bind us more than we know.’

His whisper made me shiver.

‘And I would have given up a long time ago if it wasn’t for you. Your kind have a feral hunger for survival that my … Pantheonites … have long forgotten.’

‘Kind? Since when did you start getting fussy about a couple of chromosomes?’

His eyelids lowered briefly, but I could see his iris-blues were dulled. It terrified me. I could just about cope with anything but his mental defeat. The void loomed as he stared down at his noble hands, designed for Equite service, not the precipitous North Mountains at the start of the stormy season.

‘We are who we become,’ I added. ‘The only legacy that counts is the one we leave behind.’

‘Unless we happen to be the last guardian of the Book of Arafel,’ he responded with a glint of a smile, ‘then it’s just a simple matter of fulfilling ancient prophecies, and going down in history as the girl who saved the world.’

I rolled my eyes at him, suddenly aware he was moving – getting up and settling back down. Behind me. I stiffened as he reached his arm around me, pulling me tight in a way that said everything. It was the closest we’d been since waking up beside the glass river in the Dead City. And it prompted a river of gold to chase my veins, dazzling and beguiling gold that carried me away from the perilous mountains to a place where pain was a stranger. I mumbled something, unintelligible words, but they lacked any kind of commitment. My body was winning a very short race. Some legacy I was turning out to be.

‘What are you thinking about?’

His whisper made the hairs at the back of my neck stir traitorously.

‘Failure.’

The word danced among the flickering flames.

‘What do you think is going to happen?’

I wasn’t even sure I’d spoken the question aloud.

‘To us?’ he breathed, drawing a finger down my cheek and awakening the elephant moths I’d thought long since flown.

‘To them,’ I amended, when I could trust my voice.

The only sound was the crackling of the scarlet flames we had nursed to life minutes before, before he exhaled raggedly – one breath that told me that he too was holding the world inside.

‘Perhaps, if they’re lucky, the same that happened to us? But they were so …’

I nodded, recalling the slow, agonizing moment Cassius’s arrow had buried itself at the top of Max’s spine, and the strange waxen sheen on Aelia’s skin. I’d known the truth even before Grey arrived. Yet the Oceanids had revived us …?

‘Octavia once told me, the harder the revival, the higher the price.’

I twisted around to find August’s swarthy, windburned face only millimetres away.

His words whispered through me as I stared upwards into the face that had challenged everything since the day we met. He was Octavia’s blueprint, one of her first experiments, destined for the highest office in Isca Pantheon, and yet here he was, lying beside a feral Outsider. Offering what little comfort he could. What alignment of stars had created such an alliance? And were we really free of them in the end?

His military tunic was undone at the neck, revealing honey skin, and the glint of his Equite mark just snaking over the curve of his shoulder. A slow flush crept upwards from my neck that had nothing to do with the fire. How could he make me feel this way, despite everything?

‘Price?’ I repeated.

He nodded, his eyes burning into mine in a way that made the cave recede.

‘For all revivals the Oceanids demand a payment of sorts: either an equitable trade or promise of recompense.’

I swallowed. They’d kept my old slingshot, but I knew that wasn’t what he meant.

‘Then what did I … we …?

‘Promise or give in exchange?’

There was a heavy silence as we both weighed the enormity of the suggestion.

‘I’m not certain … but as the other legends seem to be holding true …’

I struggled for breath. I could feel the dream loosening its hold.

His words conjured up an uncomfortable, distant memory. A dark promise, uttered deep within the depths of the icy waters, yet just as binding as if it were echoed from the top of a sun-drenched mountain.

‘Lia and Eli … they wouldn’t want us to give up Tal.’

His raw dark blues were emptying into mine, saying everything in case there was never another time.

I nodded again, a rock in my throat, as he gently traced the exact spot, his touch somehow relieving the constriction. And for the first time since leaving the Dead City, I allowed my thoughts to settle on home and whether I would ever see Mum again. The thought raked through what was left inside, making it soft and raw.

‘It wasn’t your fault.’

His whisper burned through me, like the first sun on ice-white snow. I opened my mouth but my voice, like my grief, was empty. And that was the moment. The moment I was guilty of wanting to forget – more than being unable to forget.

I slipped my fingers inside his open tunic collar, and let them rest against his insignia, burned into his golden skin. Her mark, just tangible beneath his warm skin, the ring of jellyfish protein that announced his modified DNA status to the world. It was his gateway into Octavia’s elite club, and the mark of the damned. And yet he couldn’t be any less hers now.

‘We have a saying in Arafel,’ I whispered, ‘that one feral heart can only be well met—’

His lips were against mine before I could finish, and if there was ever any doubt that our journeys were meant to cross, it was answered here and now, while the mountain storms raged. Our need became a heat that blurred the freezing night, and a belief that somewhere there was a parallel world where two people could travel their own path beneath the stars that guided them. And as I dug my fingers into his shoulders, his touch misting every ache and pain, I knew this was where it had all been leading.

That the mark we were making was one last act of defiance, proving free will was always the real legacy anyway.

Chapter 6

The moonlight was illuminating the floorboards like an old-world piano. I rested back against Grandpa’s willow chair. This had always been my safe place: my back against his legs, my cheek against his knee. Tonight though, I could only rest my weary head against his empty seat, and watch the night alone.

The insomnia was consistent at least, and when I did sleep, there was no Max to wake me from the vivid North Mountain dream that had returned these past few weeks. A barn owl hooted a few trees away. Somehow it seemed to know that the worst part was waking to a shame so intense I could barely force any thoughts past it.

I’d taken to sitting in Grandpa’s study when sleep eluded me. Partly so I didn’t disturb Mum, who was a light sleeper, but also because it was the one room that could offer some comfort. There were too many memories elsewhere – my window was too empty; Eli’s makeshift animal nurseries still swung from the beam in the living room; and Jas’s bed was neat and cold. I thought of the moment Eli had brought Jas home as a tiny, abandoned snow-leopard cub. The two of them had an unbreakable bond and she’d grown up to become one of the best and most loyal watch-cats in the world, even finding a way over the Mountains to Octavia’s research centre in the Dead City. The moment she saw him incarcerated inside the canister haunted me, as did the moment she squared up to Brutus, a molossus hound more than four times her size. Where was she now? I closed my eyes.

