A Court for Thieves
Date: 2017-01-02 00:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Fantasy; Young Adult; Fiction; Audiobook; Amazon; Romance; Science Fiction Fantasy; Adventure; Young Adult Fantasy; Magic
Description: “Morgan Rice's imagination is limitless. In another series that promises to be as entertaining as the previous ones, A THRONE OF SISTERS presents us with the tale of two sisters (Sophia and Kate), orphans, fighting to survive in a cruel and demanding world of an orphanage. An instant success. I can hardly wait to put my hands on the second and third books!” --Books and Movie Reviews (Roberto Mattos) From #1 Bestseller Morgan Rice comes an unforgettable new fantasy series. In A COURT FOR THIEVES (A Throne for Sisters—Book Two), Sophia, 17, finds her world upside down as she is cast from the rom

A CLASP FOR HEIRS

(A THRONE FOR SISTERS – BOOK 8)

MORGAN RICE

Morgan Rice

Morgan Rice is the #1 bestselling and USA Today bestselling author of the epic fantasy series THE SORCERER’S RING, comprising seventeen books; of the #1 bestselling series THE VAMPIRE JOURNALS, comprising twelve books; of the #1 bestselling series THE SURVIVAL TRILOGY, a post-apocalyptic thriller comprising three books; of the epic fantasy series KINGS AND SORCERERS, comprising six books; of the epic fantasy series OF CROWNS AND GLORY, comprising eight books; of the epic fantasy series A THRONE FOR SISTERS, comprising eight books (and counting); of the new science fiction series THE INVASION CHRONICLES, comprising four books; and of the new fantasy series OLIVER BLUE AND THE SCHOOL FOR SEERS, comprising three books (and counting). Morgan’s books are available in audio and print editions, and translations are available in over 25 languages.

TURNED (Book #1 in the Vampire Journals) ARENA ONE (Book #1 of the Survival Trilogy)  and A QUEST OF HEROES (Book #1 in the Sorcerer’s Ring), RISE OF THE DRAGONS (Kings and Sorcerers—Book #1), A THRONE FOR SISTERS (Book #1), and TRANSMISSION (The Invasion Chronicles—Book #1) are each available as a free download on Kobo!

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“If you thought that there was no reason left for living after the end of THE SORCERER’S RING series, you were wrong. In RISE OF THE DRAGONS Morgan Rice has come up with what promises to be another brilliant series, immersing us in a fantasy of trolls and dragons, of valor, honor, courage, magic and faith in your destiny. Morgan has managed again to produce a strong set of characters that make us cheer for them on every page.…Recommended for the permanent library of all readers that love a well-written fantasy.”

--Books and Movie Reviews

Roberto Mattos

“An action packed fantasy sure to please fans of Morgan Rice’s previous novels, along with fans of works such as THE INHERITANCE CYCLE by Christopher Paolini…. Fans of Young Adult Fiction will devour this latest work by Rice and beg for more.”

--The Wanderer, A Literary Journal (regarding Rise of the Dragons)

“A spirited fantasy that weaves elements of mystery and intrigue into its story line. A Quest of Heroes is all about the making of courage and about realizing a life purpose that leads to growth, maturity, and excellence….For those seeking meaty fantasy adventures, the protagonists, devices, and action provide a vigorous set of encounters that focus well on Thor's evolution from a dreamy child to a young adult facing impossible odds for survival….Only the beginning of what promises to be an epic young adult series.”

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“THE SORCERER’S RING has all the ingredients for an instant success: plots, counterplots, mystery, valiant knights, and blossoming relationships replete with broken hearts, deception and betrayal. It will keep you entertained for hours, and will satisfy all ages. Recommended for the permanent library of all fantasy readers.”

--Books and Movie Reviews, Roberto Mattos

“In this action-packed first book in the epic fantasy Sorcerer's Ring series (which is currently 14 books strong), Rice introduces readers to 14-year-old Thorgrin "Thor" McLeod, whose dream is to join the Silver Legion, the elite knights who serve the king…. Rice's writing is solid and the premise intriguing.”

--Publishers Weekly

Books by Morgan Rice

OLIVER BLUE AND THE SCHOOL FOR SEERS

THE MAGIC FACTORY (Book #1)

THE ORB OF KANDRA (Book #2)

THE OBSIDIANS (Book #3)

THE INVASION CHRONICLES

TRANSMISSION (Book #1)

ARRIVAL (Book #2)

ASCENT (Book #3)

RETURN (Book #4)

THE WAY OF STEEL

ONLY THE WORTHY (Book #1)

A THRONE FOR SISTERS

A THRONE FOR SISTERS (Book #1)

A COURT FOR THIEVES (Book #2)

A SONG FOR ORPHANS (Book #3)

A DIRGE FOR PRINCES (Book #4)

A JEWEL FOR ROYALS (BOOK #5)

A KISS FOR QUEENS (BOOK #6)

A CROWN FOR ASSASSINS (Book #7)

A CLASP FOR HEIRS (Book #8)

OF CROWNS AND GLORY

SLAVE, WARRIOR, QUEEN (Book #1)

ROGUE, PRISONER, PRINCESS (Book #2)

KNIGHT, HEIR, PRINCE (Book #3)

REBEL, PAWN, KING (Book #4)

SOLDIER, BROTHER, SORCERER (Book #5)

HERO, TRAITOR, DAUGHTER (Book #6)

RULER, RIVAL, EXILE (Book #7)

VICTOR, VANQUISHED, SON (Book #8)

KINGS AND SORCERERS

RISE OF THE DRAGONS (Book #1)

RISE OF THE VALIANT (Book #2)

THE WEIGHT OF HONOR (Book #3)

A FORGE OF VALOR (Book #4)

A REALM OF SHADOWS (Book #5)

NIGHT OF THE BOLD (Book #6)

THE SORCERER’S RING

A QUEST OF HEROES (Book #1)

A MARCH OF KINGS (Book #2)

A FATE OF DRAGONS (Book #3)

A CRY OF HONOR (Book #4)

A VOW OF GLORY (Book #5)

A CHARGE OF VALOR (Book #6)

A RITE OF SWORDS (Book #7)

A GRANT OF ARMS (Book #8)

A SKY OF SPELLS (Book #9)

A SEA OF SHIELDS (Book #10)

A REIGN OF STEEL (Book #11)

A LAND OF FIRE (Book #12)

A RULE OF QUEENS (Book #13)

AN OATH OF BROTHERS (Book #14)

A DREAM OF MORTALS (Book #15)

A JOUST OF KNIGHTS (Book #16)

THE GIFT OF BATTLE (Book #17)

THE SURVIVAL TRILOGY

ARENA ONE: SLAVERSUNNERS (Book #1)

ARENA TWO (Book #2)

ARENA THREE (Book #3)

VAMPIRE, FALLEN

BEFORE DAWN (Book #1)

THE VAMPIRE JOURNALS

TURNED (Book #1)

LOVED (Book #2)

BETRAYED (Book #3)

DESTINED (Book #4)

DESIRED (Book #5)

BETROTHED (Book #6)

VOWED (Book #7)

FOUND (Book #8)

RESURRECTED (Book #9)

CRAVED (Book #10)

FATED (Book #11)

OBSESSED (Book #12)

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Copyright © 2018 by Morgan Rice. All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior permission of the author.  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return it and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictionally. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR

CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE

CHAPTER TWENTY SIX

CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN

CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT

CHAPTER TWENTY NINE

CHAPTER THIRTY

CHAPTER THIRTY ONE

CHAPTER THIRTY TWO

CHAPTER THIRTY THREE

CHAPTER THIRTY FOUR

CHAPTER THIRTY FIVE

CHAPTER THIRTY SIX

CHAPTER THIRTY SEVEN

CHAPTER THIRTY EIGHT

CHAPTER THIRTY NINE

CHAPTER FORTY

CHAPTER FORTY ONE

CHAPTER FORTY TWO

CHAPTER ONE

The Master of Crows looked around Ashton and smiled at the way it was starting to live up to its name. Clouds of smoke rose over it from those sections that his men were clearing with fire, from the foundries that were even now churning out more weapons, from the fires that fed his men, burned brands into captives, and heated irons for the torment of those who tried to stand against them.

“Come to me,” he said, holding out an arm. “Show me.”

Crows descended from the sky, landing on the outstretched cloth of his great coat, their claws digging into the flesh beneath and their croaking voices filling the air around him. As each landed, it brought with it the sights and sounds and smells of a city in ruins, and each image only made the Master of Crows’ smile broaden into a sharp edged rictus.

The first crow showed him the ruins of the outer city, where starving children ran from older starving children, knives and clubs in their grubby fists now. The buildings there were rubble, splintered wood and scattered stone lying in piles that his crows picked through in search of the bodies beneath. The Master of Crows felt the moments when they found them and fed, trickles of lost life flowing into him.

More power came from the gibbets and the breaking wheels, the tying posts and the cages. A whole battalion of his troops worked at them, forcing criminals inside, and just about everyone in Ashton was a criminal under the New Army’s laws. There was the crack of muskets as soldiers practiced their rifle work on the condemned, and always, always, the tumble of crows onto those who fell.

Even more came from the places where the remaining people of the city worked in drudgery, forced to carry and forge, dig and build. There was no time for breaks, and little for sleep. Those who fell were beaten until they rose, and those who did not rise became food for his pets.

“More,” he said, because the hunger was always there. The crows demanded more, and he had to feed them. His words echoed out through the city, through the throats of a thousand birds. “Feed us more.”

He didn’t just need it for the hunger. His mind flicked out, seeking out crow after crow, spreading out beyond the city, letting him see the rest of the country. He saw fields and towns, the progress of his armies and the spots where the people of the kingdom sought to build their own.

“Should I crush you now, or later?” he wondered. Now would put down any rebellion easily. Later though, when they’d built up more followers… the rush of death would be so much greater then. The power would be so much better.

Another crow showed him the reason that he needed that power. Stonehome sat below, safe within the long wall that surrounded it, the tall stones set at intervals serving as anchors for the shield that those within could call up. The Master of Crows could see more people down there than should have ever fit into such a space: at least half or more of those who had fled Ashton, and the king, Sebastian, and…

Even from up here, the bright glow of the child was impossible to ignore. Sophia Danse’s daughter shone with the kind of power that might eclipse the sun, and that might even be enough to sate the crows. With that kind of power, a man might find himself immortal without the need for more killing, without the spread of black wings further.

Or he might have enough power to take everything.

He brought himself back to his own body, and turned to the aides who waited just a little way away. Several of his captains stood with them, looking as nervous as all his followers learned to be over time.

“What progress has there been?” he demanded, hearing the croak and rasp of his own voice. It was always worse when he’d spent a lot of time in the minds of his birds. He pointed at one of the captains at random, guessing that otherwise, they would spend their time arguing over who got to be first, or last.

“My men continue to hunt down stragglers,” the man said. “People continue to live in the city’s crawl spaces and slums like rats, but-”

“Next,” the Master of Crows said, cutting him off.

“Our control over the surrounding countryside is almost complete,” another of the captains said. “The new laws have been implemented, and we have started to-”

“Next,” the Master of Crows said.

“There is a nobleman who has announced himself as king, and-”

“Do you think I don’t know that?” he demanded, irritation rising in him. “We will deal with all of this, but it is not relevant.”

“Forgive us, my lord,” one of his aides said, “but what is it that you want to hear from us?”

“I want to hear about progress in attacking Stonehome. I want to hear that you have found a solution to that damnable shield that they have put up.”

“We have sent engineers to try to undermine their walls,” the aide said.

The Master of Crows looked over to the man. “And?”

“And they were slaughtered by forays from the people there. There was mist, and…”

“And when it lifted, they were dead. Yes, yes,” the Master of Crows said in irritation. “What else?”

“Cannon do not work against the shield,” one of his captains said. “Nor does any kind of physical assault.”

“Do not tell me what does not work,” the Master of Crows said. “I know that my army cannot break through.”

“We are searching for anyone who might have a solution,” an aide said. “But they have been reluctant to come forward, even with promises of wealth.”

Of course they were. Anyone who had that kind of knowledge would undoubtedly have a spark of magical talent as well, and someone like that would be anything but likely to help the New Army now. They would be too afraid of what would happen to them afterwards.

“Go through every record,” the Master of Crows said. “I want works of magic sought out. I want every man who can read, every aide, every captain who is not actively fighting going through the libraries of the city. Put out a reward. Any man or woman who brings information relating to the shield surrounding Stonehome will be spared, will be given gold and a place in my army, even if they have magic of their own, even if they are priests of the Masked Goddess, or nobles, or anything else. Find me a solution, and I will forgive anything. I must have that child!”

He set off back into Ashton’s palace, which had become as twisted and changed as the rest of the city. He didn’t care about any of the holes that had been blasted in the walls in the course of the battle, or about the offices and billets that had taken over what had once been noble bedrooms. Screams came from one of the rooms as his interrogators worked on a servant to find out what they knew about the city. The Master of Crows shrugged and moved on.

He briefly paused as he passed in front of a gilded mirror, the sight of his reflection arresting his attention for a moment. The tall frame, wreathed in a dark coat and covered in crows was the same as ever, but what caught his attention was the small red mark that stood out brightly against the pallor of his skin.

Moving closer, it was still possible to make out the shape of a child’s handprint, as red now as it had been in the seconds after the young Princess Violet had touched him there. The burn didn’t hurt now unless he touched it, but it was a reminder that she had the power to hurt him, and that could not be ignored.

“My lord, my lord!” a servant called running out into the Master of Crows’ path. Briefly, he considered killing the man for the interruption, but such a paltry extra hint of power would not make up for all that had slipped through his grasp.

“What is it?” the Master of Crows demanded.

“My lord, there is a man to see you. He says that it is urgent.”

Again, the Master of Crows fought back the urge to lash out.

“I… think you might want to see him, my lord,” the man said.

The Master of Crows drew himself up, and stared at the man with lifeless eyes. “Very well. Lead the way. And if I do not find this very interesting, you will find yourself in a crow cage.”

He saw the man swallow. “Yes, my lord.”

The servant led the way down to the palace’s ballroom, which had become a throne room for his occupation. The mirrors there were largely broken now, reflecting shattered fragments of the people there. Most of them stood back, flanked by guards of the New Army. One stood further forward, shaven headed, dressed in dark clothes, his mind closed off with the kind of shielding that hinted at power.

“You have taken a grave risk, coming here,” the Master of Crows said. “You should speak quickly, whoever you are.”

“Whoever I am?” the man said. “Look at me closely.”

The Master of Crows did so, and realized just who he was speaking to. He had seen this face before, albeit with hair, and usually only for brief periods before his crows had been killed.

“Endi Skydar,” he said. “You have taken an even greater risk than I thought. You should speak quickly. Why should I let you live?”

“I hear that you have a problem,” Endi said. “You have run into an issue with magic that you cannot fathom. I have run into my own problem: I and my men have nowhere to go. Perhaps we can help one another.”

“And how can we help one another?” the Master of Crows asked. “You are not your brother Oli, to know the history of such things. And you are a Skydar; one of my enemies.”

“I was a Skydar,” Endi said. “Now I have no name. As for what I know, secrets and hidden things were my business. It might be that I heard about a man who was asked to give advice on a magical matter. It might be that when my cousins turned out to have power, I looked into ways of countering such things.”

“So, what are you asking?” the Master of Crows demanded.

“You give me and my men an honored place in your kingdom, and your army,” Endi said. “In return, I will provide you with a ritual that will weaken the walls of Stonehome, and any other magic they put before you.”

That would give the Master of Crows access to the town. It would give him Sophia’s daughter. With that much power in his hands, he could afford to be generous.

“Very well,” he said. “You have a deal. Fail me though, and I will kill you and all your men.”

CHAPTER TWO

Sophia stared at the city beyond the door, beyond the normal spaces of the world. Sienne pressed up against her leg, while Lucas and Kate flanked her to either side. Sophia didn’t know what to make of the city that lay there, even though she had seen it before in visions. The city was radiant, rainbow colored in parts and golden in others. People, tall and elegant, walked through the streets, dressed in radiant gowns and golden suits of clothes.

It was all beautiful, but none of it was what Sophia had come to the city to find. None of it was the reason she had left her daughter, her husband and her kingdom to trek across the sea and the desert, past the city of Morgassa and out into the wastelands. She’d done that to find her parents.

And then, there they were.

They stood on the street in a clear space between the others there, looking up at the doorway Sophia and the others had just passed through. They were older than they looked in her memories, but so much time had passed since then, could it really be any other way? More importantly, they still looked like them. Her father leant on a stick now, but he was still tall and strong looking. Her mother still had the same red hair, although it was shot through with grey now, and she still looked like the most beautiful woman in the world to Sophia.

She ran forward without even thinking about it, and wasn’t surprised to find Kate and Lucas running forward with her. Her arms closed around her mother and father, and the others joined the hug, until it felt as though they were all one big mass in the middle of the street there.

“We found you,” she said, barely able to believe it. “We actually found you.”

“You did, darling,” her mother said, holding her close. “And you had to go through such a lot to do it.”

“You know about that?” Sophia said, stepping back.

“You aren’t the only one in the family who sees things,” her mother said with a smile. “It is why we left the path as we did for you.”

Sophia could feel how worried that made Kate feel.

“You saw all of it, but you weren’t there?” Kate asked.

“Kate-” Sophia began, but her father answered before she could go on.

“We would have been there if we could, Kate,” he said. “You have suffered, all of you, and we would have stopped every moment of that suffering if we could have done. We would have brought you with us… we would have given you a perfect life if we could.”

“Why couldn’t you?” Sophia asked. She thought of the orphanage, and of everything that happened in the wake of the attack on their home. “Why didn’t you?”

“We do owe you an explanation,” their mother said, “and there are things that we have to tell you, but not here, in the street. Come with us, all of you.”

She and their father led the way off the street, the crowds there parting as if in respect, or perhaps the way that a crowd might have kept back from someone sick. Sophia and the others followed them to a large house with carvings on the outside that seemed to ripple in the sunlight. There was no door, as if people here didn’t fear the possibility of thieves, only a kind of curtain to keep out the wind.

Inside, their parents led the way to a room whose floor seemed to be a larger metal version of the disc map that Sophia and the others had followed to get there. Its lines glowed with every step they took upon the floor. A large, low table sat at the center of the room, with chairs set around it. There was a divan on which their mother and father sat together, a camp chair that Kate took without pause, an odd looking carved stool that Lucian smiled at for a moment before sitting on it cross legged, and a deep, comfortable looking chair with a rug in front of it that Sienne curled up on, waiting for Sophia to sit down too.

She did so, and a large woman in the same radiant clothes came out from a side door, bringing food and water. Again, Sophia had the feeling that the food had been prepared specifically for each of them. Lucas got a kind of fish dish, Kate a kind of hearty stew, Sophia a delicate dish that reminded her of the things prepared in the palace of Ashton.

“It’s like you know us better than we know ourselves,” Sophia said. A horrible thought came to her. “This is real, isn’t it? It isn’t some fever dream while we’re all dying in the desert? It isn’t some new kind of test?”

“It isn’t any of that,” their mother assured her. “We wouldn’t even have subjected you to the first test, except that the door requires it. We live here, but we do not control this place.”

“We had to pass through that damn door just the same way,” their father said. “For me, the guardian sounded just like my old tutor, Valensis.”

“It made us choose who would die,” Kate said.

Their father nodded. “The lost city does not admit those who will not put love first.”

“At least not through that door,” their mother said. “And you’ll note that your father does not say quite how long we were in those blasted prisons before we made our choices. But that is not what you want to hear from us. We should tell you why we did not come for you.”

“We couldn’t,” their father said.

“Because the Dowager would have killed you if you had been in one place?” Lucas asked.

“Yes,” their mother said, “but not in the way you think. That night… she had so many people killed, but she did something worse with us. She tried to break the connection that makes us who we are. She tried to poison our connection to the land. She tried to destroy the thing that makes us who we are.”

“I’ve felt it,” Sophia admitted. “It’s like… everything in the land is there for me to touch, and I can draw power from it if I need to.”

Kate chimed in then. “Siobhan had an old sorcerer teach me that all magic is about moving power. He taught me to heal by giving people power, and to kill by stealing it. I’ve felt that connection too. It’s the same thing on a huge scale.”

