It had been so inevitable, really. Her magic had cursed her from the day she’d been born, but only when she did not have it had she realized how much her curse had meant to her. She had once told Caden that her Truthwitchery was like living beside the ocean. Hundreds of tiny inconsequential truths and lies, told every day by everyone. The ceaseless waves eventually faded into nothing.

Except that they’d never truly been nothing. Now she knew what nothing felt like. Now she understood eternal silence she could never escape.

As Henrick turned away to begin pacing and lecturing—one of his favorite activities—Safi stopped listening. It had been so long since she had felt anything, and this heat in her chest, this jittering in her heel, felt good. This was who she was, even with the noose to imprison her. She was recklessness and initiation, she was foolhardy plans with no escape routes. And gods, what she was about to do could explode so badly.

Which was exactly what made it so perfect.

When Henrick reached the next turning point in his pacing, when his toad-like form swiveled around to face her, Safi lunged. It was not an attack meant for damage. It had no finesse like she’d executed in the hall, and the Emperor could easily defend against it—for he was far more agile than he portrayed.

But Safi wanted to see if he would react not with force, but with power. Not with physicality, but with instinct.

And he did.

As Safi slammed into him and he rocked back toward his shelves, his right hand flew toward his belt, toward a golden chain wrapped around it. Safi had noticed that chain before; she’d thought it decorative. It must instead be a main chain to control all others, and more alarming—more incredible—were the two uncut rubies tucked beneath it, wrapped in thread—

Stop.

The command lightninged into Safi’s skull. So powerful, she could not resist. The word lived in her bones, lived in her soul. It froze her with shadows that could not be disobeyed.

And Safi didn’t want to disobey. She’d seen all she needed to see.

So she stopped, dropping to her knees before Henrick, and instantly, the pain—and the command—receded. The shadows cleared. Safi’s bones and soul were her own again.

“Do not,” Henrick snarled, “make me repeat that.” He grabbed her hair and snapped her head upward. His eyes burned with fury; her eyes burned with unwelcome tears. “I will put you in your quarters if I have to. Do you understand, my Empress?”

When she didn’t answer, he yanked at the chain upon his belt once again … and startled cries erupted in the hallway outside.

“Stop,” she croaked. Her heart still thumped too fast from his command. Her muscles still felt like ice had shattered within. She wished such agony on no one.

“I will stop”—Henrick pulled her hair tighter—“when you say you understand. Do you?”

She nodded.

“Say it.”

“I understand.”

He released her. She crumpled to the floor, scalp sore. Body broken. Her mind, though …

She lifted her gaze, a sneer settling over her lips. I hate you, I hate you, I hate you. “You are poison,” she whispered. “Twisted and hateful and poison.”

For the briefest flicker of a moment, Henrick’s face tightened. His brows pinched, as if Safi had hit some buried nerve, some forgotten shame. And as if, for a mere instant, he was indeed the fragile toad he pretended to be.

But the emotion vanished in a heartbeat, replaced only by thunder and rage. “No, Safiya.” He leaned close; spittle flecked her cheek. “I am the Emperor of all Cartorra, and this is what my power looks like.”

Four Days After the Earth Well Healed

The world at night is more forgiving. Just darkness and hazy shapes. No scars, no stares, no vibrant, waking Threads. Iseult’s mind at night is not so kind. She has scarcely slept in over a month. First because she was tracking Safi across the dangerous Contested Lands. Then because a Firewitch she’d cleaved had somehow haunted her mind.

But she has found Safi again, and the Firewitch’s ghost is gone. Presumably released into the Aether Well. Yet still, Iseult sits every night on this windowsill, awake while the world sleeps. Alone while the world dreams.

Four days she has been at the fon Hasstrel estate, surrounded by fon Grieg’s soldiers and servants. Grieg has taken over Safi’s family’s lands now that her uncle is imprisoned for treason, and his people bow low to Iseult. Treat her with the same respect they give Safi, the same respect they give Leopold.

Iseult knows the truth, though, for she can read what lies in men’s hearts. And they know she can—it’s why they fear her. Why they shiver whenever they think she cannot see.

Movement rustles on the bed. Safi’s sleeping Threads brighten toward wakefulness. Then a groggy voice splits the cold, shadowy room: “When was the last time you slept, Iz?”

Iseult doesn’t answer. She had hoped Safi would not awaken, would not catch her sitting on this stone lip, staring at a cloudy sky and vague mountains upon the horizon.

“I’m the only one,” she says eventually, “who can sense if someone comes.” This isn’t a total lie, and with Safi’s magic half gone thanks to her creation of a Truth-lens in Marstok, Safi does not sense any omission.

“But Lev put up wards.”

Yes, the Hell-Bard has. Iseult can see them now, strands of golden warmth that curl across the bedroom’s crooked door and across the window too. Threads of protection that somehow coil out of the Hell-Bard’s noose on her command.

But Threads mean nothing to a Weaverwitch, and it takes Iseult no effort at all to bypass them. Like sweeping aside a curtain, she walked right through two nights ago without Lev ever noticing.

Iseult says none of this to Safi. Instead she murmurs, “Go back to sleep, Saf. Tomorrow will be a long day.” The Emperor will arrive from Praga, a hundred soldiers in tow and countless servants too.

Safi does not go back to sleep. She sits up in bed, and the faded Hasstrel-blue covers slink off. Her white shift glows in the night, her chin-length flaxen hair matted and askew, her Threads green with curiosity. “Are you nervous about seeing the Emperor?”

“Yes.” Also not a lie. “Aren’t you?”

“No,” Safi says, and she clambers from bed, the wood groaning, to cross the exposed stone floor. If her bare feet freeze, she shows no sign as she curls onto the opposite side of the windowsill.

Cold radiates through the ancient glass. Warmth radiates off Safi. And not for the first time, Iseult wishes she’d lit a fire when she’d awoken. Her fingers and feet are going numb. Her nose too.

“Our plan will work,” Safi insists, and her Threads give way to green conviction. She curls her bare toes against Iseult’s stockinged ones. “We have done everything exactly as…” A pause. A swallow. A flicker of pained Threads. Then: “Exactly as Mathew and Habim taught us.”

Iseult’s chest tightens. Her nostrils flare. Mathew and Habim. The men who’d raised Safi and Iseult, training them in the art of battle and the art of words and schemes … and who’d betrayed Safi only days ago in Azmir.

Iseult bends forward and pats Safi’s foot. “They thought they were doing the right thing, you know. We have to believe that.”