Her head felt like it might split open if the butterflies didn't stop.
*Be QUIET.*
Juliet hurled the command inward with the force of a woman slamming a door against a gale. The butterflies — those shrieking, frenzied creatures that occupied the space between her thoughts like uninvited guests at a party — thrashed once more, then subsided to a sullen hum.
She exhaled. Slowly. Through her nose.
"Does this person also work for the guild?" she asked, keeping her voice perfectly level — the vocal equivalent of a frozen lake over deep water.
"Yes! Let me introduce you." Helen was already raising her hand. "Ethelid!"
The young man turned and walked toward them with the unhurried gait of someone who considered urgency a character flaw.
"This is our wizard, Ethelid," Helen said, with the particular warmth she reserved for people she was genuinely proud of. "And he is *very* talented."
The man's eyes — a pale, clear green, like light filtered through young leaves — settled on Juliet with undisguised curiosity. Then he extended his hand.
"My name is Ethelid."
"…Juliet."
She took his hand. Shook it.
And held it approximately two seconds longer than social convention required.
Not because she wanted to — but because the butterflies, even in their diminished state, were vibrating with such intensity that she needed the physical anchor of contact to keep her attention from fragmenting.
The fact that the guild employed a wizard did not surprise her. The Magic Tower — the institution where mages were trained and accredited — was located in the East. Transporting valuable cargo across vast distances involved risks that no amount of armed guards could fully mitigate, and enhancement magic — the ability to reinforce structures, strengthen materials, create protective wards — was invaluable on the road.
She had heard that eastern guilds sometimes hired wizards in lieu of mercenaries to defend against bandit attacks, and that the cost of doing so was staggering. Wizards were perhaps a hundred times rarer than ordinary sellswords, and they charged accordingly.
Outwardly, Juliet displayed nothing but polite composure during the introduction. If Helen noticed anything unusual about her niece's behavior — the fractional tension in her jaw, the careful way she positioned her body so that Ethelid was never directly at her back — she gave no sign.
Juliet had met wizards before. But only the imperial variety — the court mages who resided in the basement of the imperial palace and emerged, blinking, into public view perhaps twice a year.
They had looked exactly like the wizards described in children's fairy tales: elderly men in ornate robes that swept the floor, with long white beards and the distant, slightly confused expressions of people who had spent so long studying arcane formulae that they had forgotten how conversations worked. Their primary public function, as far as Juliet could determine, consisted of producing ceremonial fireworks over the capital at midnight on New Year's Eve.
She had watched those displays from the balcony of the Duke's manor and privately wondered whether the old men in the basement were capable of anything else.
Ethelid did not look like those wizards. He was young — younger than she'd expected — with sharp, intelligent features and the easy, sociable manner of someone who had not spent his formative years locked in a cellar.
He was polite. He shook her hand. He acknowledged Helen's introduction with a brief, courteous nod. And when Helen identified Juliet as her niece, he expressed the appropriate degree of pleased surprise and then — without lingering, without staring, without any of the behaviors Juliet had been bracing for — returned to his wagon.
*He's nothing like what I imagined.*
She had always pictured wizards as reclusive, suspicious creatures, holed up in their studies conducting research that was probably unethical and certainly uncomfortable. But this one seemed genuinely friendly. Open. *Normal.*
Which made him, if anything, more dangerous.
---
*"Never be alone with a wizard. It's very dangerous."*
Lennox's warning surfaced in her memory — not as a distant recollection, but with the sharp, immediate clarity of something spoken directly into her ear.
He had told her this years ago, in the study of the northern manor, without preamble or context, in the flat, non-negotiable tone he used for instructions he expected to be followed without discussion.
At the time, she had watched the court mages create their pretty fireworks from the safe distance of a balcony and wondered what possible danger an elderly man in a floor-length robe could pose to anyone.
Standing here now — her butterflies still trembling, her pulse still elevated from the near-loss of control — she understood.