“It’s the same, and not the same,” their father said. “Some of those with magic understand it, and some of them use it to prolong their lives. An old creature like Siobhan had power because of it. A thing like the Master of Crows has power because of it. They have their connections: Siobhan to her fountain, the Master to his crows. For us, it is different: we are connected to our land and our people. We balance it and we touch upon it, but we must be careful not to take too much from it, not to damage it.”

Sophia had felt that when she had been connected to the land: she had felt the fragility of those connections, and how easy it might be to do damage to them.

“I don’t understand,” Lucas said. “How could the Dowager poison that link when she had no magic? And why doesn’t it affect us?”

“She got another to do it,” their father said. “It took a lot of time and effort to hunt him down and try to make him undo what he did. As for why it does not affect you, I think it was just aimed at us. I am grateful to all the old gods that it hasn’t touched any of you.”

“That still doesn’t explain why you didn’t come to get us,” Kate said.

“Oh, Kate, my darling child,” their mother said, standing and going across to Kate so that she could hug her. “We couldn’t take you with us, and then we lost you for so long. Even we didn’t know where you were hidden, not after you and your nurse didn’t make it to the friends who were to smuggle you out.”

“After that, we couldn’t come back to look,” their father said. “The further we stayed from our land, the more slowly the poison progressed. It gave us time to look for an antidote, but meant we couldn’t come back for you.”

“And there was more. You have seen the future, Sophia. So have you, Lucas.” She made a statement of it, not a question. “You have seen things that will happen, could happen, might happen.”

“Siobhan talked about possibilities,” Kate said.

Sophia saw their mother nod.

“Possibilities, affected by the barest touch,” their mother said. “When Alfred and I argued about going back for you, I saw… I saw the world in ruins, land after land in flames.  I saw us dying before we ever found you. When we decided to hold back, I saw the potential for a return to beauty and to peace. I saw you, Sophia, and I saw beyond you…”

Sophia swallowed as she thought about her daughter, Violet, and the visions she’d had of her. She’d seen the possibility of an age of unparalleled peace, and the possibility of something far darker. She’d changed the name she might have given to her daughter just to avoid the second. Could she blame her parents for their own hand on the scales of fate?

“So you left us?” Kate demanded, obviously not as willing to forgive it.

“I wish I could have been there with you,” their mother said. “I wish I could have taught you about magic instead of… her. We had so little time though, and we did not dare to leave the city…”

“So that the Dowager wouldn’t find you?” Kate asked.

It isn’t cowardice to want to avoid a fight, Kate, Sophia sent over to her.

It feels like it to me, Kate shot back.

“It wasn’t cowardice, Kate,” their mother said, and Sophia smiled at the thought that of course their mother would share their talents. “It was the only way that we would get to see you all. The disc… the waiting… do you think I wanted to do that, instead of just reaching out to you and bringing you to us?”

“Then why didn’t you come when Sophia sent out messengers looking for you?” Kate asked. “Lucas came to us.”

“We couldn’t,” their father said. “We couldn’t leave this city.”

“Why not?” Sophia asked.

“The poison,” he said. “Being in a place like this, cut off from the world, was the only way to slow the effects enough to see you. It was the only way to get to tell you all the things you needed to know.”

Sophia swallowed at the thought of that, of her parents having to run not just from the kingdom but from the world to survive. Then one of her father’s words caught in her mind.

“Wait, you said that it slowed the poison being here. Not stopped it?”

“No, my darling,” their mother said. “The poison is still in us, and still working to kill us. Even the brief moment of connection to the world through the doorway sped it up. I wish… I wish for so many things, but there is no time for any of them. Your father and I… we are dying.”

CHAPTER THREE

Sebastian tried to hide his frustration as he talked to Asha and Vincente. Of course, when they could both read his mind, hiding anything wasn’t easy.

“The refugees can’t just stay in tents forever,” he said.

“It isn’t forever,” Vincente said. “Just until the army that threatens us is out of the way.”

“And if they don’t like it,” Asha said, “they can always go back out to face them. They aren’t the ones maintaining a shield around Stonehome. They aren’t the ones hunting down attackers. They should be grateful.”

Grateful to be stuck in tents. Grateful to have lost their homes and their loved ones. Grateful that they had to ask for help.

“That’s not what I mean,” Asha said, and once again, it was obvious that she was deep inside his thoughts.

Sebastian looked over to where Emeline sat with Cora, his daughter Violet cradled in Cora’s arms. Cora seemed happy with her there, and Sebastian was grateful for that, because he’d seen how hurt she was in the wake of Aidan’s death.

“Emeline, can you help me?” he asked. “Asha is looking into my thoughts.”

Emeline came over, giving Stonehome’s co-leader an unfriendly look. Sebastian felt something settle around his mind like a cloak, and he guessed that she’d blocked Asha out.

“I could break through that block,” Asha said.

Emeline smiled tightly. “No you couldn’t, and if you had any manners, there would be no need for it.”

“Why would people want to hide their thoughts if they’re not thinking anything wrong?” Asha countered, but she sounded as if her heart wasn’t in it.

“We are finding whatever spaces we can for people,” Vincente said. “You are our king, Sebastian.”

Asha looked at him with obvious surprise, and Sebastian had the sense of a silent conversation taking place between the two. Emeline supplied the content of it for him.

“Asha is claiming that Sophia might be their queen, but you are the Dowager’s son, and she cannot follow you. She says that they both know that Violet is their real queen.”

Emeline smirked as Asha glared over at her.

“I won’t be embarrassed by it,” she said. “Princess Violet is one of us. She belongs here, and will be a great queen.”

“One day,” Sebastian agreed. He didn’t like the way Asha said it though. She made it sound as though he and Sophia didn’t matter; as though they existed just to bring Violet into the world.

“Sebastian is our king,” Vincente said aloud. “Sophia is our queen, and Stonehome supports the crown. They will create a world where we can live, Asha.”

“They don’t even have a world where they can live,” Asha said, gesturing to the tents. “We saved them, but they complain. ‘We only have tents’, ‘why isn’t there more food?’, ‘what if they’re reading my thoughts?’ We exhaust ourselves to protect them, and they wonder when we will turn on them.”

“It will take time, Asha,” Emeline said. “It will only take-”

Sebastian saw her freeze in place, her eyes unfocussed and looking past him. Sebastian knew what that meant: she was seeing something well beyond the confines of the hidden town.

“What is it?” Sebastian said when he saw Emeline blink her way back to herself . “What did you see, Emeline?”

“It isn’t safe here,” Emeline said. “I saw… I saw the shields falling. I saw the New Army sweeping in.”

“Impossible,” Vincente said. “The shields are unbreakable. We turned back the enemy easily last time.”

“I saw it,” Emeline insisted. When she focused on Sebastian, he could see how serious she was about this. “We have to get Violet out of here.”

Sebastian blinked at that, but he could only agree with her. If the Master of Crows was going to get into Stonehome, then he needed to get Violet out of here. They all needed to get out of here.

“But you can’t take Violet,” Asha said. “She’s one of us!”

Sebastian turned to her, surprised by the suddenly protective note. “Violet is my daughter,” he said. “And I will not put her in danger.”

He saw Asha shake her head. “She’s not in danger. Vincente is right. No one could get into Stonehome.”

“I saw it happening!” Emeline countered.

“Where could we take her?” Sebastian asked. If they could make it to the coast, then maybe they could get to Ishjemme, but that would mean abandoning the kingdom that they had only just won. They would lose it before Sophia could even get back to it.

“There’s barely anywhere as strong as here,” Vincente said. “The only place that might be stronger would be Monthys back in the day when its defenses actually stood and Monthys has fallen.”

“Which means that the enemy aren’t there now,” Emeline pointed out.

“It still wouldn’t be strong,” Vincente said. “In the days before the civil wars, it had layers of magic and stone, but now…”

Sebastian had heard from Sophia what it was like now, damaged, almost ruined. Ulf and Frig had gone up to try to rebuild it, but they were dead now, killed by the Master of Crows. The New Army had probably passed it by, but to think of it as a safe place would be madness.

“Monthys will draw people,” Emeline said. “And the bones of the magical defenses will still be there. They can be reactivated.”

“We have magical defenses here,” Asha insisted. “Violet is the whole reason that we allowed you to come here.”

“Not the whole reason,” Vincente said.

Asha gave him a sharp look, and Sebastian had the feeling that this was an argument between them. He was more interested in what Asha had said.

“You only took in the refugees because of my daughter? Because of some flash of vision that you’ve seen?”

Asha seemed defiant. “Not just that I’ve seen. Everyone who catches flashes of the future has seen the queen to come. You can’t deny that.”

“My daughter will choose her own future,” Sebastian said. “I will do whatever I have to do to keep her safe, and to give her those choices. I’ll fight for that, if I have to. Don’t forget that, Asha.”

“We’re not enemies,” Vincente said. “We’re-”

Sebastian didn’t get to learn exactly what they were, because in that moment, bells sounded to signal that something was happening beyond the walls of the town.

“We need to go,” Emeline said. “It’s coming.”

“We’re safe here,” Asha insisted. “This is just some plan to take Princess Violet away from her people.”

Sebastian ignored that and ran to the walls of Stonehome. The shield the inhabitants had put in place was up, held by the efforts of those townsfolk who stood in the stone circle at its heart.

A battalion of the New Army stood before the town, cannons levelled, cavalry spread out like a net. Sebastian was more interested in the figures who stepped forward. He recognized the Master of Crows at once. The shaven headed man standing next to him was harder to identify, but he stood almost as if he were the Master of Crows’ equal.

“That’s Endi,” Emeline said, “Sophia’s cousin.”

“The one who betrayed us by dragging away half of the invasion fleet?” Sebastian said. He’d heard the stories, even if he’d never met the man.

“That’s the one,” Emeline said.

“What’s he doing with the Master of Crows?” Sebastian asked.

“Nothing good,” Emeline replied. “Sebastian, we need to get out of here.”

Beside them, the warriors of Stonehome and those of the refugees who could fight started to move into place. They did it with a surprising sense of confidence, but then, Sebastian thought, they were behind the shield. As long as it held, there was nothing to be afraid of. They were safe.

So why had Emeline seen destruction?

Sebastian stood there, trying to show confidence even while he felt it ebbing away. In Sophia’s absence, he was the ruler of this kingdom, and he had to provide strength for everyone else to draw from. If he showed fear, there would be panic.

Slowly, Endi started to walk around the perimeter of Stonehome, stopping every few paces to do something that seemed to involve ingredients carried by a pair of servants. He made marks with a golden rod, reading from a book as he went.

“Can someone hit him with a musket?” Sebastian asked.

“At that range?” Vincente asked. He started loading his own. “Unlikely, but we can try.”

Stonehome’s other warriors started preparing their weapons. It seemed to take an agonizing amount of time before they were ready.

“Fire!” Vincente yelled, and a volley of shots sailed out across the heath. None of them came close to hitting Endi. “He’s too far away. Maybe a cannon could do it.”

Sebastian could see that wouldn’t work. Endi was moving too quickly for a cannon to keep up as it aimed, and the idea of hitting one man with an artillery weapon was ludicrous anyway. They couldn’t even make a foray out there to stop this, because that would mean lowering the shield.

All they could do was wait.

Sebastian watched Endi as Sophia’s cousin made his way around Stonehome. He had almost completed a full circuit. Somehow, Sebastian had the feeling that they needed to stop him before he completed that circuit. Force wouldn’t work, but maybe reason might.

“Endi,” he called out. “Endi, this is Sebastian, Sophia’s husband.”

He saw Endi pause and look over.

“I know who you are,” Endi yelled back.

“It would be easier to talk to you if you were closer.”

“It would be easier to shoot me, too,” Endi pointed out. “And you’ve already shown that you’re willing to do that.”

“What are you doing, Endi?” Sebastian asked. “You are my wife’s cousin. My daughter is your blood. You shouldn’t be helping our enemies.”

Endi looked at him for a long time. “If family were the only thing that mattered, you would have died with yours, and mine wouldn’t have cast me out.”

“But you’re helping the Master of Crows!” Sebastian shouted. “You know how evil he is. He has attacked Ishjemme, and your family, and your friends!”

“At least he has a place for me!” Endi yelled, and brought the golden rod down in a last set of markings. He seemed to be muttering words to himself, and almost as quick as a snake he turned, stabbing first one servant and then the other, spilling their blood on the ground.

Lines of power flowed along the spaces that he’d walked, flaring a deep blood red. Energy seemed to twist in the air above it, and for a moment, Sebastian thought that he heard the screams of the dying there beyond the limits of the settlement. He heard those cries echoed behind him and turned to see people staggering from the stone circle at the heart of Stonehome, clutching at their heads in agony. One tumbled to his face, not rising.

Sebastian looked back in time to see the shield around the settlement flicker and die, shimmering in the air for a moment before it fell. Horns and trumpets sounded out across the heath, echoing as they announced orders. The rumble of moving horses and the stamp of feet joined them.

Sebastian saw the New Army start to advance, and now there was nothing they could do to stop them.

CHAPTER FOUR

“You’re dying?” Sophia said, not able to believe her ears. The shock of it ran hot and cold through her, making her want to do something, anything, rather than believe it. Even when Sienne pressed up against her hand, the forest cat’s presence did nothing to bring back the reality of it all.

“You can’t be dying,” Kate said. “Not like this. Not after all we’ve been through. That wasn’t how it was supposed to happen.”

Sophia could hear the sorrow there, and see the tears building in her sister’s eyes. That was almost as much of a shock as the rest of it, because Kate didn’t weep. She got angry so that she didn’t have to.

“Don’t cry, darlings,” their mother said, holding out her arms. Sophia left her seat to go to her, and found Kate doing the same. “This has been coming for a long time.”

“But we’ve only just found you,” Sophia insisted, as if that made a difference. She knew by now that the world didn’t work like that, but it should. It really should.

“You did find us though,” their father said from the side. “We have the chance to be a family again, even if it is for the briefest of times.”

Sophia saw him wince, his hand going to his chest. Until he did that, she didn’t understand quite how brief that time might be.

“Is there nothing that can be done?” Lucas asked. Sophia could see him trying to hide what he felt. She didn’t like that; she wanted her brother there, not a shell of him.

“There has to be something,” Kate agreed. “If I still had my powers, I could heal you. If I hadn’t lost them…”

“Then you would still be in thrall to one of the ancient things of our land,” her mother said. “This isn’t your fault, Kate.”

“No, it’s the Dowager’s,” Kate snapped. “Her and her followers. She’s dead, but they’re still living. I’ll find every last one of them.”

“Kate,” Sophia said gently. “This isn’t the time to get angry.”

“Why  aren’t you angrier?” Kate countered. “What’s the point in having all this power if it can’t give us our parents? Why do we have to sacrifice so much all the time?”

Sophia could see that Kate wasn’t just thinking about their parents, but about all the other things that had happened in their lives, all the pain, all the suffering.

“We have to, because sometimes that is what destiny requires of us,” their mother said. “I know you’ve seen glimpses of what is to come, Sophia, and you Lucas. I’ve had a whole life to see it. A time of great power in the world is upon us. I have seen a war, and the way that war turns out will determine the fate of the world.”

“We beat the Dowager,” Sophia said.

“And now the New Army stands on your shores,” her mother said. “The Master of Crows stalks them, killing as he goes.” She turned to Kate. “I’m sorry, darling, but Will is dead.”

Sophia felt the wash of grief and pain flare outwards from her sister like some artillerist’s bomb. She went to hold Kate, and her sister pulled back, didn’t even let Sophia touch her.

“No, it can’t be true, it can’t be right,” she said. “Will… he can’t…”

“I saw it,” their mother said. “I dreamed of Ashton falling, and I saw the moment that he gave his life so that others could escape. He saved Sebastian’s life, sending him on with Violet. He blew up the cannon he was defending, and the Master of Crows barely survived.”

Sophia expected her sister to break down then. Even Kate could only be strong for so long. She even reached out tentatively, mind to mind, but found herself faced with a wall built from white hot anger, so cold that it burned her thoughts to touch it. Kate stood there for what seemed like an eternity before she spoke again.

“How do I kill him?”

Those words had the kind of tightness that came from rage behind them.

“That is a dark path, Kate,” their mother said.

“It’s what should have happened from the start of this,” Kate replied.

Sophia saw her parents look to one another.

“There are things that the three of you need to do to prepare for the battle to come,” their father said.

“I don’t care about them,” Kate replied. “All I care about is making sure that the thing responsible for Will’s death dies!”

“You would need your power to do that,” their mother said. “The pathways to it are still there, but damaged.”

Sophia reached out to put a hand on her sister’s shoulder. This time, Kate let her.

“We’ll find a way to kill him,” she said. “Even without your powers, you’re still my sister, you’re-”

“If I’d had my full power, Will wouldn’t be dead,” Kate said. Sophia saw her look over to their mother. “How do I get them back?”

“There is a place,” their mother said. She bowed her head. “And it fits in with the rest of what I have seen. If you truly want to do this…”

Sophia knew that there wasn’t even a choice now.

“We do,” she said. “We’ll help Kate get back her powers. We’ll defeat the Master of Crows.”

She saw her father shake her head. “This is one thing that you can’t do together. There is too much to do and too little time to do it. The world depends on the tasks you each have now.”

“What tasks?” Sophia asked.

She saw her mother grimace before continuing, briefly sitting back and closing her eyes. “The poison is getting stronger. I had… forgotten it hurt so much.”

“We have to do this,” their father said. He moved beside her, reaching out to take her hand. Almost as soon as they touched, a vision came into Sophia’s mind.

She saw Monthys, the ancestral estate sprawling in the countryside beneath the Mountain Lands. She saw it in a way she hadn’t seen it before though, shimmering layers of force wrapped around it in weavings that were as intricate as they were powerful. They seemed to form a network designed to protect what lay within, and to reach out to connect to the land. Yet there were missing pieces in that network. Dull points stood out, and without those points, Monthys was nothing more than a ruin. Symbols floated over five spots, and as Sophia looked at them, she understood what each meant.

Stone, Ice, Fire, Shadow, Spirit, her mother’s voice whispered to her. Some of the oldest of those with magic believed that these were the things the world is made of, and gave each a home in the world.

“Stonehome and Ishjemme?” Sophia guessed aloud.

And others, her father’s voice said, joining her mother’s. Each holds a heart, a source of power. Morgassa used to hold the place of fire, before its rulers decided that the heart was too valuable to leave in a desert. You will retrieve that, Sophia, and take it to rebuild.

The Ill Ysbryd is a strange place, her mother sent. Things are real and not real there. Lucas must go to retrieve that heart. He will only succeed with help, but must trust enough to go alone.

The place they call Si is more dangerous still, their father sent. I worry for your sister. She will find what she wants, but what then?

The vision broke, or at least, Sophia assumed that it did. It was hard to tell, because magic still seemed to be swirling around the room. She saw the outline of the world below them light up, the same way that the disc Lucas had brought had. They glowed with power, and five points of light seemed to burn themselves through the floor, standing out, even against the rest of it.

Sophia stood up, staring at them. She could make out one burning brightly from her kingdom. Another stood close to it, in the spot where she knew Ishjemme to be. A third was near the middle of the map, clearly centered on the spot where it stood. Two more stood out: one on an island surrounded by coral reefs, another a city in a patch of hills at the midst of a broad plain. Nothing seemed to be within a hundred miles except a river running through it.

“They’re so far,” Sophia said.

Lucas nodded. “It is why we cannot go together. I will go to the place of the spirit, and seek the heart. I will not fail.”

“And I’ll go here,” Kate said, kneeling to jab a finger at Si. “If this has what I need to kill the Master of Crows, I’ll get it, and I’ll bring this heart thing back too.”

“Which leaves me to persuade King Akar of Morgassa,” Sophia said. It didn’t seem as difficult a task somehow, at least until she thought about the way he’d tried to keep them all from this forgotten place. Even the caravan that he had sent to guide them would have led them somewhere else. Put like that, it might be more difficult than Sophia had thought.

“You’ll do it,” Lucas said. “We will succeed.”

“I’ll kill anyone who tries to stop me,” Kate said, her eyes hard.

“Kate-” Sophia began, but her sister shook her head sharply.

“Don’t. I need this. I need to be angry, because if I stop being angry, there’s nothing left. I’m going to do this. I’m going to do everything that we need to do. Besides, it doesn’t sound as if there’s anything nice living in a ‘place of shadows’ does it?”

“I guess not,” Sophia said. She looked around to their parents, hoping for some other piece of advice, or maybe for some help in persuading Kate that there was a better way to do all this than through violence.