Only Grandpa’s room offered some semblance of peace. He was gone but his scent still pervaded the enclosed space, and if I closed my eyes tightly, I could hear his whisper.

‘Come what may, nature finds a way … We take what we need to survive, nothing more, Talia … All life has its place within the forest, including us …’

I contemplated the flickering floor, trying to forget the dream that left too many aches in places I never knew even existed. It was nearly three months since August left with the legatio, though my head seemed determined to replay that night above everything else. It was taunting me, lest I forget the consequences of letting myself feel anything. I could only be grateful that Unus had returned to the cave with armfuls of firewood before we’d had time to give in completely. I flushed at the memory, at the way we’d pulled apart, aching and sober, before he shuffled back inside our tiny cave.

I’d considered disappearing. And yet I was the last carrier of Thomas’s biological control, which both isolated and trapped me simultaneously. I was different, and not Eli different. Even though my twin had also possessed Thomas’s bloodline, Cassius had already hinted the control wasn’t as effective in the male line. Which left me.

By Thomas’s own hand I was no longer an Outsider or an Insider.

I was tainted.

And inexorably linked to the mother of all mythical creatures, a genetic hybrid far older than the Roman civilization and with the soul of a young girl who’d never seen the world. Lake’s double-lidded serpent eyes flickered through my head, and I knew she was searching.

Did she know she had the power to change everything?

August had made me promise I wouldn’t look for her without him. Even the lower slopes of the North Mountains were treacherous, without happening across an unstable chimera with a chemical attraction to my blood. And yet, he must have known I couldn’t not try. I was drawn to her, as I knew she was to me. A darkness, like Cassius himself, had been poured into our cells. I could feel him growing closer, like the night, crossing my sun. Dark to dark. Dust to …

‘Talia?’

Mum’s cracked voice broke the still air and I raised my head to spy her fragile frame, silhouetted in Grandpa’s doorway.

‘It isn’t dawn and you’re not on shift. Why aren’t you abed, child? You should sleep. The day’s long enough for us all … long enough … I’ll wake your brother – he’ll know what to do … Eli?’

She shuffled away, and the knot in my stomach tightened. She’d been anxious for a while, but Eli’s death had hit her hard and most days it seemed as though she lived in a world that had died along with Grandpa and Eli. I’d stopped trying to wake her. What point was there in making her live a reality she hated? And truthfully, part of me was jealous of the escape she’d created for herself. Leaving me out in the cold.

Her bedroom door creaked closed again and I sighed in relief. She’d get up again in a couple of hours and have forgotten she ever saw me.

Quietly, I climbed to my feet. The night air was warm and the forest was sleeping, which meant there was no one to convince I was the same old Tal. I slipped through the open doorway and stepped across towards the trapdoor that opened into the forest below. Our home had provided shelter to generations of my family, yet tonight it was too full of ghosts. With a final glance at Jas’s empty bed, I swung down to the forest floor and paused. It was one of my first lessons from Grandpa.

Listen to the forest, Talia. Sense what kind of mood she’s in.

But it was one of those nights. Ambivalent.

‘Tal …?’

I hesitated, cursing under my breath.

Unus’s stilted voice was unmistakable as it reached out from the gloomy trees. His was the first shelter of its kind in Arafel, a floor-house, although more had been added since the arrival of the new Outsiders. It was where he spent his nights, as no treehouse could be expected to support the weight of a ten-foot Cyclops, and until now I’d taken comfort from his proximity.

‘Tal, no sleep?’

He shuffled out across the milky clearing, care written all over his one-eyed pudgy face. He still looked so out of place in Arafel, and yet his skin had developed a warmer glow over the past couple of months, which suited him.

‘Yes … no … I just need to … to be …’

‘Alone?’ he finished, dropping his club hand.

I nodded, the old rock in my throat preventing any words from escaping. I didn’t deserve any sort of comfort, not even the shoulder of a best friend.

I forced my feet into a run, and was among the topmost branches before I could think. Not pausing to look down. Not allowing Unus’s kindness to turn into self-pity. And hoping so hard he understood. The forest stroked my cheeks with early summer, and showed me the swiftest path. I still hadn’t grown used to running without a shadow, but when I finally glimpsed my destination my thoughts were calmer than they had been in a long while.

I dropped as the trees thinned, calmed by the way the silver fingers of the bathing pool beckoned through the shadowy branches. The lake had always held a special significance. Ever since the day Max had frozen behind the cascading waterfall, paralysed with fear. It was the only time I’d known him to need help, and Eli and my acrobatic rescue had prompted our lifelong mantra.

Even now, as I watched the white water being swallowed mercilessly by the wide black lake, I could hear his grudging admiration.

‘What took you so long? Why run when you can fly, hey … crazy apricot-queen!’

My smile tightened as I stepped through the cool night grass towards the water’s edge, remembering how Max and Eli would race to be first in the water, naked and sun-kissed. I’d felt no shame watching their fresh-toned, youthful bodies glimmer in the dappled forest light, until our expeditions to the lake became known to Mum.

‘I don’t mind the swimming, but wear your slip and change separately.’

She never explained why, but it was the first time I realized things were changing.

Tonight though, I just wanted to be a child again.

I cast a look around the shadowy trees, which were rustling as though they too were reminiscing. The water was opaque and strangely inviting. It would help me forget – at least for a while.

Swiftly, I stripped off until the only thing warming my skin was my memories. I wasn’t cold but the anticipation of the swim was real now, and something else besides. There was a ritualistic feeling to what I was about to do.

I stepped across to the edge of the dark rippling lake, and looked at the waterfall spilling silver life into the void. Our distant voices reached across the water as clearly as though they were here now.

