A soft caress on Aurelie’s cheek made her eyes open. She expected Maud to be there, sitting on the covers beside her curled legs. She expected the darkness of the room to be pitch black. Or perhaps the glow of the hearth through the door that should have been open. Anything but Balor sitting there, moving his hand softly over her cheek with a warm grin on his face beneath dark eyes.

  “What…?”

  Balor’s smile only thickened. “My love,” he said, running his fingers through her hair. “You look so tired.”

  She grabbed his hand and sank her face into it. She smelled it. It was his smell that filled her lungs. She opened her eyes, bracing for a jolt from seeing some nightmarish thing in his place, but it remained him.

  “I missed you so much,” Aurelie kissed his hand and grabbed his shoulder, clenching his shirt in a fist to pull him to her. And it was lips, just the way she always remembered, that touched hers. “It hurts so much without you being here. I can’t live without you.”

  “You can,” Balor whispered, leaning his forehead against hers. “And you will. Believe you me, you will.”

  She gripped at him when he leaned back from her, confused. “I’m not dead? How are you…?”

  “Come with me,” Balor stood from her embrace, beckoning her with a wave of his hand from the doorway. “Follow.”

  “This is a dream.” She stated flatly, disappointed. She looked around the room. It was exactly as it was when she went to sleep. She shook her head, “I don’t want you to go. Stay here, with me. Please.”

  Balor only grinned. “I insist.” And he stepped through the doorway, beckoning her again.

  Aurelie leapt, “Wait, please. Please, Balor, my love, wait!” She rushed to him, but he only turned and went out the front door.

  She followed. She didn’t expect to feel the dirt on her feet or the dew of the tall grass scattered in the road to wet her ankles. She didn’t expect to feel the cool air piercing through her chemise. She only hurried to get closer to him. And he reached out to her, took her hand in his, laced his fingers into hers.

  “Come, I have something for you,” there was a twinkle in his unnaturally dark eyes, “And I promise it’s not a rock.”

  “I still have them, I never got rid of them.”

  “Come,” he pulled her, turning away but never letting go.

  “I never let you go. I can’t.”

  “You can, you will,” he looked back to her, that twinkle still there. “You must.” He let go and stepped into the forest behind the house, “Come.”

  She followed him without hesitation. She sprinted to reach him, but he was always just out of reach. She quickened her steps even more and he always seemed just too far away for her to grab him. She wanted to pull him to her, to hold onto him, to kiss him again, to feel those lips on hers and taste his breath. But he was always a step beyond her grasp.

  He led her through the trees, looking over his shoulders again and again as she struggled to reach him. His smile never faded, that smile he often gave as he would lead her into the bedroom or bring her to something he had found in the field that she might like. Finally, she reached him and grabbed his hand, just as they came to the river.

  She pulled him into another kiss, but he leaned away from her.

  “Come.” He stepped into the water.

  Aurelie hesitated. “No, come back to the house. Be with me.”

  “My time is done, Aurie. Yours is just beginning. Don’t you trust me?” He took a step deeper into the water, pulling his fingers from between hers. He waved his hand for her to follow. “It’s time.”

  Drawing a deep breath, she slowly slid her bare feet into the icy water. One after another, she followed him until the water was lapping her hips, shivers crawling up her. He let her wrap her arms around him, but he pulled from her kiss again.

  “Answer with your heart,” Balor looked deep into her eyes. Moonlight made the brown flecks glisten.

  “I don’t understand.” Then, as if the current of the river carried it to her, she felt something inside her awaken. Something she had known but always denied. Something more. Beyond her. Beyond him. Beyond everything.

  She understood.

  “Do you believe, Aurie?” He looked into her eyes with the same conviction she had seen only once before. The way he had looked at her when he stepped out the door the night the mob came for Draka, for them. The night their bodies were nearly broken by everyone they trusted and loved.

  Her body dampened. Her eyes filled with the burn of tears. Her face sank. “Believe?”

  “Do you believe what our Windleaf has been telling you? Do you believe that Jesus of Nazareth is God’s anointed son who sits at his right hand?”

  Aurelie’s lips trembled. The water stilled around her. Stilled between them.

  “Yes,” she heaved against the cold.

  Balor’s expression only darkened. “Do you believe that He suffered under the hands of Pontious Pilate, was crucified, died for our sins, and rose again on the third day?”