They sat there on the couch they shared, perfectly still, eyes closed as the magic worked around them. Sophia felt her breath catch, and she went to them, taking hold of her mother’s shoulder and shaking it.

“Mother, can you hear me? Mother, Father?”

They were both far too still. Even their chests had none of the rise and fall of breathing. Her mother’s skin felt cold to the touch now, the warmth drifting from it along with the magic. How much had they put into this last spell? More to the point, how much of the poison had been able to use it as a link to them? They had shown the three of them where to go, but in doing it… in doing it they’d left themselves open to everything they had shut out for so long.

Her parents were dead.

CHAPTER FIVE

The New Army came forward, and Sebastian knew that there was no way to hold it back without Stonehome’s shield. They hadn’t been able to do it in Ashton, or in any of the other towns of the kingdom, so why would they be able to do it here, in a settlement of a few thousand?

“Because we have to,” Asha said, drawing her blade and a pistol. “We have to hold, or Violet will never grow to be everything we have seen her become.”

Sebastian ignored the part where she seemed to have read his thoughts again. It was enough that she was prepared to help, and that she was there as the first wave of soldiers came in.

Muskets and pistols sounded for that first charge, and it slowed as men fell, scythed down by the hail of lead shot and arrows. It wasn’t enough though; it could never be enough when there was no time in which to reload. A few of the settlement’s warriors got off second shots, from spare weapons or just because they had somehow managed to reload, but the enemy kept coming even as their comrades fell, charging up to the wall that surrounded the village.

Sebastian readied his sword and stepped up to meet the enemy coming for his daughter, thrusting the blade into the throat of the first man to come close, then aiming a backhanded swipe at a second.

He cut men down, and they kept coming, even as he tried to think of ways to save the people who stood around him. He saw the warriors of Stonehome standing side by side with those of the refugees who knew how to fight. They struck out without any kind of overall plan except to keep holding. There was no time for any subtlety or strategy, only the need to stand there and fight.

He felt a hand on his arm and spun, sword raised, only to find Emeline standing there in the midst of the fight.

“We need to get to Violet!” she yelled over the clash of blades and the crackle of magic being used in combat. Around Sebastian, Stonehome’s warriors used powers that made them dozens of times more dangerous than any individual soldier: some of them moved faster than any normal person could have managed, some threw things with impossible strength, while one summoned flames on the clothes of his opponents.

Even with all those abilities from their magic though, even when they could coordinate as fast as a thought and sense every enemy coming at them, there was still only so much that they could do in the face of the sheer numbers coming at them. Sebastian saw a warrior fall, dragged down as the crush of people around him meant that he had nowhere left to dodge. He tried to rush forward to help, but Emeline’s hand was on his arm again.

“There’s nothing that you can do here, Sebastian,” she said. “The defenders don’t need you, but your daughter does.”

Sebastian swallowed. There was no choice to make, not with his daughter in danger. He had to get her to safety.

“Where is she?” he demanded.

“Cora will have headed for our house,” Emeline said. “Hurry, before the whole place is overrun.”

They ran for the small cottage, hurrying past the violence as they went. Sebastian saw a pair of soldiers attacking one of the refugees, and cut one down with his sword, but he didn’t stop. There was no time now to do anything but run. If they didn’t get to Violet soon, it would be too late.

He saw a quartet of soldiers gathered around the open door to the cottage, and roared a challenge as he ran forward. One of the men there turned towards him as Sebastian cut across his throat with the sword he held. Another froze in place with his sword raised, and Sebastian thrust his blade through the man’s chest, releasing it as it stuck there and throwing himself at the third. Sebastian bore him to the ground, dragging a dagger from its sheath for use at such close quarters and stabbing while he clung to the man’s wrist with the other hand. When the soldier went limp, he looked up to see the last of them looming above him, sword raised.

Asha slammed into him from the side, blades sliding into his flesh almost too fast to follow.

“It seems that you were right,” she said. “We need to get Princess Violet out of here.”

Sebastian stared at her as he stood. He wasn’t sure whether Asha was exactly who he would have picked to have by his side in this moment.

“Then you’re an idiot,” she said in answer to his thoughts. “I fight as well as anyone else here, and I will protect her with my life. Her survival is all that matters now.”

Sebastian suspected that she was serious about that, and in any case, there was no time in which to argue. Back on the walls, he could see Vincente trying to marshal a defense, but the men and women there were losing ground step by step.

They burst into the cottage and found another dead soldier on the floor, Cora standing over him with Violet cradled in a sling and a sword in her hand.

“Well done,” Asha said to her, seeming impressed with her almost for the first time.

“We need to get out of here,” she said, not seeming to care about the dead man at her feet. Violet was surprisingly quiet, chewing on a rag dipped in milk.

“How though?” Sebastian wondered aloud as he looked out of the cottage’s window, trying to find a break in the fighting that they could run through. If they could get to horses, they could make a break out onto the moorland, but there were soldiers on every side, and Sebastian could see crows gathering above, no doubt looking for any sign of Violet.

Worse, Sebastian saw the moment when the Master of Crows stepped up onto the walls. Stonehome’s warriors ran at him, and he cut through even them, twisting and turning, sending his crows into their faces, slicing out with his dueling blade. There were men all around him, and he always seemed to know which way to turn. Worse, with the amount of death in the air, his strength was terrifying. A man stepped into his path and was cut clean in half by a chopping blow. Another found himself kicked away, ribcage shattered.

Vincente was there then, and the Master of Crows ducked in time to let the soldiers behind him feel the barking call of his blunderbuss. Vincente’s long butcher’s blade was not as agile as the Master of Crows’ rapier, but he kept it moving, kept him at bay. Asha looked as though she wanted to run forward to him, but instead, Sebastian saw her eyes alight on the stone circle there.

“If we can get to there, I can give us a way out.”

“Asha,” Emeline said. “That won’t work. The spell Endi cast-”

“I’m not planning to stand in the circle,” she said. “We need the heartstone at its core. Just help me do this! I’ll not let Vincente die in vain.”

She ran from the cottage, sprinting from the circle and cutting down enemies as she ran. Emeline ran with her, and Sebastian cursed silently.

“Come on,” he said to Cora. “If Asha has a way out, we have to take it.”

They ran out after Asha and Emeline, heading for the circle. Almost as soon as they emerged, the crows above started to caw, and Sebastian only had to glance round to see the Master of Crows’ eyes on them. The lapse of attention cost the New Army’s general a cut from Vincente’s blade, but it closed almost as soon as he made it, thanks to the power running through him. The two kept fighting, but how much longer could their duel last when there were soldiers closing in on every side?

The answer to that was only a matter of seconds. The Master of Crows left an opening, and Vincente struck again, but his heavier blade stuck in the other man’s flesh, and the Master of Crows smiled cruelly before striking out again and again, stabbing with both his sword and a long dagger.

“Run for the circle!” Sebastian yelled for Cora, and thankfully, amazingly, she obeyed while he turned, levelling his own sword and waiting for the Master of Crows to come for him. The other man loped forward, coat flapping in the wind like wings, his blades out like taloned hands. Sebastian knew that he couldn’t survive more than seconds against something like this, but even seconds would do something to let his child escape.

The Master of Crows closed in on him, Sebastian raised his sword… and then the mist descended.

It fell over the village in a thick wave that Sebastian knew only too well. In it, there was no telling one direction from another, no guessing which direction a foe might lie in. He took a step to the side, avoiding the Master of Crows’ first rush, and then they were both lost to one another, vanished in the mist.

Sebastian hunted through it blindly, not sure if he was looking for his enemy, or for his child or something else. He thought that he saw shadows in the mist, but none came towards him. None found their way through to him.

A hand closed over his arm and Sebastian spun, ready to kill.

“It’s me,” Emeline said. “It’s me, Sebastian. This way!”

She led the way through the mist to a spot where Cora and Asha already set aside two horses. Cora held Violet, while Asha seemed to be holding something clenched in her fist; something that glowed. She briefly opened her hand to reveal a perfectly spherical stone, carved with sigil after sigil, each one flickering across the surface.

“She can’t do this,” Emeline said, awe and fear vying for control in her voice. “She can’t hold the whole mist barrier in place when the Master of Crows is pushing at it, without even the circle.”

“Watch… me…” Asha managed from between gritted teeth. “Stones are just there to contain and focus… this is… easy!”

It really didn’t look easy to Sebastian. If anything, it looked as though the effort of it was slowly burning up through her, devouring her from the inside out.

“I’ll ride with Cora and cover us against being found by our thoughts,” Emeline said. “Sebastian, you’ll have to ride with Asha.”

“Quickly…” Asha said, her eyes closed in concentration. “No time to… waste.”

Sebastian nodded and leapt up. Out in the mist, he could still hear screams and the sounds of violence, but they seemed distant somehow, spread out and unreal.

“I’ll pick a path through them,” Emeline said from in front. “Ride exactly where I say, and don’t stop!”

Sebastian didn’t need the warning. In the mist, he had no hope of finding his way without running into enemies, while Emeline might be able to both find a route between the soldiers and shield them from the Master of Crows talents.

Together, moving as quickly and quietly as their horses would let them, they set off into the mist.

CHAPTER SIX

Sebastian led his horse through the fog, following behind Emeline, Cora and Violet, every step the creature took echoing against the silence of it. Before, there had been the sudden, violent terror of battle, but now there was a different kind of fear pressing in on him: the fear of not knowing.

He didn’t know where the enemies were. He didn’t know how many might be coming at them even now. Emeline was leading the way, using her powers to pick out the men of the New Army, but Sebastian had no way of knowing if some of them would slip through, attacking them from nowhere.

“Trust her,” Asha murmured from behind him. “Emeline will get us through.”

Sebastian could hear the strain in her voice. A glance back showed beads of sweat on her forehead, her hand clasped tight around the heart stone taken from Stonehome.

“Are you all right?” Sebastian asked her. He wasn’t sure what would happen if Asha lost her concentration and the fog around them slipped. If the Master of Crows saw them now…

“I’ll hold,” Asha promised him. Sebastian didn’t even mind that she’d read his mind to do it. “To keep her safe, I’ll hold.”

Her, Violet, his daughter. She was quiet now with Cora, gurgling a little, but not crying or reacting to the violence around them. Sebastian would do anything to keep her safe, but he had to admit that he found it surprising that someone like Asha would do the same.

“With all that she’s destined to be?” Asha said. “I will do all that I can to protect her. I would die to see her safe.”

Sebastian hated the thought that everyone believed his daughter to have some destiny that she had no choice in. Right now though, the fact that Asha would give so much to keep Violet safe was hard to question.

They kept going, the fog obscuring everything around them. Sebastian could just make out Cora and Emeline ahead of his horse, but the others in Stonehome were little more than shadows in the fog, the sounds of the battle muted by it, the screams and the clatter of metal on metal reduced to something distant and unreal.

Then it became far too real as two men stumbled close to them. Both were soldiers of the New Army, dressed in their ochre uniforms, spattered with the blood of the people they’d killed already. They stared up at him and the others, clearly trying to make sense of what they’d just stumbled upon.

Sebastian reacted without thinking, swinging his sword at the first of them. Asha and Emeline needed to concentrate, while Cora was holding Violet. That left him. He hacked down at the closest of the men, catching him before he could raise his sword. He felt the steel cut down through the man’s flesh, breaking through his collarbone and bringing a shriek as the air rushed from his lungs. Blood sprayed, and the man fell, almost dragging Sebastian’s sword from his hand.

The second of the men managed to lift a musket while Sebastian was dragging it clear, and Sebastian saw it levelled at him. He threw himself from the horse, hearing the boom of the weapon echoing through the fog in a way that seemed to fill the space.

He felt the impact of the floor, and for a moment, Sebastian found his sword jarred from his hand. He rolled, and the soldier attacking him jabbed down with a bayonet. Sebastian kicked out, catching the man on the knee, then fell with him, punching and elbowing until he was able to break clear. He grabbed for the sword on the floor, and felt the soldier kick him, stopping him short.

“The Master of Crows will reward me when I bring him all of you,” the soldier said. He lifted his musket, raising the bayonet over Sebastian. “And the best bit is that he doesn’t care if you’re alive or dead.”

Sebastian made another lunge for the sword, and felt his hand close around the grip. He thrust upward blindly, and felt it slide in through flesh. The soldier stood there, looking down at the blade protruding from his torso, then fell back. Sebastian struggled to his feet.

“Hurry!” Emeline called. “They’re coming closer. They must have heard the fight.”

Sebastian dragged himself over to the horse and mounted it.

“We’re going to have to move quickly,” Emeline said. “Stay close.”

Sebastian saw her heel her horse forward, and now he had to ride hard to keep up with the twists and turns that she took. Emeline had the advantage of knowing where the minds of the New Army were; he could only follow her using all the riding skills that had been drilled into a royal prince since he was old enough to get on a horse at all.

The stone wall to Stonehome lay ahead, and Sebastian saw Emeline and Cora’s horse leap it, its hooves clipping the top.

“Hold on!” Sebastian called out to Asha, before kicking their mount into its own jump. It leapt, and Sebastian felt it knock stones from the top of the wall, then had to fight for control as it landed and scrambled for purchase in the ditch beyond. Somehow it kept its footing, and then they were out onto the moor beyond the settlement.

“Slowly now,” Emeline called from in front of Sebastian. It took another moment or two to bring her into view. “Cora, keep Violet quiet.”

They went from running to creeping along, and the worst part was that Sebastian couldn’t even see why. He knew that there had to be soldiers out there guarding the way, maybe even looking for them now, but he didn’t know where they were. All he could do was keep his sword ready and hope that none of the shadows they saw hints of in the mist looked towards them.

How long did they keep going like that for? Hours, perhaps? It was impossible to tell, when the mist obscured even the passage of the sun across the sky, and the tension Sebastian felt stretched every moment out into something like a lifetime. They walked their horses through what had to be the heart of the New Army’s lines, out onto the moors, pushing forward a step at a time.

“He’s fighting it,” Asha said behind Sebastian. “His birds are trying… to clear away… the fog.”

She sounded like someone trying to hold a door closed against an army.

“You have to hold on,” Sebastian said. “Is there anything I can do to help?”

Asha laughed. “Nothing… you can do. But I’ll hold… for her.”

She didn’t say anything else as Sebastian rode with her behind him, just kept a grip on his waist with one hand, and the glowing heart stone extended in her other. When her grip on his waist started to weaken, Sebastian caught hold of her arm, keeping her in place while their horses trudged across the moor.

After another hour, as they were working their way around a patch of peat that was too soft to hold their weight. Asha tumbled from the saddle.

Sebastian stopped and jumped down beside her, while Emeline and Cora dismounted ahead of them, rushing back to them with Violet. Sebastian knelt beside Asha, offering her a sip of water from his water bottle. She barely responded.

“Not… there… yet,” she murmured.

“You’ve done more than enough,” Sebastian said. “We’re safe thanks to you.”

“Violet… is…”

She tailed off, and Sebastian saw the moment when the heart stone of Stonehome went dull. He felt at her neck, but there was no pulse there, while around them, the fog started to thin as the power Asha had been putting in fell away.

“She’s dead,” Sebastian said, not quite able to summon sorrow for someone who had as much anger and hate in her as Asha, but able to feel gratitude and respect for all that she had done, at least.

“She can’t be,” Emeline said. “Asha wouldn’t put so much of herself into the stone that it killed her. She wouldn’t give up everything for us. For anyone.”

Sebastian looked over to his daughter and knew that wasn’t true. Asha had given everything to make sure that Violet would be safe. She’d burnt herself to an empty husk to maintain the magic needed to protect his daughter, and all for something she’d seen in a vision. Sebastian didn’t know if that was admirable or terrifying, right then.

“She hated everyone like us,” Cora said, “but she gave her life for us.”

“I just hope it will be enough,” Sebastian said as the fog continued to lift. They were far enough from Stonehome now that he couldn’t see any sign of the Master of Crows’ men, but he knew how little that could mean when every bird on the horizon could be reporting to him.

“I can make sure,” Emeline said, starting to reach out for the stone. “If Asha can do it, then I-”

Sebastian saw Cora’s hand close over her wrist. “Don’t you dare. Not if it will kill you.”

Sebastian could only agree. “If I’d known that Asha would really keep going until this killed her, I would have stopped her too. As it is, this is too dangerous.”

He didn’t risk picking the stone up with bare fingers. Instead, he took a pouch from his belt and scooped it inside, shutting it away from the world. It was far too powerful to leave for the Master of Crows.

“Do we bury her?” Cora asked, in a slightly shaken voice, holding Violet to her as if to protect the baby from the sight of the body.

“There’s no time,” Sebastian said, hating that he had to say it. He didn’t want to leave Asha for the crows. He looked over at the section of peat bog. “Emeline, give me a hand with her.”

He heard Emeline sigh. “It doesn’t seem like a respectful end.”

“It’s a better one than letting the Master of Crows feast on her power,” Sebastian said. “And I think right now she would want us to take the fastest way. Escaping is the best way to honor her.”

Emeline nodded at that. “I guess so.”

Between the two of them, they lifted Asha’s body, laying it in the soft peat, watching as her dead weight started to pull her down through it. Sebastian waited until she disappeared from sight, thinking of the times that she’d helped to save Ashton and how much he owed her for saving his daughter now.

“We need to go,” Emeline said at last. “I’m keeping us hidden from magic at least, but that won’t do anything about crows or soldiers. We need to hurry.”

Sebastian nodded. “To Monthys.”

“To Monthys,” Emeline agreed.

Sebastian wasn’t sure what they would find once they got there. He just hoped that it was something, anything that would let them survive the Master of Crows.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Sophia didn’t know what to do, what to say. All this time, she’d been searching for her parents, and in the briefest of spaces, she had both found them and lost them forever. She could see Kate and Lucas just as frozen with the shock of their deaths, neither moving, neither giving any sign that they had more of an idea of what to do than Sophia did.

The grief came slowly, as if it took that long just for her to start to believe that any of this was happening.

“I can’t…” Kate said beside her. “I don’t know what to do.”

“I know,” Sophia said, and held onto her.

Lucas joined her, and for what had to be the first time since she’d met him, Sophia saw tears falling down his cheeks.

“If I had never set out to find them, none of this would have happened,” he said. “The poison wouldn’t have gotten in here.”

“But we would never have met them, or you,” Sophia said. She couldn’t imagine that. A world where she had never met her brother seemed completely inconceivable to her.

Even so, she could feel what her brother and sister were feeling. In their grief, whatever protections they might normally have put around themselves came down and all of their grief wrapped together, in a tangle that held Kate’s anger, Lucas’ sense of mystery, and her own wishes that she could have known her parents years before this. Above all, there was the deep well of sadness that seemed to fill the world for them while they stood there.

They were still standing there when figures in rainbow silks stepped into their parents’ home and moved to the spot where they still sat curled against one another.

“Who are you?” Sophia demanded. Kate was more direct, moving between them and her parents.

“We mean no harm,” a woman with them said. She was shorter than Sophia, with dark hair and mid-brown skin. “I am Aia. Lady Christina and Lord Alfred foresaw this moment, and they made arrangements. If you need more time here, we will wait, but we were told to say…” She paused. “I was told to say that they loved you very much, but that your tasks cannot wait, even for grief. They believe… believed in you, and-” She stopped as Kate’s sword leapt from its scabbard.

“Kate,” Sophia said gently. “I’m hurting too, but she’s just trying to say what our parents couldn’t.”

“I don’t want to hear it,” Kate shot back. Sophia could feel just how much she was hurting right then, but she saw Kate pull back, straighten up, prepare herself. “All right. Let’s do this. The sooner we start, the sooner I can kill the scum responsible for so much of all this.”

She gets angry so she doesn’t have to feel, Lucas sent to Sophia.

Sophia wished it were that simple. She suspected that Kate got angry because in the House of the Unclaimed, any feelings had been a weakness to be exploited. Anger filled the spaces where there weren’t other things.

“Preparations have been made for you,” Aia said. “If you are truly ready to go-”

“We are,” Kate said, in a tone that brooked no disagreement.

A part of Sophia wished that she could stay and take part in whatever funeral or remembrance there was, but she knew that Kate wouldn’t stay. More than that, her parents’ message had made it sound as though there was no time. Whatever was happening out in the world, it seemed that they had to act fast, whatever they felt.

The funeral for your parents will be a thing of great honor, Aia sent to Sophia, catching her a little by surprise.