‘I can’t move! It’s not funny … One of you needs to climb up.’

It was one of the rare occasions I’d heard real fear in Max’s voice – that and the time we ran into the Minotaurus in Ludi Pantheonares. I closed my eyes briefly. The desperation in his forest-green eyes had pierced deeper than the Minotaur’s horns ever could.

‘Now, Tal?’

But I hadn’t let him speak, and that was how he’d met Cassius’s arrow, thinking I didn’t care when nothing could be farther from the truth.

I gritted my teeth, forcing myself past the raw memory, and back to the peace of this childhood place.

‘We could always leave him there … do him good to need us for a change.’

I recalled Eli’s nudge and wink as we realized Max was stuck. He always considered Max had it too easy. Life had tipped the scales in his favour, whereas Eli, silent from birth, had to rely on his twin sister for everything.

And I’d never underestimated my animal-whispering brother – yet he’d surprised me more than anyone. He’d sensed the griffin’s weakness in the Flavium, and brought the ravenous vultures when we most needed them in the cathedral.

All while possessing the gentlest soul I’d ever known.

I gazed at the spray bubbling up around the edge of shadowy water. I could see him signing now, teasing Max and winking at me.

‘C’mon … I was only kidding … We’ll be able to reach him more easily from the top.’

And I was there too, eyebrows raised and with a wide grin. Always so much older than my thirteen years, and usually the peacemaker. Back then I hadn’t realized the conflict between Max and Eli was so complex.

I dipped my toes and created a ripple of my own. It was curved and symmetrical. Like a story. And as mysterious as the night around me.

Carefully, I waded out into the black. Its still cool penetrating my skin, and soothing the rise of emotions there. I breathed out slowly. This felt good. I could imagine Max and Eli diving beneath the cool night water, almost feel their warm smooth bodies gliding past mine. I thrust my arms forward and let myself slide into the water, kicking my legs the way my father had taught me. The water lilies felt like tiny arms, reaching out to caress my limbs. I sank my face further into their soft tendrils, which hooked around my ears and toes, securing me in their dark world. And although I knew I was too deep to touch the bottom, and there was a strong undercurrent near the cascading falls, I didn’t feel threatened. Not by the black, not by the depth, and not by the tiny hands all over my body. Touching me, healing me.

I had no idea I’d floated out to the centre of the pool until the noise of the falls forced me to open my eyes. And for a moment I was unsure whether I’d slipped into a dream world entirely. I kicked out with my arms and legs but they felt oddly heavy. The moonlight was playing with me, darting with the tiny silver fish just beneath the surface of the lake. Only it couldn’t be moonlight, I fathomed, because the moon had gone behind a cloud and the light was beneath me. Shining up. Not down.

Which was when I saw I was surrounded.

Not by the lilies or any kind of plant life, but by eyes. Huge black ovoid eyes, and strong iridescent tails that had stolen the moonlight and painted it into their scales. There were too many to count, touching me, immobilizing me. But for some reason I wasn’t scared. Because I knew them. And last time they’d taken away all the pain.

‘Oceanids,’ I whispered into the night air, closing my eyes and submitting to the fate of the hands completely. Perhaps this was the end, perhaps it wasn’t. What did it matter?

Then a moment of clarity.

‘Oceanids?’ I repeated with more conviction, striking out in vain.

‘Where are you?’ I struggled, as the hands suddenly became stronger, pulling me. Downwards.

Reality flooded my frozen body, filling me with fresh, choking fear.

‘Where are you? Eli! Aelia!’ I yelled between mouthfuls of icy water.

‘The Oceanids are loyal only to themselves … They’re the only chance we have left,’ August whispered as we watched Eli and Aelia slip beneath the glass water.

But how could the Oceanids be here in the middle of Arafel’s forest? And why would they come now?

I was losing. The water that had seemed so calm and inviting was blurring my sight and stealing my breath. I tried to kick but the ovoid eyes were taking me down, despite my fight. Was this what it had all come to? Some kind of ceremonial drowning because I’d failed on the prophetic journey they’d envisaged?

Then just when the outside world began drifting away, I rose from the surface as though snatched from the waves in a storm. My chest tightened as I bent over to retch and rid my lungs of the black water, and only then did I snatch a glimpse of my rescuer. It was dark, but I knew him. Somehow.

I reached up to touch his jaw, before jerking my fingers away again. He was icy, angular – and one of them. He lowered his gilled head to focus his ovoid eyes directly on mine, his white chest rippling like sand dunes in the emerging moon. His nape-length hair hung like tendrils of bladderwrack, while the ivory-white shell strung around his neck proclaimed his regal status as loudly as a bugle.

‘Talia.’

His whisper filled the air, though his lips were sealed. Then snatches of eerie forgotten music reached through the water as though from the depths of an old shipwreck. It was the same soft and haunting music I’d heard in the tunnels when I was so close to death. Back then I thought it was the call of heaven; now I knew it was the pull of the underworld.

‘Eli?’ I forced through numb lips. ‘Where is he?’ My voice came in gasps, fierce and uneven.

He stared down intently, allowing me to glimpse him. Eli, reflected in the black ovoid surface of his fathomless eyes. He was smiling, holding out his hands towards me or to another. To the one holding me now?

I stared, dumbfounded, feeling a spark fire within me.

‘What have you done with him?’ I raged, pummelling my fists against his rock-hard chest.

His gills opened, releasing a soft outpouring of freezing mist that stopped me in my tracks. I stared into his black eyes, praying fervently they would show me again.

‘You know me, Talia. I am Prince Phaethon, Son of Clymene.’ His whisper clung to the air. ‘I come to you in peace.’

My mind was whirling through the pages of Grandpa’s book of mythology, until it reached the page I was searching for – heavily inked with a dark, stormy ocean, and eyes that watched as you read. A memory stirred, and Grandpa’s voice whispered through the trees.