*"And don't let them see your demon,"* Lennox had added, his red eyes steady on her face. *"Don't even let them see* you."
The logic was sound. Brutally, elegantly sound.
Juliet's butterflies fed on human emotion. Emotional energy was, at its core, a diluted form of mana — the same fundamental force that mages channeled, concentrated, and shaped into spells. The difference was one of purity and density. Ordinary humans produced emotional energy the way a candle produces light: enough to sustain her demons, enough to keep them fed and quiescent.
But a wizard possessed *pure* mana. Vast reservoirs of it — refined, concentrated, potent beyond anything an ordinary person could generate. To the butterflies, a wizard's mana was not candlelight. It was the sun.
If Juliet stood too close to a powerful mage — if the butterflies caught the scent of that concentrated energy — they wouldn't simply stir. They would *feast.* Uncontrollably. Ravenously. A bloody, ecstatic gorging that she might not be able to stop.
From that perspective, the danger was not to Juliet. It was to the wizard.
*I am the threat,* she thought. *Not him.*
But when she had asked Lennox to explain this — to tell her why, specifically, she needed to avoid them — he had chuckled. And the sound had contained none of his usual cold amusement. It had been darker than that. More personal.
*"Because they will shamelessly sacrifice one of their own colleagues — feed him to you willingly — just to lure you into their laboratory. And once they have you, the research they conduct will not be the kind you survive."*
To the mages of the Tower, she would not be a person. She would be a specimen. A once-in-a-generation anomaly — a living host for a demon species that the academic world believed extinct — worth any number of sacrificed colleagues if it meant a chance to study her.
Lennox had met with wizards several times on matters concerning the northern territories. During every one of those meetings, he had confined Juliet to her room and forbade her from leaving until the last mage had departed the estate.
She had resented it at the time. She understood it now.
---
*But this one didn't notice anything.*
Juliet watched Ethelid's retreating figure and allowed herself a measured fraction of relief.
He had shown no suspicion. No unusual interest. No subtle probing or lingering glances. Just simple, ordinary curiosity — the kind anyone might display when introduced to the guild master's previously unknown niece.
*He's different from what I expected.*
She looked down at her hands.
*Good thing I wore gloves.*
She had dressed for riding that morning — practical clothes for the journey to the meeting point. Hair gathered in a ponytail for convenience. A riding jacket, high boots of soft leather, and gloves. The gloves were a matter of habit as much as necessity. But habit, in this case, was indistinguishable from caution.
Skin-to-skin contact with a mage — even a brief handshake — might have told him things she couldn't afford for him to know. The gloves provided a barrier. Thin. But perhaps sufficient.
*Perhaps.*
Juliet turned away from the wagon and rejoined Helen, falling into step beside her as naturally as if nothing had happened.
But the resolve she carried — quiet, unshowy, utterly immovable — had crystallized.
*I don't know this man. I don't know what he can sense. Until I do, I will be very, very careful.*
---
## — The Road to Carcassonne —
The journey with the guild proved more enjoyable than Juliet had anticipated.
The Marigold company traveled with the boisterous, self-contained energy of a small nation on the move. Guild members called to one another between wagons, traded jokes and insults with equal affection, argued over card games during rest stops, and produced, from hidden compartments in their supply carts, quantities of food and drink that seemed to defy the physical limitations of the storage space.
The atmosphere was infectious. Juliet, who had spent seven years in the elegant, suffocating silence of the Carlisle manor — where even laughter seemed to require written permission — found herself drawn into conversations, pulled into debates about the best route through the mountain pass, and consulted, with flattering seriousness, on the question of whether dried beef or smoked sausage constituted the superior traveling ration.
*It feels like being on an excursion,* she thought, with a warmth that surprised her.
And the riding — *oh,* the riding.