“You have magic?” Sophia asked.

“Of course,” she said. “This is the Forgotten City. Please, all of you, follow me to the gate.”

She turned, and Sophia fell into step with her, Sienne padding along by her side. Sophia ran her hands through the forest cat’s fur, trying to hold back the sobs that threatened to overwhelm her even now. She needed to be strong, for her sister, for her brother, for the world.

Just remember that we are there for you too, Lucas sent to her.

“Not for long,” Sophia said, and that hurt almost as much as the loss of her parents had. They had finally come together for the journey to the Forgotten City, and now they would have to split apart to find the three heart stones.

Sophia followed Aia out through the city, to the spot where the gate stood. Crowds lined the way now, and they looked subdued, as though they had heard the news of her parents’ death. They stood with heads bowed for the procession, and it was all Sophia could do to keep going.

“At least we’ll have the journey back to Morgassa together,” Lucas said.

Aia shook her head. “The gate will take us where we need to go. There is no need to delay.”

Lucas’ hand on Sophia’s shoulder was the only thing that kept her from tears then. It meant that it took her a moment to realize what Aia had just said.

“Us?” Sophia said.

Aia nodded, and a series of figures came forward from the crowd. There were eleven of them, men and women both, all wearing armor that looked strangely old fashioned and that shone golden in the sun. The armor covered every inch of them, and they carried a strange assortment of weaponry, as if each had picked the one that they were most skilled in. There were spears and curved swords, straight blades, throwing knives and metal staffs, but curiously no muskets or bows.

One came forward with another set of golden armor, and Aia proceeded to lock each piece into place, until she was as heavily protected as the rest, a double ended spear now resting in her hand.

“Your parents told us what is happening in the world,” Aia said. “There are those who argued that it does not touch us, but some events are so great that they ripple through even here.”

She said it loudly enough that Sophia suspected that it was aimed at some of those still watching in the crowd.

Aia bowed. “We twelve are some of the Forgotten City’s strongest. We are warriors, and we have the magic of all here. We are at your service, Sophia. We will do all that is needed to protect you.”

Sophia wasn’t sure what to make of that. Too much was happening, too quickly.

Aia reached out a hand to place it on her shoulder. “You do not need to say anything to us. Say your farewells to your siblings. I will prepare the gate.”

Sophia turned to Lucas and Kate.

“I… I hadn’t expected any of this,” she said. “I don’t want to lose either of you, not now.”

“It’s what happens,” Kate said. “The world just rips us apart again and again.”

“But we will find each other once more,” Lucas promised. “I found you both once; I can do it again. I will go to this place of the spirit, and Kate, you will recover your strength in the place of shadows. We will do this.”

He hugged Sophia, then Kate, holding onto them for long seconds at a time.

“The gate is prepared for you,” Aia said, and Lucas stepped up to it. Sophia felt his nerves, and his grief, and his need to do all that was required of him. Then he stepped through and was gone.

“It will be ready for you in a moment,” Aia said to Kate. Kate didn’t reply.

“Kate,” Sophia said, taking her sister’s arms. “Are you ok?”

“No, I’m not ok,” Kate said. “My parents are dead, and Will is dead, and now we have to go off on some stupid quest to stop the big evil thing that’s going to kill the whole kingdom, and I just want it to stop!”

“You don’t have to do this,” Sophia said. “You could stay here, or come with me, or-”

“No,” Kate said, shaking her head. “I have to do this. I want to be useful, and there are people I’m going to kill for what they’ve done!”

She looked over to Aia, and barely waited for her to nod before leaping through the gateway.

That just left Sophia.

“The gateway will bring us out in Morgassa,” Aia said. “When you are ready, we will go, and seek the fire heart stone that was taken from our city.”

Ready. When would she be ready to leave behind the place where her parents had died? When would she be ready to do any of this? Since it all started, it had felt as though she had been struggling to catch up. The only way to get back to her child though was to finish this. She needed to find the stone in Morgassa just to make things safe for her daughter.

She looked down at Sienne. “Are you ready?” she asked the forest cat, who twined about her legs without answering. “I guess I’m ready.”

She stepped up in front of the gate. Through it, she could see a scene that she recognized as the marketplace of Morgassa. She could even make out the familiar features of High Merchant N’ka in one corner, talking to a selection of lesser merchants and porters.

“We will follow as soon as you step through,” Aia promised.

Sophia stood there a moment longer, then stepped through, into the sunlight of Morgassa. Dozens of pairs of eyes turned to look at her. Sienne stalked through beside her, drawing yet more stares. It was still easy to spot the moment when a dozen golden armored warriors stepped through behind her though, because everyone there stared in awe that Sophia could feel rolling from their minds.

She glanced around to see the gate disappearing, the archway there shimmering out of existence like a mirage. Sophia had half expected that to happen. It didn’t matter. What mattered was getting back to her daughter.

First though, she had to find the heart stone.

Sophia moved through the marketplace, following a familiar set of thoughts until she found High Merchant N’ka again. He was piling coins into a bag hurriedly, looking around as though trying to calculate just how quickly he could get out of there.

“High Merchant N’ka,” Sophia said, “it’s good to see you again.”

“And you too, Queen Sophia,” he said, with a smile that didn’t even try to look real.

“Especially good since I need your help,” Sophia continued. “Take me to see King Akar. Now.”

CHAPTER EIGHT

Sophia suspected that, while High Merchant N’ka’s hurried words to the palace guards might have played some role in them quickly stepping aside for her retinue, it probably had more to do with the golden armored figures who walked with her. With every step she took, servants stared at her and the others as though wondering what was happening, and whispers followed every step they took.

“They have heard legends of the warriors of the Forgotten City,” Aia murmured. “They think that our arrival means freedom for them, and the fall of King Akar.”

“I’m not here to start a fight,” Sophia said. Her fingers brushed Sienne’s fur. “We will defend ourselves if we’re attacked, but this isn’t the place for more.”

“Some of them are thinking that this is foretold,” Aia said.

Sophia shook her head. “What we decide still matters. Come on, N’ka is getting ahead of us.”

They kept marching through the palace, until they reached the throne room that Sophia recognized from her last visit. The scene she saw there shocked her into immobility.

Bodies sat atop spikes, some so recently impaled that Sophia could still see them moving, the people there dying even as she watched. They weren’t capable of crying for help anymore, but Sophia could still hear their pleas in her mind, slowly fading as their lives did. The worst part of it was that Sophia recognized the people there. She had seen their faces and felt their minds before, on the journey to the Forgotten City. It made no sense though. That had only been hours ago.

Time runs differently on each side of the gate, Aia sent. It has been longer than you think.

Even so, they must have turned around straight away when they realized that she and her siblings had gone off on their own, and their reward for reporting back had been… this. So many had been killed there, and Sophia could see Lani the interpreter held between two guards, waiting for the next stake. She seemed to be one of the last still living.

King Akar sat at the heart of it all, seeming to be enjoying the cruelty of it. Sophia’s heart fell at just how much she had misjudged him.

“You tricked me,” she said as she came forward.

Almost as soon as her dozen warriors stepped into the throne room, soldiers armed with spears and muskets came into the room from every side. There must have been thirty of them, easily enough to overwhelm twelve warriors.

King Akar spoke, and Aia translated beside Sophia.

“I acted to protect my kingdom,” King Akar said. “I am the king here, and you thought that you could go through my lands, taking what you wanted?”

“Why have you killed all of these people?” Sophia demanded, gesturing to the gallery of corpses arranged around the throne room. “They were your subjects.”

“As you say, they were mine, and they failed me,” King Akar said, through Aia. “They were to  keep you from wandering, show you the ruins of our Forgotten City safely, and make sure that you stole nothing.”

“You weren’t even going to show us the true Forgotten City, were you?” Sophia demanded.

“I am not sure that he knows where it is,” Aia said beside her. “It wasn’t this king who took the heart stone from us. Perhaps one of his ancestors. He’d have shown you the spot where a trader city ran before our old gates, I imagine, pretended it was real.”

“What do you know of our kingdom’s Forgotten City?” King Akar demanded.

Sophia answered that. “Aia and the others are from it; from the place where my parents actually hid. You’ve tried to stop me at every turn, King Akar. You tried to deny me, and divert me, and spy on me. I was willing to forgive that when I thought that you genuinely cared about your kingdom, but this?”

She returned her attention to the massacre there. She couldn’t imagine how a ruler could do that to his own people, and the fact that he’d done it here in the hall made it seem as though he enjoyed it. Had Sophia misjudged him that much?

King Akar said something that made Aia pause. “I am the king here; no one stands higher. No one decides life or death here but me, appointed by the gods! Who are you to judge me?”

Sophia paused, trying to be diplomatic about it. This was a different land, with different ways.

“I am still the queen of my own kingdom,” she said. “I would hate for there to be anything but friendship between our two lands. We have much to offer one another.”

“Perhaps,” King Akar said.

It wasn’t much, but it was at least a starting point.

“And I would like this to stop, as a gesture of friendship,” Sophia said, waiting for Aia to translate. “Your people did not fail you; my siblings and I slipped away from them. We are hard to stop.”

“I have heard stories of some of the things you did on the way,” King Akar said. “They seemed fanciful. You claim that you found the Forgotten City?”

“The true Forgotten City,” Sophia said, mindful of what Aia had said.

“And you found your parents?” he asked, through Aia.

That brought a fresh wave of hurt. It was all too recent, the wounds of their deaths too fresh. Sophia wished that they could have stayed longer, seen them buried with honor.

You honor them by being here, Aia sent.

“My parents died while I was in the city,” Sophia said.

“I am sorry to hear that,” King Akar said. Sophia doubted that he was sincere.

“Not before they gave me and my siblings a task,” Sophia said. “They said that a great evil is coming, and that to protect against it, we must gather stones from five homes of the elements. The Forgotten City once possessed the heart stone of fire, but now, I’m told that it is in your hands.”

King Akar looked shocked for a moment, then reached up onto his crown, among the diamonds there, drawing a ruby-like stone. It seemed to have been carved with scenes of the desert, so intricately that Sophia suspected someone could spend hours looking at them and still not see them all.

He and Aia had a brief exchange that Sophia couldn’t understand. King Akar laughed and stood, towering over her and Sophia.

“And how do I know that these dozen are what they claim to be?” Aia translated when he spoke. “I think it wouldn’t take much to paint some armor gold. I’m supposed to give away my kingdom’s greatest treasure because of that?”

King Akar fell silent for several seconds. In them, Sophia reached out for his mind. What she saw made her fists clench. This was a man who had anger about the past, and pride about keeping his kingdom free, whose kingdom had been attacked by the Dowager’s kingdom, and others like it. At the same time, there was no denying that this was a cruel man, who ruled his people with an iron fist. He was picturing what it would be like to take Sophia as his captive, and to watch the deaths of the others.

“For the sake of friendship between our kingdoms,” Sophia said, “I am not asking for you to give me a ruby; I am asking you to play your part in staving off what is to come. Come with us to do it. Place the stone where it should be. Bring your army, and help us to fight.”

He paused for a moment, and then spoke in the language of the Dowager’s kingdom, with no need for a translator.

“You have asked me two things for the sake of friendship today,” he said. “I will grant you one. In return for trading rights in your kingdom, I will travel with you, and use my stone as it must be used. My people will see me as the hero that I am.”

Sophia’s brief moment of elation was cut short by the memory of what the other thing she had asked was.

“I asked you to stop the killing; to spare Lani,” she said.

“Is that the girl’s name?” King Akar said. She saw him shrug. “She failed me. You will stand by and watch her execution, and then we will be allies, yes?”

Sophia could see his eyes tracking hers. Looking into his mind, she could see that he was waiting for her to acquiesce, or to be soft hearted enough to give up the stone for the sake of one servant. Or, better yet, to give him an excuse to seize her and her followers, confident in his thirty hardened and trained royal guards…

If she hadn’t been grieving, Sophia might have thought of some subtle way around it all; she might have found a way to persuade the king with words or with magic. She might have been able to push down her own disgust at the things he planned to do if she and her followers offered any resistance. She might have been able to ignore the fact that he was enjoying this.

“I’m going to give you one chance,” she said. She held out a hand. “Hand over the stone. Release Lani. Do that, right now, and you get to live.”

He laughed at that, laughed long and loud. “I’m going to enjoy keeping you in chains.”

Sophia looked down at Sienne. “Kill him.”

The forest cat leapt forward with a snarl, fangs and claws tearing at the ruler. The thirty men surrounding them leapt to the attack, but the dozen golden armored warriors moved to meet them, faster than any normal person could have moved. Their armor looked weak and ornamental, heavy and unwieldly, but it deflected musket shots and seemed to leave them free to dance around sword strokes.

In reply, their weapons exacted a terrible toll.

They cut in every direction with their assortment of weaponry, moving ahead of every attack as if they had seen it coming, striking back with enough force to sever limbs. Sophia stood as the still heart of it all, perfectly poised while blades flew in every direction around her and blood sprayed. She saw a soldier running at Aia’s exposed back, and sent out a flicker of power to wrap around the man’s mind to stun him. Aia spun towards him and cut him down smoothly.

The battle lasted only seconds, each heartbeat seeming to bring a fresh moment of violence. One beat, and a man was being skewered by a spear, another, and one of the dozen with a curved axe was deflecting a sword blow. A golden armored warrior kicked away a foe. Another ducked under the sweep of a sword and gutted her opponent in one smooth movement. Perhaps none of them was quite a match for Lucas, or for Kate at her most deadly, but each was as dangerous as anyone else Sophia had ever seen.

In less time than it took to make sense of it all, thirty bodies lay on the ground. King Akar sat in front of his throne, wounded in a hundred places, holding out the stone as if it might shield him.

“Here, take it!” he yelled. “Take it, you demon, and let me live!”

Sophia reached out to take the stone, plucking it from his grasp easily. She reached into his mind too. Even now, he was still thinking of how many more men he might be able to call, how even a dozen warriors like this might not be able to stand against them.

“There is still a spear without an occupant,” Sophia said.

“What? No, you can’t!”

“I can,” Sophia said. “I was willing to be fair with you, and now… now I am still being fair with you.”

She reached out, clamping her power around his mind, cutting him off from his body so that he wouldn’t feel it as her warriors lifted him and plunged him down onto the last of the spears there. She saw Lani watching in terror from the side.

“You have nothing to fear from me,” she promised, holding out a hand for the translator to come to her. “Good. Now, we should go. Something tells me that we just outstayed our welcome in Morgassa.”

CHAPTER NINE

Lucas stepped through the gateway, feeling a shift in the pressure of the air as he moved from one place to another. His feet touched rock, and he had to take a moment to catch his balance. He turned, and saw the gateway he had stepped through shimmer and fade, leaving nothing behind but the arch of two ancient looking trees that appeared to have been twisted together while still alive.

Looking around, he could see that he was on an island, ocean visible in every direction that he looked. That didn’t bother him; he had trekked across half the world to find his sisters, and had succeeded in finding places on all kinds of boats to do it. Lucas could make his way across another ocean to get back to them.

What bothered him more was the sheer strangeness of the island on which he found himself. It seemed quiet and empty, warm but largely devoid of animal life, only strips of silk and paper hanging from the occasional trees hinting that there had ever been more.

In spite of that, every sense he had assured him that this was a busy place, filled with creatures. His ears caught snippets of roars and conversations, the chirp of birds and the sounds of small animals. His eyes assured him that there was movement on the edges of his vision every time he turned his head. His skin said that every so often something or someone was brushing against him, darting in and away.

He opened himself up to those sensations, reaching out with the part that could touch minds. There were definitely other minds there: hundreds, perhaps thousands of them.

Where are you? Lucas asked anything that would listen.

We’re right here, silly.

It sounded like a child’s voice, but Lucas couldn’t find it, so that it felt like one of the hiding games Official Ko’s servants had played with him in the palace when he was young. Not knowing what else to do, he went over to the nearest of the trees, examining one of the papers hanging down. There were marks on it that looked faintly similar to Old Chorit, which was just one of the scripts he’d had to learn from his tutors, and which he struggled to recall now. To get a better view of it, Lucas reached out to hold it and stop it flapping in the wind.

He was standing in a corn field that seemed to extend into the distance, with a house further off in it, and birds flying overhead. There were scarecrows in the field, but strangely, they seemed to be working the crops, not hanging inanimate on posts. One raised a straw filled hand in greeting…

Lucas’ hand slipped from the paper, and the image was gone.

“What is this place?” he wondered aloud. Again, there was the sense of laughter just on the edge of hearing.

As an experiment, he went to another tree, and touched one of the strips of silk there. Instantly, Lucas found himself in the midst of a tree lined valley, where spider-like creatures were clambering down into it. Lucas reached for his swords, and the action of reaching meant that he let go of his grip on the silk. Once again, he found himself standing alone on the island. A child’s laughter sounded, close enough that Lucas looked around sharply, but there was no one there.

Where are you? Lucas sent on instinct.

Right here, silly, the child replied, and Lucas recognized it as the same one who had contacted him before.

How do I find you? Lucas asked.

You just have to learn to look properly. My mother taught me how to look when I was just little, and you’re a grown up. Why do you keep looking at places but not going in?

Going in? Lucas asked. The child made it seem as if the scenes he saw were real places that he could enter, and not just images destined to vanish as soon as he let go of whatever scrap tethered them to the world.

You don’t know how to go in either? the child asked. You’re strange.

He was the strange one? Of course, here, he probably was. Lucas was sure now that there was a whole island, a whole world maybe, just out of reach, and that the only thing stopping him from connecting to it was his own mind.

You should come to the village, the child sent.

And how do I do that Lucas asked.

Just follow me!

He had the sensation of movement away to his left, and followed that sensation, trusting his instincts. He had the sense of more people around him now, as if he were in the middle of a thriving settlement, even though he couldn’t see any of those there. There was a tree ahead with just one cloth scrap tied to it, in a broad white bow wrapped around it. Lucas reached out to touch it…

He was standing in the middle of a village square, with a small girl standing in front of him, probably no more than five years old.

“My mummy says you have to con-cen-trate,” the girl said, screwing up her features in a pantomime of it. “You have to make this world more real than the one you start in.”

Lucas suspected that was easier said than done, but he wasn’t about to let himself be defeated. He focused on the village around him, trying to take in its details. He could feel his body, and he tried to focus on his breathing, the way Official Ko had showed him-

“Wrong, silly,” the little girl said. “You’ve got to forget about the other place. Think about this one.”

Lucas did his best, applying the same kind of concentration to the world around him, focusing on the way the wooden houses there fit together, and the feel of the wind in the square on his skin. He focused on the dirt there in the village square and picked some up in his hand, concentrating on the feel of it there…

The world seemed to snap into focus, and somehow Lucas knew that he had entered the place he had only seen before.

“It took you long enough.”

Lucas looked at the spot where the little girl had been, and now there was a woman of perhaps twenty standing there, wearing clothes that were simple in their manufacture, but that clearly had time and effort lavished over them. Dark hair spilled down her back, and deep brown eyes looked him up and down with an amused expression.

“I take it that there never was a child?” Lucas asked.

“Oh, there was,” the woman said. “Just not for some years now. I find that people trust that form more, and I like to find out what people are like before they see me as I am. I am Elanora, and you… you are here because the world needs you to find something that we hid a long time ago.”

Lucas nodded. “I’m seeking a stone.”

“One of several,” Elanora said. “Yes, we know. We know what is happening here, probably as well as you do. Probably better than you do. Spirit sees more than flesh, after all.”

“So you’re all just spirit here?” Lucas asked.

“Just?” Elanora asked, looking faintly insulted. “How would you feel if I said that you were just meat, Lucas Danse?”

“I’m sorry,” Lucas said. “Would it be better to say that you do not have a physical form?”

“A little,” Elanora said. “We can still touch the world when it pleases us; you can still be hurt here, warrior, but we are not as you are. We will be harder for you to hurt. You will have to understand that if you’re going to find what you’re looking for.”

Lucas was a little taken aback by how easily this spirit woman seemed to accept what he was there for.

“I half expected that whoever had the stones would not wish to part with them,” Lucas said.

“Oh, we had those arguments when we first saw all this,” Elanora said. “But we were only ever custodians, and this is right for the world. Of course, just because we say that in the village doesn’t mean that it will be easy. The stone was put in a safe place, several layers deep.”

“Layers?” Lucas asked.

Elanora beckoned him forward, leading the way to where another scrap of cloth hung from another tree.