Clymene was an Oceanid nymph loved by the sun god, Helios. Together, they had seven daughters and a son, a prince named Phaethon, who was killed when he tried to drive his father’s chariot of the sun across the sky, scorching the land and its people for all time.

‘Phaethon?’ I echoed, my frozen lips barely able to form the word.

An intense stare was my confirmation.

‘Eli … my brother …?’

The water stirred around us.

‘He is safe …’

I exhaled, feeling the fractures in my heart flood with fresh pain, forcing open the scars.

‘Then where is he?’ I burned. ‘Is he here? Why can’t I see him? And Aelia!’

‘You brought them to us with barely any life. But we accepted them, as we accepted you and the Commander General …’

‘Where are they, Phaethon?’

And then I glimpsed it, buried in the place where things are supposed to be forgotten.

A huge rambling city, concealed by an underwater garden, its bioluminescence gleaming like a million candles.

It was a world I’d chosen to forget. My breath rattled the cool night air, and the shapes beneath the black water darted faster and faster – as though they knew it too.

‘Now you claim a right, despite this world doing all it could to end them,’ his ovoid eyes challenged, showing a glimpse of Eli and Aelia’s pale, waxen faces as they slid into the glass river, ‘so, my question to you is, what will you do for my kind in return?’

His imperial face was as still as stone, the strength coursing through his arms as old as mountains.

For all revivals the Oceanids demand a payment of sorts: either an equitable trade or promise of recompense.

I tried to steady my breath. Hadn’t August and I paid the heaviest price already?

Fresh zeal flooded my veins.

‘I can pay,’ I forced through gritted teeth. ‘There can be a trade. Give them back; give Eli back. Stand beside us against Cassius – and I will pay in blood. For the Oceanids, for the Prolets, for Arafel, and for every last misbegotten creature who has suffered at his hand – I will watch Cassius draw his last breath before burning his dark heart until there is nothing but dust.’

Another memory stirred, only this time it was Atticus pleading with me to spare his father’s life in the cathedral. Was it prompted by Phaethon? Some kind of test?

‘This time I will have no mercy,’ I swore.

‘Find Hominum chimera.’

Prince Phaethon’s words faded into my skin as a myriad of illuminations reached up through the water. I stared down, glimpsed them floating somewhere between sleeping and waking, their hypnotic lullaby growing louder all the while. I could see they were coming, all of them, a thousand pairs of fathomless eyes powering towards me and reaching for my innermost thoughts.

It was beautiful, terrifying and magical in the way only ancient worlds understood. I wanted to sleep, to let their bewitching song engulf me, to take me to them. Perhaps never to return.

But instead the surface broke one last time and a familiar silhouette reached out of the water beside me. A gentle face, grey-blue eyes and longish sandy-brown hair. He smiled, and for the first time in months, I was conscious of a knot releasing somewhere deep inside.

Chapter 7

I was alone. Save for the rustling trees, and the ground beneath me which was as dry as a bone. For a second I stared upwards at the protective canopy of branches, entwined over my head as though to protest, ‘She’s one of us … a land creature … not of the water.’

Adrenaline fired my limbs into action and I bolted upright, a million thoughts misfiring. I could see the silvery gleam of the lake through the trees, yet somehow I was dressed again – and as dry as though I’d never been swimming at all.

Was it all a dream?

Then I heard a rustle in the jade grass beside me. I turned slowly, still caught in the web of my dream.

There was a man asleep next to me. My breath stilled. A familiar, missing man.

My breath caught on a painful cough as I reached out. It was him. My brother. Lying asleep beside me as though it were the most natural thing in the world. His skin peachy and perfect. Arafel perfect. As though we’d never lost him at all.

For a moment it was as much as I could do just to sit there, drinking in every tiny contour of the face that was so like my own, and had yet been so difficult to picture these last few weeks. Then at last, I smiled. Not gratefully. But blissfully. A real smile that broke through the walled-up fissures of my heart and reached into my cheeks to make them stretch until they ached.

It really was Eli. Glistening and whole, as though he’d never known Pantheon, Cassius or the research facility. And then he was opening his grey-blue eyes, and rolling his head towards me. Fixing me with his gentle smile, and healing me in a way no one else could.

He raised his head in bewilderment as I reached for his hand. His fingers were a shade of field-gold just before harvest, and I recalled how pale he was when I whispered my goodbye. The thought sobered me faster than if I’d plunged into the river myself, and I threw my arms around him with a sob.

‘I’m OK, I’m OK,’ he soothed as I held him fast, uncertain I would ever let him go again.

He looked the same, felt the same, and yet his eyes glinted with the light of another world and its secrets. And he was alone. My heart ached for Max and Lia, but it only made me hug Eli harder.

‘Where have you been?’ I whispered finally.

Chapter 8

There was an iridescent mist bathing the mountains today. It swirled around my strapped ankles like tendrils of heaven reaching down to soothe the warm, dusty rocks. It was the sort of day we used to enjoy in the fields. The sun was a blur of spring warmth, affording the workers a degree of respite from the usual searing heat. But the mountain mist was also deceptive, ready to lead any hunter to his swift demise given any lapse in concentration.

Unus paused to kneel beside a scorched Venus flytrap. We’d passed this way a few days ago, when the plant was green and budding.

‘Close,’ he pronounced with difficulty.

I nodded briefly, gesturing up the trail. Unus followed my gaze, his single pale eyebrow forked and anxious. We all knew why. Lake was roaming closer to the village with each passing day, and whether she was friend or foe, we had to find her.

Eli frowned. Art and the rest of the Council had heralded his return as nothing less than a miracle. There was a full day of celebration, and while my jubilation was no less real, it was shadowed too. My twin was back, but there was a new quietness about him, as though he carried the weight of the ocean inside. I recalled his image smiling inside Prince Phaethon’s eyes, and I couldn’t help but wonder whether it was more significant than I had first realized. Once I mustered enough courage to ask about Aelia too, but he only shook his head. I didn’t press him – I knew the answers would come in their own time.

