For a split second Stray couldn’t quite understand what she was seeing.

Sharp, molten-as-sunlight feathers were digging up between her knuckles, along her forearms, cutting into Logan’s fingers.

A growl instinctively rising in his throat, the familiar hazel eyes staring at her in worry and disbelief.

Whorls of gore were dripping down his flesh now, wafting into the bath water and exploding into the liquid like puffs of scarlet smoke. She could feel the blood hissing through the Dove’s Heart Potion, tainting it. Making the peace she and her Sunlight Lock had found here into nothing but an illusion, a dream she couldn’t hope to keep. And yet-

Logan wasn’t letting her go, wasn’t moving away from her even though she was hurting him.

Instead he gritted his teeth and very deliberately said, “Cariad, stay with me.”

Stray felt it then, felt that hiss-and-scratch presence push inside her mind even as more feathers erupted, sharp, fiery and metallic, from beneath her flesh. Her shoulders twisting in agony, something wet and bloody flaring through the water. Its malice plain to see. She sensed Gold’s presence in her mind before she heard her voice, recognised that same old, mean, whispering-familiar wraith before ever she heard the words. Don’t tell me you’d forgotten about me, Stray, she heard the other woman purring. Don’t tell me I made so little impression as all that… Pain rocked through her again and this time Stray’s body spasmed, her spine arching like a bow. The motion jerking her clear out of the bath-tub, causing her to land messily on the tiles even as Logan scrambled to catch her fall. Gold started laughing and Stray felt hatred, real, hissing-dark hatred pool within her-

If I have been so soon forgotten, little one, the older woman cooed, I shall have to remind you of just what I can do to you…

And Stray felt more feathers tear through her body, Gold’s snickers still echoing through her head. Heard something wet and gory slap against the floor as new bones, new tendons and muscles ripped themselves right from her shoulders, leaving her skin in tatters with their birth. Her eyes snapped shut, her own nails digging into her palms hard enough to draw blood from them; For a moment all she could register was agony, white-hot and blinding- but then she heard the beast within Logan growl as he shook her. His hands on her hair, stroking it, his voice trying to sound soothing in her ear. Stray attempted to manoeuvre away, not wanting to hurt him more- the feathers were streaked with his blood already, she didn’t want to do any more harm- but he wouldn’t let her go. Couldn’t. Didn’t even let her move an inch away from him though the Blessed Maiden knew she tried.

“Hush,” he kept whispering, “Whatever she’s saying to you, cariad, you don’t listen. You stay here with me-”

Through the haze of pain something clicked in Stray’s head. “You can hear her?” she croaked. “You can hear Mistress Gol-”

Gold’s laugh was mocking even as it drowned his voice out.

He doesn’t need to hear me, little one, she hissed. He’s seen my feathers before.

And an image flared in Stray’s mind, a beautiful, sinuously writhing, naked woman on a forest floor: The spring maid Gold had once been, though few would believe it now. Her red hair arrayed around her face like tumbling daylight, her body arching in ecstasy as heat burned from beneath her skin. A shadow- massive, feral, vicious- moved beside her. Dark hair, dark fur beneath her fingers, a wolf’s low keening snarl stalking through the grass. Stray watched, strangely fascinated, as a burst of brilliance enveloped Gold, so bright that she wished she could look away from it- And then where Gold had lain there was a massive bird, molten and throbbing with energy. A firebird a thousand-fold brighter than any Stray had ever imagined, a burning letter from some long-forgotten alphabet, a sign that meant possibility and rebirth and pitiless thirst for life. The bird opened grass-green, beautifully human eyes, staring straight at Stray. Pleasure and knowledge and the sweet whisper of experience all somehow visible in their depths. These are my feathers, Gold’s voice whispered. And you will learn to fear them spring maid.

And as Stray watched the Once-was Gold burned brighter, the air growing heavy with her presence. The woman rising into the air now, shimmering and sensuous, that feral, familiar growl sounding again somewhere off to Stray’s right. The lupine voice rose to a shivering, ecstatic howl behind her eyelids and Stray saw a wolf stalk towards Gold, his form massive and somehow familiar. A silhouette of shadow-spun blackness against a molten, artificial sun. For a second the wolf was still, staring at Gold in either contemplation or adoration, the girl couldn’t decide which-

And then the feel of naked flesh flared beneath Stray’s fingertips, the give-and-shiver of human skin unmistakeable though the girl somehow knew she was not the one feeling them. That neither this memory nor its sensations were her own to experience or trust. And yet… The vibration of the wolf’s howl slid against her skin, fit to make her body quake as it had for Logan that night in the Wolf Mother Cave. The taste of salt and sweat blooming on her tongue, her muscles tightening in pleasure and release. Gold’s memory was somehow bleeding into her own mind now, the feeling of seeing double behind her eyelids dizzying and disconcerting. The boundary of where she ended and the other woman began growing ever blurrier, the centre refusing ever more jarringly- ever more truculently- to hold. Stray tried to pull her mind away, tried to concentrate even on the pain of her feathered, unnatural transformation- But it was useless. Nothing could bring her back inside her own skin. Even Logan wasn’t here to help her, now when she saw drowning in another’s memories-

You want to see Logan? she heard Gold’s voice coo in her head then. The plague-bitch sounded like she was laughing. My darling girl, why didn’t you simply ask?