“The village is one step removed from your world. One layer. In each, there may be ways through to another, and another, going deeper and shallower, further away, or further back. A man who goes too far might never find his way back to the island.”

That thought frightened Lucas. It wasn’t a death with any honor to it, wasn’t a warrior’s death. More importantly, it would mean that he would never see his sisters again. It would mean that Sophia and Kate would never be able to stand against the Master of Crows.

“I need to find my way to the stone,” Lucas said.

“I know,” Elanora replied. “And I might be persuaded to help you.”

“Persuaded how?” Lucas asked. He thought that the people there had already agreed among themselves to help.

Before he could react to it, she kissed him. It was a brief, almost ghost light kiss, but as Elanora pulled back, Lucas felt something being pulled with her.

“What are you doing?” Lucas asked.

“Some of your kind have a taste for connecting to the spirit,” she said. “I like to connect to the material. A little taste of reality, and you do taste real, Lucas. Promise me another kiss, a real one, when we’re done and I’ll help you find your way.”

Lucas didn’t know what to say to that. He was still reeling from the effects of the first kiss. Still, if that was all it would take to find what they were looking for, there were definitely worse fates.

“All right,” he said. “I agree.”

“Don’t sound so serious, Lucas,” she said with a smile. “I like you. I have done since the moment we saw that you were coming here.”

Lucas wasn’t sure what to say to that. He’d seen how happy Kate and Sophia were with the people who loved them, but he’d never thought anyone would look at him the same way. He was just a figure in the background, silent and not a part of events.

“Come with me,” Elanora said, reaching out a hand for his. It felt strangely solid. “I’ll show you the way.”

She led the way to the corner of a house. One of the strips of silk dangled there, high enough that no one would touch it by accident.

“This is the first step,” she said. “On the other side, you need to believe where you are fast, and we need to run, because it’s… not a pleasant path. Are you ready?”

Lucas tried to take stock, but how could he hope to prepare for something like this? He wasn’t sure if his weapons would help him here, or if his powers would. He wasn’t sure where he was going, or what he would be facing. On the other hand, if this was the only way to get the spirit stone, then there was only one answer.

“I’m ready,” he said.

CHAPTER TEN

Kate stepped through the gate, a part of her hoping that she could somehow leave everything that she was feeling behind as she did it: that she could somehow bundle up all the grief and anger and hatred and abandon it behind her the way… the way that her parents had abandoned her.

“No,” she told herself. “I won’t think like that. I won’t.”

It was so hard not to though, because the grief was almost overwhelming. Grief for her parents, and not just because they were gone but because they had never been there. Kate didn’t have the early memories that Sophia did. She had glimpses of her parents in visions, but now, the only real memory she had of them was of their death.

Now here she was in a place that looked as though it was made of black glass, fraught with jagged edges and spurts of flame, shadows writhing in places that Kate suspected that they shouldn’t have been. It reminded Kate of the way she felt right then.

“I have to find the stone,” Kate reminded herself. “I have to be strong enough again.”

If she was strong again, she could protect the people she loved. She could protect her sister, and her brother, Violet, and Will…

Fresh pain came as she thought of what her parents had said: that Will was gone, killed in the violence that the Master of Crows had brought to Ashton, killed so that everyone else could get away. Kate would have sacrificed every one of them just for one more moment with him…

“Not Violet,” Kate said, feeling a wave of disgust at that thought. She just… she wished that Sophia were here, and her parents, anyone who might understand the sheer pain of it all right then.

Kate shook her head. She had to focus. She had to be strong again so that no one else she cared about died. Only one more person was going to die, and that was the Master of Crows.

This place was… she couldn’t make sense of what it was. It didn’t look like a place that anyone could live, and yet she could see signs of people in the distance, in brittle looking towers and houses of black marble. People moved between them in silence, wearing dull grey and black robes that reminded Kate far too much of the kind of thing the nuns back in the House of the Unclaimed might have worn. A part of Kate wanted to avoid all of them, yet she knew that even on an island, there was no way that she could simply search every inch of it. She had to hope that the people there would be able to help her find what she was looking for.

If any of them tried to stop her, they would die for it.

Kate headed down towards the settlement, her feet picking their way over the jagged rocks. She kept her eyes on the ground, on the shadows around her, on the creatures that flew through the air, furred and scaled in equal measure. Some of the shadows seemed to shift, reaching for her with tendril like fingers. Kate stepped aside from them and kept going.

A man in dark clothing stood ahead of her, apparently scavenging for mushrooms in the shadows. He looked up as Kate approached, and there must have been something about the way that she did it that gave away the kind of thoughts she was having right then, because he took a step back, hands raised.

“I’m looking for the shadow stone,” Kate said. It was hard even to form the words right then. Why was she doing this when she should have been grieving?

Her hand rested on her sword, and her thoughts reached out towards his. In a place like this, she’d half expected everyone who lived there to be evil, or at least uncaring. Maybe she’d even hoped that they would be, so that there would be nothing to stop her from sating some of the anger that rose up in her. Instead, she just heard the kind of thoughts that any peasant outside Ashton or Ishjemme might have had.

“I don’t know where you’d find that,” he said. “That’s the watchers’ business.”

“Where do I find the watchers?” Kate asked.

The man pointed. Kate nodded, and she couldn’t work out then if it was acknowledgement, or thanks, or something else. Instead, she started to stumble her way down towards the settlement.

It was as somber as she felt. There were processions in the street that seemed to involve icons that cast shadows on the ground that shifted and changed while Kate watched. They seemed to be part of some larger ceremony, heading towards a kind of altar at the heart of a circle of columns whose shadows intersected upon it. Robed figures stood there, overseeing the ceremony, and Kate couldn’t be sure exactly what was involved in it. The trappings made it look as though it should be something dark, something to be stopped, but so far, there was no sign of blood, or death, or anything else to give her a reason to.

Maybe at another time, Kate might have waited for it to be over before she did anything. Then again, maybe not. She started forward towards the altar, determined to demand answers. The sooner she did that, the sooner she could get what she needed to kill the Master of Crows.

A hand came out of the shadows and settled on her arm.

Kate spun, sword half out of its sheath before she knew what she was doing. A woman stood there, robed like the others, with almost ghostly pale skin that stood out against the shadows where it wasn’t covered by her robes.

“You’d better let me go,” Kate said. “I need answers.”

“You need more than that,” the woman said. She smiled gently. “There are all kinds of shadows in this world. I can see the one that’s hanging over you. I’m Lisare.”

“Kate.” Even saying her name like that was hard. “What do you mean, there’s a shadow over me?”

“People think that this is a place of evil,” Lisare said. “They think that because it is a place of shadows and death, then it must be. We look into the darkness, so that we can guide people through it. What do you need to be guided through, Kate?”

“I…” Kate was about to tell the woman that there was nothing she needed, but she couldn’t say it. It wasn’t the truth. It wasn’t even close to it. “People I love are dying. My parents… I didn’t even get to say goodbye properly. The man I love… loved, they tell me he’s dead too, and I’m stuck out here. I can’t even protect the people I care about.”

She saw Lisare nod. “It’s hard. It’s hard feeling helpless. It’s hard when everything around you is dark, and you don’t know the best way to tread.”

Anger flared up in Kate at that, because it touched far too close to everything that she felt.

“You don’t know anything about me,” she said.

“I wasn’t claiming to,” Lisare said. She nodded to one of the buildings close by. “Come inside, away from the rest of it. Tell me what it is you need. There are deaths to be commemorated out here.”

She made it sound so reasonable that Kate should do what she suggested that it was almost easier to go along with her than to stand there. She was just too numb to think of doing anything else. She followed Lisare into the building, which had furniture that seemed to be made from onyx and bone, and shades that cut out the sunlight.

“Tell me about the people you’ve lost,” Lisare said.

Kate wanted to. She wanted nothing more than to tell Lisare all about her parents, and all the others who had died in the days since she had left the House of the Unclaimed. She wanted to tell her about the ones who had died at her hands, and the ones who had died in the wars she hadn’t been able to stop. There had been her cousins, so many of the people of Ashton, the soldiers she had fought.

If that had been all of it, she might even have told Lisare about it. Will though… she didn’t even have the words to talk about that pain. Just the thought of it felt as though her heart was being ripped out of her chest. It wasn’t something she could tell this stranger about. It wasn’t even what she was here for. It wasn’t the point of all of it.

“I need to be strong,” Kate said. “I used to be strong. I used to be strong enough to protect people. I’ve lost so much.”

“All those people,” Lisare said, even though Kate hadn’t told her about it.

“Not just the people,” Kate said. She couldn’t think about the people. This wasn’t just about them. “I came here for the shadow stone. I came here to get back what I was. I… we need it to defeat the Master of Crows.”

“He is a powerful thing,” Lisare said. “The dead mount. This may not be wise, though. This is a place that-”

Kate drew her sword. “I don’t care what kind of place this is. I need the power to defeat the one who killed him!”

If Lisare was afraid, she didn’t show it. Instead, she gently pushed the sword aside.

“I am not trying to stop you,” she said. “Perhaps this is a thing you were meant to do. There must be a reason that the dead put me in your path. I will need to ask them.”

“You’ll help me, or I’ll send you to join them,” Kate said, hating herself even as she said it.

“I hope that you will not,” Lisare replied. She shut her eyes, her face a picture of peace. A part of Kate wanted to slap her to bring her round, but she suspected that it might not do any good.

She was silent for what seemed like forever. Outside, Kate could hear the muted sounds of the ceremony occurring, and the drone of the priests’ voices. Finally, eventually, Lisare’s eyes flickered back open.

“It seems that I am to help you,” Lisare said. She looked at Kate with a depth of pity that was almost enough to make Kate hate her. “Are you sure that you want to do this? The way will not be easy. The stone might be able to give you back what you were, but you have already seen that such things have prices.”

“I’ll pay any price,” Kate said. “It doesn’t matter anymore. I’ve already lost all the things anyone could have taken from me.”

All that mattered now was getting back her powers. She would recover them, kill the Master of Crows, and this would be over.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

The Master of Crows stood in Stonehome as the mist that had filled it cleared. He could feel the power that had held it in place dissipating, and he wondered what that meant. He felt some satisfaction in the thought that it probably meant someone’s death, but it didn’t do much to cut down on the feeling of frustration as he looked around the rest of the settlement.

The violence was not done. One of Stonehome’s warriors came at him, a blade in his hand. The man was fast, as they all seemed to be, and powerful in other ways, summoning a corona of power to surround his blade in crackling lightning.

The Master of Crows swayed back from the first blow, knowing better than to try to parry a blade that would shock with the merest touch. The ones like this with magic reminded him of the way he had been once, powerful but naïve at the same time, possessing a single affinity but not yet knowing how to make it work well for them. There had been a time when the Master of Crows had been so much less; had been only a little more than any normal human might have been.

He was not that now, though. He charged forward, drawing on the strength that he had gained from death after death to move aside from strikes, maneuvering his sword around the attempts of his foe to connect with it and stun him. He dropped low, thrusting up in one movement to catch his enemy through the guts and abandoning his blade there. It was a killing blow, but not quickly. There would be plenty of time for his crows to feast.

He drew a pistol, shooting down a running man. Around him, there were still moments of violence, but things were chaotic, not a true battle anymore, just a case of mopping up. He snatched another sword from a fallen man, then cut down an enemy as he passed.

On another day, perhaps he would have continued to be a part of the battle, but the truth was that none of this made any difference to him. He pushed through what was left of the battle, looking for the one thing he had actually come to Stonehome for.

“It should be beautiful,” he murmured, looking around at the chaos there. There was plenty of chaos to be found, of course, now that the battle was all but done. Bodies lay against the walls and in the streets. His soldiers marched captives out to the crow cages for his birds to start to pick apart. A crew of his men was tearing down the standing stones at the place’s heart even now.

“There’s not enough death for you?” Endi asked, walking up. If he had any remorse about what he’d helped to do here, he didn’t show any sign of it.

“There can never be enough,” the Master of Crows assured him. His creatures would never be satisfied, at least, not without the potential that the child held. “But this is not that.”

He looked around at the remains of the battle, visualizing what had happened there from the places where the bodies had fallen.

“They made a stand on the walls to buy time to get out,” Endi said. “Then there are small knots where they ran into your men in the mist.”

“Our men,” the Master of Crows pointed out. “You are one of us, now.”

“And if I had said our men,” Endi said with a faint smile, “you would have reminded me that they were your men, because you command.”

He was not stupid, then. Perhaps he would be of use in the army.

“Is there a reason that you have sought me out?” the Master of Crows asked.

“I wanted to see what the ritual I brought you would do,” Endi said.

In other words, he wanted to provide a reminder that he was still useful, and that he had fulfilled his part of their agreement. The Master of Crows wasn’t sure whether to admire that, or whether to despise the weakness of it. Right then, he didn’t care. He had other concerns.

He sent his awareness out into the crows that hopped their way around the battlefield, ignoring the gore of their feeding and sending them up into flight to look down over Stonehome.

From up there, it was even easier to see the patterns in the death and destruction below. The Master of Crows could make out every shift and twist in the tide of the battle, from the small spots where people had tried and failed to protect those they loved to the spaces where they had been cut down as they ran.

None of it mattered. Even the flow of power from those his crows consumed counted for almost nothing. Only the child mattered, and the Master of Crows could not spot her form among the carnage.

“She is not here,” he muttered to himself, even as he had his crows swing over the settlement once again.

He looked as if he might somehow have missed the signs of her; as if she wouldn’t have stood out like a beacon shining amid the rest of it. He looked with the kind of hunger that needed her to be there, that willed her to be there, after all the effort that he had put into this assault.

He started to send his men further afield. The mist made sense now, a ploy to let the inhabitants escape. He could see some of them, running across the moorland in groups, walking in well-armed squares, riding in occasional ones and twos. He’d thought that it was just to let the people there flee, and that he would see the child’s shine through even that magic like a lighthouse at sea. Instead, there was only the dullness of the ones who scurried and sprinted.

“Where are you?” he demanded into the blankness of it all. He sent out the senses he had for power, tasting for it through beaks, watching for it through dark eyes. There were flickers around him from the dead and the dying, more from the ones out on the moors, but when it came to the child, there was no sign. Either she was gone into thin air, or someone was shielding her.

He reached for more, spending power at a rate he would never normally have countenanced, reaching for any hint of the prize that sat out in the world. Maybe it was where he stood, replete with the workings of a thousand magic users, or maybe it was the raw power that he threw out there, but whatever it was, the Master of Crows found himself seeing further than he planned, seeing things that showed the dangers to come.

He saw the spaces where the Danse siblings searched for the power to defeat him. He saw their hands clasped around stones, and weapons, and reaching for the kind of power that they had once possessed. In another space, he saw a man with a weapon that could kill even those such as him, and that could take away the powers of a foe for a fight. In a moment when he should have seen the prize for his victory he saw… what? Yet more things to fight against?

“No, I will not allow it,” he said.

Coming back to himself, he made his way to the lines of prisoners, drawing a knife as he approached the first of them.

“You,” he demanded. “Which way did the child go? Where did she flee to?”

“I don’t know anything,” the man insisted, and maybe he would have said something else, but the Master of Crows plunged his blade into the prisoner’s throat, leaving him gasping as he went to the next one.

“Where is the child?” he demanded.

“I don’t know,” the woman said, and got the same fate as the first.

“Where is the child?” he demanded of the third.

“Even if I knew, I wouldn’t tell you anything,” a man who looked as though he had been one of Ashton’s soldier’s said. The Master of Crows killed him too.

Along the line he went, asking the same question over and over, meting out the same fate for all those who failed to tell him what he wanted to know.

“My lord,” one of their guards said. “I really don’t think that any of them know anything, and these are the ones you wanted for the crow cages. Why not see if they know anything once-”

The Master of Crows stabbed him too. How dare he interrupt? Didn’t he know how important this was?

At least the others had the sense to stay back while he worked his way along the line, from the first until the very end, not caring about the blood that sprayed to coat him, or the hatred in the eyes of those he killed. He didn’t even care that his crows showed him the way his own men looked at him while he worked: as a mad thing to be avoided, something they only kept from cutting down because none of them was strong enough to do it. By now, it was as much a ritual as a real chance of finding out about the princess, a thing that had taken on its own momentum.

He stopped eventually, but only because there were no more prisoners left to question. It would have been silent, except for the cawing of the crows who hopped in his wake, already jostling and fighting for space on the bodies of his victims. The Master of Crows looked around, seeing his men looking on with obvious horror, none of them daring to interrupt, none of them daring to run.

“What are you all waiting for?” he demanded, in a cracked voice like the screeching of his birds. “Search the moors! Search the kingdom! Find me that girl!”

Nothing else mattered now. He had seen the things that were coming for him. He had spent so much strength in the past days, even as he had feasted on a kingdom. In the face of the dangers that were coming, there was  only one thing that he could do. He had to find the girl. He had to become still stronger. He would not lose after all he had done.

He would not!

CHAPTER TWELVE

When Henry d’Angelica’s parents arrived at the Duke of Axshire’s estates, Henry had them housed both as comfortably and as far away from him as possible. If there was going to be any benefit to be had from having declared himself king, it should be that he shouldn’t have to put up with their jibes.

Even so, he found himself avoiding the house, just to be on the safe side.

“Anyone would think that you’re scared of them, Henry,” Loris said, as they surveyed their growing army out on the south field. Henry leant on the spear he had taken from Loris’ family tomb, while Loris had an ornate walking cane. Henry knew that his old friend would never really understand it. He’d never contrived to be a disappointment to his parents.

“Sometimes it’s not about fear, husband,” Imogen said. “Sometimes it’s enough that someone just calls you less often enough, and then shows up when you do something impressive like become king, as if it was all their idea in the first place.”

She understood, even though there was no way she could ever have disappointed anyone. She was the most radiant, the most beautiful… no, Henry would not think like that. Not even when she’d suggested that they should be more. Maybe especially not because of that.

“Well, put like that, I’ll make sure that they don’t bother you. I’ll say you’re busy with the army or something.”

“It’s even true,” Henry said.

There was so much to do with it. There were more soldiers arriving every day, and more nobles running from the war, and more… well, more of everything. Well, almost everything. They could have done with more food, and more places to put them all. Even though the estate came with a medium sized town, there was only so much room in which to put soldiers, and nobles, and refugees who were only too quick to bend their knees to Henry in return for safety.

“Maybe you could use the spear on them,” Imogen suggested.

“It deals with witches,” Henry said. “I suspect that it would take more than that to get rid of my mother.”

“She can be quite…” Imogen seemed to take her time searching for the right word.

“Yes,” Henry agreed. “She can.”

“We have other problems,” Loris said. “Problems that make even your parents pale into insignificance.”

Henry nodded. He was aware of how dire things were. “More refugees from Ashton?”

“Yes,” Loris agreed. “The city is all but gone, from what they say, and the New Army occupies the remains.”

“Maybe that’s just as well,” Imogen said. Her husband looked shocked at that, but Henry understood what she meant.

“It means that the pretenders won’t be able to base their claim on occupying it,” he said. “Imagine if we’d had to march up to Ashton with the Dowager’s son and the Danses’ daughter in residence.”

“People would have recognized their rightful king!” Loris said. “They would have stood on the side of justice.”

Henry wished that the world worked like that, but he was not a fool.

“They would have seen us as the attackers, Loris,” Imogen said. “They would have cheered for a witch and a murderer, because they were in the right place.”

“Now this is the right place,” Henry said. “People will come here. Is there news of what happened to Prince Sebastian and the others?”

He would not dignify the man by calling him a king after the way he had betrayed Henry’s cousin Angelica.

“The people coming in are saying he and some of the others fled to Stonehome, but now…”

“Now there are reports that Stonehome has fallen,” Henry said.

“How did you know that?” Loris demanded. “I’m only just hearing the news from people that the New Army has moved that way.”

Henry sighed. “I have spies telling me. When did I become the kind of man who has spies?”

“When you became a king,” Imogen said, looking faintly amused by his discomfort. Perhaps she was aware of just how distasteful he found the whole business. Still, Henry would do what was necessary.

“Of course, our would be queen is safe across the ocean,” Loris said.

“She will return,” Henry said. He hefted the spear he had found in Loris’ family tomb.

“Are you sure that will stop her?” Loris asked.

Henry shrugged. “It is Witchsnare, the spear of Lord Thomasin.”