And Mum’s reaction was worth all the unanswered questions in the world. She was still fragile, but hadn’t stopped smiling since Eli followed me into the treehouse that morning. She glowed as though a thousand sunbeams had coalesced inside her all at once.

‘I knew you’d come home … I said you’d come … I knew you’d come home … I said you’d come,’ she repeated.

But no one stopped her.

And if Eli’s return had provided some semblance of hope, Prince Phathon’s deal had provided a grim focus. I wasn’t ignorant to the irony of a mythical prince with an Oceanid army at his fingertips, challenging a feral Outsider to rid the world of a monster, but knew enough to understand there were rules. It had been my legacy from the start after all. I could only hope our deal would stand, and the Oceanids would stand beside us when we needed them. I glanced at my quiet brother. Perhaps we stood more chance than I realized.

‘Tal … look?’

Unus paused again and threw a long look around, before returning his attention to his feet. Eli and I caught up to find him staring at the mangled hindquarter of an ocelot, strewn across the shaley path. It was clear it hadn’t died from natural causes. I glanced up into Unus’s blue eye, barely visible beneath huge flushed folds of squinting flesh.

‘It’s fresh,’ I confirmed, racking my brains for any other animal that may have had the power to rip a body apart in this way.

Only a larger mountain cat would come close, and those I’d encountered would never leave half a carcass for another creature to finish. I turned the unfortunate animal’s remains over and something hard and ivory rolled away. Frowning, I picked it up and held it aloft, so it glinted in the sunlight.

‘Looks like someone is losing their milk teeth,’ Eli signed.

I stared in fascination. It was about the size of my fist, ivory-white, and tapered to a perfect razor-sharp point. Carefully, I reached out and tapped the tip of the tooth on a spiny cactus plant. Instantly its tough exterior skin split open, spilling its soft pulp and inner juices down over its spiny prickles until they pooled at our feet.

‘Bigger teeth … bigger draco,’ Unus remarked, his eye stretching as round as a rice bowl.

I frowned, assessing the steep mountain pass. ‘Which is why we can’t wait,’ I muttered, refusing to think about the promise August had extracted before he left.

The higher we climbed, the steeper the trail, and the more frequently we needed to rest. We reached the mid-peak summits without too much trouble, and though we were still within a few hours’ hike of Arafel, the air was noticeably thinner. There was also less animal life the higher we climbed, while mountain shale grew more crumbly underfoot. I fought to suppress the dark memories pushing to the forefront of my mind, and focused instead on the stark cries of the golden eagles circling above our heads.

Within a breath, I was back in Isca Pantheon with August, looking down on the main dome floor as Octavia’s regal two-headed eagles dived past.

‘The haga are two-headed – it’s a Roman thing,’ he joked.

Gritting my teeth, I spun on my feet and looked for Unus. He’d dropped a little way behind. His face was flushed, and his usual lumbering rhythmic pace had slowed. I glanced at Eli anxiously.

‘I don’t think Cyclops’ circulatory systems are designed for altitude,’ he signed. ‘Anyway, it’s well past midday … time we turned back.’

He met my rigid look warily. He could sense that another sleepless night was one too many. I had to find her, even if it meant staying out all night.

‘Tal, I promise … we’ll come back tomorrow.’

His signing was almost persuasive, and then an ominous shuddering stopped us all in our tracks. It was chased by a barrage of sharp stones raining down on the pathway just ahead of us. Small avalanches of slippery mountain shale weren’t unusual, but something told me this freshly dislodged debris wasn’t due to the variable weather. We jumped back as another torrent of hardened topsoil and shale cascaded down. It was closer this time. Unus shuffled in front of us protectively, but I could feel his fear. A Cyclops was stronger than ten men, but pitching brute strength against a hormonally charged adolescent Hominum chimera wasn’t likely to end happily.

‘Wait here with Unus!’ I signed to Eli, knowing Unus’s wheezing would slow them both for a couple of minutes.

Then without waiting for a response, I turned and flew up the edge of the falling debris as lightly as I could. The trail was lined with boulders, their narrow crevices providing scant protection for the mountain’s hardy plants. Occasionally, foragers would bring a basketful back to the village for Raven to use in herbal compresses or medicines. Today though, my eyes were trained on the jagged mountain path that disappeared up ahead. I’d seen this mountain’s summit once before, could just recall the haze of shaley paths and treacherous passes I’d pushed to the back of my mind. We had every reason to turn back – except the air was filled with the faint scent of smouldering ash.

With blood thumping in my ears, I continued upwards until the trail met a near vertical, creviced wall. Scanning the rock, I spotted a shelf about five metres above my head. It was a short easy climb providing the rock was stable. There was no time to waste, and I scurried up the jagged surface as swiftly as I dared, so conscious Eli and Unus would catch up at any moment, just when she was close at last. Dark to dark. I gritted my teeth, unable to deny the truth clawing up my throat with each hand and foot hold – she knew I was near too.

I peered over the top cautiously, and was surprised to find a wide, barren mountain shelf, lined with piles of fallen rock and shingle. It looked barren enough, but somehow I knew it wasn’t. There was a waiting in the air, an anticipation of the kind that forces every nerve to strain beyond comfort, and today it was because of the looming black cave set about twenty metres away to my right. A cave that looked as black and uninviting as any of Pantheon’s tunnels.

And though it couldn’t conceal any strix, I knew that Lake in draco form could incinerate one hundred of the mythological flesh-eating birds with a single, violent breath if she chose.

I crept forward, aware the eagles overhead had quietened, as though they too were able to sense a menace reaching through their spiralling thermals. I wasn’t sure what I was hoping to achieve. I was hopelessly ill-equipped to challenge Lake in any form. She was the most successful of all Cassius’s trials – brutal, powerful, and more than capable of reducing a girl from the forest to dust – and yet, my leather-clad feet kept on stealing forward anyway. I just had to gaze into her yellow, double-lidded eyes, and know she felt it too.

