So Vivia had turned to her father. She had scraped and begged and apologized, and every now and then, he had dropped scraps for her to devour. But Serafin, she saw now, respected no one save himself, and his approval was only given so long as it did not affect his own self-image. He wanted all the glory, none of the blame.

“Thank you,” Vivia told Sotar, and she meant it. “I will see you and the other vizers soon.”

Then Vivia Nihar, rightful Queen of Nubrevna, Chosen of the Void Well, and Little Fox of Nubrevna, returned once more to the crowded night.

* * *

Safi lunged in front of Mathew. He wouldn’t hurt her. Her body knew that, even if her mind had yet to fully fathom that he was here. She reached Vaness before the blade could connect, forcing Mathew to spin away. To swipe up the sword at the last second.

It still hit Vaness. A slice across her face.

The Empress did not move, though. Did not even flinch.

“What are you doing?” Mathew cried. His voice, that was his voice—how had Safi not noticed earlier? How had she not noticed the lightness of his eyes and lashes? Because Mathew and Habim gave you what you expected to see. And now they were cutting the purse.

Mathew twirled sideways, a graceful swordsman, and planted two paces away. Safi twirled with him, keeping her body between him and Vaness.

Still, the Empress did not react behind her. None of the Adders did either, or anyone in the crowds below. Everyone watched the fireworks cascading above. Blissfully oblivious.

It was then that Safi realized Vaness wasn’t bleeding. Safi had seen the blade connect with flesh, but no blood streamed down her face.

Glamour. The Empress must be hidden beneath a glamour made to look just like her.

Weasels piss on Safi, she should have seen this coming. Uncle Eron had used the same plan in Ve?aza City: glamour the party while an attack ensues. Which meant there was a Glamourwitch somewhere near, and likely the same one they’d used before.

If Safi had had her magic, she would have sensed this coming. For that matter, if she’d been paying any thrice-damned attention, she would have spotted the signs. This was why the false soldiers hadn’t attacked her at the Well. This was why, when Safi had first interrogated Habim, she had sensed him lying.

Habim hadn’t merely heard of a plot to overthrow the Empress and claim the throne, he had created it.

Habim, Mathew, and Uncle Eron. Three men Safi had known for nineteen years, but never truly known at all. And now her body was all that stood between the Empress of Marstok and death.

“Step away,” Mathew hissed. He advanced a step, Adder blade raised in warning. “Why are you interfering, Safi?”

“Why are you attacking?”

“Because this is the plan. The one we have all worked for. You know that.”

“No, I don’t. Because you and Habim have told me nothing!”

“Then we will explain after.” Mathew circled the Empress; Safi circled too. “Now is not the time for this—”

“Explain after what? After the Empress is dead? How will that bring peace to the Witchlands, Mathew?”

“By eliminating someone who wants war! She broke the Twenty Year Truce, Safi. She caused this war to resume.”

For half a heartbeat, Safi believed him. After all, it was what everyone always said, including the Empress herself. Vaness had landed forces in Nubrevna, canceling the magic that bound her to the Twenty Year Truce—and therefore the magic that bound all the other nations and empires as well. So yes, she had caused it.

Yet as each of these thoughts speared through Safi’s mind, she realized her chest hadn’t buzzed with truth at Mathew’s words, her magic hadn’t twinkled and sung.

Which meant he was lying.

Safi’s gut flipped. A great downward drop that yanked her lungs straight to her toes. She felt like vomiting. Or shrieking. Or even demanding that Mathew tell her it wasn’t true—that they hadn’t somehow coordinated the end of the Truce, the resuming of the war.

Somehow, though, Safi managed to do none of those things. Somehow, she managed to channel Iseult’s stasis and sink more deeply into a defensive stance. “It was you who ended the Truce, wasn’t it? I don’t know how, but it wasn’t the Empress who did it at all. It was you.”

Mathew’s eyes shuttered within his shroud. A pained wince that cut straight to Safi’s heart. True, true, true. “I told you,” he said gruffly. “In Ve?aza City, I told you there were big wheels in motion—”

He did not get to finish. At that moment, the glamour wavered. Ever so slightly, as if the entire world blinked, and for half a breath, the real world tore through.

