Blood Heir

4

Ana had almost drowned twice in her life.

The first time was ten years ago, on the cusp of winter. The snow had painted the world a glittering sprawl of white, sprinkled with the ruby reds and emerald greens and sapphire blues of the Salskoff Winter Market. Ornaments winked silver and gold like small ice spirits as the Imperial family passed by on their annual city Parade to welcome the arrival of their Patron Deity. Tambourines jingled, music played, people whirled around outside in flurries of white gauze and silver sash.

The excitement had even diminished the headache that had kept Ana in bed for the past few days. She held Luka’s hand as they waited for their carriage to stop, for the walk through the near-fairy-tale town, heralded and beloved and showered with gifts by the citizens of their empire.

Yet as the doors opened and the smells of roast meats and spiced vegetables and baked fish rolled in, Ana felt a wave of nausea. There was something writhing beneath all the noise from the crowds, the colored ornaments and furs and jewels clasped around people’s throats, the scents and sights. It pounded at her head, throbbed at her temples.

She distinctly remembered the pot of beet soup, thick and bubbling and so vividly red.

And then that thrumming energy within her exploded, a sharp crimson that drenched every corner of her vision, rushing through her veins. The hot, pulsing beat of blood swept into her world, drowning out all else.

She only remembered the aftermath. The bodies in front of her carriage, twisted on the cobblestones; the red, blooming like poppy blossoms on a canvas of colorless snow.

Ana had killed eight people that day.

The Palace alchemist, a strange bald man with overly large eyes and a quiet demeanor, had diagnosed her that very evening. She remembered the cold glint of his silver Deys’krug as he raised a trembling hand to whisper in the Emperor’s ear.

An Affinite, he’d told Papa. A blood Affinite.

Papa had bowed his head, and Ana’s world had crumbled.

In a window across her room, she’d seen her reflection. Face still streaked with blood and tears from the market, her hair crusted with sweat and half-covering her eyes—her monstrous red eyes. Her arms had been heavy, the skin stretched taut over swollen, jagged veins.

That day, Ana had looked in the mirror and seen a monster.

She’d tried to run after that. Past the maids who screamed at her approach; past the guards who stepped aside, bewildered and at a loss for what to do. She hadn’t known where she was going; all she’d known was that she had to get away, away from the Palace, away from Mama and Papa and Luka and mamika Morganya, so that she couldn’t hurt them.

The Kateryanna Bridge had loomed out of the blur of her tears, statues of Deities watching over her like sentient guardians. The bridge was named after Mama, and Ana watched it every day from the windows of her chambers, roping over the icy Tiger’s Tail river that wound around the Palace.

It was a sign. It had to be.

Tears streaked Ana’s face as she lifted her gaze to the sky. I love you, Mama, she thought. Carry me somewhere safe.

Ana climbed over the stone handrail and hurled herself into the river.

The cold jarred her bones as soon as she hit the water, and the ruthless current pulled her under. Immediately, she realized that any hopes she had of being borne to distant lands by the river’s waters had been foolish. The water frothed around her, pummeling her in a way that aroused a different type of terror within her: uncontrollable and tumultuous. Instinctively, she opened her mouth to scream—but water rushed in, squeezing the air from her lungs.

Panic whitened her mind, and spots bloomed before her eyes even as she fought against the water.

She hadn’t wanted to die. But perhaps the Deities meant to claim her today after all.

Something gripped her across her midriff—something different from the pressure on her chest and the cold in her lungs. The world spun in a whirl of white-ice currents and mute chaos, but she realized that the current was no longer carrying her. She was being dragged up, up, and into the light.

She burst through the surface, her lungs gasping in sweet, precious breaths of air. Her limbs drifted weakly in the violent waters, but there was a firm arm around her chest and someone was pulling her toward shore with fluid, practiced strokes.

Her savior struggled at the bank and, at last, deposited her on the ice-covered ground that stretched for miles around.

Ana’s blood froze as she found herself looking into her brother’s eyes—eyes that burned with rage. All traces of earlier mirth had disappeared from Luka’s face—and she thought she saw a trace of the prince, the future Emperor Lukas Aleksander Mikhailov.

Her brother was panting, his hair plastered to his forehead and curling at the nape of his neck. Breath plumed from his lips, pale with cold. “Brat,” he snarled, and slammed his fist into the frozen ground so hard that it cracked. “What the hell were you thinking?”

