Far, far behind, the alarm still echoed, a faint call on the horizon.

Before Leopold could tow his roan to a stop, Iseult had her right leg over the saddle. She pulled Owl to the ground. The girl had stopped crying, but what replaced it was so much worse. Dead eyes and faint, shrinking Threads of numb white. She was in shock.

“Owl,” Iseult said. “Look at me. Can you look at me?”

Owl could not look at her.

“What is wrong with her?”

Iseult snapped around, flames awakening. In a whisper of steel, she drew her cutlass and fixed it on the prince. “Stay where you are.”

“Because I am clearly such a threat.” He glared, dirt thick on his brow, while several paces behind, his stolen mare waited. Sweat glittered, a thick lather across her body. Both horses needed watering and rubbing down. “I did just save your life,” he added. “Twice.”

Iseult didn’t care. Her fingertips throbbed with heat. Her mind throbbed with the voice. Burn. Him. Burn. Him. And beside her, Owl had not moved at all.

“Why were you there?” she asked.

“What do you mean?” Leopold frowned. “You knocked me out, so I had no choice—”

“In Tirla,” she ground out. Her mouth was too small. Her mind was too small. “Why were you in Tirla?”

“Again, what do you mean?” Confusion whorled across the prince’s Threads. “I already told you that I am working with Safiya’s uncle.”

“How do I know that’s true?”

“You … want proof?” He gaped at her.

Iseult, however, was entirely serious, and after three long seconds of only the horses’ snuffs to fill the air, the prince finally seemed to grasp this.

He barked a laugh, an amused sound even as rusty frustration spiraled up his Threads. “Everything I had is back in Tirla, Iseult det Midenzi. Unless you want to return there and face all those soldiers again, then I fear you will have to trust me at my word.”

She did not trust him at his word. She also did not know what to do. Everything had happened so fast. She needed to tend the horses. She needed to deal with Owl. She needed to interrogate this prince and figure out where she was going.

And above all, she needed to stop thinking about Aeduan. He was not coming back.

“I can see you do not believe me.” The prince sighed. His breath fogged. The night had grown cold.

“Perhaps if I explained everything from the start, then that would help. Shall we sit?” He shifted as if to crouch.

“If you move again, I will kill you.”

“Standing it is then.”

“Silence.” Iseult turned away, dropping to one knee before Owl. Leopold could wait; Owl could not. The girl had not moved, her Threads had not changed. Wherever she was, it was not here. But this night—it was not so different from a night six and a half years ago, and Owl was not so different from another girl on the run, all the ties that bound her shorn without warning.

Iseult plucked a stone from beside her knee, just as Monk Evrane had done on that night. Then she took Owl’s hand into her own and unfurled Owl’s fingers.

“Take this.” She placed the rock on Owl’s palm. “Look at it and tell me what you see.”

Owl did not look at it, she did not speak. Nor had Iseult all those years ago.

“There’s silt on it,” Iseult said. “Do you know what that means? It means it’s from the riverbank, but look—do you see how rough its edges are? It has never been a part of the river. And what about this.” Iseult tapped sparkling flecks on the rock’s surface. “Do you see the mica? It looks like starlight. You can even see the Sleeping Giant right here.”

Owl’s pupils shrank slightly. Her eyes rolled down to Iseult’s hand.

“And what color would you call this? Gray? Or is it black? I think it’s black in the sunlight, but the Moon Mother’s glow makes it—”

“Old.” Owl’s voice rustled out, soft as the song of her namesake.

“Very old,” Iseult agreed. “As old as the Witchlands.”

“Older.” Owl blinked, and with that movement, the first flakes of color pitched through her Threads. Cyan awareness, jerky at first, like a wave smacking against a ship. Then smoother, gentler, calm. They were not whole yet, but they would eventually build back to it.

“Gone,” Owl murmured. Still she gazed at the stone. “He is gone.”

Iseult did not need to ask who Owl meant, and unbidden, the muscles in her legs crumpled. She sank onto her heels. Tired, so tired.

In Tirla, back at the inn, she had not believed Aeduan when he’d said he would not be joining them. He will follow, she had thought while mounting the gelding. Then while riding into the yard, He will follow. Then again and again, her breath closing off with each beat of the gelding’s hooves. This is a joke, and he will follow. He will follow. He has to follow.

Please, please follow.

They had left the inn, pistols firing. Final thunderclaps to fill Iseult’s ears. To fill her heart. But Aeduan had not followed. He had left her, after everything. After she had saved his life, and he had saved hers. After she had cleaved a man for him.

She had gone back for Aeduan that day in the Contested Lands, but he was not coming back for her. He was never coming for her. No us, no we, only a means to an end.

“I’m sorry,” Iseult said, and she meant the words as much for herself as she did for Owl.

“He will come back,” Owl said, a strand of certainty wending through her Threads.

Iseult said nothing in reply. It was too familiar, that hope. That hunger. That belief that there had been some mistake, and that at any moment, the abandoner would change their mind. Aeduan would not, just as Gretchya had not six and a half years ago.

Fortunately, Iseult was saved from having to speak. First came burning silver Threads, then the mountain bat himself appeared, a silent silhouette across the moon. Before Iseult could tell Owl to keep the creature away, Blueberry had dropped into a nosedive, aiming toward them.

The horses bolted.

TWENTY-FIVE

When Esme sang, Merik could almost pretend he was somewhere else.

Curled beside the cold wall of her tower, with only a frayed blanket to offer warmth, he could shut his eyes and let her voice carry him away.

He did not know the song. He did not need to. As long as she was singing, he was not chained in her tower with no magic. He was not a puppet, bound to her by cleaving Threads.

She was like a sea fox, Merik decided, singing with a voice from another realm. In the stories, the sea foxes would shed their skins and lull unsuspecting sailors to the shore. Then they would drown them. A nice clean death, really, compared to this half-life Merik was trapped in.

When the last of Esme’s song trilled out, a vibrato to bounce off the stones, her bare feet padded across the room. Merik was careful to keep his eyes shut, his breaths even. I am still asleep. Leave me alone. I am still asleep.

“I know you are not sleeping, little Prince.” She sank to the stones beside him. “I can see from your Threads that you’re awake.”

Merik winced and opened his eyes.

She grinned down at him, her face closer than he’d realized. Then silver flashed in her hand and she stabbed him in the heart.

* * *

The shadows were not kind to Merik. They sang to him from a little girl’s face framed by blond braids, and when she smiled, it did not stop at the edges of her face. It stretched beyond, off her jaw and into the air, singing and giggling forever.

Merik wanted to wake up, but the shadows wouldn’t let him. There was only laughter and darkness and hate.

* * *

Merik awoke to a night sky and rainfall. He did not know how long he had been unconscious. All he knew was that candlelight flickered around the tower, and his chest ached.

My heart. He scrabbled to a sitting position and gaped down at where the wound should be. There was blood, almost black on his shirt, and there was a hole in the linen …

But no wound. Only a shadow-tinged pucker where the knife had gone in. And pain—always the pain.

“Fascinating, is it not?” Esme’s words skated over him, and then the woman herself appeared, slinking around the wall. She wore a different dress now, honey-colored velvet as fine as any noblewoman’s. It was too big, though, dragging as she skipped toward him. Clutched to her chest was the book she’d shown him when he’d first arrived. “You died, Prince Merik! And then came back to life—although not entirely. The Threads that bind you to the Fury are still intact. It keeps you from life, but it also keeps you from death.”