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“Call your dog to heel,” Mia says, looking right into Miles’ eyes. Watching them widen as he finally draws back, shoulders dropping from their defensive stance in his surprise and his smirk sealing up in a pale, thin line. “It should be clear to both of you that I am not here to speak with him.”Phoenix winces, too. He’s the one who told them there was still something, something bright and fierce and kind, hidden under Miles’ sneers and scowls like a seed buried into frozen ground. The one who braved the winter storms to come plead before the gates of their village, high and hard and often enough to bring even the Master on the Mountain herself to let him try and talk to the man known as the Demon Knight before it was too late, for all that she’d already exchanged blows as well as spells with him on many a battlefield Phoenix had never seen, much less fought on. The one who kept at it, throwing old memories and lost dreams like stones against the Demon’s shield, until he failed beyond repair, and might have doomed the Women of the Technique.And now, he’s left to stand back and watch as Mia and Miles’ master — hard to deny the accusation, right now; hard to miss the glint of twin torques, one gold and set with blue stones and the other plain if bright silver, around their necks and under the high, cruel moon and all its stars — both choose to ignore Miles’ angry, inelegant sputtering. Manfred of Karma pays no heed to his best disciple as he steps forward and grins, wide as the maw of freezing blue fire that may yet shine before the Army of Kurain and swallow it whole — and after they are gone, eat the world whole.“My every deed is done in the name of perfect justice and perfect order,” he says. “Go back to your Mountain, witch. You, your women and your pet, with your ghosts and your spirits, and all your unholy necromancy.”Mia smiles tense and deceptively soft through Maya’s lips, and twirls a lock of black hair around her finger for good measure. “I will not. But perhaps it's you who should go back to your lands in the North, well beyond the sea, and stay there. Never to return.” Her eyes are like a brand, aflame with life and with the mysteries of that which lies behind it, and it is a wonder to Phoenix how Manfred does not burn on the spot, leaving only a circle of ashes and easy victory on the grassy plain. But then again, it is a wonder to Phoenix how Phoenix is even here, standing at a hair’s breadth from a crossing of wills and spells that may leave him dead so far away from the small, quiet farm he grew up on.“I do not fear a dead woman,” sneers Manfred. “Least of all, as the night is about to die. For as soon as dawn rises, from the sea will come my ships. From the North, my daughter, standing tall on the gilded prow. And when she comes, she will whip you like a disobedient serving girl. You, or your green sister. Whichever one gathers enough courage to face us.”“Let her come, then. And then we’ll see who whips who.”And Mia turns in a flutter of hair and skirts, striding out of Manfred’s camp and towards their own like a storm in purples, leaving Phoenix to scamper behind her. Miles’ gaze burning itself into his back as he flees.In the morn, young Maya will stand at the helm of all the might and magic of Kurain, with her innocent smile and haunted eyes. And Phoenix will be by her side, with the ancient, too-bright sword he’s barely learned how to wield clutched in his shaking hand.And may a miracle — a heart suddenly changed, or at least, thunder and lighting over the sea… — come their way.