His tone lashed across her sharper than the bite of a whip, and she flinched. Her brother—kind, gentle Luka—had never yelled at her like this.

She thought of the eight dead bodies blooming red in the Vyntr’makt and lowered her gaze. “I’m a monster,” she mumbled, her lips numb.

Luka hunched over her, his weight propped up by his elbows. His shoulders shook, and when he lifted his gaze to hers, he was crying. In a sudden motion, he pulled her into his arms and hugged her tight. “Don’t ever scare me like that again. You could’ve died.”

The maelstrom of her thoughts cleared, leaving only one: the realization that Luka was afraid she’d almost died. He hadn’t … he hadn’t wanted her to die.

“I’m sorry.” Her voice was high and broken. “I—The Vyntr’makt—”

“Hush,” Luka whispered, cradling her. “It’s not your fault.”

It’s not your fault.

She let herself go then, the torrent of grief and guilt and helplessness, and for a few moments, his arms held her together and his words were her salvation.

When he pulled back, his eyes—she’d always thought of them as the grasses that bloomed in the Palace gardens each spring—had hardened with resolve, a burning fire, as he cupped her face with his hands. “You are not a monster, sistrika.”

A flash of the alchemist’s silver Deys’krug. Papa’s bowed head.

The response sprang to her lips. An Affinite. The alchemist whispered. A blood Affinite.

“My Affinity—”

“Your Affinity does not define you.” His gaze seared into hers; his words cut like metal striking stone. “What defines you is how you choose to wield it. You just need someone to teach you to control it.”

She loved the way he said those things—you are not a monster; you just need someone to teach you to control it—as though they were simple truths. It was as though he believed them, and she could start to as well. “Like Yuri?” she asked, thinking of her friend, a fire Affinite several years older than she, who worked in the Palace kitchens as an apprentice to the master chef. His Affinity made him valuable.

“Right. Like Yuri.” Luka pushed himself to his feet and hauled her up. They were on the bank of the river right beneath the walls of the Palace, an abandoned stretch of land. The river had borne them to the back of the Salskoff Palace; straight across from them, the Syvern Taiga began in a line of winter-colored pines.

Luka took her hand and turned away from the direction of the bridge.

“What should we do?” Dread bloomed in her as she thought of returning to the Palace, of facing her father and the reality of what she had done.

But her brother’s grip tightened and he brought her fingers to his lips, kissing her bloodstained nails. His brows were creased, his eyes stormy yet gentle at once. “We’ll go back through a secret passageway Markov showed me. You’ll wash off in your chambers. The truth of the incident at the Vyntr’makt was lost in the crowds and the confusion. No one has to know.” His jaw set and he lifted his chin slightly, in that stubborn way she knew so well. “I’ll speak to Papa. I’ll tell him that you need a tutor, like the ones that teach the Affinites employed at the Palace to hone their Affinities.”

Yet that night, Papa had come to her chambers, his brows creased. He oftentimes came with Mama to tuck her into bed, but this time, he’d stood at the foot of her bed, the distance between them stretching an ocean.

Quietly, he’d told her that she would have to stay indoors for a while—at least until her “condition” was gone. The official story to the outside world was that the Princess was sick, and her frail health had to be preserved within the walls of the Palace.

Ana had fallen to her knees, reaching for him—and he had remained where he was, his face carved of ice. It had broken her a little more. “Please,” she’d whispered. “It won’t happen again. I’ll never use my … my Affinity. I’ll be your good daughter.”

Papa’s eyes had clouded. “It … isn’t acceptable for you to be an Affinite,” he’d said. “Especially considering your particular Affinity It mustn’t be known widely, nor registered on your papers. We will take measures to cure your condition. It is … for your own good.”

Ana clung to that tiniest sliver of hope. Perhaps, if she was cured, Papa would love her again.

Within a moon, Papa had hired a tutor to “cure” Ana of her Affinity. Konsultant Imperator Sadov, they called him, and from the moment Ana met him, she knew he was made of nothing but nightmares. He seemed to grow out of the shadows: a silhouette stretched tall and slim, with hair and eyes as dark as blackstone, and fingers long and sickly white. His cure centered on the theory that fear and poison would wash the Affinity from her.