Loris looked blank.

“Thom Witchbane, husband,” Imogen supplied.

“Ah, I used to love those stories as a boy,” Loris said. “My fearless ancestor who fought the wicked and brought low the magical. I half imagined that someone had made him up. Are you sure that the spear isn’t some confection made to look the part? A lot of my ancestors liked to do that kind of thing. Why, one of my uncles built an entire tower that-”

“It’s real,” Henry said, his hand tightening around the spear. “I can feel it.”

“Be careful, or people will mistake you for a witch,” Loris said with a laugh Henry didn’t share. “Yes, well, I suppose I should go down and make sure that the preparations for tonight’s banquet are on course.”

There would be a banquet, because it seemed that there was always a banquet. Loris hurried off, heading in the direction of the main house. Henry wasn’t entirely surprised when Imogen stayed behind.

“Loris didn’t mean to call you a witch,” she said. “He doesn’t see the damage that jokes like that can cause.”

Henry sighed. “Loris was always the one who was quick with a joke, and always the last to see why it was in poor taste.”

“True,” Imogen said with a smile. She moved closer to him, kissing him quickly, before he could think to stop her. “This is probably in poor taste too.”

“Imogen,” Henry began, with a warning note. “You know we can’t. We mustn’t.”

“Are you telling me that you don’t want to?” Imogen countered.

“Of course I want to,” Henry said. He shook his head. “This isn’t about what I want though, any of this.”

“You don’t want to be the man who’s here with me? You don’t want to have an excuse to be here at the hall?” Imogen asked. She was playing a game with him, of course. Imogen had never been the foolish girl she was playing at being now.

“It’s not an excuse,” Henry insisted. “It’s a real reason. The only way that I can have justice is to be the king these people need.”

He heard Imogen sigh.

“You could put this whole idea of ‘justice’ aside,” she pointed out. “There is a greater enemy, and your cousin… I know you’ve heard some of the stories of what they did, but Angelica was hardly sweet or innocent. She could be a cruel thing.”

Henry paused at that, caught between the need to defend his family the way honor demanded and the recognition that Imogen was only telling the truth as she saw it.

“You know that I cannot simply abandon honor,” Henry said. “If I do not have that…” He shook his head. “Honor demands justice for my cousin, whatever she may have done. She was the queen. My whole claim to lead here rests on it.”

“You lead because you can keep these people safe,” Imogen replied. “You have given them a way to come together, and a place aside from the chaos. You are strong for these people.”

“And I need my honor to stay strong,” Henry said. “I need… I need to be the man I am expected to be here. That man cannot betray his oldest friend, cannot stand back from the things he is expected to do, cannot… cannot just forgive a murder. When Sophia comes back, she must die.”

“If she comes back,” Imogen said. “Perhaps she will stay across the sea.”

“Perhaps everything will work out conveniently?” Henry asked, with the kind of bitter laugh that came from knowing that things very rarely worked out conveniently.

“Is it so hard to imagine?” Imogen said. “Henry, fate has given you a royal title, an army, and a place at the heart of all of this. Is it so hard to think that other things might work out just as well?”

Henry wasn’t sure what to say to that. He had a hard time thinking of any of this as having worked out well. It was simply the way things had to happen.

“We should head back towards the others,” he said. “People will talk, otherwise.”

“People are already talking,” Imogen said. “It is what they do best. You know that, because you’re one of the ones who listens.”

Most people wouldn’t have noticed that about him. Most people thought that Henry didn’t pay attention to the world, didn’t plan, didn’t think. He might not be his subtle and conniving cousin, but he wasn’t stupid, either.

He led the way back towards the house, watching the men drilling and working along the way. Some of them were skilled, while some were anything but, pressed into service by their betters.

“Many of them will die when the fight comes,” Henry said.

“Many of them would have died anyway if they had stayed where they were,” Imogen said. “The New Army would have come for them. At least here, they can fight together, armed and commanded.”

Henry had been thinking about that, almost as much as he had spent his time thinking about the forces of the pretender and her traitor husband. Now that Ashton and Stonehome had fallen, those forces barely even existed.

“The New Army will be coming here,” he said.

“You sound very certain,” Imogen said. Henry was almost proud of the way that she didn’t sound frightened by it, but he didn’t get to be proud of her. That was Loris’ job too.

“Their leader seeks death, their soldiers seek conquest,” Henry said. “What’s left to conquer but us?”

“Damn,” Imogen said. “That makes far too much sense for comfort. I take it we fight them?”

“There are some foes a man must stand against,” Henry said. He hefted the spear. “If I can get close enough, this will end the thing that rules them as easily as it would end Sophia Danse.”

“You’re certain?” Imogen asked. “It still looks far too rusted for my liking.”

In truth, Henry suspected that it had probably looked rusted from the moment it was constructed. His best efforts to polish it had yielded nothing, and yet it was sharp, almost wickedly so.

“I believe it will work,” he said.

Imogen reached out to place her hand over his. Henry should have pulled back from her touch, but he didn’t. He couldn’t bring himself to pull away from her when these moments might be the only ones that they had before the end of all this.

“Belief is a powerful thing,” Imogen said, “people’s belief in you has done all of this. Before we face up to all of this, though…” Another of those beautiful, perfect smiles. “Maybe we should test that this weapon of yours does all that we hope it does?”

Henry held the weapon up. He had every faith that it was what he thought, but could he trust all of these lives to that faith? Could he trust Imogen’s to it?

“What did you have in mind?”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Sophia stood on the deck of High Merchant N’ka’s ship, willing it to go faster. Forcing it to go faster, since her magic pushed wind into its sails when there would have been none otherwise. Sienne sat overhead, perched amid the masts with one paw dangling down idly. It would have been an idyllic scene if High Merchant N’ka didn’t look so furious as he stomped about the deck.

“If carrying us back to my kingdom was going to make you so upset,” Sophia said, “you shouldn’t have agreed to do it.”

“Shouldn’t have agreed, your majesty?” the merchant replied. “When a woman with fresh blood on her and a dozen warriors by her side makes a request, do you really think that a wise man turns it down?”

“You’ll be well rewarded when we get back to the kingdom,” Sophia promised him, expecting the prospect of gold to lift his spirits.

“Will it be enough to make up for everything I have lost?” he countered. “People will see that I have carried you away from Morgassa after you killed the king. I will be called a traitor. If I go back, I will be executed.”

“Or called a hero,” Sophia suggested. “I think that changes will be coming to Morgassa.”

Perhaps she shouldn’t have killed its king. It had been an extreme and impulsive act, the kind of thing that Kate would probably have approved of, and that would probably cause more trouble for all of them. It was something that she couldn’t regret though, when she saw Lani standing happily by the ship’s far rail, and when she thought of the man King Akar had been.

“And in the meantime, I become a merchant with nothing to sell,” N’ka said. “A man can insure with the banks of the merchant states against the weather and against pirates, but not against a thing like this.”

“My kingdom’s treasury will see you well supplied,” Sophia assured him, not sure if she even had a treasury right then. “Think of it this way: you have lost the regard of one ruler, but you have gained that of another.”

It was enough to placate the merchant a little, and Sophia was grateful for it. She kept pushing the wind into the sails, hoping that she could be back with Violet and Sebastian as quickly as possible. From what her parents had said, there was no time to lose.

Her parents. The thought of them brought a wave of pain and loss, tempered only by her happiness that she and the others had at least got to meet them before their death. She’d gotten to speak to her mother and father, hold onto them and tell them that she loved them. They’d given her answers, too.

She took out the stone that she had taken from King Akar, holding it in her hand. Above her, Sophia felt the winds that propelled them shift, becoming warmer, hints of heat and steam flickering at the edges. Just by touching it, she felt connected to all the things of fire in the world, able to reach out to see from the flickering flames of candles and cooking fires, able to reach into a mountain filled with fire as it steamed and hissed halfway across the world.

She felt something in the stone whispering to her, pushing at her, urging her to make the volcano erupt and feed the lands below to the flames. It took an effort of will to pull back from that urge and gain control of herself. She stood there staring at the images and symbols cut into the stone. They seemed to shift as she watched them, dancing like half seen afterimages across her eyes.

“My queen, are you all right?” Aia asked. Sophia hadn’t even heard her approach, which seemed impossible, given that she was still wearing her golden armor.

“I’m not sure,” Sophia admitted. “The stone… it feels like it’s almost alive. It feels as though it wants me to… use its powers.”

Aia nodded. “The stones are powerful. Things with so much power have their dangers. There are reasons that they are channeled and contained. Some run the risk of draining those who try to use them, others… they are elemental things, and a human will must be strong to make sure that they do what is required of them.”

“You sound as though you know a lot about magic,” Sophia said. “I’m a little surprised. I thought with the armor that you were a warrior?”

“In the Forgotten City, those two things do not have to be so far apart,” Aia said. “All of us twelve have our talents.”

“And I don’t know what they are,” Sophia said as she realized that there was more she didn’t know. “I don’t even know all of your names.”

“It’s all right,” Aia said. “We all understand how much you’ve lost. It has been hard enough for all of us losing Lord Alfred and Lady Christina. With the time they have spent in our city, we are heartbroken that they are gone, yet for you…”

“I think you’ve probably seen more of them than I have,” Sophia said. “I’d like to hear about that if you have time. I’d like… I’d like to know more about my parents.”

“Of course,” Aia said. “We have the rest of the journey.”

“I’d like to know more about you, too,” Sophia said. “You and the others. A dozen of you have agreed to protect me and help me, but I don’t even know you. I’d like to… I don’t know, talk to you all, meet you properly, or something.”

“Then come with me,” Aia said, leading the way across the ship.

The others were there, practicing together, most of them forming a ring while two of them sparred with a pick-like axe and a serrated sword. They sparred with more than that, too. Sophia could feel the interplay of power there, the web of it shifting back and forth as they pressed at one another’s thoughts. One, a large man, flicked out bursts of force that tried to push the other, a woman who was almost as big, off balance. The woman cut eldritch sigils in the air with her sword that hung there like traps.

They moved around one another in a dance of blades that was curiously beautiful. They cut and moved, the steps so perfectly synchronized that it seemed to Sophia as if they had worked them out in advance. She was sure that they hadn’t, though. This wasn’t some carefully choreographed routine; it was a real contest that just happened to be between two people so evenly matched that it became something more until finally, the man’s fighting pick slid through a gap in the woman’s defenses and lightly touched a spot on her armor above her heart.

“You let yourself be distracted by the rolling of the ship, Hella,” Aia said. “And you, Florian, I wouldn’t be so happy about it. If Hella’s footing had been more secure, she could have cut you down two moves back.”

They turned to her, bowing, and Sophia had a sense of the respect that they had for Aia.

“Our queen wants to meet you all,” Aia said. “Let her see you, and if we’re lucky, she won’t be too terrified by the sight.”

“She hasn’t run screaming from you so far,” one of the women said.

“True, Pha, but then, I’m fundamentally more likeable than you are.”

Sophia had a sense of easy camaraderie between the twelve of them, as if they had all spent a lot of time in one another’s company. She’d had little chance to be that close with anyone except her sister.

She waited while the golden armored figures removed their helmets, one at a time. Each helmet, each suit of armor, was subtly different, some elaborately etched or partly painted, some as plain as golden armor could ever manage to be. One or two had spikes or ornaments attached to the plates, while one had armor that seemed to be composed of thousands of individual golden scales. Some of the helmets were smooth and blank, some were formed into the shapes of animal heads, and some were decorated with symbols that looked as though they were parts of spells.

The people beneath the helms were just as varied. There were as many women as men, while some were large, some were small, some dark skinned, some even paler than the inhabitants of Ishjemme.

“We have come from all parts of the world to the Forgotten City,” Aia said. “We found a place where we fit, and we found that what we were good at was the art of war. There are others who can sing songs that can make the spirits themselves weep, there are some who teach us about the world, or explore places no one else can touch. Fighting is what we do.”

She went along the line of golden armored warriors. A white haired woman with a spear was first. “This is Pha, who once fought against fifty desert raiders, and stalked them through the dark.” A man with the thicker armor of a knight was next, holding a two handed sword. “This is Halek, who used to protect princes for money before he came to us.”

There were more of them: Hella and Florian, Kan Ji and Pollus, Nesterius and Gant. The last three were a man in armor that seemed to flow like waves as he moved, who Aia introduced as Valerian, a woman named Ulli who had axe after axe strapped to her, and a man named Weis who held circular blades in either hand. Each seemed impossibly dangerous, and yet each of them looked to Sophia with something like awe. Standing there with them, Sophia felt utterly protected, utterly safe.

She felt as though she should say something to them. She wanted to express to them just how grateful she was that they were willing to go with her like this, and just how-

The world shifted, and Sophia was standing in front of Ashton, watching it fall. She saw Sebastian there, saw Violet in his arms, and saw them fleeing from the city. She saw the flames there, and the stone in her hand seemed to respond to it. She saw the Master of Crows following, and she wanted to scream a warning, but she couldn’t.

Then she saw Monthys in the distance, saw it surrounded by layer after layer of power. It was like a fortress there, but the walls of that fortress were constructed of energy. She saw Sebastian running towards the house, Violet still clutched to him, and now it wasn’t the Master of Crows following behind, but some long, crow shaped shadow.

Sophia snapped back to herself, and saw the dozen fighters looking at her with obvious worry.

“What is it, my queen?” Aia asked.

“We need to hurry,” Sophia said. “We’re running out of time.”

She threw her power into the sails again, and the boat shot forward.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Kate followed Lisare as she led the way across the island of shadows, not entirely trusting her, but also guessing that the priestess, or whatever she was, represented her best chance of finding the stone that might help her. So far, at least, Lisare had shown no sign of betraying her, but Kate knew how quickly that could change.

People betrayed you, or they left, or they were lost.

“We should move quickly,” Lisare called back to her. “There are many things on this island that will see us as weak if we stand still for too long.”

Kate almost longed for that. Let something attack them, and she would… what? What would she do? She was still too weak to protect the people she cared about. Once, there might have been a time when she might have dared the whole island to come at her. Now, she hurried in the direction Lisare was going.

“Where are we headed?” Kate asked. That way, even if Lisare betrayed her, there would be a way to get to the stone.

“Do you see the waterfall?” Lisare said, pointing.

Kate hadn’t realized that was what it was. Instead, it looked as though black smoke was pouring off the edge of a mountainside, the water so dark with shadows that it didn’t look like it at all.

“There is an entrance beneath it,” Lisare said. “Once we go inside, you will be able to find what you are looking for.”

“Just like that?” Kate asked. “You want me to believe that there are no protections on the stone?”

“A whole island of them,” Lisare said, with a gesture around at the place they were walking through.

Kate had to admit that it was an intimidating enough landscape. Every rock had a sharp edge to it, every plant had thorns. The shadows themselves seemed to reach out for them…

“Back!” Lisare said, as tendrils of darkness snaked for Kate.

Kate leapt back, barely avoiding them in time, her sword already clearing its sheath. She cut at one of the shadows, and although it seemed to lack any substance, it felt real enough as her sword cut through it. Something made a sound of pain, but the tendril of shadow she cut free writhed back to the rest of it and seemed to latch back onto the greater mass.

It lunged again, and now Kate saw a mouth at the heart of it, open and waiting. She cut off another tendril of the darkness, but one wrapped around her leg, so cold that it burned as it started to draw her in.

Kate didn’t wait for it to pull her forward. Instead, she leapt at it, sword first, thrusting up through the mouth of the thing into the space where she assumed its vitals would be. The creature gave another of those piercing shrieks of pain, pulling back and seeming almost to collapse in on itself.

She tore her sword clear of it, black ichor spreading in a stain across the ground. The creature tore apart into shreds of flesh and shadow, and more tendrils came out to grab for what was left, dragging it into other waiting mouths.

“Run!” Lisare called. “The feeding will distract them!”

Kate could see that she was already taking her own advice, sprinting away from the fight. Kate guessed that she should be grateful that the other woman hadn’t run before now. Kate joined her, running as fast as she could while tendrils of darkness reached for her legs. She didn’t stop until she saw Lisare slow, gasping for air.

“We should be safe,” the priestess said. “The watchers rarely move far from their ambush spots.”

She said it as if being attacked by shadowy things were just a normal part of life there.

“Is there anything else that’s likely to jump out at us here?” Kate demanded.

She saw Lisare shrug. “This is an island shaped by death and shadow, Kate. What would you have me say? Every step is likely to be dangerous.”

Kate wished that there had been a more comforting answer than that. Instead, there was only a path that looked slippery smooth, lined with plants that had thorns as long as her fingers, each one seeming to sway hungrily in the breeze.

“If it’s so dangerous,” Kate said, as they set off “why do people bother living here?”

“Because there are things that must be done,” Lisare said. “The dead must be attended, the shadows understood. Besides, some families have lived here so long that they wouldn’t understand the question. Where else would they go?”

As far as Kate could see, the answer was “anywhere but there”. The island looked like one large deathtrap, every plant having spikes or suckers or warnings of poison, every animal looking as though it was only waiting for them to die. Small things scuttled in the shadows, their squeaks cut off occasionally as they ran into something larger.

“We will need to pick our way across this section,” Lisare said, as they came to a hollow where dozens of plants sat at the bottom, forming a kind of carpet. Mist rose up from them, and Kate guessed from the bones of animals partway through it that it wasn’t ordinary. A path of sorts continued through it, but it clearly hadn’t been cut back recently, and now it seemed like islands of open space amid the plants.

“We must hold our breath as we cross,” Lisare said. “In the spots without poison, we can breathe, but if we get it wrong…” she nodded towards the bones.

Kate shrugged. She didn’t care. Even if she died, would it be so bad? It was her only chance at getting to see Will again, and her parents. Maybe dying would be better, put like that. Maybe she should just let herself breathe as she went across…

“We get people here sometimes, who have nothing left to live for,” Lisare said. “They come here hoping that the island will kill them. Often it does. They cheat death out of its due.”

“How does dying cheat death?” Kate demanded.

Lisare shrugged. “Death is the ending to a life. It is owed a life lived until the moment fate declares it done.”

“Maybe being tired of it is fate’s way of telling us,” Kate suggested.

Lisare looked at her pointedly. “Then do it, Kate. Give up on whatever prompted you to seek your strength again. Give up on whoever needs you to seek the stone. Maybe that’s what I was sent to you for: to guide you to the other side, not to the stone of shadows. But tell me now, because I’ll not keep going through a field of poison if you’re a dead woman anyway.”

The sternness of that caught Kate a little by surprise. How dare this stranger judge what she felt like that? How dare she try to demand that Kate give up? Pointedly, Kate held her breath and stormed into the field of poison, not stopping even at the first obvious break in it.

That was a mistake. Kate was expecting the next gap quickly. Instead, she found her lungs burning with the effort of not gulping in air, and she had to run forward in the hope of finding another open space. When it came, she gasped for air, dragging it into her lungs gratefully before plunging on.

It seemed to take forever to cross the field of poison, and every breath Kate dared to take was filled with the fear that she might have misjudged it, and that at any moment, her lungs might fill with the taste of death. Even when she broke free of the gas filled hollow, she staggered a few extra steps before allowing herself to breathe normally. Lisare ran out of the mist a few moments later, her mouth covered with a cloth.

“Are you ready to keep going?” the priestess asked, and Kate suspected that she didn’t just mean on the journey.

Kate nodded. “I have to find the stone. I have to get back my power.”

“Very well,” Lisare said. “Keep your weapon ready.”

Kate did as the other woman instructed, holding her sword in her hand, prepared for any attack. Perhaps that sense of readiness was enough though, because while Kate saw signs of creatures nearby in scratch marks on the trees, and footprints with claws that gouged the turf, nothing else seemed to be willing to attack them. Even the circling birds above didn’t descend for a closer look.

That didn’t make the way easy, though. The path ascended, with slopes below now that threatened death with slightest slip, spiked rocks waiting below, and no doubt more than enough scavengers ready to pick clean any remains. After a while, as the slope continued to get more treacherous, Kate had to put her sword away and use her hands to steady herself on the rocky slope. Whenever she put her hand in the wrong spot, it came away bloody, cut by the sharpness of the stones there.

“Be careful,” Lisare said. “Some of the rocks themselves can make a person sick and weak.”

“Even the rocks here are killers?” Kate muttered. Maybe this was a place that she belonged. After all, hadn’t she brought enough death to the world around her? Maybe there was a reason that her parents had sent her here, and not to one of the other places.

