It was not warmth that met his opened eyes, though, nor sunshine, but a tiny, glassless window set high atop a dark, damp stone wall. The sun was still there, but with clouds knotted before it, there was no glare to hide the uneven gray bricks framing the window. No glare to hide the moss fuzzing along the rim, or the bits of braided, beaded yarn—green, yellow, pink, and blue—dangling from above.

Ivy crept along the ceiling, while painted red poppies curled and crawled along the crumbling walls. Ancient things made new again, he thought, and with it came the first bolt of panic amidst the song.

Cam. Ryber. The Fury.

Where the hell-waters was he?

Merik tried to jolt up. It hurt—a flashing, skittering pain in his ribs, his stomach, his spine. He instantly gave up and sank back down, but when his neck hit the rough floor, something heavy and hard clacked against it. He jerked upright again, despite the pain, despite the dizziness, and found that a smooth wooden collar encircled his neck. Hanging from an iron latch was an iron lock, and from that lock was a loose-woven iron chain that spooled to the ground before snaking to a hook on the wall.

The world spun. His muscles ached. Merik yanked at that lock—yanked and yanked again.

“That will not work.”

So distracted was Merik, he had not noticed the singer had stopped her singing. He had not noticed her approaching from behind. Only now that her words hung in the air beside him did he realize he was no longer alone.

He whirled toward the sound, chain scraping. Distantly, he realized that the walls were curved, that the whole space was rounded, and he was in a small alcove. A tower, he decided. Then he found the speaker’s face, and all time, all panic trickled to a stop like the final grains of sand in an hourglass.

She was as beautiful as her voice. Nomatsi, he thought, for she was too unnaturally pale to be Fareastern, but unlike most Nomatsi women, her hair ran down to her waist and was plaited through with bright bits of colorful felt, glistening beads, and even stalks of dried purple heather tucked behind her ear.

“Only I can remove the collar,” she said, sweeping into a crouch before him. Her spruce gown swished, the mortar and pestle clanked as she set them beside her feet, and for several endless moments, Merik was caught up in her burning golden eyes. They were not a young woman’s eyes.

Ancient things made new again.

It took Merik a moment to realize she spoke in Arithuanian. He wasn’t good with that tongue. He could understand it well enough, thanks to Kullen’s mother using it when they were young, but actually finding words and forming sentences …

“Where?” he wheezed out. It was the best he could do.

But the young woman understood. “You are in my home, Prince Merik Nihar. In Poznin.”

Poznin. Impossible. He had been on the other side of the Witchlands only … yesterday? Or had it been longer? And what about Cam and Ryber—were they safe?

At Merik’s gathering distress, the young woman laughed. A beautiful sound, but … wrong. Like a shark shouting or a fish crying, this was not meant to tumble from her throat. And the dimple in her right cheek only made it worse.

“I do not need my Loom to read your thoughts, Prince Merik. I can see them as easily as if they were written in your Threads. You are wondering how you got here, yes? That is easily answered.” She pushed to her feet, sweeping up the mortar and pestle as she rose. A plume of pale dust trailed behind. “Your friend brought you here. The one who used to be called Kullen before I awoke the Fury inside.” Another laugh, another chill down Merik’s spine.

“The bond you share with him is so strong that you were pulled into the same Cleaved half-life as him—and now, like him, you are very hard to kill … Though it is not impossible. Which is why you must remain here, Prince. We need the Fury to lead raiders inside the Sleeper’s mountain, and we cannot risk you suddenly dying and ruining everything.”

That sounded vaguely familiar. On the journey to the Convent, Ryber had said something about a Sleeper … and a mountain … And something about doors and different ways inside.

By the Hagfishes, Merik prayed Ryber was all right. Cam too. Please, Noden. Please.

“You,” Merik tried to say. “Who?”

“My name is Esme, and it is thanks to me that you are still alive. And this…” She bent forward to tap at the wood screwed around his neck. More dust puffed from the mortar’s bowl. “It blocks your magic, so there is no need to try your witchery. On me, or on anyone else.”