And so Ana’s world had shrunk to the corners of the Palace and the depths of the dungeons, where the blackstone walls sucked all light and warmth from the air, and the darkness pressed against her like a living thing.

“Most Affinities manifest slowly, as an awareness to the elements of one’s Affinity,” Sadov had said, his voice smooth and cold as silk. “But yours exploded, completely out of your control. Do you know why that is?”

Ana shivered. “Why, Konsultant Imperator?”

“Because you control blood.” He touched a finger to her chin, and it took all her willpower not to shrink back. “Because you are a monster.”

By that time, Mama had fallen sick, and within a year of the Vyntr’makt incident, she passed away. The Palace courtiers had whispered that it had been a mistake for the Emperor to take a wife of one of the southern ethnicities of Cyrilia; something about her tawny skin and dark hair made her different. Something that her offspring had inherited. There had already been veiled murmurs of the Prince and Princess’s distinctly southern looks, which stood out among the pale-faced, fair-haired Northern Cyrilians who dominated the ruling classes of Cyrilia. With Mama’s death and Ana’s confinement, the rumors grew louder.

Humans, it seemed, tended to fear things that were different.

Yet it was her brother’s words on that terrible day that stayed with Ana throughout those long years, in the stretches of darkness and loneliness, during Sadov’s worst rages and Papa’s callous coldness.

Your Affinity does not define you.

The bitter taste of Deys’voshk, burning her throat and twisting her stomach.

What defines you is how you choose to wield it.

The nauseating fear, the cold of the blackstone, the blood pulsing through the small rabbits Sadov used to test her abilities, which never diminished in the ten years after.

You are not a monster, sistrika.

She had so, so desperately wanted to believe that.

Perhaps the Deities had willed for her to live after all—and if not the Deities, then Ana had willed herself to live.

It was this thought that she clung to now, half-frozen and half-dead from the battering current of the Ghost Falls river. This, and the memory of her brother, like a steady, unwavering flame in her heart, guiding her onward.

For there was a reason for her to live, Ana realized, as she began to surface through the bouts of sleep and groggy wakefulness that claimed her in turn. Her thoughts rose through the darkness and the cold, stubbornly, willfully, as she had that day from the icy depths of the river.

Yes, there was a reason for her to live. And that was to find Papa’s murderer.

The second time Ana had almost drowned, it had been beneath a bone-white moon—not unlike the one that hung above the Syvern Taiga tonight—that had carved the world in monochrome. The winter night of eleven moons past had been cast in the color of death. She had walked into her father’s chambers to see him convulsing, his face leached of color, his eyes rolling into his head, the poison and the blood roaring through him like the distorted screaming of a river. She had seen his murderer, dressed in white prayer robes, bent over her papa and tipping the vial of poison.

She’d caught sight of the man’s face in the moments before he ran: a peculiar yet familiar face, like that of a dead man, with bulging eyes and a bald head. In the moonlight, his Deys’krug had cut silver like a scythe. The Palace alchemist.

Alchemist. Murderer. Traitor.

He was the reason she had been arrested that night. She had been found long after he had run, still clinging to Papa’s body, covered in his blood—the poisoned blood she’d tried to pull from his body to save him. In the end, she’d lost control of her Affinity, and Papa had still died, right in front of her.

And she should have died, too, accused of murdering the Emperor and of being a traitor to the Crown. Curled against the cold bars of the Palace dungeons that night, her father’s blood still staining her hands, she’d never wished more that she did not exist, that she never had.

Because you are a monster.

And yet again, on that night, fate, or the Deities, or whatever perverse dictator of the courses of lives, decided to spare her. She’d woken to the rattle of keys and the creak of her cell door opening. A weathered face out of the darkness with eyes the gray of clouds, and salt-and-pepper hair.

“I’ve followed you since the day you were born, so don’t ask me to stand aside and just watch as you die,” Markov had told her.

“It wasn’t me, it wasn’t me,” she’d babbled, clutching at him and sinking to her knees.

Markov’s face softened. “I believe you. Take the tunnel and run, Princess. I’ll tell them you escaped when I was escorting you here, and that you drowned in the Tiger’s Tail.” He stroked her tears away with his callused thumbs. “Run, and live.”

Live. That felt like an impossible task.

