“Because you were Wordwitched.” Shamed fire burned in Safi’s shoulders. In her belly. She should have seen this coming. Why hadn’t she seen this coming?

“You know the man who did this to me.” A statement, not a question.

And Safi couldn’t lie. “Yes. I know him, and General Fashayit too. They raised me, and I’m so sorry I didn’t tell you. You trusted me, and I failed you.” She tied off the red crepe. Then with all the truth she could summon, straight from the heart of her magic, she said: “I swear to you, Your Majesty, that I did not know what they had planned. I thought Habim had come to the city to take me home. Nothing more. Had I known they planned to … to…”

She trailed off. She couldn’t say the word “assassinate.” She couldn’t believe the people she’d loved—her Thread-family—were capable of such a thing.

Vaness watched Safi. Her left eye blinked and blinked. Her chest trembled. No expression, though. No hint as to what she might be feeling. Until: “I believe you.” She looked away. “I heard what you told the men. And … Well, I suppose people do not jump off cliffs for just anyone.”

“No,” Safi replied, a taut chuckle beneath that word. “They don’t. I don’t.”

As Safi uttered these words, Vaness changed. Between one moment and the next, the Empress went from injured and weak to poised and unharmed.

“Shit,” Safi whispered. “You’re glamoured again.”

No change of expression hit the magicked Vaness, but Safi heard her gasp. She heard her gown rustle too, as she frantically examined herself.

All Safi saw, though, was a cool, collected Empress staring straight ahead. And if this glamour had returned, then the others must have too. Which would make this escape much, much harder.

“Hell-Bards,” Safi blurted at the same moment Vaness said, “The Cartorrans.”

“They can see through this,” Safi went on, and at the glamoured Vaness’s nod, she asked, “Where are they now?”

“Only a level above.” The false Vaness pushed gracefully to her feet.

Then the false Vaness tumbled into the wall, and Safi realized she was barely clinging to consciousness. Safi slid an arm behind the stone-faced Empress. “Hold on to me,” she said. Then together, they walked to the ladder. Together, they ascended—Vaness first, in case she lost her strength.

It felt like a lifetime climbing those rungs. And the higher they moved, the more sounds drifted down from above. A rhythmic boom! that could have been fireworks, or could have been explosions. And a roar that sounded like the water in the sewer had felt. Like wind on a storm-crossed day.

It wasn’t until they reached the small hatch that would eject them into the palace that Safi realized what the sound was.

Fire.

Everything from the escape in Ve?aza City was being used again. Glamours and distractions, soldiers with shifted loyalties and fire—lots of fire.

Heat pressed against them through the door. “We should turn back,” Safi called, but either Vaness did not hear, or Vaness did not care. With her magic, she melted apart the door.

And the heat and roar doubled.

Vaness crafted a shield—a tactic she had successfully employed twice with Safi. Of course, both times there had been somewhere for the smoke to go. Now, there was nowhere except around the iron barrier as Vaness and Safi climbed into and then across a room thick with flames.

Or maybe they were in a hallway. Or maybe it was a closet. Safi had no idea what was around them. Her eyes streamed. Her throat and lungs spasmed, and she only kept going because Vaness did. When they reached a stairwell not consumed by flames, though, Vaness sagged into Safi.

No warning, since Safi’s magic was still half missing and she only saw a perfectly poised Empress. Again, she helped the woman ascend, this time up low steps clogged by heat and smoke.

They reached the next level, and a familiar sandstone hall met Safi’s eyes. However, now it burned, and now, there was no one alive.

Vaness came to the same conclusion. She shook her head, expressionless, and shouted, “They cannot have survived this!” She tugged at Safi to continue rising.

But Safi didn’t move. In Ve?aza City, Habim had started the fires in the walls. A Firewitch’s flames were magic.

“Release their restraints!” she called. “They could still be alive—please!”

A nod. A choking cough from a mouth that did not move. Then Vaness lifted an arm. Her wrist tipped upward, and together, she and Safi waited. Safi squinted into the flames while the glamoured Vaness appeared to do nothing at all.

Two charred breaths later, shadows appeared. Black and skeletal and moving this way.

