The sky overhead turned darker with each passing, spluttering breath. No more moon. Only hell-waters and ash.

“Leave,” Esme ordered the Fury, shouting over the growing storm. “Or I will drown him.”

“He is not the only reason I am here—” Merik did not hear the rest of the Fury’s words. A wave crashed into his ears, into his mouth. By the time he could hear or breathe again, Esme was responding.

“I told you,” she spat. “He is not so easy to find as the others.”

“Why?”

“He has no Threads. He is outside the world’s weave.”

“Impossible. Do not lie to me.”

“He was born in the sleeping ice. You, of all people, should remember that.” A withering tone had taken hold of Esme’s voice, and finally—finally—the storm reared back. Less wind, fewer waves. Holding his breath, Merik lowered his chin and twisted his face toward the shore.

The Fury looked puzzled. The shadows on his skin, the snow and the winds—they had faded. “You have found him before.”

“Because he was with others I knew.” Esme gave a dismissive flick of her wrist. “He is no longer.”

“The General will be displeased.”

“Then tell him to come here and say so himself.”

“Oh, I see.” Kullen’s head fell back, and he cackled at the sky. “That still bothers you, does it? You are still bitter he did not bring you with him.”

“No.” The word cracked out, and with it, a pain lightninged through Merik. His back arched. He gasped for air.

Then it was over, as fast as it had come.

“The King,” Esme snipped out, “will bring me to him once he opens the doors.”

“Is that what you tell yourself?” The Fury clucked his tongue. “A lovely delusion, Puppeteer, except he already got what he needed from you. He got me.”

A pause. Stillness and silence softened around the Well. But it passed in an instant, and Merik had just enough time to suck in air before the storm tore loose.

First came all-consuming pain. His muscles locked; his throat screamed.

Then came waves. Wind too, and the sudden hammering of rain. He could not breathe, he could not see. No screaming, only choking and convulsing.

Finally, his feet moved. He stepped below the surface. Three long strides while cold and darkness shuttered over him, stealing sound. He exhaled, bubbles charging out even though he needed to conserve air. There was no conserving anything here. No thinking, no moving. The only thing he could do was drown, electrified by Esme’s cleaving while the last of his life drained away.

Merik lost consciousness, there beneath the waves. He couldn’t say for how long. He could not say how many lungfuls of water he inhaled. All he knew was that the final sparks of pain towed him into Hell … Then he came back into his body, and he was on all fours upon the shore, vomiting.

He was mid-heave, bile-laced water gushing from his throat onto grass, when he realized he was awake. He was alive.

Esme sat several paces away. Her prim pose was a lie; her tight smile a painted mask. Her fingers yanked grass from the earth. Fistful after fistful, she wrenched up the blades and then dropped them at her feet.

Blinking, Merik scanned the forest and the Well, searching for the Fury, but the man was nowhere. Only the usual Cleaved remained, standing guard as always. How long had Merik been underwater? How many times had he drowned?

“No gratitude.” Esme ripped up more grass, smiling a flat-eyed smile at Merik. “They have no gratitude for what I do, Prince. No understanding of the difficulty. They come to me, they demand I find people, and then they leave again. No gratitude.”

It was similar to what the Fury had mentioned, and even in his drowned misery, Merik had enough sense to tuck away that information.

“He has no Threads!” she went on. “I can only find him if he is near Iseult—not that I have told them that.” Another fistful of grass. “She is mine. Not theirs. And you are mine, Prince. Not theirs.”

Merik forced his head to nod and throat to wheeze, “Yours,” before his lungs started seizing again. Dry heaves shook through him.

Esme, however, stopped her grass-shredding, and when she cocked her head sideways, the anger had dimmed in her yellow eyes. “So you will not help the Fury enter the mountain?”

Merik had to wait until his stomach stopped shuddering, his throat stopped coughing. Then he eked out, “No.”

“Then why did the Fury say such a thing?”

Move with the wind, move with the stream. “Because he wants to frighten you. You are the Raider King’s favorite.”

Her flat smile faltered. “And why do you think that, Prince?”

