Sam slept fitfully in her pallet, her bed sheets in a twisted knot about her ankles. In her dreams, a woman sat at a vanity, brushing out her hair with long, even strokes. A silk, wine colored gown clung to sinful curves, the décolletage cut scandalously low. The mirror in front of her revealed a face inhuman in its perfection, the exotic tilt of her jade eyes exaggerated by thick lashes. The woman hummed softly to herself, a simple, haunting melody.

As the song wrapped around Sam like a sensual embrace, the mirror shimmered, and her reflection appeared next to the visage of the woman. She was dressed in her training getup, though as far as she could tell, she was weaponless.

The woman smiled. “Sam,” she crooned. She rose from her chair, hips swaying in an open invitation as she approached.

“Sam,” she said again, the name a caress on her lips. She cupped Sam’s cheek with a soft hand. “Who are you, Sam of Haywood?”

Sam imagined that if she were a man, she would die a hundred deaths and confess to a thousand sins for a single night in the sultry woman’s arms. Even she was not entirely immune to the woman’s siren-like allure.

Don’t trust her. A warning sounded in the back of Sam’s mind, clearing the fog from her brain. Don’t trust her Don’t trust her Don’t trust her. “I-I’m nobody,” she stuttered.

The woman’s smile grew over bright. “Nobody?” Her nails pressed into Sam’s cheek.

“Nobody,” she affirmed, with more confidence.

Sam screamed as the nails against her face became clawed, gouging her to the bone. “Tell me,” the woman snarled. “You will tell me who you are.”

Sam awoke writhing in agony, clutching at her cheek. When she pulled her hand away, her fingers were dry; she had half expected to find them wet with blood. “Just a dream,” she whispered.

Then she sat up, and saw her.

She—or it, Sam should say—stood silently in the darkest corner of the room. From the waist up, the demon could be a twin to the woman from her dream, though its jade eyes lacked the same intelligence. Long nails as sharp as swords descended from its fingers, hovering an inch above the floor. Its bottom half blurred into the shadows, and it glided, rather than walked, towards her.

Sam opened her mouth to shout for help and then closed it, lifting her chin. She could handle this. She had not joined the Paladins to ask others to come to her rescue. She did not need Tristan’s or Braeden’s aid to fell a single demon.

Sam grabbed the dagger from the night table beside her pallet and leaped up from the bed. The demon swiped at her with a long-nailed claw. She jumped backwards out of the way then thrust her dagger deep into the demon’s gut. She drew the blade up and twisted, exposing its ribcage and still-beating heart. The demon let out an outraged howl.

Tristan’s voice echoed inside her head. They won’t die until you cut off their heads!

The demon’s howl choked off in a sharp screech as her dagger tore into its throat. Embedding the blade in its neck, she wrenched the dagger horizontally with all her strength. The demon’s head dangled from a single thread of flesh before dropping to the carpeted floor.

“Well done,” said Tristan, peering over her shoulder. Sam jumped; she hadn’t seen him wake. Braeden had woken, too, and stood by his pallet with a throwing dagger in each hand. “We need to leave now, however.”

“Why?” asked Sam. “It’s not even close to morning.”

Tristan looked sidelong at Braeden. “A demon in Cordoba is not exactly a common occurrence, and this—” he gestured at the demon’s corpse—“will incite some unnecessary misunderstandings.”

“In other words, I’ll get blamed for it,” Braeden said.

Sam made an incredulous face. “That’s stupid.”

“It’s Cordoba,” said Braeden, as though that explained everything.

Tristan frowned at them both. “Less talking, more packing.”

They left The Twelve Peers as soon as the horses were repacked. The streets of Cordoba, so boisterous just hours earlier, were eerily quiet. With the moon as their only source of light, they kept the horses at a slow walk, careful to avoid any missteps. The gatekeeper was asleep at his post, and they had to rouse him from his slumber in order to get him to raise the city gates. He would have refused, too, had Tristan not revealed himself as a Paladin.

