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38

It was just a haze. The burning in his chest. The deep ache in his side. The cold. The faraway screams. The smell of smoke. None of it could reach him. None of it could get through.

His anger was too great.

Ander hurried through the woods, bent low to the ground. Dark red pots of blood stood out like burning coals in the night, practically leaping out at him. He saw one in a clump of snow. Another on a bare patch of earth, spread over a layer of dead twigs. Yet another splashed over the roots of an old tree.

Ander slashed an arrow into the bark and kept moving, following the trail, going faster and faster, perhaps trying to outrun his own thoughts just as surely as he was trying to catch up with his quarry.

Nilia was right to slap me. She should have punched me. She should have knocked my teeth out for even thinking of showing mercy.

Ander slashed another arrow into a nearby tree, cutting deep enough for the sap to ooze from the wound even though it was the dead of winter.

The haze was getting darker. Redder. It pounded inside his head, just behind his eyes. He could taste it on his tongue. A vile, bitter anger, strong enough to wipe away all doubt, all hesitation, all remorse.

Once there was a time Ander would have considered saving his older brother. Once there was a time he would have considered simply sparing his older brother. Once there was a time he would have killed his older brother, and felt a deep, inconsolable remorse, carefully hidden away from the ones he loved. But now... now that time was gone. That Ander was gone. He died the moment Banno decided to lay his filthy, disease-ridden hands on the mother of his child. The Ander ploughing through the woods right now was a completely different creature to what he once was. This Ander would not beg or cry. This Ander would not hesitate to do what needed to be done. And if Banno spilled even one drop of Kiana's blood...

Ander's lips peeled back into a furious snarl. His fingers curled around the haft of Nilia's knife so tightly that the grip began to dig into his palm.

Not so different, af -

Ander slashed an arrow straight through a splash of blood against a withered pine, cutting the foul spot cleanly in half. It didn't stay that way for long, though. After a second the blood began to ooze into the white meat of the cut, as if the tree itself was made of flesh instead of wood.

This blood was almost fresh. He was catching up.

Ander followed the trail until the screams faded away completely and the pale light of the basecamp was no more than a dull, orange star at his back, flickering beyond the black bands of the forest. He kept his eye low to the ground, constantly taking in that scent, that foul, bitter scent of rotting flesh and putrid, puss-filled sores. And one other scent... one deep beneath the others, a subtle scent, a soft scent, the same scent he breathed in every time she embraced him, every time he buried his face in her hair, every time she kissed him, every time they held hands. Her scent. Kiana's scent. Mixed together with Banno's.

Ander ground his teeth together and slashed another arrow into a nearby tree. Chunks of bark fell to the snow in a patter of black squares.

I will find you and I will take her back. I will slit your throat and watch you choke on your own blood if I have to. Even if I don't_have to..._

The haze was beginning to cloud over everything. He could no longer hear his breath whistling in and out of his throat. Could no longer feel the underbrush beneath his frozen feet or even the throbbing agony between the ribs on his left side. The shadows flitting by were just that; shadows. No form. No substance. No importance. Even the dagger in his hand could have been nothing but dead air. There was only the dull heat building inside his cheeks, the furious anger swelling inside his heart, and the reddish haze, burning around the edges of his vision, pointing out the spots of blood for him, the broken twigs, the torn bushes, and finally...

The tree.

Ander stopped. For a moment his addled mind insisted that he was on the wrong side of the mountain, that he had somehow wandered into the shadow of the monstrous beech tree that still marked his little sister's resting place.

Ander stood staring at that otherworldly shape for what felt like a very, very long time. Flakes of snow blew into his face and the wind cut him right down to the bone, but he hardly felt any of it. It was that shape, that ungodly shape, like something out of a nightmare, wreathed by the red haze inside his mind, turning it into something more than what it truly was, something more than a mere tree.

Dead branches covered in frost, reaching up to a blank, empty sky. They swayed with the wind, creaking and groaning and scraping up against each other, making a sound like scratching claws. Below this, a thick, black trunk, leading Ander's eye down to the true horror, dripping between the roots and seeping into the frozen ground.

It was blood. Great splashes of it, each one like the shadow of a dead spider in the snow. It wasn't nearly as much as the false trail Banno had put down earlier, but it was worse. Infinitely worse. And for one simple reason.

"No..." Ander shook his head in complete and utter denial. His free hand was balled into a fist so tight that fresh spots of blood were beginning to seep into Sarah's handkerchief, adding his own bitter scent to the horrifying concoction drifting up to his nostrils. "No!!"

Ander dropped down to his knees at the base of the tree, breathing heavily, seething with anger that could find no out. It was the blood. These red starbursts in the snow. It was filthy, it was foul, it was diseased, it was laced with white tendrils of puss, it was Banno.

But not all of it.

Not all of it.

Ander reached for it, reached for the red inside the white, but pulled his hand back again, unable to cope. His body shook. His entire world was reeling.

Some of these starbursts, some of these spots of red inside the white...

They were Kiana's.

"No..." he said it again, but that didn't make it any less true. Kiana and Banno's blood, mixing together with the melting snow. "No!!"

He staggered to his feet. The whole forest was spinning. He had to plant his palms against the tree just to keep standing, but looking down at all that blood made him want to vomit, so he raised his head and -

enka

Just that one word, smeared across the bark in broad, red strokes. 'First Daughter', written in a mother's blood.

The breath froze in Ander's lungs. All the sounds of the forest bled away, leaving only a dull throbbing in his temples. There was no light, no shadow, nothing at all, just that single word -

enka

• burning into his eye. Enka. First Daughter.

Taken from this world before she could even earn a name.

Strangled sounds of inarticulate rage burst out of him, mindless as the blizzard blowing about his ears. He raised his fist and smashed it against the trunk, putting all his anger into it, enough to cause bits of bark to break off and get snatched away by the wind. He lowered his head and screamed against the wood, unaware of the painful throbbing in his knuckles or the blood flowing from his fingers, dripping down to join the rest of the starbursts among the snowy roots.

Red inside the white.

"I won't let you..." Ander said and plunged the dagger deep inside the wood, just beneath that single word.

enka

That single challenge.

First Daughter

That single invitation to end it all.

On some level he knew it must be some kind of trap. If Banno had wanted to kill Kiana, he would have done it right here and left her violated body in this tree's shadow for him to find. The fact that he was carrying her around, coupled with this message, meant that he had something more in mind. Probably something sick and twisted. But it also meant she must still be alive. She had to be. Even if he couldn't be completely sure, that was the only thing he could think on without losing his mind completely, so that's what he chose to believe. Kiana was still alive. Their baby was still alive. And no matter what it took, no matter what hell he had to wade through, he would get them back.

He dragged the knife horizontally across, as if slitting a throat, and finished the arrow off by adding the point.

He set off, following the blatant, perhaps even deliberately clear trail of blood to the north, pushing his way through the cold and snow.