“Because it’s obvious.” Merik sucked in a broken breath, forcing his exhausted eyes to hold Esme’s. “The King sends the Fury on menial errands. Fetching other people? That is the job of a page boy.”

Her nostrils flared. Her lips twitched—the hint of a real smile in her eyes.

“You, however, have an entire city. You have an entire army at your command, while the Fury commands no one.”

It was the wrong thing to say. Her face fell. She wrenched up more grass. “But he does command an army. He leads the Raider King’s southern assault upon the Sightwitch Sister Convent. And once they enter the mountain, he will use the doorway to enter Lovats and claim the hidden Well that should have been mine.”

Merik’s stomach hollowed out at those words. The doorway to enter Lovats. Noden, no.

“The Fury’s soldiers will stream into the city from the underground, and then he will win all the glory.” Esme’s lips curled back. “All while I am stuck here, winning nothing. Just waiting for them to find the doorway that leads to Poznin.”

Noden, no, no, no. The world wavered and blurred around Merik. His home was in danger. Never had Lovats fallen, even in the worst of wartime. The Sentries and the water-bridges had always protected it.

But if soldiers attacked from within—if they used these magic portals and poured in from the underground …

Merik’s retching resumed. Bile splattered the grass.

Vivia had planned to lead refugees into the underground. They had thought the newly discovered ancient city a miracle, a space to house all the homeless and hungry and lost. Now the homeless and hungry and lost would be the first to die.

Merik had to stop that. He had to lose this collar, no matter the means, and he had to stop that.

“I never should have cleaved him,” Esme went on. “Not before I made a second Loom. If I hadn’t, then I would be the one now leading the march—”

“Do it.” Merik’s voice graveled out, desperate and wild. “Do it. Beat him to the Crypts, and use me to lure out the Sightwitch. Then I will kill her, and you can go inside before the Fury does.”

Esme eyed Merik askance, as if she thought through what he’d just said. As if she played it out, step by step, and—

“Yes,” she breathed. “Oh, yes, yes, yes. You can fly me there, Prince. And then you can trick the Sightwitch from her hiding place and kill her while I deal with the monsters of the Crypts. I know how to control them—it’s in Eridysi’s diary. Yes, yes, yes! I will lead the advance into the mountain before the Fury can, and then the Raider King will see how much he truly needs me. And oh,” she sighed, “if we are so near to the sleeping ice, perhaps it will suck him in. Eliminate the Fury and all of his memories for good.”

In a lurch of speed, grass flinging around her, Esme pushed to her feet. She was grinning now, an exultant expression with cheeks flushed and eyes aflame. In three skipping hops, Esme reached Merik. Her fingers gripped and tugged and twirled around the collar, as if she teased apart a braid of Threads he could not see. Her eyes flicked quickly side to side. Her heels bounced and her cheeks scrunched with a grin.

Then the collar gave a soft hiss, like steam leaving a kettle. The wood clanked apart, two halves that toppled toward the earth. Neither Merik nor Esme tried to catch them.

Merik grasped for his magic while Esme’s hands shot toward the Well. “You are mine, Prince. You know what pain awaits you if you disobey.”

He nodded. “I will not disobey.” Then, to convince her fully, he bowed his head. “Command me, Puppeteer.”

She giggled, and Merik used the moment to inhale as deeply as he could, fumbling, fumbling. His magic was in there—he could feel the faintest spark alive within his lungs. But it was weak. It was tired. It did not want to wake up.

That was all right, though. He knew that if he fled while Esme was at her Loom, then she would lash him with pain unimaginable. And if he fled at any time, the Fury would sense the magic and return. Merik would simply move with the wind and the stream, allowing his magic to rebuild with each careful step.

His plan, however, was short-lived. For as he lifted his face to watch Esme, still bouncing and laughing and thoroughly absorbed by her dreams of glory to come, a figure darted from the forest. It moved quickly through the lines of Cleaved, immobile and unresponsive to this living person in their midst.

The Northman, his red-tailed knife in hand, vaulted across the grass and stabbed Esme in the back.

FORTY-FIVE