Vivia knew she ought to reprimand Stix for hiding this from Serafin. He might not be King or King Regent, but he was still Vivia’s first and foremost adviser. She said nothing, though, because for the first time since leaving the crowds outside Pin’s Keep, Vivia’s heart felt a bit less flattened. Her lungs felt a bit less crushed.

She slowed at an intersection and unfurled the message. Foxfire flared brighter than lamps here, casting the paper in green.

It was from the Empress of Marstok.

Now that true negotiations for trade have begun, I wish to invite you to Azmir. Some decisions are best made face-to-face. As are some apologies, particularly for the treaty terms my ambassadors attempted to make before my return.

I have alerted all soldiers to allow Nubrevnan Wind transport into the city, should you decide to come. All I ask is for several hours’ advance warning.

Vivia blinked. Then read the message again, a new sensation winding through her muscles and lungs. A hot, tightening sensation that was a thousand times preferable to the frenzied panic from before.

On the third read-through, a laugh choked up from her belly. For surely the Empress could not be serious. “Tell Her Majesty,” Vivia said at last, crumpling the missive and shoving it into Stix’s waiting hands, “that she can come to me if she really wants to negotiate. And that all I ask is for ‘several hours’ advance warning.’”

Stix chuckled at that, but it was a taut, nervous sound. And when Vivia launched back into a march, she followed more sedately behind.

“Who the hell-waters does she think she is?” Vivia demanded.

“Well,” Stix said, “she probably thinks she’s the Empress of the Flame Children, Chosen Daughter of the Fire Well, the Most Worshipped of the Marstoks, Destroyer of Kendura Pass—”

“And?”

“And she’s used to people doing her bidding.”

Vivia scoffed. “I could have just as many titles too, if I wanted them.”

“Of course you could, Your Highness.”

Your Highness. There it was again, and just like that, it was too much. Vivia didn’t need Stix’s pity; she didn’t need Stix’s condescension. And above all, she didn’t need credit or titles or the adoration of a city she worked so hard for.

She didn’t, she didn’t.

They were almost to the exit now. The wooden barricade built to keep unsuspecting refugees out of the dangerous tunnels glimmered in the green light, and the waters of the Cisterns rumbled in Vivia’s chest. They called to her magic as they barreled past, uneven and weak since the attack two weeks ago.

Before Vivia could tow out the key that would allow her through the barricade, Stix pushed in front of her. “Wait. Please,” she began. “Just hear me out, Your Highness.”

“Why?” Rude, rude—there she went again, being rude. “What is it you need to say?”

“I think you should go to Azmir.”

It was not what Vivia expected, and it was also not what Vivia wanted.

But Stix wasn’t finished. “Believe it or not, the city will not collapse if you’re gone for a day, and the chance to trade with Marstok … Can we really risk passing that up?”

“I don’t have time,” Vivia snapped. She pulled out the key. “Please move aside, Captain.”

Stix didn’t move. She just folded her arms across her chest, a pose Vivia had seen her make a thousand times, usually relaxed and smiling while her nearsighted eyes squinted.

Now, there was no smile. Now, Stix’s lips were pinched tight. “Why don’t you have time? The operation with the under-city is complete, and you have soldiers across the city to see that it runs smoothly. The High Council doesn’t meet until tomorrow, and you have me to make sure the dam repairs proceed as planned. If anything, today is the perfect day for you to go.”

“But my father,” Vivia began.

“Has nothing to do with you. He stole your speech. He stole the applause and recognition that should have been yours. You are Queen-in-Waiting. Not him. And how many times have we said that Noden and the Hagfishes ought to bend to a woman’s rule?

“Please,” Stix added, straightening off the barricade. “The Hasstrels only sent us that one shipment of grains, and now they aren’t answering our Voicewitches. We need this. So do it for you, and do it for Nubrevna. You might not have all the titles the Empress has, but that doesn’t make you any less than her. And you are Queen-in-Waiting, Viv. Not your father.”

