The soldiers moved like cattle. Slow, loud, and stupid.

  Cú Dubh stood at the crossroads and watched Tighearnán’s men shuffle into formation. Twenty soldiers split into four groups, each assigned a village from his map. Their armor gleamed in the daylight and they wore expressions that said they’d rather be anywhere else.

  He didn’t blame them. He’d rather they were anywhere else, too.

  “You five, south along the coast. Check every fishing hamlet between here and the point.” He pointed at the next group. “You five, the inland road. Farms, shepherds, anyone who might have seen a blonde woman traveling alone. Remember, we’re looking for a boy named Oisín and a blonde girl with piercings.”

  The men nodded and moved off without enthusiasm. The remaining ten waited, shifting their weight, avoiding his eyes.

  “The rest of you hold here. Ask anyone that passes if they’ve seen a girl with piercings or a boy named Oisín. I want them caught, not chased.”

  “And you?” one of them asked. Braver than the others, or dumber.

  “The next village north. I’ll handle it myself.”

  He didn’t wait for a response. He turned and started up the coastal path, leaving the soldiers behind. They’d be useless in the actual hunt. They were too slow and clumsy. Too human. They served a purpose, which was covering ground and asking questions. They flushed prey toward the true predator.

  The path wound between hills dotted with scrub brush and sea grass. The ocean churned grey to his left, waves breaking against rocks that looked like teeth. He moved at a pace that would have exhausted the soldiers in an hour, his boots finding purchase on the uneven ground without effort.

  She was close. He could feel it the way a hawk feels a mouse in the grass below. The certainty of a hunter who knows his territory.

  The girl had stolen from him. Had crept into his tower while he was burning ships and taken the one thing that mattered. Heart-B. He needed it to move between timelines and destroy the Weaver. He wasn’t sure how to make it work yet, but he would ask Eithne for help on that once it was back in his possession.

  First things first, he was going to get it back, and then he was going to make her understand what that theft had cost her.

  A couple appeared on the path ahead, walking toward him. Peasants by their clothes, with faded wool and mud-stained boots. The man saw him first and stopped dead, one hand reaching for the woman’s arm. She looked up, saw the black fur and yellow eyes, and made a sound like a small animal being stepped on.

  They tried to step off the path and give him room. They shied away to make themselves small and ignorable. He let them try for a moment. Let them hope.

  Then he spoke.

  “A woman. Blonde hair, piercings in her ears. Have you seen her?”

  The man’s mouth opened and closed. The woman pressed against his side, trembling.

  “I asked you a question.”

  “Y-yes,” the man managed. “Yes, we saw her. Just passed her on the road, maybe thirty minutes back. She was heading toward… our village.”

  “Did you know her?”

  “No, she was a stranger… said she was there to visit her cousin Cormac.”

  Cú Dubh was already moving.

  Thirty minutes. She had thirty minutes on him, but she’d been walking and he wasn’t going to walk. He broke into a run, the ground blurring beneath his boots, the wind tearing at his coat. The village appeared over the next rise. Like all the rest, it had stone cottages, fishing boats, and the ordinary bones of ordinary lives.

  That’s when he saw her. She was small, but the blonde ponytail that followed her as she ran drew his eye immediately. She was heading north along the cliff.

  He didn’t slow down. He cut through the village like a blade through cloth, ignoring the faces that turned toward him, the gasps and scattered screams. A man mending nets outside a cottage looked up as he passed, eyes going wide, but Cú Dubh was already gone, already on the northern path, already closing the distance.

  Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

  The cliffs rose to his right. The sea crashed below. There, ahead…

  A figure on the rocks with her hair whipping in the wind. A satchel hanging from her shoulder.

  She was looking down at something in the cove below. She hadn’t seen him yet.

  He slowed. Let his footsteps fall soft. Moved into the tree line where the brush grew thick, angling toward her, cutting off her escape route back to the village.

  She was close to the cliff’s edge. Close to a gap in the rocks that led down to the beach. The terrain would favor her if she made it through. The rocks on the coast always had tight gaps, and Cú Dubh was many things, but small was not one.

  He needed to pin her here.

  He moved through the brush, silent despite his size. Twenty feet. Fifteen. Ten.

  She heard him.

  He saw her ready herself and her hand move toward her hip. She turned slowly, putting her back to the sea, and her eyes found the tree line.

  He let her look. Let her see the brush moving. Let the fear build.

  He pulled his short scythe out of his belt and stepped forward.

  She ran.

  Not back toward the village because he’d cut off that route. She ran toward the cliff’s edge, the gap in the rocks, and the only path left to her.

  Clever girl. Annoying, but clever.