  Her face squeezed with tears as she hesitantly nodded. “Yes.”

  “And are you committed to forsake all things and take up your cross to follow Jesus, The Word, and God, no matter the cost, from this day until your last day?”

  “Yes,” It was barely a whisper. But she knew she meant it.

  His expressions morphed into a wide smile, and he came close to her so that he could whisper in her ear, “Hold your breath.”

  Aurelie took in a long breath through trembling lips. He pressed her nostrils together as he placed his hand on the flat of her back. She felt her feet lift from the soft sand and smooth pebbles of the riverbed.

  “I baptize you in the name of God, the Father,” he squeezed her nose as he lowered her into the water. He lifted her head just over the surface, “And God’s only begotten Son, Jesus Christ.” He pressed her under again, some of the water spilling into her mouth, stifling the breath she tried to take. He lifted her again, “Breathe deep the Holy Spirit and quiet your heart so that thou may hear His command.”

  She took a long, deep breath. And she felt it course through her. She felt the goodness flow through her lips, down her throat, and into her lungs. Felt it bursting through from her heart, pumping through her veins, filling her. As he lowered her into the water once more, she heard two voices in her filled ears, carried by the river’s icy current.

  “I love you,” Balor’s said before his fingers could no longer be felt holding her nose or his hand bracing her back. “I will see you again, my love. But you must live. You must live on.” He faded from her.

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  “Stand.” The other said. Thundering through her bones. She felt every syllable grip her.

  She stood from beneath the water to find Balor gone. Her breath was steady, as if it had never been stifled by the water. She searched the trees for him. She stepped out of the water, feeling the drips down her legs and over her feet, only to find that he was nowhere to be seen.

  “Accept.”

  She swallowed another breath. Shakily, she nodded. The cold of the air, the hanging of the icy water in her hair and covering her body, she knew was there, no longer made her shiver. She was warm. All around her was light. She felt it on her as she would the sun. It dimmed. She still felt the warmth on her, within her, through her.

  Her right hand felt something long and grooved pressed into its palm. She looked down and felt herself relieved of all her weight. All her sorrows, the moment she saw the longsword--similar to Draka’s but glistening with diamonds lining its center--were gone. In its place, as she gazed at it, was a fiery bulge of something she hadn’t felt since Balor’s death, since the day that she took the chance in the Ribbon Dance to win his hand in marriage. Since the days she struggled with errant conviction to feed her little sister on the polluted streets of Alcer. Purpose.

  “Ahead of you. Go.”

  She looked up. This place, she knew only in her dreams. This was Draka’s nightmare, all over again. Only…there were the mangled trees, the ashes falling from the sky like snow, the light of that simple hut ahead of her, but no Draka. She turned to the sword in her hand. She felt its weight. Not heaviness, but the weight of something she could use as a weapon. As her weapon.

  “She killed thy husband and thy son. I grant thee thy vengeance. I shall guide thee. Go forth and test thine enemy.”

  Aurelie turned her eyes to the hut ahead of her. The ashes became rain drops. The dirt beneath her feet became mud. As she took her steps toward it, the colors of the forest changed. Instead of the grays of dying bark and the black of the veiny vines clinging to them, she saw red burning from them, coursing like blood through the vines, over the rocks, pulsing beneath the mud. She grit her teeth with conviction as she went. Her arms began to tense, filling themselves with a familiarity she had never known, but they had been chosen for. She had been chosen for.

  She reached the hut door. It was a simple bundle of thick branches tied together and braced by a log crossing from one corner to the opposite. She took a breath.

  “Feel. Listen. Do.” She narrowed her eyes with anticipation of whose figure she could faintly see between the branches. “Attack!”

  She slammed through the door with her shoulder, gripping the sword in both hands.

  It was a woman who sat in the center of the room, cradling that dead child as before, who leapt to her feet to meet her. It was a blur of movement.

  The woman changed in her explosive charge at her. Her skin paled with one step. Leathery wings burst from her back with the next. Feathers covered the legs whose feet grew talons. Fingers grew claws. She reached Aurelie in a blink.

  “Swing!”

  Aurelie swung the blade. Lilith’s claws caught only the sleeve of her chemise. Aurelie’s strike drew blood to the tune of a bone-chilling shriek. Lilith leapt back, her wings stretching to glide her. Aurelie leapt into another swing. She only met air. Lilith dissipated into a darkness that filled the room.