At those words, the hourglass of Merik’s panic snapped around. Sand toppled and spun. He inhaled as deeply as he could, lungs bowing against screaming ribs, and he pulled at the power that always lived there. At the air, at the winds, at the currents in the world around him.

He came back with nothing. Nothing but dust from the mortar wafting up his nose. He coughed—which earned more laughter as the young woman skipped away. She returned with a porcelain cup three coughs later.

“Drink,” she commanded, and Merik obeyed.

The water, though strongly sulfuric, was perfection against his spasming throat. While he drank, Esme sauntered across the room to a desk heaped with books. Unlit candles in varying states of decay slouched on every available space: the desk, the floor, on stones pushing free from the wall, and on the sill of a larger window overlooking the cloud-spun sky.

An evening sky, he guessed. Still, though, he summoned the words from his thick skull: “What … day is it?”

“On the Nomatsi calendar, it is the twenty-seventh day beneath the Eight Moon. On the first peoples’ calendar—the ones who lived here a thousand years ago—we are on the twenty-seventh day of Storms.” Esme peeked back at Merik, a sly smile on her lips. “But I imagine, simple as you are, Prince, that you wish to know the day on the ‘common’ calendar.” She rolled her eyes. “Such a word implies ease and choice, doesn’t it? But in truth the common calendar was forced upon us with whips and chains.”

Throughout this long speech, Merik said nothing. Showed nothing on his face beyond the truth of pain in his ribs and spine. Even his unfocused gaze he kept pointed toward Esme, so that she would not sense how he took note of every space in the tower, every possible weapon or potential tool. She had referred to Threads, so she must be some kind of Threadwitch—which would also explain the assortment of stones piled on a low table beneath the main window.

She had also mentioned awakening the Fury inside Kullen. That was a question Merik would have to poke at later, though.

“On the common calendar,” Esme finished, “we are on the two hundred and forty-third day in the nineteenth year since the signing of the Twenty Year Truce.”

So Merik had lost only a few hours, then. Kullen must have flown his unconscious body directly here after destroying that stone, which meant he had not attempted to hunt down Ryber or Cam. One small boon amidst this maddening storm.

After draining the final sips of water, Merik cleared his throat. “They … will have to start again.”

At Esme’s puzzled look, Merik wondered if perhaps he had chosen the wrong words or conjugated improperly. But then the young woman’s expression cleared, and her delighted, spine-twisting laugh skipped out once more. She even plunked down her mortar and pestle to clap her hands.

“You mean the calendar! They will have to start it again—yes, yes, they will, for the Truce has ended. Oh, how fun. You actually have a brain, Prince. I would never have guessed it to look at you, but you are not like my other Cleaved, are you?” Another clap, and this time she hopped to her feet to prance toward a stack of books at the opposite wall.

My other Cleaved. With that phrase, a thousand questions clamored to life in Merik’s brain. Who this woman was, why she possessed Cleaved—or for that matter, how she possessed Cleaved … And why she’d spoken of Merik as if he were one of them.

More troubling, though, was the fact that Merik felt no alarm. No panic like before. Only a gathering warmth behind his lungs and a slow dissipation of the pain.

“It makes sense, I suppose,” she went on, snagging a worn tome off the pile. “You are not directly bound to my Loom, and I did not cleave you intentionally like the rest of my servants. Nor did I fully cleave your Threadbrother. I tried to.” She flipped open the book, her sigh brushing atop flapping pages. “But he is made of so many people and so many ancient Threads, it was not as simple as I had thought it would be. Ah, but now that you are here, Prince…”

She spun toward Merik, eyes wide and finger tapping at some page he could not see. Though he thought he should be able to. She was not so far away. He blinked. The room blurred.

“Now that you are here, Prince, I shall fill in all the gaps that this diary failed to explain. Magic is not what it was when Eridysi first ran her experiments. Your collar, my Loom—I have had to modify and adjust everything. But now that you are here … Ah, there is so much for us to explore. I wish I had not added the sleeping draught to your water! For then we could have started right away.”

Ah, Merik thought as cozy sleep charged in, pulling him to the ground in a clank of wood and chains. She drugged me. How nice.

ELEVEN