It had been so long since she'd been in a saddle with open country ahead of her and no obligation to return to a particular place at a particular time. The mountain air filled her lungs. The horse beneath her responded to every shift of her weight with the attentive sensitivity of a well-trained animal. And the road — winding, uneven, bordered by wildflowers and dropping away to reveal panoramic views that made her breath catch — was magnificent.
"Want to ride up to that hill?"
Gray appeared beside her, his horse falling into step with an ease that suggested the animal was accustomed to its rider's habit of materializing at interesting moments. He nodded toward a large fir tree growing on the crest of a nearby hill — a dark, solitary sentinel visible above the tree line.
Juliet glanced at it. Assessed the terrain between here and there — the slope, the footing, the obstacles.
"With pleasure."
Gray's eyes slid sideways, past Juliet's shoulder, and a grin — slow, meaningful, edged with mischief — spread across his face.
"How about a wager? The last of the *three* to reach the hill grants the first one's wish."
*Three?*
"But there are only two of —" Juliet began.
"I'm in!" Theo's voice erupted from behind her like a cannon shot. "Let's *go!*"
Before the last syllable had left his mouth, he had driven his heels into his horse's flanks and launched himself toward the hill at a full gallop.
"Hey!" Juliet protested. "*That's not fair!*"
Gray — who had clearly orchestrated this exact outcome — flashed her an apologetic grin that was not apologetic at all and sent his own horse surging forward.
Juliet sat alone on the road, her hair half-escaped from its ponytail, the two brothers already diminishing toward the hill in a thunder of hooves and competitive shouting.
She did not hurry.
She took her time. Gathered the loose strands of hair. Tucked them back into the tie. Adjusted her gloves. Settled her weight in the stirrups.
Then she looked at her horse.
Then she looked at the road.
Then she smiled.
---
The brothers rode large, powerful animals — broad-chested stallions with long, muscular legs built for speed on open ground. They covered the distance to the hill in great, ground-eating strides, their riders leaning forward, weight shifted, every line of their bodies expressing the single-minded urgency of men who intended to win.
Theo reached the congested section of the road first — the stretch where the guild's wagons and carts created a bottleneck that narrowed the available path to a corridor barely wide enough for a single horse.
"Watch it!"
His stallion swerved — just barely — around a rumbling supply cart that materialized in his path like an indifferent wall. The near-miss cost him a heartbeat of momentum. He recovered, drove forward, and glanced back with a sharp, satisfied grin.
Gray, following closely behind, was not so lucky. The same cart — or perhaps a different one that had decided, with the serene malice of inanimate objects, to occupy the worst possible position — blocked his path entirely. He pulled up, swore under his breath, and searched for a gap that wasn't there.
Theo looked over his shoulder and *smiled.*
*Too easy.*
The hill was close now. The fir tree stood dark against the sky, and the finish line — such as it was — beckoned with the promise of an uncontested victory. Theo was already composing the pose he would strike when he arrived — casual, unhurried, perhaps leaning against the trunk with his arms folded, as though he'd been waiting for some time.
*Maybe I should take a leisurely trot to the finish. Just to make a point.*
The thought of looking behind him didn't cross his mind.
And then a golden shape exploded past him.
It came from his left — from a gap between two wagons that no sane rider would have attempted, on a horse so small it barely reached the shoulder of his stallion — and it moved with a speed and agility that his brain, for one disoriented moment, could not reconcile with the laws of physics.
"Wha—"
He nearly collided with her. His hands jerked the reins on pure reflex, and his stallion lurched sideways with an indignant snort.
"*What the — !*"
By the time his vision cleared and his heart rate stabilized, the golden horse and its rider were already past him — already climbing the hill, already covering the final stretch with the light, nimble strides of an animal designed for exactly this kind of terrain.
Juliet reached the fir tree, reined her mare to a halt, and turned in the saddle.
She looked back at Theo.
And the expression on her face — triumphant, luminous, vivid with the uncomplicated joy of someone who has just done something clever and knows it — was the exact victory pose he had been rehearsing in his own imagination thirty seconds earlier.
