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“What of Voordiza? Whose side is she on?” Pyetar asked.

The lines around Thelbiz’s golden eyes tightened. “Voordiza doesn’t seem to want to be found yet. She will want to be the one to find me. She was the first to discover what Noshtiz had planned. She started the war.”

Iryana tried to grapple with the new information and what she remembered of the different gods. She wished she could recall more. The clans regarded all the gods as teaching important lessons, but they remembered them less as actual beings that once walked the earth and lived among them and more as ideas. Abstract concepts.

“Is that all your questions?” Thelbiz demanded, looking impatient.

“Her magic…” Pyetar’s eyes trailed over Iryana, his gaze dripping with concern. “Is there anything you or the others can do?”

“No. I told you already. She’s not ours. If she hasn’t managed to settle it on her own, I can only think Noshtiz or Voordiza would be able to settle the magic.”

Iryana refused to think about that, despite the painful churning in her gut.

“The dakii are yours, but whose are the others?” she asked quickly.

He sighed. “They’re all such copiers. The bears are Limhiz’s, the little spies are Mhakiza’s—”

“The dragons—” Iryana blurted out, wincing when Thelbiz narrowed a glare at her for interrupting. “Sorry. The dragons, are they Noshtiz’s?”

“No, they are also Mhakiza’s. A colossal waste of magic, in my opinion.”

“Has Noshtiz not made any beasts then?”

“He has, though I have not seen them. Something to help him dig deep into Istri, both to unleash his magic that bled into the earth and to search for the deeper magic of Istri.”

The earthquakes, Iryana realized. It was Noshtiz’s creatures then.

“How bad should we expect things to get before the full Lying Moon?” She desperately hoped he would say not much worse.

Thelbiz looked to the sky, then back to her with an ancient weariness in those golden eyes. “War between the gods isn’t gentle.”

Her stomach clenched, and Iryana swallowed down the urge to be sick. Pyetar looked as pale and wide-eyed as she felt.

“I must resume my work. Heed the warning and perhaps we will meet again.”

He turned from them, heading toward the cave, and whatever magic had kept the wind at bay disappeared. The raging winter winds slammed into them once more. They couldn’t even see the cave with the wind blowing the snow around.

“We’ll have to tell everyone we can,” Iryana shouted over the wind, wrapping her scarf around her head and pulling on the fur-lined cap. The responsibility on their shoulders was immense.

He nodded. She could only see his eyes again, a searing blue that matched the winter sky. “There isn’t much time.”

The relief that this would all be over soon and the terror that they had so little time to prepare warred inside her like her opposing magics. She feared how many more they would lose and feared taking on this burden.

She brushed away a tear, already starting to freeze on her cheek. “We need to go back. Now.”

The trek back felt longer, although she knew they were covering ground quicker. She was on edge, crumbling beneath the weight of what had been asked of them. They needed to adjust their plans and get the word out to everyone in the valley. But there was nothing they could do until they returned home. They barely stopped long enough to sleep, and the winds were relentless as they hiked through the deep snow.

Everything was an endless sea of white, and Iryana was grateful for how easily Pyetar navigated the frozen landscape. Visibility was terrible, but it meant the dakii couldn’t see them as easily while the wind ripped away their scent and the sounds of them crunching over the snow. With the packs as large as they were, it was easy for Iryana and Pyetar to hear them first and hide or take a different path.

Her mind spun with every hour, working through how they would all survive this. She didn’t have the luxury of fear or self-doubt anymore.

When a snowstorm forced them to seek shelter under an overhang, huddled together with their backs to the raging snow, Iryana could finally talk without the wind eating their words or exhaustion dragging her into sleep.

“Do you feel the tremors?” she asked. At first, she thought it was just the wind making the snow unstable, but the feeling had been strengthening throughout the day. It was nothing like the earthquake that had rattled her home or even the smaller ones they’d felt in the weeks afterward, but it was deeply unsettling.

“Yes, I think it must be Noshtiz.” Pyetar’s cheeks were chapped from the wind.

“He’s searching.” Iryana couldn’t help the shudder that surged up her spine. He was trying to find his way to the magic deep within Istri.