Aisslyn drove her blade through the demon's chest, and the moment its blood touched her hands, the thing inside her woke. Illidan's gift. The corruption she had carried out of the Vault and wanted gone. Her vision went red. Her muscles burned with a strength that was not hers. She wanted to keep cutting, past the corpse, into anything that moved. That was the price of every fight now. Win, and lose herself a little more. She staggered back from the body and pressed her back against a tree. Her hands shook. She counted her breaths the way she once counted seedlings in a row. Ten breaths. The red faded, but slowly. Slower than last time. Someday it would not fade at all. She had escaped one prison. She would not become another. "You held it," a voice said. "Barely." Maiev Shadowsong stood among the trees, watching. The woman who had chained Aisslyn to a wall in the dark. The woman who had let her go, then made her a Watcher after seeing her defend travelers at a river crossing. Aisslyn's grip tightened on her blade before she made herself lower it. "I don't need a keeper," Aisslyn said. "You need control." Maiev stepped closer. She did not soften it. "The demon's blood feeds what Illidan left in you. Every kill pulls you toward it. I've seen better fighters than you lose that fight." Aisslyn wanted to argue. She couldn't. Her hands were still shaking. Maiev crouched and pulled a small flower from the ground near the tree roots. Pale petals, the kind Aisslyn had grown a lifetime ago. "You worked plants once." "How do you know that?" "I read your file for a year." Maiev held out the bloom. "A hunter can't master the corruption by fighting it head-on. You bury a still thing under the rage. Something to reach for when the red comes. A word. A memory. A weight in your hand." She pressed the flower into Aisslyn's palm and closed her fingers over it. "You need an anchor. Or you die, and I lose a Watcher I can't spare." Aisslyn stared at the crushed petals. The smell reached her, green and clean, and something in her chest loosened. Not gone. Steadied. "Show me," she said. They worked until dark. Maiev wounded her own arm and let a fugitive from the northern vaults come at them, then made Aisslyn fight it while holding the bloom's scent in her mind. The red came. Aisslyn reached for the flower, the row of seedlings, the woman watching her with hard pale eyes. She held. She killed the demon and did not lose herself. When it was done, she stood over the body, breathing, her mind her own. She had found her anchor. But her fingers had crushed the bloom to pulp during the fight, and she understood the flaw at once. A scent she could carry ran out. She needed something that would not.

Aisslyn had not slept in two days. The wound from the demon fight ached, but the wound did not keep her awake. Something else did. A pull under her skin, low and steady, like a second heartbeat that was not hers. Illidan's blood knew something was near. It had known since dusk. Each time she lay down inside the fortress walls, the red crept into her sight, and her hands curled toward her blades. She could not heal. She could not even rest. She found Maiev in the stone forecourt, sharpening her glaive by torchlight. Maiev had chained her to a wall once, deep in the Vault, and left her in the dark. Now they served the same order. Aisslyn still did not trust the woman's hard pale eyes, but she had no one else to ask. "There's a fugitive loose," Aisslyn said. "Close. My blood feels it." Maiev did not look up. "How close." "Close enough that I can't sleep. It keeps waking the rage." Maiev stood. "Then you don't sleep until it's dead." She said it plain, like a fact about weather. "Rest won't come while the blood answers a demon. Kill the demon, and the pull stops." "And if I lose myself out there? Tired, no flower left?" "Then you find a new anchor tonight." Maiev handed her the glaive. "You said a scent runs out. Fine. Use the thing that doesn't." They tracked it past the walls, into the trees below the bastion. The pull grew stronger with every step. Aisslyn's vision began to shift red before she even saw the demon. It crouched over something dead. A traveler, maybe. It turned, all teeth and smoke, and charged. The rage took her fast this time. Faster than the training fight. She had no bloom to reach for. Her mind slid toward the red edge, and she grabbed for anything to hold. She found the dark. The Vault. The cold wall against her back and the sound of her own breath in the black. The thing Maiev had done to her. It was hers. No one could take that memory or crush it in a fist. She held it and she held herself. Her blade found the demon's throat. Its blood hit her hands and roared through her, but the memory held her down under the roar. She cut once more, clean, and the demon fell still. Aisslyn stood over the body. The pull under her skin was gone. The red faded, and this time it faded fast. Her hands stopped shaking. Maiev watched from the trees. "You held." "I did." Aisslyn wiped her blade. The anchor had cost her nothing to carry, and it would never run dry. But it was made of the worst hour of her life, and she would have to reach for it every fight. She could sleep now. She was not sure what that would cost her later. Maiev regards her with concern, and perhaps something more.

Aisslyn slept, but the sleep gave her nothing. In it she was back on the cold Vault floor, chained, breathing in the dark. She woke with her jaw clenched and her hands aching. The anchor had killed the demon, but it was killing her too. Each time she reached for that memory, she stayed inside it a little longer. She needed calm that was hers, not pain she borrowed. She left the fortress before dawn. Maiev found her at the edge of the trees, glaive across her back. The woman who had once chained her now watched her with something close to worry. "You're not resting," Maiev said. "The memory doesn't let me. It holds the rage, but it holds me too." Aisslyn met her eyes. "You told me to find a thing that doesn't run dry. I found one that poisons me instead." Maiev was quiet a moment. "Then we look for another." She turned and walked into the trees. Aisslyn followed. They came to a lake hidden deep in the woods. Mist sat on the dark water. The moon hung full above it, and stars floated on the surface like scattered coins. It was still. Aisslyn had not seen anything so still since before the Vault. "I used to grow things," Aisslyn said. She surprised herself saying it. "Before Illidan. Before any of this. I'd wake and check the soil and that was the whole day." She knelt at the water's edge. "I forgot I was ever that person." Maiev crouched beside her. She did not speak, and for once the silence did not feel like a wall. Aisslyn cupped water in her hands. It was cold and clean. She pressed it to her face and breathed. No red crept in. Her heartbeat slowed on its own. "Try it now," Maiev said softly. "Reach for the corruption. Let it rise a little." Aisslyn did. She let Illidan's blood stir under her skin. The rage lifted its head. But she held the water in her hands, the cold of it, the quiet of the lake, the memory of soil and green shoots. She held a good thing instead of a wound. The rage rose and found no room. It sank back down. Her hands did not shake. She opened her eyes. The lake was still there, and so was she. "That," Aisslyn breathed. "That's the one." Maiev almost smiled. "A calm thing. Not a scar." "It's mine. It won't run dry, and it won't rot me." Aisslyn looked at the woman beside her. She had feared this face once. Now she was glad of it. "Thank you." They stayed a while by the water. For the first time since the Vault, Aisslyn felt she might one day be free of Illidan's blood entirely. The corruption still lived in her. But now she had a way to hold it without breaking. And she had someone who had chosen to sit in the quiet with her.