But Ana shut her eyes, and that face came to her again: moon-pale, with owlishly large eyes. The alchemist, who’d left the Palace so many years ago, after her diagnosis. It had seemed like a dream—no, a nightmare—to see him there again, a ghost of the past.

But a ghost was all the reason she had left to live. That alchemist was the reason she’d run through that secret passageway in the dungeons that night and thrown herself into the Tiger’s Tail for the second time in her life; the reason she’d crawled onto the shore of the Syvern Taiga, half-frozen on the outside and dead on the inside, waiting for the Deities to claim her. Yet he was also why she’d stood again that night, staring at the Palace and the Kateryanna Bridge in the distance and vowing that she would return only when she had found him.

Yes, she did have a reason to live after all these long years, Ana realized suddenly, her thoughts sharpening into lucidity. She lived to find the owner of that face, to hunt down the person who had murdered her father and diagnosed her with this evil affliction, sealing her fate for ten years past. She lived to redeem herself, to prove that, beyond the monstrosity of her power, she could be good.

I will find you, alchemist, she thought over and over again, like a vow. I will find you.

5

Ana woke with a start and the ghost of a face scattering from her dreams. It took her several moments to grasp her surroundings: the crackle of a fire burning low in the hearth, the musty smell of old pinewood floors, and the scratch of a coarse cloth pillow beneath her cheek.

She remembered flashes of the evening—the cold, the dark, the scent and silver of snow, a warm bathtub. She’d made it. She’d made it back to the dacha.

Ana clutched the ragged fur blanket tighter, surprise twanging in her stomach. How had she gotten back? She remembered the fall into the river, the feeling of utter helplessness beneath the battering current, and then crawling onto an empty, frozen shore. Her clothes had been colder than ice, and she’d barely been able to move.

Can you walk, darling?

Ana blinked. The voice had come out of nowhere—out of a foggy, distant memory. There had been a forest, an ounce of warmth, and that voice had constantly, irritably dragged her from the comfort of slumber.

Fear seized her. Now she recognized the symptoms of near-hypothermia she’d been experiencing, and how close to death she’d been. That warm darkness had been a menace … and the voice had saved her.

Ramson Quicktongue, she thought, her sleep-addled brain suddenly alert as she scanned the cabin. Everything was just as she’d left it. Her rucksack leaned against the wall, her belongings spread out across the small worktable. No sign of a disturbance; no sign of any intruders.

Ana loosed a breath and pushed herself into a sitting position. Someone had washed the blood off her arm, but the wound was still raw and fresh. She remembered now, a little girl with dark hair, the edges softened by the glow of candles, almost like a halo.

“May?” she called softly. The cabin was utterly still. She leaned back against the wall, trying to quell her anxiety. The con man was nowhere to be seen, either. The remnants of the Deys’voshk were still in her system; she could feel her Affinity beginning to return, drifting in and out of her reach. Trying to use it now was like trying to set fire to wet kindling.

From the wash closet door in the far corner came the sound of splashing water. The movements were too careless for May. A masculine cough confirmed her suspicions.

The con man was still here.

Ana gritted her teeth against a groan of frustration. She’d spent months searching for this man. She’d pinned all her hopes—and more—on him. And he’d fooled her, and admitted he didn’t even have a clue who her alchemist was.

And now she was stuck with him.

The door to the hut creaked open. Her thoughts scattered as a child struggled in with a pail of fresh snow. As soon as May caught sight of Ana, her eyes widened and she dropped the pail, bounding to Ana’s side.

Ana sighed in relief as she buried herself in May’s embrace. “Hey, you,” she murmured. Being with May always, in some ways, felt like being at home.

The darkness in the boreal forest had been absolute the night Ana had run into the Syvern Taiga, though it had been nothing compared to the shadows in her heart. But May had found her and brought her to shelter by the soft glow of a globefire. May had been bound by a contract then, but it hadn’t stopped her from trying to save Ana, unbeknownst to her employer.

May straightened and fixed Ana with a stern gaze. Her eyes were the startling aquamarine of the ocean waters of the Aseatic Isles that Ana had once seen in a painting, sun-kissed and warm. Ana touched her forehead briefly to the child’s, her lips tugging into a smile.

“Did you get the alchemist?” May demanded. Eleven moons ago, when they’d first met, she’d been much quieter, her words a featherlight whisper. Only her quick eyes had told Ana that she drank in the world and gathered it in her heart, and gave back with kindness that had never been shown to her.