  Aurelie whipped around, now near the back end of the hut. Like a tornado, the darkness swept around her. She slid her feet, taking on a stance she had seen Draka do on that bridge, preparing herself.

  “Left.” She swung left. Blood formed raindrops following her blade. Lilith shrieked.

  The light through the whirling darkness faded. The black thickened. Sweat stung her eyes. Her hands were rubbed raw from her gripping the handle too tightly. There was a whistle, whirling, tugging, dizzying. She blinked away the sting in her eyes.

  “Above.” She leapt with the sword reaching upward like a spear. The darkness parted before her in a splash of blood.

  “Right.” A graze of her blade on something thick. Her feet moved with familiar intention. Her knees were bending to instinct, just as her back was straightening. Her balance was perfect.

  “Behind,” the voice directed. She rotated the blade to stab behind her. Another graze. “Right…Right…Above…Left…” She followed each command unquestioningly, without hesitation, without thought. She swung. She lunged. She leapt and shifted by the commands in her head.

  The darkness filled the room again. The last thing she could see past her face was the blood dripping from her blade. And then she was blinded.

  “Come out and fight me!” Aurelie growled. “You coward! Murderer!”

  She turned this way and that, waiting. She tasted the smokey air. She felt for brushes of something passing. She listened for any sound that could give her foe away. Anything so she could strike again.

  “The little rabbit has finally grown teeth,” a silky-smooth voice echoed all around her. “Oh, I will enjoy ripping you apart. This time, I won’t fail.”

  “How about now?” Aurelie turned in circles. “You could try to now. Come out, you bitch!”

  “Have it your way.”

  The darkness disappeared in the same blink that Lilith slammed Aurelie from behind. But Aurelie heard the command, “Turn.” Her blade cut across Lilith’s bare chest.

  Aurelie’s back hit the floor. Lilith shrieked and leapt for her with claws and talons aimed. Aurelie’s eyes widened.

  “Smite with your Faith!”

  Aurelie had no way of explaining what happened next. One moment, she was lying on her back with Lilith soaring through the air at her like a hawk swooping for its prey. The next, an explosion of light burst from her, as fiery as bursting flames, as bright as lightning, and as bone shaking as thunder.

  Lilith’s flight was stopped with an arm to cover her face as her skin, her scaly legs and the ichorous feathers covering her thighs and wings, instantly seared from her flesh.

  Lilith wailed as she threw herself back, tripping over the infant’s corpse, and stumbling hard into the wall. She thrashed at the light. She screeched and threw herself. Ashes fluttered from her swinging arms and kicking legs.

  “On your feet.”

  Aurelie stood. The light surrounding her faded only as she gripped the sword ready. Ready, as if she had done it a thousand times before.

  “Smite her!”

  Aurelie charged. Lilith’s wide eyes met her fierce battle cry as she leapt through the air in a fiery blue arc.

  “No!” Lilith screamed as she was sucked into a swirl of smokey tendrils the moment Aurelie’s blade cut through them.

  The sword stuck into the ground, she had brought it down so hard and fast. When it had connected, light exploded out of her in all directions, sending debris flying through the walls of the simple hut. The fire within barely stayed lit.

  “Burn it.”

  Aurelie lifted one of the long pieces of wood that had splintered and held it in the flames just long enough for it to light. She raised it like a torch above her, through the hole in the center of the hut, and watched as the flames stuck to the thatching of the roof.

  Her sword arm relaxed. She tossed the torch to the side. As the flames climbed the walls and formed a dome of fire around her that dripped cinders, she reached down and pulled the infant’s corpse to her chest. It wasn’t hers. It wasn’t her Alden when he was born. But that didn’t matter. It never deserved the fate Lilith had given it. She carried it to the engulfed doorway, whispering how it was safe now, how she’ll never hurt it again.

  As she stepped through the flames of the doorway, the flames shied from her, curled away as if they were somehow afraid of touching her. She cradled the babe tight against her chest as if it were her own. It blew into ashes the moment she was on the other side.

  Her gaping gaze followed the ashes as they twirled into the twilight sky beyond the canopy of the trees. She furrowed her brow at it, then looked at the burning hut, and finally landed her eyes on the bloody sword at her side.

  “His name was Hans.”

  In her bed, wrapped in the golden pelt, snug against a snoring Maud, Aurie woke up.