“It isn’t far now,” Lisare said. A brief flash of fear crossed her face.

“What is it?” Kate asked. “What else can this island throw at us?”

“The shadow stone protects itself,” Lisare said. “Entry to the cave is… difficult.”

They kept going on their route up the mountain, to the point where the waterfall cascaded down in a roar of dark water. Kate could see the mouth of a cave beyond it, sharp edged enough that she suspected that it was far from natural. The steam that came up from the water as it hit a pool below was like a cloud of darkness rising.

“So we just need to go through there?” Kate said.

“It’s not as easy as that,” Lisare said. “The water brings fear with it. It pushes back those who try to enter.”

“I’ve been afraid of plenty of things,” Kate said. She stepped forward…

The impact of the fear was immediate. Terror filled her, rising up and threatening to overwhelm her. Go into this cave, the fear said, and everything would be ripped away from her. Everything would be taken. Everything would be-

“It’s already gone,” she said. Will was gone. Everything she cared about was gone. What did fear matter, compared with that?

She could hear sounds of terror behind her, and glanced back to see Lisare quivering as she tried to push through the veil of dark water. Kate reached back, her fingers catching hold of a handful of the priestess’s robes, feeling the softness of them for a moment before she yanked Lisare stumbling forward.

As soon as they made it beyond the waterfall, the fear seemed to fall away, leaving them standing in a space cut from the dark rock and lit by reflected light.

“That was… I was…” Lisare began.

Kate shook her head. “It doesn’t matter.”

All that mattered was getting her powers back. The path was ahead, and she would follow it, whatever it took.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

The most difficult part of the journey for Lucas was the need to adjust, over and over, to strange new places. Each time he and Elanora touched a strip of inscribed cloth or paper, and the whole world shifted, he had to find a way to believe in the new place he was in.

“You’re good at this,” Elanora said with a smile as they shifted to a space that looked like a wide orchard, filled with fruit trees of every variety. Of course, she shifted with the effortless grace of someone born to it, while Lucas had to concentrate each time, sinking into the detail of the place. For the orchard, he held onto an apple, feeling its weight, taking in its scent before biting down on it and taking in its taste.

“I have you to thank for that,” Lucas said. Without Elanora there, he doubted that he would have gotten so far. He certainly wouldn’t have found his way so smoothly. It wasn’t as though he could see the way ahead, because the papers and silks gave no clue as to which might be the correct ones to go through. He might have been able to glance ahead through them, but could he have judged just by looking where to go?

“Which way do we go now?” he asked, stepping among the trees.

“We could take our time, you know,” Elanora said. “A place like this is one of the beautiful ones.”

“I wish I could,” Lucas said. “But there isn’t much time. My sisters are searching for stones of their own, and there are people who need me.”

“Do you really wish that you could though?” Elanora said. “You’d spend time here with me if you could?”

There was something playful about the way that she asked it, but there was a serious note to it too.

“Yes,” Lucas admitted, “I would.”

He found himself thinking of the brief kiss that they’d had, the memory of it coming to him as they made their way past the blossoming fruit trees at the farther end of the orchard, to a spot where another strip of paper hung tied to a tree.

“Are you sure you won’t stay a while longer then?” Elanora asked. “This next one is a bad one.”

“The world is in danger,” Lucas said. “I can’t lose any time, even if I want to.”

“I understand,” Elanora said. “Be ready.”

She reached out for the paper, and shimmered out of existence. Lucas did the same, and instantly, he was in a stinking, bone filled place, where glints of metal showed the weapons and armor of fallen warriors. The sheer stench of the place was more than enough to make the place believable.

“What is this place?” Lucas asked.

“This is the approach,” Elanora explained. “It is… a kind of funnel, I guess. There are a bunch of different routes people can take for most places on this island, but to get to the heart stone, you have to pass through here.”

She looked worried. No, more than worried; she looked frightened.

“What is it?” Lucas asked.

He was still waiting for an answer when things burst from the piles of bones, seemingly pulled together from scraps of them. They were the kind of horrors that could never have existed in the world he knew, but here, there seemed to be no rules about what could exist and what could not.

One lunged for Elanora and Lucas leapt to meet it. His blades cleared their sheathes as he jumped forward, the steel singing through the air as he struck out. The creature had no obvious vital points to aim for, no sense of where to strike to stop it, so Lucas had to settle for hacking at the thing’s bony frame, wincing as the impact took the edge from his weapons.

He kept striking out, using their weight and his strength to splinter bone even if it would not cut cleanly. Another of the things came in from his side, and Lucas leapt away, striking down at it.

He felt his sword shatter.

The splinters of metal flew around him, and he heard Elanora cry out as one struck her. Lucas had to focus on the bone creatures, striking out with hands and feet, lashing out with enough power to snap the bones as he connected with them.

Somewhere in the violence, his other sword gave way, but by now, it didn’t matter. His hands and feet broke bones and splintered them away from the whole, and when Lucas saw a mace among the mass of abandoned equipment he grabbed for it, laying about himself with the weapon and hearing the crunches as he connected.

The bone creatures weren’t easy to stop though. They kept coming, even as Lucas struck at them, and they seemed to shift as they came forward, fragments of bone extending the way another opponent might have thrust out a spear or a dagger. Lucas barely swayed aside from one thrust in time, then parried another clumsily with his club as he found himself caught off balance. He managed to spin round to crush more bones, but the thing just kept coming…

Fire leapt from Elanora’s hands, engulfing the bone creatures and burning hot enough to reduce them to ashes. The flames kept burning until there was nothing left of them, save for a scorch mark on the ground.

Lucas looked over at Elanora in surprise. “You never said that you could do that.”

“You didn’t ask,” Elanora replied. “Besides, I can only do it here. Reshaping the world is easy, when it is the layers of this island. Outside…” she shrugged. “I am made of spirit. I couldn’t even get outside.”

There seemed to be a small note of regret in her voice at that, but it only lasted for a moment or two.

“We need to keep going deeper,” Elanora said. “But you need to be able to fight. I can’t just throw fire at everything here. It’s hard work, and some of it will see past that; they won’t believe in it enough to burn.”

“Believe in it?” Lucas said.

“It’s a fire of the spirit,” Elanora said. “You would think of it as an illusion, but you have felt how real such things can be, Lucas.”

He could have thought of the ground under his feet, or the impact of his fists against the bone creatures. Instead, Lucas found himself thinking of Elanora’s kiss.

“We need to find you a new sword,” Elanora said. “Before you go deeper, you need a weapon that can actually defeat the guardian.”

“A weapon that only exists here?” Lucas asked.

“Reality can be lent or given,” Elanora explained. “Enough of it can let a thing exist beyond this place, and a sword like that might strike at an enemy’s spirit, through their armor, or despite their power.”

Lucas found himself thinking about the Master of Crows then. What if this was a weapon that could cut him dead?

“What will it take?” Lucas asked.

Elanora seemed to think for a moment. “Find me bone and rusted iron. In this place, it won’t be hard. Find me wood and find me leather. I will prepare things here.”

“Prepare them how?” Lucas asked.

“Do you trust me?” Elanora asked.

To his surprise, Lucas did. He nodded.

“Then trust me,” Elanora said with a smile. “You do your part and I’ll do mine.”

Lucas nodded again and headed off among the bone piles, searching for the ruined weapons and armor of those who had come before. He took fragments of bone, and cut leather from the tunics of the dead. He lifted rusted chainmail, and the wooden hafts of spears. He hoped that they were the kinds of things that Elanora wanted, although to him they looked broken and useless.

He came back to find that there was a forge sitting on the spot where he had left Elanora, and the fires were just starting to heat up.

“That all looks perfect,” she said. “Come and help me. Work the bellows for me.”

“If this is a magic forge, can’t you make the fire hot enough by wanting it to be hotter?” Lucas asked.

“Maybe I just want to see you sweat,” she suggested, then laughed. “No, Lucas, as you work the bellows, it won’t be air that you push into the fire, but a fraction of your reality. Just a fraction, you’ll have plenty left, but it will go into the sword as I shape it.”

“All right,” Lucas said. “Although when it comes to working a forge, it’s my sister you want.”

“No, it’s definitely you I want,” Elanora assured him.

Lucas kept his head down, working on the bellows. It was hard work, at least as difficult as it might have been in the world of the flesh. In minutes, Lucas could feel himself sweating, the flames of the forge glowing with heat.

Elanora brought the materials forward, and she started to sing to them.

She sang the sword into shape, not beating the metal with hammers, but stretching it with notes, not working it with tongs, but with the melody of her voice. The rusted iron reshaped itself under the weight of a song of pure spirit, while the wood formed itself into a guard, and the bone fragments became a part of the whole. The blade became something long, and curved, and sharp enough that it seemed to cut the sound itself, severing it into dissonance as Elanora continued to sing. She hummed gently as she started to wrap leather around its grip, pulling it tight so that it would not slip or give.

“You can stop now,” she said. Lucas let go of the bellows. It was a relief to be able to do so. The effort of it seemed to have drained something out of him, left him breathing hard.

Elanora held out the sword. It was, Lucas had to admit, perfect. It seemed almost translucent, there and not there at the same time, while the balance in his hand while he lifted it was superb. Its blade shone in the sunlight, in a rainbow of colors that seemed to suggest it was cutting the light itself.

Only a faint rumbling of the ground disturbed Lucas from staring at it, a steady thud that shook the earth beneath him making him look up to Elanora.

“I think we might have made this just in time,” she said. “It’s coming.”

“What is?” Lucas asked.

“The tree.”

A shape came into view, monstrously tall and broad. It had arms, and legs, but Lucas could see at a glance that those arms were branches, and those legs were roots. Its skin was bark that seemed to be the deep red of mahogany, or maybe just blood. There were knot-like eyes staring down at them, and a mouth that was a hole in the trunk.

An inscribed length of paper hung from one of its upper branches, and Lucas knew that this was both the guardian of the way to the spirit stone, and the way itself. There was no way to get around it without abandoning what he’d come for.

He would have to fight.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Sebastian rode forward, staying close to Cora and Emeline, and grateful that they finally seemed to be coming to the end of the moorland. They’d made good time, but he had no doubts that the Master of Crows would be searching for them. Wherever they went, it wouldn’t be safe from someone like him forever.

They saw a quartet of people ahead on the road, mounted on horses of their own. Sebastian was about to pull off and ride cross country, but two things stopped him. One was the fact that they would probably have already seen him, and trying to outride people on moorland like this was just asking for a broken leg for his horse. The other was the part where Emeline raised a hand in greeting.

“You know them?” Sebastian asked.

“They’re from Stonehome,” Emeline said. There was a faint bead of sweat on her brow from maintaining the concentration needed to disguise them from the Master of Crows. “They must have gotten out in the confusion.”

Sebastian was grateful for that. He didn’t know how many people had died when the New Army had come down on them, but he was glad that some, at least, had been able to get away.

He and the others rode closer, taking in the people there. The quartet were a mixed group of what looked like former soldiers and warriors of Stonehome. Sebastian was a little surprised to see them working together, but he guessed that survival beat everything else right then.

“Your Majesty, you survived!” one of the soldiers said.

“And the princess is alive as well,” one of the warriors said. Sebastian suspected that he shared Asha’s views on how important she was.

“Who are you?” Sebastian asked.

“I’m Valin,” the warrior said. He gestured to the other warrior. “This is de Lacy, and that’s Edmore and O’Llan.”

The last soldier offered Sebastian a salute.

“We’re heading to Monthys,” Sebastian said. “Would you like to travel with us?”

“Monthys?” Edmore said. “But Monthys has already fallen.”

Sebastian nodded. “We think that the New Army has moved on.”

“I saw Monthys in a vision,” Emeline said. “We will be safe there.”

“Safe? In a place that’s already ruined?” de Lacy demanded. “Didn’t Sophia’s cousins go up there to try to rebuild it?”

“There are defenses,” Cora said. “Emeline saw them too. If we can get them working-”

“If is a lot to stake our lives on,” O’Llan said. “We should go to the Duke of Axshire’s estate. Henry d’Angelica is gathering people together.”

“People with no magic,” Valin said. “They’re no friend to the likes of me. If we all go there, half of us would be killed out of hand.”

“It’s the only safe place,” O’Llan said.

Sebastian got the feeling that they’d been debating this for a while. He shook his head.

“It’s not a place I can go. It’s not a place that I can take my daughter, or my friends, and I doubt that my former wife’s cousin is any friend to me. I’m going to Monthys. If you wish to come with us, we’d be happy to welcome you.”

O’Llan shook his head. “It’s not safe. I’m sorry, but… I’ve given enough.”

“I understand,” Sebastian said. “What about the rest of you?”

“I’m not going to the Duke of Axshire’s estate,” de Lacy said, “but Monthys isn’t safe. Right now, the only safe place is as far away from you as possible. If you hadn’t come to Stonehome, it might still be standing.”

“de Lacy,” Edmore began, “the princess-”

“I don’t care about some prophecy,” the other man insisted. “I care about staying alive!”

Sebastian held up his hand to stop the argument. “I don’t want to force anyone to go with me if they don’t want to,” he said. “We’re going to ride on now, because I don’t know how far behind the New Army will be, and if you want to ride with us, we would welcome the company and the protection. If you don’t, that’s fine, but if you see others looking for somewhere to go, tell them where to find us.”

He looked over to Emeline and Cora, nodding for them to keep going. The three of them heeled their horses forward, and Sebastian saw both Edmore and Valin ride forward with them. The others turned their horses, setting off across the moor in different directions.

“I’d hoped that they would all come,” Cora said.

“It’s better that we have ones who actually want to be here with us,” Sebastian replied.

They rode on, and the moorland started to give way to farms, and then to forest as they turned north. The trees rose high on either side of them, lifting to a level where they seemed to shut out the sun. Sebastian saw hints of movement among the trees, perhaps from deer, or perhaps from people displaced by the fighting. After so many invasions, the kingdom was a shadow of itself now, and any journey would be dangerous.

“We’ll need to find somewhere to stop,” Cora said. “We grabbed what we could as we left, but Violet will need milk, and I wouldn’t want to sleep with a child out on the open ground.”

Sebastian didn’t like that idea either, and there was no way that they would be able to make it to Monthys in one day’s ride. They couldn’t stop yet though. They needed to put enough distance between them and the New Army that they wouldn’t be found just by pure, random chance.

“We need to keep going, for a while, at least,” Sebastian said. “We’ll try to find a place to stop when we can.”

“All right,” Cora said, still holding Violet close.

They continued to ride, and Sebastian continued to see flickers of movement in the trees. They seemed to keep pace with the horses, and then he heard the howl from the side of the road.

“Wolves!” he called out.

“I thought wolves didn’t attack groups of people?” Cora called back.

“Maybe not in peace,” Sebastian said, “but with armies marching through to take all the food? With bodies on the ground to teach them the taste?”

He urged his horse forward, and it barely needed any encouragement. Apparently, the scent of the wolves was all it needed to spur it into a run. All of them rode together, sticking tight in a group. Sebastian drew his sword, hoping that he wouldn’t need it, but knowing that the wolves wouldn’t give up easily.

He saw one dart in towards Cora and Emeline’s horse, and he moved to meet it, slashing down with his blade and hearing it whimper as it didn’t quite dart away in time. Another came at the other side, and this time it was Cora who struck out, holding Violet in one arm and her sword in the other, while Emeline held her in place.

Edmore and Vallin moved to try to intercept the next wolves as they came, but the creatures didn’t stop. They darted in and back, harrying the horses, snapping at their legs. One gouged lines of blood down the hindquarters of Vallin’s horse, while another nipped at Sebastian’s boot, sending pain through him before he could hack down with his sword.

“They’re trying to tire us!” Sebastian said. “Vallin, Emeline, can you do anything to drive them off?”

“Not without dropping the protections I’ve put in place!” Emeline called back.

“My magic can call sounds,” Vallin said. He flung a shout at one of the wolves, loud enough that it reared back. “Beyond that, there’s not much I can do. We need to keep riding.”

Sebastian wasn’t sure about that, though. “If we keep riding, they’ll just run us until we collapse. We need to fight. There, a clearing.”

He led the way, and they circled their four horses in the middle of a clearing where fallen trees stood. Sebastian and the others leapt down from them, moving to stand on the fallen trunks, weapons ready.

The wolves came from the trees, lunging at them in a pack.

Sebastian leapt to meet them, cutting two handed with his sword, hacking at the wolves to either side. He saw Emeline holding onto Violet while Cora struck out, wounding another wolf. Vallin and Edmore had pistols, and they fired them at the first wolves to come.

They must have been hungry though, because they kept coming. One snapped at Sebastian’s arm, and he pulled back from it, then cut down to take its head off. Another was there to take its place, bigger than the rest, and before Sebastian could strike again, it was on him, knocking him from his feet, its mouth opening wide while Sebastian shoved his forearm into its neck, trying to hold it at bay.

Cora was there then, stabbing it from the side, and Sebastian managed to sit up, shoving it off him. The creature rounded on him again, and Sebastian hacked it down.

“Thanks,” Sebastian shouted to her, and looked around for more wolves, but by then, the pack was running back into the trees. It seemed that, even starving, they didn’t want to lose too many of their number. Or maybe enough had died now to feed them. Given some of the things his fellow humans were managing to do to one another, he couldn’t complain about that.

“We should get out of here,” he said, moving back to his horse. “Is Violet all right?”

“She’s fine,” Cora said, picking her up from the spot where she’d put her. “Not even crying. She’s such a good little girl.”

They started riding again, heading north. Their horses weren’t moving as quickly now, Vallin’s limping on the leg where it had been bitten. Sebastian had hoped that they might be able to ride for another few hours before they stopped, but he knew that if they tried that, the horses wouldn’t live through it. Then they would be left walking through the kingdom, stumbling about in the dark at the mercy of whoever came.

They came out of the forest, with plains and small patches of wood ahead, the road cutting through them, down across a series of streams. Ahead, miles distant, Sebastian thought that he could see an inn, but that wasn’t the relief that he’d thought it might be. It certainly didn’t look like the sort of place that he might stop given the choice. Even from a distance, the walls stones around it looked dirty, the walls dilapidated wood that seemed half-rotten. Worse, in the forest like this, the kind of people who would be inn were as likely to be thieves or murderers as simple foresters.

“We have to stop,” Sebastian said.

“This doesn’t look like a good place,” Cora said.

“It won’t be,” Emeline assured her. “But it’s better than being out in the open.”

That was the problem. As bad as the inn looked, as bad as the people in it might be, it was still better than a land full of wolves that they had no chance of riding out of before dark. Sebastian might have been willing to risk it if it had been just him, or him and the others. With Violet there, though, they had to go inside.

Sebastian just hoped that it wouldn’t be even more dangerous than the forest as he started the long ride down towards the place.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Sophia pushed the boat as hard as its sails could take, then harder. She forced it forward until the coast of her kingdom came into sight, and then continued until a small fishing port appeared. She stood there with Sienne by her side, holding the fire stone in her hand, letting the power flow through it to push the warm winds of the desert into the sails.

“My queen,” High Merchant N’ka said, “perhaps you could let us guide the vessel into port? With this much wind, I fear we may beach ourselves.”

Sophia had to fight to bring the power back under control, forcing it down into herself and putting the stone she held away. It was hard to control the impulses from the stone, and using it felt exhausting, as though the power that flowed through her when using it threatened to scour her empty from the inside.

“It’s all yours,” she told him.

She waited while, around her, sailors worked hard to bring the ship to land. The others with her started to collect their things, although in truth, those with her hadn’t brought that much along with them on their journey. Aia and the others of the twelve had their armor and their weapons, but only small packs of belongings to go with them. Lani appeared to have little more than the clothes that she stood up in. Sienne stood by her, pressing up against her hand.

The ship pushed up against the docks of the fishing village, and High Merchant N’ka’s men moved to tie it in place.

“High Merchant, come with us,” Sophia said.

“Your majesty?”

“Would you rather stay with the ship? A man like you, who can negotiate and trade, might be very useful. Or you could return to Morgassa.”

That was probably a little cruel. They both knew that he wouldn’t be able to go back until he knew for sure how the events following King Akar’s death had turned out.

“Look at it this way,” Sophia said. “If you come with us, you’ll be in the perfect position to make trades that no one ever could.”

She heard High Merchant N’ka sigh. “Very well. I will join you, although I doubt that I brought enough bearers for all my things as well as your palanquin.”