“Almost.” Seeing May always cleared her mind and calmed her nerves, and the word nearly felt real. “Were you all right by yourself?”

May nodded, and a copperstone appeared in her hands. “I have three cop’stones left. Do you want them back?” The copperstone caught the shine of the firelight, a small leaf engraved in the center of the coin.

Ana hesitated. She knew what these coins meant to May, who had spent her life accumulating meager sums of money to pay off the impossible amount of the contract she’d been made to sign. In the past, Ana might have spent dozens of cop’stones on a piece of ptychy’moloko milk cake, coins flowing through her fingers like water without a care as to their value.

Meeting May had changed that.

Ana gently curled a hand around May’s, tucking the coin back into the girl’s fist. “We earned this together. Keep it, and let’s buy ourselves a treat at the next town.”

May slipped the coin carefully back into her tunic. “Do you think we’ll find Ma-ma at the next town?” she asked.

Ana paused, studying May’s face carefully, but the child’s hopeful gaze didn’t waver. It haunted Ana that this girl loved so easily after what she’d been through. Over time, Ana had pieced together the child’s story: a long journey from the Chi’gon Kingdom, her home in the Aseatic region, with her mother in search of a brighter future, only to find those dreams shattered and her mother sent away by a separate contract.

And May had been exploited for her earth Affinity and stuck with a debt that kept growing.

With every day, the realization had grown louder and louder in Ana’s head: That could have been me.

“We will,” Ana replied. “We’ll find your ma-ma even if I have to knock on every single door of this empire.”

May’s smile stretched, and she threw her arms around Ana, burying her face against Ana’s shirt. “You won’t leave again, right?” Her voice came out muffled, and when Ana looked down, she caught a pair of bright ocean eyes peering up at her shyly. “Don’t go where I can’t follow.”

A knot formed in Ana’s throat. She knew the ache of having lost a mother at such a young age. The feeling that you had done something wrong, that you could be abandoned by those you loved all over again, never went away.

So Ana squeezed May tight in her arms and whispered, “I’m always here.”

The sound of splashing water drew both of their attention to the wash closet.

May’s eyes narrowed. “That strange man brought you home, and because he sort of saved your life, I told him he could have a warm bath before leaving,” she said.

Ana felt her lips curling despite herself. “Smart girl,” she said conspiratorially.

“He was smelly. And dirty.”

“I know,” Ana said. “He’s disgusting and stupid and ugly.” It was immature, but it felt good to say anyway.

The wash closet door flew open.

In a flash, Ana heaved herself from the bed and shoved May behind her. Her injured arm throbbed at the sudden motion, but all of her attention was focused on Ramson Quicktongue.

He had shaved and cleaned the grime from his face. Now she could see that he was much younger than she had guessed—perhaps only a few years older than she. His tousled sandy hair curled on his forehead, droplets of water carving a path down his chiseled cheeks. The contrast from his filthy, unkempt state earlier made him appear startlingly handsome—the type of roguish good-looking face more befitting a Bregonian marine or Cyrilian Imperial Patrol than a shady underground crook.

Quicktongue shot a smile at May. Ana imagined it had fangs. “Hello, sweetheart.”

“Don’t talk to her,” Ana snarled. She turned and said quickly, “May, please go and take a bath.”

The child grabbed the pail of snow and slipped into the wash closet. She turned and, glaring at Ramson, drew a finger across her neck before slamming the door shut. A satisfying click sounded as the door closed, and Ana’s heart settled.

She rounded on Quicktongue.

He was bruising; on his wrists where the sleeves of his tunic ended, angry red patches bloomed from where she had broken blood vessels. Guilt churned in her stomach, but she pushed it down. He hadn’t hesitated to use and betray her. Guilt was an emotion wasted on this kind of a man.

Quicktongue’s mouth quirked into a smile that was both devious and charming at once. “Well, Ana, love,” he said, and her insides turned cold. “Here we are. You asked for my aid, and I asked for a way out of Ghost Falls. If only wishes came true every day.”

Ana bit back a sharp retort. This wasn’t some argument she was having with Luka or Yuri. This was a calculated stance against an enemy. There was no telling what he was planning and what he was hiding from her—even his accent, she noticed, had shifted slightly from last night. She had to tread very carefully.

