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33

They didn't go far before they came across a she-wolf sitting in the shadowy gap between two tents, hugging her knees to her chest and rocking back and forth, muttering beneath her breath. Her hands were soaked in fresh blood, and that was reason enough for Nilia to give her a wide berth. After what happened with Shekka, she had no intention of taking any chances with she-wolves of questionable sanity, but apparently Ander didn't think along the same lines, because he went straight for her.

"Ander, no!" Nilia hissed after him. "Just leave her alone!"

He dropped down to his haunches and leaned in close, trying to get a look at her face. "Nayva? Is that you?"

Nayva? There's no way that can be -

But then she raised her head, and it really was Nayva. The same light grey fur, like wisps of ground mist, and the same dark blue eyes, staring out at them from inside a pair of deeply sunken sockets, filled to bursting with unspilled tears.

By the Cora, what happened to her hands?

There was so much blood it looked like she was wearing a pair of crimson gloves. Fresh rivulets kept dripping from her fingers and running down her legs in wavy, red lines. Nilia took a step closer, absolutely horrified. She seemed to be holding something in those crippled fingers, something short, but glinting in the night, something -

Knife!

Nilia yanked Ander back onto the path, but she needn't have bothered. Nayva simply lowered her gaze and continued rocking back and forth, muttering a nonsensical rant.

Nilia glanced down at Ander, intending to pull him back to his feet, but there was something in his eye that gave her pause, something like... pity?

"Oh no, Ander, don't..." Nilia said, knowing it wouldn't do any good. He was already going back.

"Nayva, can you hear me?" he asked, but she just kept muttering. Muttering and shaking. "Nayva?"

"He was right, he was completely right, he was right all along, but now it's too late, it's too late for everybody, too late for Allekai, too late..." She raised the knife - it was a rusty old thing - and slid it across the palm of her hand, drawing a neat, red line through her flesh. "Too late, too late, too late..."

Ander reached for the knife, then thought better of it. There was no telling what someone like this was capable of. "Nayva? Have you seen a vixen wearing a green dress come this way? Something like this?" He held the scrap of cloth up for her to see, but she immediately shut her eyes and shook her head, rocking even faster than before.

"No no no no no!"

"You saw her, didn't you? Where did she go?"

She took the knife and dragged it across her knuckles, one by one. Blood poured down her fingers. "That dirty bitch had scratches on her hands. Dorin showed them to everyone. Showed everyone how hard she dug to save us. Tiny little cuts and cracked claws. But it didn't matter. I saw the scratches but it didn't matter. I didn't care about her hands, her stupid, scratched, scuffed up hands. All I saw was that mouth, those lips, wrapped around that horn, calling that terrible sound... the sound that took Allekai!" She stabbed the back of her hand, again and again, gouging out the flesh. Gouts of blood splattered across her knees.

Ander winced, but thankfully didn't try anything stupid. There were too many lives at stake right now, too many calls for help in too many different directions. Getting stabbed in the face wouldn't do anyone any good.

At least, that was what Nilia thought at the time, but looking back on it later, she couldn't help but question that oddly focussed look in Ander's eye. That frown. That direct, unwavering glare.

That wasn't pity. That wasn't pity at all.

"Where did she go, Nayva?" he tried again. "Just give me a direction."

She held out her mutilated hand, a dripping, crimson mess of peeling skin and fur. "My hand is scratched, too, see?" she said, a vulgar smile slowly spreading across her demented face. "My hand is scratched, just like that orange bitch, so that makes everything better, doesn't it? That makes everything fine, if it can work for her then it can work for me, too, right? If my hand is scratched, that means I helped, that means I'm good, that means it wasn't my fault, all the sins washed away, everything made better, everything fixed!"

"Nayva, please -"

"This means it wasn't my fault! This means it wasn't my fault Allekai died! It was everyone's else's fault! I didn't kill anyone! I didn't murder anyone! It was you! It was just you and your filthy little bitch!" She plunged the knife into the back of her hand and the tip actually burst through her palm in an explosion of blood. "Red blood means no sin!" she yelled, stabbing herself again and again. The tip poked out of her flesh repeatedly, like a metallic worm boring its way through a rotten apple. "Red blood means no sin! No sin! No sin! No sin! No -"

Ander slapped her so hard she almost ploughed face-first into the dirt. The knife went skidding across the path and Nilia kicked it away on pure instinct, her heart pounding. For just a second there, Ander had looked like - No, she was positive she must have been seeing things, but for a second he had looked like...

That was exactly what he looked like during his trail. Right before he went berserk...

Ander seized her by the shoulders and screamed into her face: "Where did she go, Nayva!? Just tell me! Where did she go!?"

Nayva sniffed and blubbered. Her bottom lip trembled. A thick runner of snot dribbled from her nose and ran across her lips. But somehow she managed to raise her mutilated hand and point to the east.

The pitter-patter of all that blood dribbling from all those cuts filled Nilia with revulsion. "Come on, Ander. There's nothing we can do for her." She took him by the arm and pulled him to his feet before he could get any cute ideas about dressing her wound or -

(biting her until her entire arm is just a useless hunk of meat)

• or something like that. "Don't look at her. Just let her bleed if that makes her feel better."

She managed to get him to walk with her, but reluctantly. She never looked back, but she could hear the sniffling, snuffling sounds of Nayva's crying, her hitching breaths, and the soft swishing of her clothes as she pulled her knees back up to her chest and resumed her rhythmic rocking, probably cradling her ruined hand to her chest.

"This whole place is going insane," Nilia muttered, keeping a constant watch on all the shadows floating by on either side.

"No, Nilia," Ander replied. "It's not the place. It's our people that are going insane. They've been going insane for generations. It just took something like this to finally push them over the edge."

You're one to talk..._Nilia thought, surprised to find herself longing for Panicky Ander. At least _that Ander wasn't scary. At least that Ander wasn't losing his goddamned mind.

"You love her a lot, don't you?" she asked.

He touched the bloody scrap of green cloth tied around his head. "More than I can take, sometimes."

She understood. It wasn't exactly the same, but she knew what it felt like to be driven to the edge by your own emotions. It was a scary thing.

I hope Kiana is okay..._she thought. _I hope she's safe... because if she's not...

Nilia cast a sideways glance in Ander's direction. That single eye, sweeping down the path, looking for the mother of his unborn child. There was something in there.

Something trying to break free.