Then I glimpsed her, or rather I glimpsed her breath, hanging on the cool air just outside the cave. I froze, my chest tightening. I hadn’t set eyes on her for more than three months, when she unwittingly helped us escape the research centre by incinerating it. August and I had only escaped by squeezing inside one of the life-support canisters, but her abject fury had imprinted on me for ever. There was no doubting the astonishing myths about Hominum chimera’s strength and abilities were not to be dismissed. She possessed a nature that was different to every other creature I knew, natural or otherwise.

‘There’s an ancient myth that Hominum chimera is capable of triggering a sequence of natural disasters, culminating in the eternal fire of damnation.’

It was spine-tingling, a tale worthy of Grandpa’s book of mythology, beyond probable – and yet wholly believable too. I could sense her truth, as she could sense the difference in me. And that was my best hope, her instinct for our blood connection – and what it truly meant.

‘Lake?’ I called, watching tendrils of steam slowly float away in the early spring sunshine.

I pressed my teeth together. My voice sounded surprisingly steady for a forest girl approaching a legendary chimera, who was probably hungry too. Momentarily inspired, I felt in my leather rations bag for whatever food I had remaining – some smoked cheese and a hunk of rye bread. It would have to do.

I threw the meagre offering into the mouth of the cave, and backed off warily. There was a thick silence before a heavy dragging, then a savage burst of steam followed by silence again.

I hesitated, as the shadows inside the mouth of the cave appeared to dance and cavort. Somehow I knew she was looking straight at me, while making short shrift of my meagre offering. Her double-lidded liquid amber eyes were narrowing, contracting and assessing – was I predator or prey? Or something else entirely.

‘Lake … it’s me, Talia,’ I offered steadily.

My legs felt oddly weak, and there was a strange creeping cramp spreading out from the pit of my stomach. I forced myself to scramble up onto a large flat boulder anyway. I had to face her now, before I lost my nerve completely.

It felt better being higher, although I knew Eli would say I was breaking cardinal rule number one: always present yourself lower than the animal you’re trying to pacify. Somehow though I knew it wasn’t the right way for me and Lake.

‘You have to remember me? Max and I? We came to find you from Arafel …? You were hiding with Atticus and the Prolet children beneath the Dead City? Remember? We were with you – in New Arfel – when you were taken – by … Cassius’s aquila?’

Then there was another violent projection of steam, the colour of Bereg’s mulberry wine, and then a raking noise – the sound of heavy claws digging into a hard rock floor. Every cell of my body tightened. She recognized Cassius’s name. There was hope.

‘We followed you to Pantheon, to try and rescue you! Max and I were forced into Ludi Pantheonares to face the Minotaurus. And we only escaped with Unus – the Cyclops’ help … I was injured but we managed to escape through the tunnels beneath Pantheon only to be hijacked by Cassius and his guards at the cathedral. There was a fight, Lake. We lost … so many.’

‘… Tal!’

Unus’s voice broke my concentration, and somehow the warning note in his tone told me exactly what to do. I dropped and flattened out on top of the boulder, just as a burst of searing red heat passed over my back with scarcely a gnat’s length to spare.

Instinctively, I rolled away and slid down into a crevice as a second burst of her fury enveloped the entire side of the boulder. From my sheltered position, I could see only Unus and Eli’s incredulous expressions, but they were enough. I took hold of the stone edge, and pulled myself up until finally I had a clear view of the spiny-tailed mythological legend dwarfing the dark hole behind her. It was Lake.

And she made the mountain look feeble.

Clearly draco-chimera adolescence involved huge growth. Although her five metres had already seemed big at the research centre, now she had to reach at least twenty metres into the sky, and I couldn’t even see the tip of her tail, which disappeared into the darkness behind. She was still ash-grey with spiny titian scales, but they’d tapered into menacing arrow-points that stretched all the way down the back of her thick, muscular back and hind quarters.

I swallowed the rock in my throat, mesmerized by her new adolescent appearance.

New veins of regal purple traced a visible path from her neck, all the way down her torso and into the tops of her powerful forelegs. But it was her double-lidded honey eyes that stole all my attention. They were older, hungrier – angrier. But they were still eyes that didn’t belong on such a vast, serpentine creature. They were hers. Lake’s eyes. And they were eyeballing me intently.

‘We came to look for you, Lake!’ I entreated, as she opened her huge scaly jaws and spilled her rage into the chilled mountain air.

‘With Pan! We came with Pan!’ I added hoarsely, my eyes streaming.

An eerie, smoky silence suddenly filled the air. Lake paused, lowering her great spiny head so it was level with the top of my boulder. And it could have been her proximity, or the late sun glinting off the shale, but I fancied there was a reddening to the underside of her amber eyes, almost as though she associated the name with pain.

‘He traded his life to save us … so we could come and find you,’ I whispered.

Her purple scaly nostrils vibrated with barely contained aggression, and this time I could tell she was listening, that somewhere in her hybrid, mixed-up mind, she remembered.

‘Pan knew about our blood, he knew we shared a connection,’ I begged, my throat feeling like razor blades. ‘Lake?’

I extended my hand, but a familiar rumble filled the air before I could finish, and as Lake swung her thick leathery head back to identify the source of the noise, my heart sank.

Unus and Eli had caught up, and were clearly intent on distracting Lake from incinerating me. I scowled furiously, shaking my head, but it was already too late.

Lake wasted no time in swinging her huge reptilian body around, her heavy thrashing tail sweeping across the top of the boulder and nearly taking my head off in the process. And as I bolted out from behind her, I was conscious of her titian spines flushing with deep scarlet blood, staining their dark jagged points cruel and hard.

‘Move!’ I bellowed, sprinting across the top of the rocks.

She settled her gaze on Unus, her eyes narrowing to slits, and opened her brutal jaws to reveal violent canines, designed with one purpose in mind. In that split second I understood. She was the mother of all mythical creatures and here was one of her kind, actually daring to challenge her. And while Unus possessed the strength of ten hunters, he was still paltry defence against an adolescent Hominum chimera.