“I’ve delivered my end of the bargain,” she said instead. “Now it’s your turn.” She clamped down on the urge to remind him of her Affinity, just to prove that she could hurt him if she wanted to. That she still held some shred of power over him. That her plan hadn’t all gone to … nothing. “I don’t care if you don’t have a clue who he is or where he is. You’re going to help me find the alchemist, and you’re going to do it in two weeks. I’ve heard enough of your reputation, and I know you’re capable of it.”

He had to be. All other searches, paid bounty hunters or trackers, had led to dead ends. Ramson Quicktongue was her last chance.

Ana didn’t say that.

Quicktongue raised his brows. “You’ve heard enough of my reputation,” he repeated, as though savoring the words on his tongue. He almost looked pleased, but then his eyes narrowed. “And what makes you think I’ll help you, now that I’m free as a bird?”

Conniving, backstabbing con man. If he wanted to play dirty, so be it.

She could threaten him. The thought had been lingering in her mind for a while: an ugly, twisted thing she hadn’t wanted to bring into the light.

Show him what you can do, my little monster.

“You remember what I did in the prison?” The memory of crimson pooling across white marble halls flashed across her mind. It sickened her to bring it up, but she pressed on. “I could do the same to you.” She took a step closer, exhilaration pushing her forward, the thrill of danger drawing her toward him. “Can you imagine how it would feel to die with blood leaking from you, drop by drop?”

“I’ll admit, that hurt.” He wet his lips. “But there are worse things to fear in life. Whatever torture you’re thinking of, I’ve probably been through it. I suppose that makes it extremely difficult to threaten me, doesn’t it?”

Ana drew a tight breath. He was bluffing—he had to be. And he was challenging her to call his bluff. His eyes crinkled as he watched her, waiting for her response. Those eyes were cunning eyes, quick and intelligent … but they weren’t coward’s eyes. They held no fear.

He would learn to fear her. Just like everybody else did.

Ana shot him her most feral grin. Her Affinity stirred. Against the remnants of the Deys’voshk, it was still weak, but growing stronger. “So many others sang the same tune at first. I had them groveling at my feet within minutes.”

“You sound like you have experience.”

“You know nothing of what I’ve been through. I’m going to ask you one more time, and I hope for your sake you’ll give the right answer. Will you help me find my alchemist?”

“I will.”

Ana blinked. The sinister thoughts, the twisted memories, and the pull of her Affinity dissolved. All that was left was the crackling of fire in the hearth, the splashing sounds from the wash closet, and a child’s muffled humming.

“You look startled.” Ramson Quicktongue raised his eyebrows.

If she had gotten her way, why did it feel like he’d won? Ana crossed her arms, her brain whirring even as she spoke. What had she missed? “I don’t believe you.” What are you playing at?

“A wise decision. I’m a businessman, after all.” His gaze sharpened. “I never give anything without asking for something in return.”

Anger rose in her, sharp and hot. “In return? I broke you out of that prison. I saved you from rotting in that cell. You owe me.”

“I didn’t ask you to free me. I suggested an exchange, but we agreed to nothing.” Quicktongue spoke conversationally, as though they were bartering over the price of beets at a marketplace.

Ana was bargaining for her life.

“So, I don’t owe you anything, Witch,” he continued, picking at a fingernail. “But I’d be willing to speak the language of deals.”

Her voice came out in a snarl. “You think you’re in a position to ask for something?”

“Oh, I do. You’ve been threatening me with torture for the past few minutes. If you actually wanted to do it, you would’ve done it already. Clearly, you need me. So let’s stop dancing around the topic and get to the bargain, shall we?”

He had called her bluff. Ana’s heart hammered as she stared back at the con man, refusing to break eye contact first. Papa had always taught her that strong eye contact was a show of confidence. But even as she scrambled for a response, she found her confidence waning.

Brat. She heard her brother’s voice in her head, saw the glint of intelligence in his eyes as he leaned over their game of chess. Think.

Luka had told her that a negotiation was like a game of chess. To succeed, one had to consider the endgame above all else. It had seemed like such an obvious lesson at the time, but Ana found herself clutching it tightly to her now. Her goal—her endgame—was to get him to find the alchemist, the true murderer. And now the con man wanted something more from her in return.

Why not? After all, what more did she have to lose?