Ah. Viv. The one thing Vivia had wanted her best friend to say for the last two weeks, and now it was offered alongside a plea.

The bludgeoning returned, twice as strong. Twice as vicious. Vivia had to get away before her chest burst. She had to be alone.

“I’ll consider it,” she said, stunned when the words sounded crisp and normal. Then she pushed past Stix, unlocked the barricade, and hurried into the tunnels beyond as fast as her bungling feet would carry her.

And when the Cistern’s tides barreled toward her, she did not try to stop them. She did not use her magic to take control or ease their impact. Instead, she let the waters of her city drag her down and carry her far away.

SIX

Stacia Sotar ran her fingers over the carvings in the limestone. Her skin glowed green beneath the foxfire. A hundred tiny boxes, each with diagonal lines to intersect, framed a rectangle as tall as she. It was as if someone had intended to build a door here, had even begun the process, and then abandoned it before actually hollowing out a passage.

Or maybe the door only travels one way.

For some reason, Stix kept thinking that this morning. That maybe, somehow, by some magic she did not understand, there was indeed a doorway here.

A doorway that only traveled one way.

Stix’s hand fell away from the carvings. She eased back two steps, head shaking as it did every time she’d come here. The urge to talk to Vivia swelled in her chest. She wanted to ask Vivia what she thought this door might be, tucked off the edge of the under-city, and above all, she wanted to know if Vivia heard the voices that trickled out from the stone.

The truth was, though, that Stix would never … she could never speak of this to Vivia. The Queen-in-Waiting had enough burdens as it was—too many, actually, and Stix refused to add to that heap.

It didn’t help that things had been stretched so thin between her and Vivia since the kiss they never spoke of. It was so odd—had always been so odd—that Stix could be so near to her best friend, yet somehow a thousand leagues away. She caught glimpses of the real Vivia from time to time, but that was all she ever got. Tiny peeks that never seemed to last.

After the kiss, Stix thought she’d finally earned that raw honesty. That she’d earned Vivia’s true face she so adored. But then the promise of the crown had been laid atop Vivia’s head, and with it, a thousand tasks needed to rebuild a city scarred. Vivia had retreated behind her masks and her duties.

Leaving Stix to face the whispers all alone.

Besides, what could Stix even say? I know the underground city too well, Viv. I find secret corners and hidden streets that I should not be able to find.

Or, I feel anxious every moment I’m away from the city. But as soon as I’m back inside its walls, I feel as if I can breathe again.

Or, the one that scared Stix the most, the one she couldn’t even voice aloud to herself: There are whispers in the back of my skull, Viv. They talk all day, all night, and I am slowly losing my mind to them.

The whispers only spoke when Stix was aboveground, out of the under-city. They only screamed when she was far away from this door. When she was here with it, though, they were quiet.

It had started with dreams two weeks ago. Darkness and screaming and a pain in her neck that woke her in the night. She found her sheets soaked, sweat sliding off her in thick rivulets.

A week after that, the shadows had started coming during the day. Little flickers of movement that made her fear her already weak vision might be getting worse. The shadows only lasted a few days, though. Then they vanished and the whispers began.

The whispers were the worst part yet, because she could never quite hear them. It reminded her of a cadet she’d trained, who, no matter how much she told him to speak up, never got his voice above a squeak. The majority of what he said went forever unheard, forever lost to the din around him.

These whispers were like that.

At times, Stix thought them a hundred different voices speaking inside her brain. Other times she thought them only one, as if all those separate sounds and languages were blended together like a vast orchestra playing a single tune.

One voice or many, it did not change the fact that none of the words made sense. It was a language—or languages—she did not know.

Worse yet, the low, inaudible murmur of the voices never ceased. All day, all night, they followed Stix. Always incomprehensible, always angry, and they expected Stix to do something about it.

But I can’t hear you! she had mentally screamed a thousand times in the past two weeks. Twice, she had even slipped up and barked it aloud.