And suddenly Stray was looking at Logan, a younger, less careworn Logan. His familiar, handsome face grinning lazily, his lips brushing gently across her cheek, her jaw- Except it wasn’t her jaw, it was Gold’s. He was lying on his back, naked as the day he was born; Mistress Gold lay beside him, her body beautiful and molten and golden. Her firebird form burning around her like a shining shadow, an aura that might inspire adoration- Or fear. But Logan wasn’t afraid. His hands ranged teasingly, sensuously over flesh which Stray could feel him touching though she knew that it was not her own. His body flaring back and forward between human and lupine with a speed Stray hadn’t thought he possessed. The sounds he made hungry and enthusiastic, so different from the gentle, soft sounds he made for her. The girl knew that she was watching a coupling: Gold’s hands and mouth moved over his body in ways Stray had never even imagined. But she couldn’t look away. Because Gold was touching Logan, kissing him. Licking, biting, scratching him. Doing all the things that he wouldn’t let her do to him, no matter what she said.

And if that was who Logan wanted, Stray thought dizzily, then what on earth was he doing with her?

I’ve been asking myself that question, Gold’s voice drawled, ever since you hauled your drab little carcass across my path.

Something changed- snapped- then, inside of Stray. Some little piece of hope or certainty she had been hanging onto. Some idea that had made everything she had suffered the last few weeks seem worthwhile. Because the man she could see inside her head- he would never want her. He wanted Gold, a woman her Logan had given every indication of hating, a woman he’d never bothered to tell Stray he had even a passing acquaintance with, let alone knew how to bite and kiss. So why had he? Why hadn’t he told her? And what else was he keeping from her, if he could lie about something like this? Stray knew this was more than jealousy, though she could feel plenty of that simmering inside her; She felt hurt that he hadn’t told her this, distrust as to why. But more than anything else it was fear, plain and simple fear. The memory of how she’d had to run from Illunis haunting her, the way she hadn’t been able to please Lord David wavering behind her eyes. Because she could never be a woman like Gold, she knew that-

You’ll never please him the way I could, Gold‘s voice whispered smugly to her, so why even try?

Tears rose to her eyes then, her throat constricting with the feel of them. Gold’s wicked, mocking laughter sounding in her head, echoing as if through the wildwood or maybe her father’s snow-cold hall. She had been a fool, a moon-sopped, naïve fool. The desire to flee- to just let the beast within her run- was heaving through her body, its course fleet and fractious as a runaway horse. The fact that she might well be walking into danger of no consequence, the fact that she might even end up running into Shaw equally meaningless if she could just stop seeing Logan with Gold in her head. With a final, mocking coo- We’ll talk soon darling, Gold murmured- Stray felt her vision clear. Saw Logan’s familiar, hazel eyes peering at her from a worried, haunted face. He had placed her between his legs on the soaking floor, his potion-protected hands gently stroking her. His expression tender and worried- though Stray no longer trusted her interpretation of that. “Cariad,” he said hesitantly, “Cariad whatever she showed you, there’s an explanation-”

The girl’s voice was flat. “You could have just told me,” she said. “You didn’t have to lie.” She saw anger move through his eyes and some tiny, desperate hope she’d been nursing- that Gold had deceived her- died within her chest. Because he knew precisely what the woman had shown him, and he’d only have been able to guess because it was true.

Gold had showed her a memory and not an illusion, no matter how she might not wish it were so.

And with that knowledge Stray rose unsteadily to her feet, her skin no longer marked by burning, metallic feathers. Those, she guessed, had been an trick or a glamour, a little bit of enjoyable torture for Mistress Gold to punish her for having to leave the Company of Miracles behind. The werewolf’s worried, harried eyes following her about the room but she didn’t say a word as she dried herself, didn’t look at him. Didn’t try to form a conversation with the pain of what she now knew so recent and clear in her chest. She murmured something about going out to get some air and he tried to stop her. One look at her hurt face however seemed to put a stop to that; he walked back towards the bed and away from her, everything in his demeanour screaming discontent. Hi mouth opening and closing as if he wished to speak to her but truly didn’t know what to say. Stray she pulled on her winter cloak, her eyes squeezing momentarily shut as she remembered it was a gift from him. She stepped over the threshold of her room’s door just as he reached for her, his face suddenly alight with worry, with fear. But as soon as she left the room she was grabbed by two dark red hands. Hands that felt oddly familiar.

There was a bamf!, a flare of brimstone as Logan yelled out for her, and then she was gone.