‘Get down … Unus, get down!’ I yelled, flying towards them as Lake closed in from the opposite side, the ground shaking with her every colossal step.

Eli was trying, heroically, to force Unus to his knees, but I could see he was struggling.

I scowled as a snippet of Aelia’s medical knowledge floated out of the whirlwind in my head.

Cyclopean arteries and limbs are especially thick; they have low blood pressure and are pretty inflexible …’

‘He can’t … Lake, he can’t kneel!’ I yelled, just as she reached forward with one of her powerful, regal claws and knocked Unus flat onto his back.

He landed with an almighty crash, his face swiftly staining purple as breath deserted his ill-designed body. He looked up in utter bewilderment as I ran out in front of his plate-feet, and spun to face Lake’s wide-open jaws.

‘No!’ I yelled furiously, throwing my arms wide as she teetered, before swinging her colossal weight back.

And in that moment I don’t know who was more amazed. Lake, because I’d dared to defy her – or me, because she actually listened and reacted.

Eli stepped in beside me, calm glued to his face, as Unus recovered enough to start slowly dragging himself backwards. But Lake’s surprise was short-lived. And as reality returned, her giant head sank once again towards the ground, jowls drawn back in ugly contemplation, haunches high and arched. The frenzied look was back in her double-lidded eyes, and even though Eli had begun to sign, they were locked on me alone.

‘We aren’t here to hurt you, Lake,’ I forced out, so conscious of our vulnerability, and yet determined to reach the little girl inside, wherever she was. ‘We’ve come to help, and to ask for yours in return. Cassius is raising an army, waging a war on the outside … and we … Arafel, the Outsiders … we need your help.

‘You are Hominum chimera, mother of all mythical beasts, and the most ancient of all creatures described in the Voynich. But you are also Lake, a loyal friend with the bravest, truest heart I’ve ever known.’

She tilted her head so suddenly, Eli and I had to jump aside to avoid a sharp stream of boiling acrid steam.

‘Cassius wants to control you,’ I continued stubbornly, ‘to use you as a weapon to change the outside world. But there is another way. A way to live freely, to live the life you deserve on the outside … Help us, Lake. Help us stop Cassius, help us free the Prolets – your people … and Max.’

I finished on a whisper, and though Eli was signing fast, translating my words as swiftly as I spoke, I could tell she was so different from Brutus, the griffin and the vultures. Because for once, the only control in the world was standing right beside him.

And I knew Lake understood every damned word, and not because of anything she was doing, but rather because of what she wasn’t doing. Her giant scaled head was still angled to one side and though her honey eyes were blazing, there was something else too.

She was listening.

Somehow it was working.

Just as a new sound cut the air, a groan I only half-recognized as belonging to Unus it was so shot through with shock. In that moment we all shared the same instinct – draco, Cyclops and Outsiders alike – to turn our gaze upon the valley at the bottom of the North Mountain slopes. Towards Arafel.

And I barely acknowledged Lake’s last violence as she shook out her draco wings, each one the length of three stallions, and thundered off the mountain shelf – because my sights were locked on a serpent much closer to home. A serpent that took the last of my hopes, and crushed them to ash before my darkening eyes.

Arafel was in flames.

Chapter 9

I felt only the scorching jaws of a dark curse. As acutely as though it were slowly gorging itself on my own feral heart. Raw and bloody, bite by bite.

Instinctively I slowed as the charred skeleton of Arafel’s forest rose up before us like a giant desiccated spider; its appearance as alien as Pantheon’s Eagle aircraft disappearing over the North Mountains peaks.

Eli and I picked our way, among the handful of survivors on the outskirts of the village, in silent shock. The Eagle Stealth Sweepers had dived silently and without warning, using laser fire technology to obliterate most of our forest home within seconds. No one heard them coming, and for most, there was no time to escape their individual treehouse furnace.

The air was dead, broken only by the splitting and cracking of disintegrating trees, hanging over what was left of our home village like a funeral shroud. As we entered the village community area, a handful of disparate people emerged from different directions – Komodos, Lynx, Eurasians and my people – their faces as mutilated as the landscape surrounding us. No one could give voice to the sudden and absolute devastation shattering our village home. It was too much like admitting it had happened; that somehow we had to process this horror.

There were bodies everywhere, people and animals, limbs entwined, as the laser fire had prompted that most human of responses. Raven and Mathilda lay face down by the grazing ground gate, cut down in a desperate attempt to set the grazing animals free. To give them the fighting chance Cassius had denied them.

And an ocean of blood was staining the earth beneath our feet.

The ground was sodden, rivulets converging and painting my feet with the fate of so many innocents. My mind recalled the moment we glimpsed the vampiric eyes of the basilisk in the Isca Prolet, watching and waiting. A single drop of the basilisk’s acidic venom had reduced the ironmonger’s tool to nothing but a pool of molten metal. It was just the same now, only the acid was Cassius, and the molten iron my family and friends, children and animals alike. Nothing and no one had been spared. We were staring at a massacre.

Eli regained himself first, breaking into a run that blurred into the splintered trees within seconds. It pulled me back into the moment, into conscious thought, and I flew after him, not needing to ask where he was headed.

I tried to keep my eyes focused on the unrecognizable ground in front, conscious only of a dull thump in my ears as I sprinted. The communal buildings were just a series of dusty, blackened rises, their top layer already scattering to the wind. And as I willed the violence and destruction to blur behind my eyes, I was already aware of a muted resemblance to the Dead City.

We entered what used to be the perimeter of the forest at a speed neither of us knew we possessed, but were then forced to slow. Because nothing was the same. And where before there was a network of treehouses, now there was only chilling, empty space. It was as disorientating as it was devastating. Most of the outlying homes had stood no chance against the intense heat of Cassius’s weaponry. My chest strained as though a vortex was growing inside, a whirling gut-slicing vortex. If I even gave an inch, there would be a storm to pay.