She had *stolen* it.
"That's impossible!"
Gray arrived second, his expression caught between bewilderment and a laugh he couldn't quite suppress. His horse was breathing hard. Juliet's mare was not.
Theo crossed the finish line last.
*Last.* The word tasted like ash.
"What trick did you use?" he demanded, pulling up beside her with the outraged dignity of a man who has been publicly humiliated by a horse the size of a large dog.
"Juliet, *how?*" Gray was shaking his head, half-laughing. "You left after both of us!"
"…Can we go again?" Theo asked. His voice suggested that this was less a request than a requirement.
Juliet looked at their faces — Theo's furious disbelief, Gray's baffled amusement — and laughed.
It was a real laugh. The kind that comes from the belly and doesn't ask permission. The kind she hadn't produced in longer than she could remember.
She did not explain how she'd won.
---
## — Apple —
Some time later, as the convoy paused for a rest stop, Juliet stood beside the golden mare, running her palm along the animal's smooth, warm coat. The fur was fine and sleek — the color of sunlight on honey — and the mare stood perfectly still beneath her touch, ears forward, dark eyes calm.
Isaac approached from behind, his heavy boots crunching on the gravel.
"Her name is Apple," he said.
Apple was a three-year-old mare with a timid, gentle temperament — the kind of horse that startled at loud noises and preferred to observe the world from a cautious distance. But when Juliet had approached her that morning, the mare hadn't shied. Hadn't backed away. She had simply turned her large head, regarded Juliet with one liquid brown eye, and stood still — as though she had been waiting for precisely this person and no other.
Juliet offered her an apple — a real one, pulled from her jacket pocket. The mare took it with soft, careful lips and ate with the delicate precision of a creature determined not to bite the hand that fed it.
"So you can ride," Isaac said. It was not a question. The grin on his face said he already knew the answer and was simply enjoying the confirmation.
"Yes," Juliet said, and smiled, and stroked Apple's neck.
She had seen what she needed to see the moment she laid eyes on the mare.
The Marigold Guild's horses were, overwhelmingly, large and powerful — big-boned warhorses and heavy draft animals bred for strength and endurance, the kind that could haul loaded wagons over mountain passes and carry armored riders across open country. The stallions Theo and Gray rode were prime examples: tall, muscular, built for speed on straight, unobstructed roads.
Smaller horses like Apple served a different purpose. They were used for short-distance transport, for navigating the narrow passages and switchback trails of mountainous terrain where a larger animal would struggle to maneuver. They were support horses. Pack horses. Afterthoughts.
There weren't many of them.
Juliet had recognized Apple's breed on sight.
*Armas.*
The Armas were a distinctive line — small-framed, mild-tempered, and astonishingly agile. On a flat, straight road, they could not match the raw speed of a larger horse. But on uneven ground — on roads cluttered with obstacles, on terrain that demanded quick turns and sudden stops and the ability to thread through gaps that no sensible stallion would attempt —
The Armas were *unmatched.*
The capital's Grand Hippodrome — the largest racecourse on the continent — hosted steeplechase events every season. And Juliet, who had attended more of these races than she could count, had watched Armas horses win again and again and again. Not through speed. Through *agility.* Through the capacity to see a narrow opening and take it without hesitation, to change direction at full gallop without losing stride, to navigate chaos as though chaos were simply another word for opportunity.
The race to the hill had not been a contest of speed. It had been a steeplechase — an obstacle course of wagons and carts and narrow passages, run on terrain that rewarded maneuverability over raw power.
Juliet had chosen her mount accordingly.
And she had won.
But she never told her cousins how she'd done it. Not that afternoon. Not that evening. Not ever.
Some victories, she had learned long ago, were more enjoyable when they remained unexplained.
She fed Apple another slice of fruit and scratched behind her ear, and the mare leaned into the touch with the quiet contentment of an animal that has found its person.