Hydra finally put Teal down, though her hands remained on her sister’s shoulders as if standing still might make the story escape her.
“I met Derpy,” she announced. “He’s wonderful.”
The grin that followed made Revy’s temple tighten. Across the fitting room, Tina gave a growl low enough to vibrate through the back of her chair. Her white gloves had done nothing to hide the tension in her hands.
Teal glanced between them. Then she looked up at Hydra with considerably more care than she had used to introduce her.
“Dear sister, I would love to hear about it later. But I’m busy with Derpy’s companions. These two, I believe, are involved with him. And Sera is his friend.”
Hydra continued as though she had heard only an invitation.
“He doesn’t want a mate. He told me that.” Her ears shifted, and the grin softened. “But he said he’d play lots of games with me. We can go on hunts.”
Tina’s claws pressed against the chair through her gloves.
Hydra’s ears flattened. Tears gathered beneath her amber eyes and spilled down the spotted fur of her cheeks before she seemed to notice them.
“He’s the first male who’s taken an interest in me,” she said. “Even after what Mother and Father said about making me his mate for the festival, he was still willing to be my friend.”
Revy watched Teal reach toward her sister’s arm. The tears looked real. So did the happiness behind them. Hydra spoke about games and hunts as though Derpy had offered her a kingdom, and for a moment Revy could see how easily someone might mistake that hunger for affection as something harmless.
Then Tina shifted beside her.
The chair creaked.
Revy looked down. Tina was staring at Hydra’s shoulders, measuring the difference without meaning to. She had been measured herself only a short time earlier. The dress had let her stand in front of them with a shy little hand at her neckline, waiting to be told she was beautiful.
That uncertainty had returned for a different reason.
There was somebody bigger in the room. Taller, broader, more massive. Someone Tina looked at and imagined had never needed a laboratory to become powerful. She knew nothing about Hydra's bloodline. Fear was filling in the gaps for her.
“Hey,” Revy said, placing a hand on her shoulder. “It’s alright. What happened to the escapee from the White Tiger Kingdom? The one they experimented on and turned into a god-killing weapon?”
Tina caught her hand.
The grip was firm enough to stop Revy’s next words. Tina stood and pulled her toward the door, managing the broken heels with stiff, careful steps. Revy followed rather than make her explain in front of everyone.
Outside, the air felt cooler against her face. She turned as Tina released her.
“Revy.”
Tina’s eyes were wet.
“I’m worried about her joining our group,” she said. “About her taking him away from me.”
Revy’s irritation eased. “Tina—”
“This is the first time I’ve felt this way about someone. What if he gives her a crest, like those other girls? More competition. More people he wants around him.”
She looked down at her hands, then toward the doorway. The white fabric had creased where she had clutched it against the chair.
Revy let out a breath.
“That's what this is about? Somebody he just met?”
“You saw her.”
“You were with him in prison,” Revy said. “You fought beside him. You've seen things most people haven't.”
“That doesn't mean he'll choose me.”
Revy's first answer died before it reached her mouth. She had been about to make promises that belonged to Derpy.
“No,” she admitted. “It doesn't. But another woman's body doesn't erase what happened between you.”
She squeezed Tina's hand. “Ask him for that date. Let him answer.”
Tina wanted to believe her. Revy could see the effort in the way she lifted her head.
The doorway darkened behind them.
They turned together.
Hydra stood on the step, looking down at them. With the room no longer around her to soften the comparison, the difference in size became absurd. Tina reached barely halfway up the space Hydra seemed to occupy. Her shoulders tightened again.
Teal followed, her violet eyes already on her sister.
“Hydra. You promised you wouldn’t cause trouble.”
“I’ve been somewhere with Derpy that nobody else has.”
Hydra’s gaze remained on Revy and Tina. The tears had left tracks in her fur, but her smile was returning.
“I know there are four other types of him. In a place I can’t talk about.” She leaned slightly forward. “He trusted me enough to let me into his circle. Who are you to say I don’t have a chance?”
Revy remembered every word she had just used to reassure Tina.
Hydra laughed. The sound broke into a wild cackle that seemed too large for the space between the building and the path. Revy felt it against her teeth.
Light gathered around her hands. Her cleavers settled into her grip, familiar weight answering the unease crawling beneath her skin. Beside her, Tina moved into a defensive stance, sparks tracing her arms again.
“I don’t like you,” Tina said. “For some reason, you give me goosebumps. And I don’t like it.”
Hydra’s eyes moved to the cleavers. Her expression did not become more cautious.
Teal lifted a hand as if to summon something. Nothing appeared. Revy saw the moment she remembered: the slight hitch in the movement, the anger that tightened her mouth.
“Shit,” Teal muttered.
The hammer Derpy had shattered in the White Tiger Kingdom was not going to answer her now.
She put her hand on Hydra’s shoulder instead.
“Could you listen for one moment? Your ability is activating, and I don’t have my hammer to stop you.”
Hydra turned her head. “Huh?”
