Mikhail sat on a stool, leaning back against the expensive timber wall of the airship’s infirmary. Klara lay propped up on a bed against the opposite wall while Golubski, Yuri’s healer, bandaged her arm. The rest of the squad had been patched up, given healing extracts, and had retired.

  Wind buffeted the airship as they descended to the tundra, the gaping hole Klara had left in one of the hydrogen cells in dire need of patching.

  The grizzled healer tied off the bandage and straightened. “The healing extract will take a day or so to heal the bone, but the bruising and lacerations should fade in the next few hours.”

  Klara offered the man a stiff nod as he slipped from the sparse room, leaving the siblings alone.

  The drone of the engines filled the silence between them as Mikhail searched for something to say. They never should have been on that airship. It was only through his insistence that they’d attempted to rescue Dominik. Which was, he hated to admit, little more than an attempt to assuage his guilt.

  Klara sank back onto the pillows and shut her eyes. Her heavy frame relaxed, though Mikhail could see the tightness in her jaw, and her tensed neck left hard lines in the roll-neck of her shirt.

  “I’m sorry,” Mikhail whispered.

  “Apologies don’t fix mistakes,” Klara said, her eyes still closed.

  Mikhail rubbed the back of his neck, feeling the soft fabric of his own roll-neck collar beneath his fingers. “It’s all I have, though.”

  His sister—older, stronger, tougher—let out a sigh and turned to him, opening her eyes. Weariness etched lines around her black eyes. “Why are we here, Mikhail?”

  Mikhail opened his mouth to respond, but Klara interrupted.

  “No,” she said, “I don’t mean why are we on Vera’s Revenge, I mean why are we together? Our paths divided years ago. You’re an Alchemist, I’m a Sentinel. By rights we should be rivals, yet neither of us fit the mould our guilds so desperately want their members to fill. I turned down a position as a Sentinel at Katavsk, a position offered to me by Katavsk’s commander himself. Why? To fly halfway across Serovnya to find your mother. What possessed me to do that? I nearly got dishonourably discharged because of your crazed search for her.”

  Mikhail’s cheeks burned as his sister talked. He didn’t like where this was heading…

  “And yet,” she continued, “since we found Pozharsky and actually found a clue as to her location—indeed, we know exactly where she is, you’ve stopped at nothing to avoid seeing her. Despite the fact that we have no idea when the Alchemists will make a move to capture her. Instead, you somehow convince us to chase Pozharsky. So again, why are we here, Mikhail?”

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  So long as his mother stayed with the Warrior Guild, she’d be fine, Mikhail reasoned. The Alchemists wouldn’t dare move against the largest military group in Serovnya. But how could Klara possibly understand his hesitation? The strange, apparently sentient, gas they knew as uzhas had taken her over and now controlled her. For decades Alchemists had used the gaseous uzhas to sculpt uzhasgart, a slick black metal with incredible strength. The black art of sculpting was a closely guarded secret by the Guild, but the end result was incredible structures of impossible scale and precision. Their entire society was built upon Uzhasgart. From the phials they used to hold extracts, to the steam engines powering this very airship, to the huge corkscrew tracks of the coil trains.

  And it was alive.

  Or it had been. Before they had murdered it to build their world.

  And now? Now some of this uzhas resided in his mother. If he was from a race who for decades had been systematically murdered for others’ gain, he’d be pretty mad. Mad enough to take over an Alchemist and use her to slaughter her own lab partner and several squads of Alchemist soldiers.

  Something his mother would never do.

  And that left only one possible explanation…

  “She’s dead, Klara,” as he said the words, his hearts cracked as the truth he’d been trying to deny for the last week hit him.

  “Don’t be a fool. We have reports of her helping the Warrior Guild hold a gate near Krepost Lozvinsky.”

  Mikhail lurched to his feet, the stool tipping back and thudding against the wall. He pointed an accusing finger at her, his breath rasping in his throat. “That body is not my mother! The uzhas stole her from me.” Just like we’ve stolen the uzhas… As the thought hit, the sudden rage evaporated, taking with it the last reserves of his strength. He slumped back and slid down the wall until he sat, knees tucked to his chest, arms wrapped around them. The uzhas simply did to him what the Alchemists had done to it—taken his mother’s body to use for their own purposes. Could he really hate it?

  He clenched his teeth. Yes. Yes, he could.

  “I’ve seen that hatred in your eyes before, Mikhail, and believe me, I know the pain of that road. Don’t go down it.”

  “How can you say that?” he snapped. “Don’t pretend you don’t hate Zinaida.”

  “I don’t,” Klara said firmly, but Mikhail could see in her eyes that she did, even if she didn’t know it yet. She was a Koskov after all, hating those who hurt them was what they did flawlessly.

  A long silence stretched between them until finally, Klara broke it. “Mikhail,” she said, her voice gentle, “you owe it to yourself to at least talk to Elana. Your mother may still be in there. If you don’t, there will be a small voice that forever nags you, telling you that you could be wrong.”

  Mikhail grunted. And what if she was? What if there was some small part of her trapped in her own mind, unable to escape, unable to be freed? Could he live with knowing there was no way to help her? No, it was better to believe she was dead. Because she was dead. He shook his head and rose to unsteady feet. “You should rest. You took a beating in there.” With that, he stumbled from the room, lost in his own mind.

  ?─?? ?? ??─?

  Life isn’t some kind of grand destiny.

  It’s just a collection of decisions shaped by the moments that happen around us.

  Of Moon and Magic follows a silver-haired girl. Her mana was weak, but that never dulled her hunger for magic.

  We follow her steps. We weigh her choices. We sit with her loneliness. In a world where magic is everything, war is constant, and morality is little more than a neglected guideline.

  Will she become just another cog in the machine?

  Or will she be the one to end it all?

  Only one way to find out.

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