With no trees left to run through, we were forced to keep our path on the ground, circumventing any ominous smoking remains. I kept my gaze locked forward, pushing my feet until we reached the scorched embers of Art’s treehome. It was where the Council held meetings on the last working day of the month, a tradition Grandpa started when he was Village Leader.

Now I could only stare at the twisted blackened remains of a tree stump, with bile burning up my throat.

We stood together dully. There was unrecognizable debris, and the same oppressive smoke everywhere. The guilt of survival volumed up from my core, threatening to swallow me whole as I turned slowly, trying to force my clouded brain to work.

Then a voice, calling through the smog. It was a familiar voice, from behind the remains of a Norwegian fir. Blindly, I ran towards the sound, and skidded to my knees beside a trapped, skewed person. And even though she was covered in blood, and my senses were suffocated, I knew her instantly.

‘Ida,’ I whispered.

She turned her glistening head, only now the tongues dancing around her fading eyes were choked with dust.

‘Tal,’ she whispered with the glint of a smile, as I pushed my arms beneath her soaking back and pulled her close.

Then she closed her proud Komodo eyes and breathed her last.

I cradled her tightly as though that could make a difference. But I was too late, far too late. It was only when Eli took her shoulders to lower her that I realized her legs were skewed because they had been severed by the indiscriminate laser fire. Numbly, we straightened her so the division was barely visible. Then she lay there, with as much dignity in death as she had in life, and I watched as the scorched ground darkened around her body, as though it too knew it wasn’t her time, that this warrior belonged to the sun.

A quiver of her pared hand-darts rested against her still hip, and gently, I reached out to unhook the small weapons she always used with such accuracy. Each one had an immature Komodo tooth set into its tail, weighting it precisely, so it flew with the tribe’s honour.

‘I promise,’ I breathed, placing my palm over her cooling forehead the way she used to mark respect, before pushing to my feet.

Then we flew as though our feet could defy gravity. And as the desiccated landscape blurred, all I could think was that if the Eagle Stealth aircraft had reached our white oak, I’d failed Mum in the same way I’d failed Grandpa. And that hurt was just too much for any one body to contain.

Eli pulled ahead of me, his longer legs giving him the edge over the charred ground. We hadn’t spoken on our flight down the North Mountains, leaving Unus far behind on the slopes, but I knew we were both thinking the same thing. We’d left Mum when she needed us most. She wouldn’t have understood what was happening, and she wouldn’t have had the wherewithal to run if there had been chance to escape. The thought stole my air, making my feet leaden as the silent forest blurred like a monument to itself.

Then, suddenly, our feet were plunging into denser foliage, and I found myself holding my acrid breath until it hurt. Our treehouse was the first to be built in the middle of Arafel’s forest, whereas most of the newer treehouses had been built nearer the village centre, where the laser fire had been concentrated. Dare we hope? The foliage was definitely greener, though the indiscriminate path of laser fire was still visible. It was the tiniest ray of hope, but I clung to it fiercely until Eli slowed in front of a familiar willow bough.

My chest thumped painfully as I approached, my brother’s silhouette looming through the dust like a dark angel. And then we were back, standing at the edge of our clearing, staring up at the old white oak that had sheltered Thomas and our ancestors through the worst storm mankind could devise.

It was still there.

Or at least most of it was. One of the large supporting boughs had been split off by passing laser fire, leaving the edge of our living room exposed, but the rest was there, its silver-white bark a beacon of hope among all the grey.

‘Mum?’ I whispered, my eyes streaming. ‘Mum?’

My anguish exhaled forcibly as I scrambled forward, willing myself up there, willing Mum to be OK. Before a sudden, bruising grip on my upper arm yanked me back into the foliage.

‘What?!’ I hissed as I regained my balance, only to find his other hand clamping down hard over my mouth.

Then I saw his expression. He was staring straight ahead, and there was something in his fixed stare that flooded my limbs with fresh dread. Yet I couldn’t not look. I forced my gaze to level with his, and scowled through the eerie, particle-choking air.

And then I understood. Because she was there, just past the dust and devastation, just beyond the shadow of our treehouse. Mum.

Mum was standing, unprotesting, as some kind of metal frame box closed around her, a box connected by a glinting silver cord to the open underbelly of an Eagle aircraft.

They were taking her.

The words repeated dully in my head before reality bit back. Then cold fury snaked through my limbs and I fought like a caged medusa to show I didn’t care, that I knew he was trying to save us, but that it didn’t matter any more. There was no way I could stand here and watch them take her the way they took Grandpa. I had to try to stop it. And somehow, whether it was a moment’s weakness, or some brief understanding that there was no survival worth her loss, his hold loosened. It was all I needed and I was away in a flash, pelting past our treehouse, across the open ground and towards her.

‘Mum!’ I grated hoarsely, as the cage swung just out of reach of my gut-twisting leap.

I landed in a heap before turning my burning face skywards.

‘Cassius!’ I bellowed into the air. ‘Fight me! You goddamned son of a cowardly death-adder bastard! Do you hear me?’

Panic was clawing up my throat, blinding me as Mum’s frail figure grew terrifyingly smaller.

‘Or are you too scared to face me after the cathedral? Cassius …!’

A second grill was over my person in a breath, and it was only then that I realized the metallic frame was lined with a transparent material. It was a fortified box, much like the canisters in the research centre, and it sucked me in with intense force. Stealing my breath. Dulling my consciousness.

‘Mum,’ I moaned desperately.

And as my senses dimmed, I was vaguely aware of a broken face far below, of a dark hole looming closer, and the mechanical clatter of a hatch closing. Then there was motion, but it didn’t matter because through my dimming eyes I caught a glimpse of her. Beside me. And whatever she was facing, I was right beside her. Facing it too. Grandpa’s eyes blurred before mine, he was smiling so sadly.

‘I tried,’ I pleaded, as the world dimmed to a faint pink spot, and all I could think was that, sometimes, winning wasn’t about fulfilling prophecies or defeating monsters.

That sometimes, it was about knowing when to lose.