“Derpy shattered it. Mother and Father are dealing with him at the moment.” Teal kept her voice steady. “You don’t want my place destroyed because of a fight between you, a half-breed, and a wendigo tamed by a man, do you?”
Tina’s jaw tightened at the description. Revy’s fingers shifted against the cleaver handles, but Teal was still speaking.
“Who would make your clothing? Who would make you look pretty when you wanted?”
Hydra considered that with more attention than she had given the mention of weapons.
“You promise you’ll make me prettier than all the girls?”
“Indeed,” Teal said, shaking her head slightly. “Go find Derpy. Play with him.”
Hydra went quiet.
Revy waited for the laugh to return. Instead, the hyena looked away from them, apparently considering a different idea.
“I’ll find our other sister. Ask her to visit Sister Rose’s area.”
The color left Teal’s face.
“Absolutely not.”
Hydra looked back at her.
“We aren’t allowed in Rose’s area. She’s been…” Teal paused. For the first time since Hydra arrived, she seemed to be choosing each word before allowing it out. “Sleeping. For a while.”
Revy watched the hesitation. There was a question in it, but now was clearly not the time to ask.
Teal drew a breath and offered something else.
“How about you find me a yellow spotted-belly toad? They’re difficult to find at this hour. Bring me one, and I’ll take you hunting later.”
Hydra gasped, her ears lifting.
“You mean it?”
“Definitely. One hundred percent.”
The hyena straightened over her sister. The movement brought her shadow across Teal’s face, and for a moment the promise sounded less like an invitation than something Teal had better be able to fulfill.
“Okay,” Hydra said. “But you’d better keep your word. I hate when you lie to me and don’t keep your promises.”
She started past them.
Revy tried to move her cleavers out of the way.
Her hands did not answer.
The air stopped reaching her lungs. She opened her mouth, but the breath she expected would not come. Hydra’s shoulder passed through the edge of her vision with unbearable slowness, while the world around it seemed to have become fixed in place.
Tina stood beside her, equally still.
Revy could see the strain in her throat. Could see the sparks along her arms. Neither of them could make a single step.
“This isn’t over,” Hydra said. “I’ll take care of you when the time is right.”
Her laughter receded down the path.
Revy’s knees struck the ground.
Air tore into her lungs, rough enough to hurt. A cleaver hit the ground beside her, and she caught the handle before her fingers could lose it completely. Tina fell too, one hand braced against the path, her other arm pressed across her body while she tried to breathe.
Teal and Sapphire were beside them almost immediately.
“I’m so sorry,” Teal said. “Are you alright? She’s normally not like this.”
Revy lifted her head. “There’s nothing normal about that.”
“She was ready to kill us for knowing him,” Tina managed.
Teal glanced along the path Hydra had taken. “You’re owed a fuller explanation. But I can’t talk here. Hydra has good hearing.” She crouched lower. “You were hit by her ability. Cackle Overwhelm.”
“You knew she could do that,” Tina said.
Teal's hands went still.
“Yes.”
“And you sent her to find Derpy.”
“He has stood up to my mother. I thought—”
“That doesn't make him somebody you can hand her to.”
Revy had found enough breath to look toward the path. “He needs to know what she said.”
Teal rose and called a passing attendant over. She gave him the direction of the clearing and told him to find Derpy or the doll waiting there. This time she repeated Hydra's threat without softening a word.
Revy watched the attendant leave. “If she comes back before we do, you don't tell her where he is.”
Teal nodded. It was the first agreement she had made without an excuse attached.
Revy swallowed another painful breath. The name gave her something to remember. It did nothing for the fear of kneeling with her weapons in her hands after being unable to use either. For a moment she remembered Sera's wrist, the confidence with which she herself had decided somebody else could bear a little fear.
“Sapphire,” Teal said, “take Revy and get her changed. I’ll help Tina.”
The seamstress picked Revy up before she could find a dignified way to stand.
“This is embarrassing,” Revy muttered.
She dismissed the cleavers. Her hands were still tight enough that she had to deliberately open them afterward.
Hydra had left her with cleavers in her hands and no way to use them. Revy looked back toward Tina, then leaned close to Sapphire.
“Could you do me a favor? Something special for the outfit.”
She whispered the request. The seamstress listened, studying her with a new calculation.
“I’ll have to see you transform,” she said. “I need the measurements.”
Revy straightened enough to make Sapphire pause.
“Then I’ll need a bigger space.”
They went outside to a place with room for her to change. Revy removed her black jacket first, the red wool at the cuffs catching briefly against her wrists. The cropped top beneath it carried a sheep emblem. Her belted shorts followed, chains and little ornaments settling against the folded fabric. She set the chunky lace-up boots beside them and touched the old clothing once before stepping away.
Without the layers holding it down, her wool expanded. Red curls puffed outward until Sapphire was studying what looked like a ball of wool with a sheep woman somewhere inside it.
“We’re going to have to shave some of this,” the seamstress said. “May I keep it for fabric?”
“I don’t care, as long as you can do what I asked.”