  He lunged after her, scythe swinging, but she’d already dropped below the first outcropping. He heard her boots scrape against stone, heard the clatter of loose rocks tumbling toward the beach below.

  The gap was narrow. Barely wide enough for a human to squeeze through, all sharp edges and slick surfaces. She slipped into it like water through fingers, her small frame finding holds his couldn’t.

  He tried to follow, but his black armor made contorting difficult.

  His shoulders caught on the first turn. The rocks bit into his pauldron as he forced himself through, but she was faster here, twisting through spaces that shouldn’t fit a person, and every second he lost she gained.

  He snarled and pulled back. Found another route above. A wider channel that would require a larger drop. It might hurt, but that was the nice part about being reforged by the Heart. A fall wouldn’t kill him.

  He could hear her below him, the scatter of pebbles, the rasp of breath.

  She burst out onto the beach twenty feet ahead of him. Grey sand stretched in both directions, hemmed in by cliffs on one side and churning waves on the other. Nowhere left to run.

  He dropped forty feet into the sand and landed heavy, boots sinking in a puff. She was backing toward a large rock that jutted out of the sand between her and the waterline. Her knife in hand, chest heaving. The satchel hung from her shoulder, and he could see the shape of Heart-B pressing against the leather.

  “Enough,” he said.

  She didn’t respond. Her eyes were moving from the cliffs to the water to him. She was calculating odds that weren’t in her favor.

  “You have something of mine.” He stepped forward, closing the distance. “Give it back, and I’ll make this quick.”

  “Quick.” She laughed, but there was no humor in it. “Like the orphanage? Like Brigid?”

  He paused. The name meant nothing to him, but the way she said it did. Then he recognized the girl who stood in front of him. Not the second version. That one, he had buried his scythe in. This was the one that caused the splinter. She had used the Knot, and now she was here.

  He laughed. “You’re the one that got away.”

  “Aye, and you’ll regret letting me.”

  “I’m not sure about that. You’re just the last bite. Something to be savored.”

  Her back pressed against the rock. Her hands were out and ready for him to lunge. The one he had put down had a similar stance, and it did her little good. This would be easy.

  He’d give her this much: She wasn’t a coward. She was going to die stubborn.

  “Last chance. Give me the Heart,” he said.

  She shifted her weight, knife raised, ready to fight a battle she couldn’t win.

  He stepped forward and the satchel moved.

  Not her moving it. The satchel itself, lurching against her hip like something inside had woken up. She looked down, startled, and he saw the leather begin to glow from within. A rainbow light, pulsing and growing brighter.

  Heart-B.

  It was reacting to something. He didn’t know what, didn’t know why, but the light was building and the air around them had begun to hum. The sand beneath his boots trembled. The waves behind her seemed to slow, then stop, frozen mid-curl.

  “What did you do?” she demanded.

  “Nothing.” He stepped back, scythe raised. “This isn’t me.”

  The light burst upward from the satchel, tearing through the leather, rising into the air above them. Heart-B hung there, spinning slowly, its surface alive with patterns that hurt to look at. The humming built to a roar.

  A wound opened in the world beneath their feet and swallowed them whole.

  The world felt inverted for an instant, like gravity worked in the wrong direction. Then it righted itself and he hit the sand, fighting the sense of vertigo.

  When he recovered, he stood to take in his surroundings. He was… on the same beach. It was no different from the one they had just been standing on. Which meant…

  Timeline-A.

  He could feel the pull of his Heart once again, Heart-A. It was here, somewhere in the Otherwhile.

  He hadn’t done this. He didn’t know how to use the Heart, not yet. Someone else had activated it. Someone else had torn this hole between realities.

  Maybe the girl… maybe she had…

  The Heart hit the sand next to the satchel. The girl wasn’t there. She had used the disorientation to flee. Up the cliff? Maybe, or maybe into the waves. Cú Dubh wasn’t sure, but he had seen her pulled into the rift with him.

  He walked forward until the satchel lay by his feet. The glow was slowly fading from Heart-B. He picked it up. Felt the weight of it. His key to destroying the Weaver, returned.

  He looked out to the ocean as the tide pulled in and out. He thought of the girl who had brought them both here.

  “Run,” he said quietly. “If I see you again, I’ll take my time.”

  He let her go.

  A sound behind him. Boots on stone.

  He turned, scythe raised, and found a woman standing atop the rocks at the base of the cliff. She jumped down and landed lightly.

  Black hair with pale skin. She had dark eyes that watched him with an expression of amusement he wasn’t used to humans having. She was barefoot, wearing clothes that looked like they’d been soaked in seawater and dried stiff with salt.

  She smiled.

  “Hello, Hound,” she said. “Welcome home.”