Safi whooped. She couldn’t help it. The Hell-Bards were alive. Habim hadn’t killed them. The flames hadn’t ended them.

Zander stumbled from the fire first. His golden noose glowed. His face was red with heat. Then Lev raced out behind, and finally Caden staggered out last.

“Fancy meeting you here,” Lev said between coughs, but Safi just grabbed her arm and roared, “Come on!”

Without being asked, Zander scooped up Vaness and tossed her over his shoulder—which meant Vaness’s injury must be grim indeed. Safi couldn’t see it, though. Not so long as the glamour ruled and her magic failed.

Together, Safi, Vaness, and the Hell-Bards ran. Up stairs that boomed beneath their feet in time to explosions that definitely weren’t fireworks.

“Wait!” Safi screeched as they charged past a hallway. She recognized it. It led to the storage room filled with fireworks, and at the end, there was access to the lake.

“Your Majesty.” She pushed in close to the Empress draped over Zander’s massive shoulder. But Caden shook his head. “She’s out.”

“I can wake her,” inserted Lev. “It won’t be pretty, though.”

Safi nodded. “Do it.”

“All right, Domna, but later when she wants to kill me, you tell her it was your idea.” Without preamble, Lev stabbed her finger into Vaness’s injured eye.

And the Empress awoke shrieking.

It was horrible to see, horrible to hear—an expressionless face emitting a sound of absolute, bone-rattling agony. But Safi needed Vaness awake, and pain was a better alternative to death.

“A boat!” Safi flung her voice over the screams, over the flames. “Is there a boat beyond this storage room?”

“YES!” Vaness screamed. Then Lev released her, and the Empress toppled limp against Zander’s shoulder.

Hollering for the Hell-Bards to follow, Safi shot out of the stairs and into the hall. Caden stayed close at her side, while Zander followed with the Empress, and finally Lev took up the rear. They crossed the hall and no one stopped them. No soldiers or fire appeared.

They crossed the storage room, and still no one interfered. They crept past crates of spark-candles—except they weren’t spark-candles at all. Which meant as soon as the fire chasing behind them reached this room …

“Faster!” she urged, and the Hell-Bards obeyed.

They reached the doorway at the end. As she’d seen earlier, it led to a cavernous boathouse that opened onto the lake. Naval vessels appeared to float harmlessly, but Safi knew, even if her magic did not, that it was all a lie. The battle echoes spoke otherwise.

And there, at the end of the boathouse, was a ship. Small, flat-bottomed, clearly meant for transferring goods off larger vessels, it was the only option, so without discussion, everyone aimed for it. Caden and Zander maneuvered Vaness in, then Safi followed while Lev untied the boat.

“Oars,” Zander said. “These aren’t going to get us far.”

“Not with what’s out there.” Caden stared at the lake, face screwed with concentration. Whatever he saw, Safi couldn’t.

“Guide me.” A ragged voice listed up from the Empress. Safi hadn’t realized she was awake again, and when she looked down, she only saw closed eyes and peaceful sleep.

But then Vaness tried to rise—and Zander helped her into a weak, slumping seat that even the glamour could not hide. “Tell me where to go,” she repeated, “and I…” A shaking breath. “I will send the boat where you command.” As if to prove that she could, she knocked her wrist sideways and the boat slithered away from the dock.

“You’re not well,” Safi protested, but at the same moment, Caden declared, “Forward.” Then his eyes met Safi’s, holding hers in that grim, unrelenting way he had. “It’s our only chance, Safi.”

She knew he was right. Smoke now plumed from the storage area. Any moment, the flames would hit. The explosion would tear the flesh from their bones and boil it straight to the Void.

So without another word of protest, Safi reached down, gripped Vaness’s other hand in hers, and said, “Forward.”

FIFTY

Aeduan went to the clearing with the tallest mountain pine. There his father waited, a group of women and men clustered to him, and twelve horses stamping and snuffing just beyond.

Ragnor met Aeduan’s eyes amidst the throng. He nodded, and Aeduan thought he almost caught a smile on the edge of his tired lips. Approval, maybe. Or relief.