Sapphire began carefully clearing the wool around Revy’s chest, belly, and back. Revy kept still, listening to the work instead of the remembered cackle. Each pass left another piece of what she had worn naturally in the seamstress’s hands.
It was for Derpy.
She had promised to protect him in prison. The promise had survived everything that followed. It would survive the loss of some wool and old clothing, too.
“Alright,” Sapphire said. “You can transform.”
Revy let the other form unfold.
Her limbs lengthened. The ground seemed to sink beneath her as her body rose, red wool thickening along powerful legs and gathering in a heavy mane over her shoulders. Great branching antlers spread above her head, their pointed ends requiring all the space she had asked for.
Her face became pale and skull-like, the eyes burning red within it. Broad ears angled beneath the antlers. Bone-white structures followed the lines of her torso, riblike shapes prominent against the darker markings and crimson wool. Long fingers ended in claws. Her feet settled with dark talons against the ground, and an elongated red-and-black tail moved behind her.
Sapphire looked up.
For several breaths, neither spoke.
“I’ve never seen a full wendigo,” the seamstress said at last.
Revy lowered one clawed hand so Sapphire could reach it. There was no laugh in her throat now. No little joke about being pretty. She watched the seamstress measure the body she used when keeping Derpy safe demanded something more than standing at his shoulder.
Sapphire moved carefully, checking one measurement against another before recording it.
“I’ll need magic threads to do what you asked,” she said. “Is that alright?”
“It’s fine. Just don’t mess it up.”
The work took the rest of the fitting. Revy asked twice whether anyone had brought word from the clearing. Both times, Teal checked the doorway before answering no.
Inside, Sera touched the ribbon over her concealed collar. She remembered the wolf’s hand, Hydra’s laughter, and David wanting to spend time with someone else. She sat with those memories while Tina waited beside her.
Footsteps interrupted the thought. Sapphire emerged, brushing a last stray curl of red wool from her hands.
“Our little sheep had a lot of hair,” she said. “Sorry it took so long.”
Revy followed her into the room.
The fitted dark-plum dress moved differently from the jacket and shorts she had surrendered. It followed her waist and hips before ending above her knees, with purple trim marking the neckline. At one thigh, a violet inset showed beneath a slit crossed with lacing through small gold eyelets. A ribbon secured the bottom of the lacing.
Her red wool had been gathered into a high, rounded bun tied with purple ribbon. Curls framed her face and fell beside her ears. Small gold earrings and a delicate heart necklace caught the light when she turned toward the others.
Her woolly arms and legs remained visible. Dark-purple heels fitted around her feet, with ankle straps fastened above them. Her round tail sat clear of the dress behind her.
Teal looked her over and stopped pretending to concentrate on anything else.
“Wow. I thought the first two changes were pretty. This is stunning.”
Revy’s mouth curved into a small smile. Tina stared at her for long enough that she noticed and let the smile deepen.
“I had to use her old clothing for part of the outfit,” Sapphire explained. “She agreed to it. She wanted to protect Derpy, even if that meant sacrificing what she had before.”
“A small price to pay,” Revy said. “Besides, I think he’ll enjoy seeing me like this for a while.”
She glanced down at the laced inset, then smoothed the fabric at her hip.
“Maybe he’ll stop thinking about that pink jester panther. Festa.”
She spat on the floor.
Tina’s eyes lifted sharply. “Festa was a Warden.”
Revy put her hands behind her back.
“Do you know something I don’t?” Tina asked.
“Yes. But it’s not important.”
“You just spat on the floor after saying her name.”
“While you were on the floor below him, the Warden would visit. She entered his mind. He developed a little fixation on her.”
Tina stared. “On Festa?”
“Do you remember when we first entered Briar Glen? I could feel his emotions. What he was thinking of creating.” Revy rocked back carefully on her new heels. “He knows her measurements. Her size. Her personality. I stopped him before he could try anything strange.”
“Can you imagine what he could do,” Revy continued, “with that much information about us?”
“Would he?” Tina asked.
Revy looked at her.
“Make somebody who looked like me, because he couldn't have me?”
The smugness left Revy's face. “I don't know.”
Tina glanced toward Sera. All three of them had spent the afternoon discussing who could claim whom. “Then perhaps that's another thing we should ask instead of deciding we know.”
The entrance opened before Revy could answer.
Mk.1 burst inside, looking past Teal and Sapphire until she found the three women.
“Derpy needs you!”
Revy turned. Tina was already getting out of her chair, balancing on the shoes Sapphire had flattened after their heels broke.
“A wolf brought a message from Teal,” Mk.1 said. Her hands kept moving. “I went looking for Friend Derpy. His grandmother took him away from our clearing. Everyone followed. There's fighting now.”
Sera stood, gathering the longer panels of her skirt clear of her paws.
“He said it would be our spot,” Mk.1 said. “I thought we were all going to stay there.”
Revy reached for the connection she could usually feel without thinking.
For one terrible moment, it was not there.
She stopped hearing the room.
“Show them the way,” she told Mk.1. “Tina, bring Sera.”
The doorway was too small for what her body was becoming. Revy reached the open path before the antlers spread.