It is a strange thing, to once again walk a landscape that does not twist and churn and invert itself in no more than the blink of an eye. Indra cannot help but feel constantly ready for it—braced against the moment when the magic of the rift will yawn back up to snatch the ground from beneath her hooves, transforming this soft, late-summer world around her into something violent and unnatural.

But the seaside cliffs fade gradually into rolling fields, and their tall, waving grasses are so gentle, so golden, so ordinary that Indra’s heart almost breaks for the beauty of it. Autumn is still but a kiss on the breeze, a pale sheen of frost on the grass at dawn. If the rift lurks here, waiting, the only change that it wreaks is to turn the leaves from green to scarlet and bronze.

Indra is surprised, and not surprised, when she stumbles upon the little celebration nestled in the shadow of the woods. The Dawn festival had been a sprawling, lively thing, attended by far more horses than she had seen in one place for quite some time, and she has been half-waiting to discover where the people of Terrastella must make their home. Quietly she slips in among those present, listening absently to their conversations, keeping an (unoptimistic) eye out for any signs of the Ilati.

And then she sees someone she knows, and the shock of it has her going rigid where she stands, her neck straightening, her nostrils flaring in disbelief.

A cream-colored pegasus might be a common enough sight, but it is the spill of amethyst flowers over the young mare’s neck and shoulders, the slender dagger glinting at her chest—

“You were a child,” Indra says, and the words are cold, cold, cold. If Florentine is here, in Terrastella—if this place is just another trick of the rift—

Indra’s golden eyes narrow, and she stalks toward the other woman, and each iron footfall is a step across worlds. Her breath is coming slow, and deep, and steady, and she feels such a terrible calm as she lowers her head, the iron tip of her horn coming to rest against the pegasus’s milky-golden cheek.

She does not know that Florentine is a queen, here; she does not know that she herself might well be flayed alive for simply drawing so near to this ruler of Dusk, much less for laying a weapon against her skin. She knows only that she saw this girl of flowers lying small and broken in the winter mud.

The barest twitch of a muscle, and Indra could open the sovereign’s cheek, but the unicorn is still, so still. Her golden eyes find Florentine’s, and they are as violet as she remembers, impossibly deep. “I watched you die.”

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All around the clearing, the twilight party plays on (a sweet, pretty thing, gentler by far than the wild revelry of the Dawn festival, but still made lovely with flowers, refreshments, quiet laughter), and yet Indra feels as if she cannot touch it, cannot be touched by it. Standing before Florentine, the unicorn’s focus narrows to the fixed point of her horn against creamy flesh, the centered gravity between them. It is as if the whole world is a snow globe, swirling around them with life and light, while only they two are still.

Welcome back, Flora says, and something in her tone makes Indra think that this is more than just one friend welcoming another—it is the voice of an individual speaking on behalf of something larger than herself. Indra’s brow furrows ever so slightly, and her lips part as if to ask a question, though she is not yet sure precisely what—

And then a scarlet line blooms along Florentine’s golden cheek, savage and bright.

Too many things rise up in Indra’s heart at the sight of that blood. Her veins flash with a dark, twisted triumph, to have wounded the other mare as she herself has been wounded. Shame follows just as swiftly, a sharp pang at her ribs.

And then there is relief—cool, curious relief—to find that Florentine can still bleed at all; to find that the flower girl is indeed real, and mortal, and standing before her here.

Indra did not miss the gesture that drew Flora’s cheek along her blade, and now she lifts her horn carefully away, her golden eyes following the path of the young pegasus’s glance. Her gaze lights on a pale brace of antlers, and a small, thoughtful smile teases at the corners of her mouth, as she recognizes the stallion who had escorted her north along the cliffs and into the heart of Terrastella.

She notices, too, the many pairs of eyes that watch them from across the clearing, some merely interested, others clearly more concerned. She turns back to Flora, regarding the razor-thin line they have so carelessly carved. For a heartbeat she almost regrets it. But she is glad (strangely, fiercely, viciously glad) for that fleeting moment of pressure, that solidity of proof.

“You are important here,” she observes casually, her head tilting as if to indicate the realm around them. Now that the numbing, furious cold is receding from her mind, she allows herself a moment to take stock of the woman before her: for Florentine is indeed a woman now, and Indra is surprised to find that they are of an age and nearly of a height.

An image prods at the recesses of her memory—another time, long ago, when they were similarly alike, younger and smaller and freer of care. “How long have you been here? What have you made of yourself?” And, almost as an afterthought, almost—but not quite—apologetically: “I don’t think that should scar.”

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Indra cannot say, exactly, how she came to feel so inexplicably responsible for Florentine—so determined to see the flower girl safe and whole and well, no matter the cost. She had been scarred to witness the young filly’s death, of course, but there is more to it than that. Indra has watched others die, and there were others who watched as Flora fell, and still Indra has the feeling that she alone has been marked in some way by the encounter.

Perhaps it is just one last trick of the rift, sending Indra as unwitting envoy of her sire: Dominik, who could not master his wild impulses enough to stand and rule, even for love of his people; Dominik, who allowed himself to be consumed with guilt over the heavy crown that he left Gabriel to bear. Maybe Indra’s presence in Novus now is the magic’s claiming of a debt, from one bloodline to another. Maybe she has been summoned here to serve as the Dusk queen’s sword and shield, as Indra’s father failed to do for Florentine’s.

Or perhaps it is simply the rebound of the bond, the rubber band stretched tight and then snapped back, between Indra and Florentine themselves: sisters in time, twin stars orbiting one another across the ages, passing close and then flinging apart again.

Now, as Flora jests, Indra allows the corner of her mouth to twist in the barest admission of a smile. If Florentine is golden light, then Indra is a shadow, sleek and cool, her humor a wry, private thing beside the other mare’s ebullience. “How you managed to keep from being thrown out on your ear in the first week—” She shakes her head, her scarlet mane glossy and gleaming in the twilight. “But I suppose I’m not surprised. You never do anything halfway, do you?” No, Flora had always lived her life full-force. It was something Indra had often envied, even as she knew it was at odds with her own disposition.

As the flower queen turns her own questions on the unicorn, Indra shoots the other mare a sly, sidelong look. “A certain handsome antlered stallion, for starters,” she drawls, watching her friend’s expression. The mention of scars and stories reminds Indra of the stories which she herself had exchanged with that stallion on their journey north, and the unicorn’s brows draw together, her mind tickling with unease at the coincidence. “He’s from the riftlands, too, isn’t he.” It’s a guess, but one she’s suddenly quite certain of. Surely it can be no accident that they three are here—and surely they cannot be the only ones. “Are there others, who came through?”

And now Indra is thinking of her parents, and of Florentine’s, and of all the others that they knew when they walked the riftlands. Indra’s breath hitches in her throat, and she does not know if it is for terror or for longing. Not all of the horses in the rift were friends. Not all of the horses in the rift were even horses, anymore.

Looking at Florentine’s faint smile, her creamy feathers ruffled by the breeze, her violet eyes glinting in the evening light, Indra feels a pang of remorse for the darkness she has brought, and the difficulty. For a moment she thinks that maybe she should just smile, too, and sample the pretty refreshments, and enjoy the night. But there is a line of blood dripping down the flower child’s cheek, and there is a question Indra cannot keep herself from asking. “And what of the disease? Has it followed you here, too?”

For if it has, there is no place and no time in which any of them can be truly safe.

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