As the excitement from the demon attack tapered off, Sam began to feel the effects of lack of sleep. “Are we riding for much longer?”

“I want to get at least two hours’ distance away before we rest,” said Tristan. “Why?”

“I’m practically falling asleep on my horse, that’s all,” she replied with a hint of a whine.

“You’re beginning to annoy me,” Tristan told her. “You knew full well before joining the Paladins that it wouldn’t be easy. I’ve gone days without sleep when I’ve had to. We do what we need to do. If you don’t like it, I can drop you off when we get to Haywood.”

Sam gulped. “We’re going to Haywood?”

“Why, homesick already?” Tristan sniped.

“No,” she shot back. “I was wondering, is all.”

“We’ll be there in about a week’s ride. I have a few matters to see to once we arrive, so you’ll have time to visit with your family, if you’d like.”

“Great,” she said weakly. Visiting with her family was the last thing she wanted to do. She prayed to the gods she would be able to escape notice. Too many people knew her face in Haywood.

After several minutes had passed, Tristan spoke again. “Braeden, can I ask you something?”

Braeden grunted in the affirmative.

“There’s no good way to say this.” Tristan took a deep breath. “We’ve had two demon attacks in the past week, which is highly unusual in such close proximity to The Center. Do you have anything to do with it? I’m not saying you’re doing it on purpose, of course. I don’t blame you for Paladin Shen’s death.”

“It’s okay,” said Braeden. “I’d probably wonder, too, if I were you. But the answer is no. I’ve always had to seek demons out, if I wanted to fight them. If anything, they generally avoid me. I suppose they don’t want to attack their own kind.” Sam felt Braeden’s eyes on her. “I’m not sure why we’ve seen so many demons of late.”

An awkward silence followed his reply. Sam concentrated on keeping her eyes open; several times her forehead collided with her horse’s neck as she nodded in and out of sleep, and once she nearly fell out of her saddle. To her frustration, neither Tristan nor Braeden seemed to be having any trouble. Struggling to stay awake, Sam became aware of a challenge she hadn’t accounted for: she’d never considered that her pampered upbringing would put her at a disadvantage. She was accustomed to sleeping in a four-poster bed; Braeden was probably raised by wolves, for the gods’ sake, and Tristan was, well, Tristan. She stuck out her tongue at their backs.

By the time Tristan motioned for them to dismount, Sam was all but ready to collapse. They walked their horses off the main dirt road to a hidden enclave in the surrounding woods, and tethered them to a tree. Tristan erected a small wedge tent; the shelter was just large enough to squeeze three bodies side by side.

“I’ll take the first watch,” he said. “Braeden, I’ll wake you for the second watch, and Sam, you’ll take the third. Get sleep while you can.”

Sam didn’t need to be told twice. She rolled out her bedding and crawled beneath the sheets. The ground was uncomfortably hard, but at least her ankle no longer bothered her so much. Only the occasional twinge reminded her that she’d injured it just a few days before.

She felt Braeden crawl in next to her. “Sam?” he whispered.

“Yes?”

“Did you feel anything strange earlier tonight? Before the demon appeared?”

“I had a bad dream,” she replied sleepily. “Why do you ask?”

He hesitated before responding. “I normally can sense them before they attack, like a premonition. But this one…this one I didn’t sense until your knife was in its belly.”

Sam mulled this over. “What do you think it means?”

“I don’t know.”

“Maybe you should say something to Tristan,” she suggested.

He shifted again, flipping over onto his back. “I’d rather not. Not yet anyway,” he said. “It could have been a fluke. I’ll tell him about it if it happens again.”

“Tristan can be an arrogant ass,” said Sam, “but I think we can trust him.”

“You're more trusting than I am.” He said nothing more, and Sam wondered if he’d fallen asleep.

“Braeden?”

“Yes, Sam?”

“Thanks for trusting me.”