It was so much worse than Safi had imagined. There was the Empress, standing in exactly the same place but with blood gushing down the right side of her body. Behind her, twelve Adders lay dead, every one of them impaled on their own swords. It was Lake Scarza, though, that made Safi gasp and rear back—and made everyone in the crowds do the same. A collective cry of horror that rippled outward while the world they saw was briefly replaced with another.

Military boats aflame and sinking. The wall of soldiers now a wall of corpses. Smoke and fire and explosions erupting in time to the fireworks.

Then the glamour snapped back into place. The ships floated once more. The soldiers and Adders stood sentry. And Vaness did not bleed.

It was too late, though. The mistake had been made. People knew they had been duped.

“Safi!” barked a new voice. Habim leaped onto the terrace, Firewitched pistol in one hand, sword in another. He moved into position beside Mathew. “Stand down, Safi. Do not ruin this. I realize you care about the Empress, but—”

Safi laughed. A surprising burst of sound that shut up Habim and made Mathew flinch. A fuzzy, burgeoning thing that could not have been more at odds with the crowds panicking below or the fireworks still detonating.

“Do not ruin it?” she repeated. “I already thought I had! All this time—ever since Ve?aza City, I thought I had ruined your precious little plan. I thought I had made choices that were wholly my own, and sent Uncle’s scheme spinning through the hell-gates.

“Now I see I was nothing more than your puppet. I suppose you knew about the engagement to Henrick all along. You knew I would end up in Marstok. And I suppose you thought I would help you here tonight, didn’t you? Well, you’re wrong. Because I won’t.”

“The Empress isn’t what you think she is, Safi—” Habim began.

“That is rich coming from you, General.”

“She is what her parents taught her to be, Safi. She will only lead Marstok into more war.”

“No.” Safi hissed that word with all the conviction she could conjure. Then she spat it again, harder, “No. You’re wrong. You don’t even know her, Habim.”

“We are running out of time,” Mathew warned. He stood taller now, with Habim at his side. Two Heart-Threads doing what they believed was right—and what Safi might have believed was right too, if she hadn’t seen behind Vaness’s mask.

“Do not make me compel you,” Mathew warned. “I did so with the Empress, and I will do it to you too.”

“You already have!” Safi laughed again, a ridiculous, high-pitched sound that screeched inside her skull. Mathew must have commanded Vaness not to move, so she could stand there and take a blade through her belly. Now, he would do the same to her. “You bewitched me in the storage room earlier, Mathew. And you bewitched me a month ago in Ve?aza City.”

His betrayal had cut deep then. Now, it severed her heart entirely.

All her life, these men had been there. To scold and to teach and to tend her wounds from another sword lesson gone wrong. They were not evil; Safi knew that as surely as she knew that Vaness was not evil.

They were merely wolves in a world of rabbits, who had forgotten that rabbits were important too.

Safi had no doubt that Mathew, Habim, and Uncle Eron believed in their cause—she also had no doubt that it had begun as good and true when they’d first started scheming twenty years ago. But along the way, they had become exactly what they hated.

True.

And now it was up to Safi to remind them that rabbits mattered too.

True, true, true.

She slipped her hand into her pocket. “You say that Vaness is what her parents taught her. Well, I am too, Mathew and Habim. You both showed me right from wrong, and you gave me a conscience.

“I love you,” she finished, “but I will not help you.”

She yanked the spark-candle from her pocket and threw it at the men who’d raised her as a daughter. “Ignite,” she whispered, already spinning away. Already slamming her body into Vaness and sprinting like the Void was at her heels.

Thank the gods, Vaness was small. And thank the gods, Mathew and Habim had trained her for exactly this moment, when she would have to lift a compelled Empress onto her shoulder and make a run for it.

As she’d expected, the spark-candle was no spark-candle at all. An explosion cracked behind her. Mathew roared her name—roared a command for her to stop. And she would have followed the command too, unable to resist such Wordwitched power.

But she was to the garden’s edge and he was too late.

She and the Empress toppled over and plummeted toward the lake.

FORTY-SEVEN