So Iseult did, watching as the final dregs of the Dreaming dripped away. As his wings shrank inward, revealing a woman with silver hair and warm, worried Threads hunched above.

Awake. Iseult was awake, but still shaking, still freezing. She didn’t know where she was. Lamps glowed so bright, they dazzled her eyes and turned the world to a mute, uniform amber. Even the glowing woman before her shone like a rising sun.

After a ragged breath and three shuttering blinks, it hit Iseult: she knew this woman. She knew the lined face above her and the silver hair.

Monk Evrane. She rubbed salves onto Iseult’s arms in gentle circles. A distant touch Iseult scarcely felt. She had numbed Iseult’s skin with … something, and Iseult’s vision sharpened the longer she watched Evrane. Circling, circling, always circling.

“You are awake,” Evrane murmured in Nubrevnan, words compassionate. Threads compassionate, even as her focus remained on her work. “Noden has blessed me, indeed. I never thought I would see the Cahr Awen here, in their sacred home.”

Iseult’s eyes stung at the sound of the monk’s voice. Her throat felt stuffed full of cotton. Evrane is alive. I didn’t kill her in Lejna. Aeduan had told Iseult this, but she supposed she hadn’t fully believed him until right now.

“H-how?” Iseult croaked. She tried to sit up, but Evrane easily stopped her. A single firm hand to her shoulder, and all Iseult could do was topple back. Her head sank against rosemary-scented velvet, and another realization swept through her: I am alive too.

“You are at the Monastery,” Evrane explained. “In the main fortress. We were able to reach the wreckage of the sky-ferry before the others.”

“Others?”

A sweep of cobalt hit Evrane’s Threads. Regret. “I fear the Monastery has split into two factions. Those who support the Abbot, and the insurgents, who do not. I,” Evrane added, “support the Abbot.” Her ministrations paused. She cocked her head. “Can you hear them? They lay siege even now. Ever since we brought you in.”

Iseult felt a frown hit her brow as she listened. Yes, yes—there was a distant roar, like voices shouting. Then every few moments, a boom would shudder out. More ripple in the bed than audible sound.

“Ceaseless catapults,” Evrane said. “Though they have run out of pitch and use only stone now.”

“Wh-why?”

A sigh. More sadness and regret in Evrane’s Threads. “Because they have lost their way and forgotten their vows to the Cahr Awen. It is a wonder you did not die, Iseult. I suppose, though, that Noden protects those He needs most.” Her dark eyes briefly met Iseult’s, a smile flitting across her lips. Then her gaze slid to a corner beyond Iseult. “The prince came out almost unharmed. He says you protected him in the crash.”

For the first time since awakening, Iseult sensed the second set of Threads inside the room. Pale with sleep, they hovered in the shadows. This time, when she tried to rise, Evrane allowed it—though not without a gentle hand to assist and an insistent, “Careful, careful.”

The full room materialized around Iseult. Heavy, rich fabrics in hunter green and navy draped her four-poster bed. Curtains hung floor to ceiling beside an ornate wardrobe with a ram’s head mounted to the wood above and a gold-framed mirror beside. Gold candlesticks, gold sconces, gold chandelier. Even the two braziers warming the space were painted gold.

The man in the corner, though, captured Iseult’s attention. Prince Leopold slouched in a satin armchair. A sling cradled his left arm and bandages covered his hands as well as one side of his face. His Threads, faded with sleep, curled languidly above.

“He would not leave your side,” Evrane said testily. “Though he did at least allow me to heal him.”

“Oh?” Iseult murmured, though the truth was she scarcely listened. Her eyes racked every inch of the room, every stone and shadow. But there was no third set of Threads.

There was no Earthwitch hiding.

“Where is Owl?” Iseult turned stiffly to Evrane. “What happened to her?”

Evrane shook her head, Threads blanching with confusion.

“Owl,” Iseult repeated, louder now. “She was a child. A girl. A special girl.”

“There was no one else in the crash—”

“But th-there was. There had to be!” Iseult’s words came faster, her stammer closing in.

They had lost Owl. How could they have lost Owl? Moon Mother, no.

“She was with us on the ferry, Monk Evrane. Sh-she must be somewhere!”

“Calm yourself.” Evrane laid a hand on Iseult’s shoulder.

“Was there no body?” Iseult’s voice slung louder, higher. Leopold stirred in his armchair.

And Evrane’s Threads darkened to mossy concern. “Iseult,” she murmured, “you must calm down. You cannot heal if you are hysterical.”

Iseult wasn’t hysterical, though. She had lost Owl. A child she had never liked, but whom she had finally started to understand—she was out there somewhere. Possibly trapped in a war between monks …

If she was even alive at all.

But Iseult’s voice was now dammed behind her tongue and waves of sleep were rippling down her spine. She knew this magic. It was Evrane’s, meant to tow her under where she could better heal.

She didn’t want to be towed under. Not yet. Not when Owl needed her. But the monk’s magic was stronger than Iseult’s desperation, and although Iseult tried to argue, all that came out was a distant groan.

The last thing she saw before Evrane’s magic pulled her under was darkness. Shadows skating over Evrane’s face, and over her Threads too.

Then darkness took hold of Iseult too, and she slept.

THIRTY-EIGHT

Two weeks after saving Boots, the boy helps his mother tend the dog’s wounds. Each day, they rub salve onto the stitches in his belly, and the boy knows his terrier is happy, even if his body aches and he will never walk or play quite the same. Whenever the boy is near, Boots’s tail thumps and the boy smells flickers of contentment on the hound’s loyal blood.

That monster will never get you again, the boy whispers to Boots every night, scrubbing at black, fluffy ears. I will always keep you safe.

He is lying, though, and three weeks after saving Boots, the boy kills him.

It happens when he is scratching at Boots’s ears one night. His parents sit outside the tent, talking in the low voices they always use when they think the boy is sleeping. His mother laughs softly. She often does.

Scratch, scratch. “The monster will never get you again,” the boy reminds Boots, who is curled by his side upon their mat. “I will always keep you safe.”

Boots’s tail thumps. Scratch, scratch.

Then stops.

Alarmed, the boy sits up. “Boots?” Boots does not react, and the boy realizes that the power in his veins has latched onto the freedom that thrums inside Boots.

Then it sinks into the loyalty too.

And now, Boots’s blood is slowing. His heart is slowing … and stopping.

The boy didn’t meant to grab hold—he doesn’t even know how he did it. He just knows that he did, and now that the talons are in, he cannot let go.

He tries! He tries, he tries, he tries. His lungs billow. He even scrabbles to the other side of the tent and starts crying.

Let go, let go, let go, he thinks, terror tangling in his chest.

Then the boy screams, “Let go! Let go! Let go!”

His parents rush into the tent, Mother panicked. Father ready to defend.

But they can’t fix this, and no matter how much the boy shouts and cries, he can’t make this power inside let go.

As the boy’s heartbeats judder past, he feels Boots’s weaken. His mother tries to calm him. She hums, she holds, while his father tries to rouse the dying dog.

Then Boots’s heart stops entirely.

Yet all the while, throughout the shrieking and the begging, the scratching and the sobs, Boots stares with loving eyes at the boy. His best friend in the entire world. Right up until the last flickers of life leave him, his tongue lolls happily and loyalty sparkles bright upon his blood.

Because he does not understand that the boy has broken his promise. He doesn’t understand that the boy did not keep him safe at all.

And he doesn’t understand that the boy was the true monster all along.

* * *

The sun had fully set by the time Lizl forced Aeduan on the move again. The salves had helped. A slice of hard cheese and harder bread had helped too. But the anger stewing in Aeduan’s heart helped most of all.

Cold hardened the night. Fog rose, and they ascended ever higher until they reached a river too wide and too rough to cross. They were forced to slow and follow the rapids upstream to a stone bridge. Here, a waterfall tumbled steeply down a cliff fifty paces away, stealing the night’s sounds and thickening the fog to icy mist.

Aeduan’s donkey was halfway over the bridge when he smelled it: hundreds of scents, sharp and burning. Exposed to the night air. Even weak as his magic was, there was no missing the slaughter.

“People,” he said hoarsely. The first word in hours. “Ahead. Fighting.”