“We’ll walk,” Sophia assured him, which seemed to leave the merchant in shock. Apparently, he wasn’t entirely used to such strange ideas as rulers who walked.

Their group headed down into the fishing village, and people stared at them as they passed. Sophia imagined that the stares had a lot to do with the presence of so many golden armored warriors, but she suspected that at least a few of the people there had guessed who she was, too.

Almost as soon as she set foot on the soil of her kingdom, Sophia felt the power there. She felt it the way she might feel a familiar touch, knowing that this place was a part of her, and was hers, all at once. She settled down into that feeling, and in a moment, she could feel every hill and blade of grass in the kingdom. She could feel the burnt and damaged ground of Ashton, could feel the soil of Stonehome, soaked deep with blood.

She could feel the presence of the Master of Crows’ army, like a stain upon her land.

“We have to hurry,” she said.

She turned to leave, but a young girl ran up to her. “You’re the queen aren’t you? You’re Queen Sophia?”

“That’s right,” Sophia agreed.

“My daddy told me that you can fight anyone, and you beat the Dowager single handed,” the girl said.

“My sister is a lot better than I am at fighting,” Sophia said with a smile.

The girl’s expression didn’t match it. “Oh.”

“What is it?” Sophia asked. “Why were you hoping that I could fight that well?”

As gently as a feather, she reached into the girl’s thoughts and found a barrier there.

“You’re from Stonehome, aren’t you?” Sophia said.

The girl nodded, and then let Sophia into her mind.

She saw Stonehome. She saw soldiers there, who swept through it even while the girl’s parents told her to run. Searching for something and someone. A baby, the girl knew. A princess. Sophia felt her heart tighten at that thought. She saw the girl’s father being cut down, her mother running in a different direction, trying to draw them off. Villagers ran in the girl’s memories, and Sophia was grateful that the girl was too young to really understand all of the things she saw.

She saw Sebastian and Violet engulfed in mist, while at the same time dozens of soldiers closed in.

“No,” Sophia said, feeling her breath catch.

“I don’t know where everyone went,” the girl said. “We had to walk, and walk, and then they told me to run again. There were men coming; I could see them.”

Sophia held back tears with an effort. She knew what it was like to be forced to run when she was just a girl. She knew what it meant when adults told you to run on alone because there were men coming.

She reached out, using her connection to her kingdom to feel for what was happening. She could see a battle building now, to the north, where there were people who seemed to have powers, and others who were clearly Ishjemme soldiers, and some who were just ordinary looking people. There were perhaps a hundred of them, with their backs to a low turf wall so that they couldn’t be surrounded easily.

Against them there were arrayed more members of the New Army than she could count at first glance. Even so, she didn’t hesitate.

“We’re going north,” she declared. “And we need to hurry. Lani, will you help to look after Revi here?”

“Whatever you command,” the translator said.

Sophia shook her head. “No, Lani. Whatever you wish.”

Lani paused for a moment, as if taking that in, then nodded. “Yes, I will see that she is safe. But do not ask us to stay behind. We go where you go.”

Sophia wasn’t sure if any of them would be truly safe anywhere, but even so, if there had been more time, she would have argued against them coming to a battle. Right now though, there was no time, so Sophia simply waved the twelve warriors forward.

“We have to hurry,” she said. “There are people who need our help.”

“Yes, my queen,” Aia said, and the others fell into step with her as they started forward.

One of the villagers brought Sophia a horse, but the others walked and ran, hurrying at her side as they headed north. They moved quickly, using the roads even though it meant that they were in the open, and soon, Sophia could hear the sounds of battle from nearby. She heeled her horse forward, Sienne running at her side, and the twelve golden armored figures ran with her.

They ran over a small rise, and below, Sophia saw a battle that was only one step away from being a slaughter. The ochre uniforms of the New Army surrounded a group of people. Although those people fought back bravely, holding their ground, it was obvious that they were losing. Too many bodies already lay on the ground.

There was no time for subtlety, no time for some clever plan or elegant ruse. This time, there was only enough time for one thing.

“Kill them,” Sophia said.

Aia bowed, put her golden helm in place, and charged, along with the others. Twelve warriors didn’t seem like enough, but they scythed into the ranks of the New Army, cutting through the first ones they met with impossible speed, their weapons flashing out to clear spaces around them while their armor absorbed the few blows that they couldn’t avoid in the chaos of the battle. They weren’t invulnerable, but looking at them then, it was easy for Sophia to forget it. There must have been ten times as many soldiers of the New Army as there were warriors on her side, but with those twelve there, it didn’t matter.

For a moment, Sophia thought that it would be that easy; that the twelve would just cut through the New Army’s contingent, and it would be over. That they would save the people there without a single loss.

Then an entire battalion of enemy soldiers came over the next hill, muskets shouldered as they marched.

Sophia doubted that even the golden armor would stop that many shots, and she cursed herself for not thinking that this might be some kind of trick to draw in whoever came to save the others. She’d rushed in without even checking to see if anything had changed since she first looked, and now…

…now everyone was going to die.

“No, I won’t allow it,” Sophia said, her fists clenching. She wasn’t going to lose more people who trusted her. She wasn’t going to let the crushing weight of another enemy overcome people who fought on her behalf.

In desperation, she reached for the fire stone, clasping her hand around it.

She stretched out with her knowledge of her kingdom, feeling the presence of the soldiers ahead of her, feeling their movements even as she felt the power of the stone in her hand. She thought about everything they were, and everything they would carry, searching for something that would match with its hunger for fire. Uniforms, weapons, black powder…

“Yes,” Sophia said.

She fed energy from her kingdom into it, and reached out with the power of the stone. It was hard, even for her, the power of the stone lashing through her, threatening to overwhelm her. She held onto it, focusing the power, drawing fire where there had been none before.

Every scrap of black powder the soldiers held exploded at once.

The blast of it filled Sophia’s ears, the men barely having time to scream as flame and power and energy ripped through them. Their weapons exploded in their hands, their powder bags combusted at their hips, and they died. They died because Sophia killed them.

She fell to her knees, hand loosening its hold on the fire stone while hot tears filled her eyes at the thought of killing so many. They had come to kill her people, they deserved it, but even so, she couldn’t help the feeling that each death only fueled the Master of Crows’ campaign. She knelt there until Lani came to her, raising her up.

People crowded around her, men and women and children. They looked at her with awe. They stood staring at her, while others started to chant her name.

“Sophia… Sophia…”

“We’ll follow you wherever you go, your majesty,” one of the warriors there said.

Another one knelt, holding up his sword. “Tell us what you need from us, and we’ll do it.”

She struggled to find the words.

“Tell me,” she said. “Tell me. I have to know. Does anyone know where my daughter is?”

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

If Rika had learned one thing about ruling, it was that there was always another thing to do. There had been a time when she hadn’t had to worry about anything more difficult than making progress with the latest piece on her harp. Now though, there was so much more to do.

“The farmers are saying that this year’s harvest might not be as good as we would hope,” Oli said, standing behind the ducal seat that Rika now occupied in her quarters.

“After all the fighting, I guess that was always going to happen,” Rika said. “Do we have enough in the treasury to make sure that the people get food?”

“I think so,” Oli said. “Although there’s the cost of the army to consider as well.”

Rika wanted to say that feeding people came before fighting, but she knew now just how easily someone could use violence to kill those same people if she didn’t protect them. Of course, sometimes a problem could provide its own solutions, of a sort.

“The soldiers we have left might have to go to support Sophia soon,” she said. “There’s going to be a battle. With the New Army’s attack on her kingdom, we might have a lot fewer mouths to feed when they go to help, and… I think if we ask her, she’ll help to send food.”

She guessed that people wouldn’t be happy with having to beg food from Sophia’s kingdom, but right then, Rika’s main concern was ensuring that they didn’t starve.

“You said that there’s going to be a battle?” Oli said. Her brother looked nervous. He’d always liked books more than swords, and Rika didn’t blame him for it. “Does that mean that you’ve seen something?”

Rika’s dreams were becoming more frequent now, almost as if meeting her cousins had triggered something in her. She still didn’t have any of the magical strength of her siblings, couldn’t even stop someone from reading her mind if they wanted to. The things she saw though, that power was becoming stronger and stronger.

“I saw something that doesn’t make sense,” Rika said. “I saw myself leading a war fleet.”

“Well, you do have a war fleet now,” Oli said.

“You know that’s not the point,” Rika said. The point was that neither one of them was exactly suited to leading a military force. That had been more the kind of thing that Hans or Ulf might have done. It was hard to think about her brothers without experiencing the pain of their loss again. She and Oli had lost so much now, from their father to their brothers and sisters.

“I know,” Oli agreed, and some of the sadness in his voice said that he understood what she was feeling right then. “Since we’re talking of war, you should know that Jan was hoping you would come down to see him work with the men.”

Rika’s oldest surviving brother had taken over a lot of the work with Ishjemme’s soldiers. He had started to teach them the tactics that he had learned in the war against the New Army, and to make sure that the recruits could fight with sword and musket equally well. It was the kind of thing that Rika couldn’t do herself, and that Hans had always done before… well, before.

“Then let’s go see him,” Rika said. “We can see how people are doing in the town while we do it.”

Rika had been worried when she became Duchess of Ishjemme that people would start to be distant with her, or even afraid. After all her brother Endi had done in his brief time as a tyrant there, she wouldn’t have blamed them. Instead, as she and Oli started to make their way down from the castle that sat above Ishjemme, people started to smile and wave to her. It wasn’t like a procession, because they weren’t lined up neatly, or pushed into it by the sense of an occasion they couldn’t miss. Instead, it seemed that almost every person Rika passed wanted to stop and talk with her. They actually liked her.

“Are you all right today, my lady?” a fisherman’s wife asked. “I can’t imagine how anyone manages to do all that you’ve been doing all alone.”

“I’m not exactly alone,” Rika said. “Everyone does what they can.”

“My daughter says that she wants to be just like you when she grows up,” a burly woodcutter said. “Brave, and strong and no one bullies her.”

“If someone is picking on her,” Rika said, “she shouldn’t have to wait until she grows up for it to stop. You should talk to her now, maybe get her to think about what my sister Frigg would have done if someone was being cruel to her.” She thought for a moment. “Although maybe with fewer axes involved.”

It made for slow progress down towards the training square, but Rika didn’t begrudge her people a single moment of it. It meant that she got to hear about what was going well for them and what needed to change, what was happening in their small land, and what they thought was happening with their neighbors. Endi might have had his spies, but Rika found it far better just to ask people what they thought.

Eventually, she made it to the training square, where the remaining young men of Ishjemme, and some of the young women, were training with swords and axes, shields and pikes. Currently, they seemed to be practicing moving in rapidly changing formations, working to sprint from one piece of protection to another in triangles where one group made for cover, another fired muskets to distract any enemy, and a third reloaded in preparation for their turn to advance.

Jan was a little further over, working with a group on swordplay, showing them how to roll their wrists properly to get around the shield of an opponent. He was smiling as he did it, and that seemed far too rare a thing since he’d come back from Ashton.

“You’re doing a good job here,” Rika said.

He swept into a bow. “I’ll have them prepared, my duchess.”

Rika frowned as he straightened up. “Jan.”

“Sorry, I couldn’t resist.” He moved forward and hugged her. “Besides, it’s good to remind them that you are the duchess here, just in case any of them are having fond memories of Endi.”

“It won’t be like that,” Rika said. “I want to bring people together.”

“You’re peaceful and you’re kind,” Jan said. “It’s one of the best things about you, sister, but people can be unkind and soldiers… well, too often they decide that they want a war leader like them.”

“Then they’ll love the dream I had,” Rika said, knowing that her brother was right, and wanting to tell him about the battle that she’d seen. “In it-”

That was when the vision hit her, hard enough that Rika gasped with it.

She could see her cousin Kate, standing in a place of shadows, her hands covered in blood. Her face was terrifying, given over to hate. She stepped back into those shadows, and was gone.

She saw Lucas, sitting in a place where ghosts and unreal things danced around him, shifting and changing with every passing moment. She saw him growing thinner and less real even as she watched his body both starving and seeming to shift into something that wasn’t made of flesh.

She watched him disappear into nothing, lost to the world, turned into a thing of spirit and air, unable to touch the world. There was a smile on his face as it happened that made it seem almost beautiful, and that made him look at peace with it, yet Rika couldn’t feel any of that peace watching it.

She felt even less in the next moment when she saw a battle unfolding around her, in the surrounds of an estate bolstered with walls of energy to turn it into a kind of fortress. Mighty armies clashed there, the New Army taking on a force that seemed to belong to Sophia, along with another under a banner Rika didn’t recognize.

She saw Sophia throwing power that spoke of flames and of stone and ice, men burning and freezing, caught in crevasses and crushed by the ground under their feet. Rika saw the death there, and the destruction, but in spite of it, the others were fighting back with cannon and muskets and power. Rika saw flocks, clouds, of crows descending. She saw blood, and smelled death, and heard the screams of men who would have preferred it.

They fought, and in spite of the power Sophia was able to bring to bear, Rika could see the elements that were missing. She saw the Master of Crows charging through the battle, unstoppable. She saw Sophia fall, pierced by a blade, or a spear, or both…

Rika came back to herself with a scream, her brain momentarily unable to distinguish between the men practicing in front of her and the blood and horror of her vision. She half collapsed, and only kept from collapsing completely because Oli and Jan caught her. They both looked at her with concern.

“What happened?” Jan asked. “Are you all right, Rika?”

“What did you see?” Oli said, obviously catching the way Rika had looked.

“I saw… I saw death. I saw us failing. I saw the Master of Crows winning.”

The other two looked at her in shock.

“No,” Jan said. “He can’t. We won’t let him.”

“I saw it,” Rika said, holding her head. The pressure of the vision was hard to fight past.

“There has to be something we can do,” Oli said.

A part of Rika wanted to just shake her head. How could the three of them hope to do anything when there was so much horror?

“Rika, focus,” Jan said. “I know you’re terrified right now, but you can do this. If you saw something, there must be something we can change. Tell us.”

“I saw… I saw Lucas in trouble,” Rika said. “We… lose him, and then he isn’t there for the battle that matters. Kate… I think that we need to get them there. We need to find a way.”

“Where was Lucas?” Jan said.

Rika tried to think. “He was in a place with trees that had paper hanging from them, and illusions everywhere.”

“The Isle of Spirits,” Oli said. “There are maps in the library that show all the old isles. Lend me a ship and I’ll go.”

Rika shook her head. “No, I feel… I feel as though I need to do this.”

“And Kate?” Jan asked.

“An island of shadows,” Rika said. “Oli, do you know where it is?”

“I know, but I’m not sure-”

“I’ll go,” Jan promised. He put a hand on Rika’s shoulders. “We’ll find them. We’ll get them where they need to be.”

Rika hoped that he was right. If not… if not then they might lose everything.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Kate stalked through the caverns, the shine of the light from the dark walls lending it an eerie quality. The shadows stretched out in odd ways that didn’t always seem to have anything to do with the light. After the attack by the watchers, Kate kept clear of them, wary of being grabbed.

“People come this way sometimes,” Lisare said in a low voice. “They try to consult with the stone.”

“Consult with it?” Kate asked. She had thought that it would just be a stone. How did you consult with a stone?

“The shadow stone is connected to every shadow in the world,” Lisare said. “People come to ask questions, and see what it sees. Many do not survive. The ones who do…”

“What?” Kate asked as they kept going, through the underground spaces beneath the mountain.

“The stone tells the truth, but a shadowed version of it,” Lisare said. “People come out haunted looking. I have seen a man fight his way through all of it, only to sit down and starve himself to death once he was back.”

Kate shuddered at the thought of that. “And no one here tried to help him?”

“This is a place of death,” Lisare told her. “We tried to warn him, just as I’ll warn you now: the stone is powerful, and it is dangerous. Try to use it before you are perfectly prepared, listen to its lies too closely, and you risk destroying yourself.”

Kate could hear the concern in her voice, but she didn’t trust it. She had learned far too many times how cruel life could be, and how easily people betrayed one another. This woman, this priestess, was just trying to push her back to keep her from what she needed to do.

Kate pressed on in silence, her feet slipping over the shadowy ground without so much as a scrape. The echo of Lisare’s feet sounded far too loud in comparison.

“You need to stay back,” Kate said. “You’re making too much noise.”

“I need to guide you,” Lisare said.

“To a place you’ve never been?” Kate demanded, becoming more suspicious by the second. “Why? So that you can let something know that I’m coming?”

“Kate, this is the shadows having an effect on you,” Lisare said. “They try to sneak into who you are. They try to bring out the worst in you.”

“But not in you?” Kate shot back. What did she actually know about this priestess? How many times had she been tricked before? Siobhan had done it, tricking her out of her own soul. Her parents had sent her a way to find them, but then… then they’d gone and died.

She couldn’t listen to this. She had to get away before Lisare had a chance to betray her. She should run, she should kill her. She should…

“Kate, don’t!” Lisare shouted as Kate sprinted away.

Kate took turnings at random as she headed through the passages beneath the mountain. The shadows reached for her, but she avoided them. Kate ran on, trusting her instincts, hoping that they would lead her to where she wanted to go. It felt almost as if the shadows were leading her forward, a tugging on the edge of her mind beckoning her, urging her, luring her…

“I don’t care,” Kate whispered.

The words seemed to echo through the tunnels, turning into something that seemed to call Kate forward, and now she was certain that this was the right way, this was the way she needed to go.

The tunnel opened out, giving way to a large, circular cavern, lit by a shaft of light from above that seemed to glance off the rocks, only providing fuel for the shadows that filled the place.

At the heart of it was what seemed like a pool or a pond, except that it was not a pool of water. Like the waterfall above, it was a pool of raw shadows, and those shadows writhed like something living as Kate drew closer. At the heart of it, she could see a round object the size of her hand, smooth as glass, but with what seemed like yet more shadows dancing underneath the surface.

This had to be the shadow stone, the thing Kate had come to find, the thing that might give her back what she had been before. She started to make her way towards it, and even as she did, something started to rise up from the pool.

It was obviously made from shadows, some of them flickering and curling off it like smoke. It rose up far higher than her head, lizard-like and huge, jet black teeth in an empty cavern of a mouth. It roared out a wash of shadow, and Kate threw herself to the side. She saw the shadow flicker against the walls, seeming to destroy the spot it touched.

Kate drew the blade at her hip: the blade she’d helped to make part of, and that had been finished by Siobhan. She lunged forward, cutting at the hide of the lizard, feeling it surprisingly solid even as she sliced through it. Shadows spilled from the wound like blood, and again, where it struck on the floor, the floor shifted and changed.

It lashed out with claws like knives, and Kate ducked.

“Is this what you do to everyone who wants to ask questions?” Kate demanded. She didn’t know if the lizard thing could understand her, but she had no doubt that something in there could.

You want more than questions. You want us… you want power…we must see you…

“Well, if it’s a show you want, I’ll give you a show,” Kate snapped. She didn’t like the idea of having to fight for what amounted to the entertainment of a rock. Even so, with the lizard advancing on her, there was nothing to do except fight.

It swept its tail round in an arc that threatened to scythe her legs away, and Kate leapt over it. It brought claws down in sweeps that gouged rents into the shadowy rock beneath as Kate danced back from them. It breathed its strange shadow fire again, and Kate threw herself flat, before leaping up to dodge away from another blow of the thing’s claws.

In between, she cut at it. Between every dodge, every leap, every sway to avoid the hacking passage of its claws, she struck back. The blows were mere pinpricks compared to what the creature could have done to her, tiny even in comparison to what she could have done with her full strength, but Kate made sure that there were plenty of them. She cut, and she stabbed, and she sliced, every touch of her blade spilling more shadow from the thing.

“Oh, come on,” Kate said as the thing kept coming for her. “This should at least be slowing you down.”

Did you think that things were fair, Kate Danse? Haven’t you learned by now that you keep trying and trying and trying, and nothing turns out well? Give in, yield, and we will at least make your oblivion swift.

Kate roared in anger at that, charging at the lizard and continuing to cut. She sliced at the beast, its shadow substance falling to the ground and seeming to flow back into the pool of it. She cut and cut, and now she thought that the lizard was smaller than it had been. It no longer towered over her, and as she kept cutting, it continued to grow smaller, with less shadow substance to form it.

Finally, as she thrust through its heart, she felt the power of it dissipate, the shadow spilling down into nothing.

“Is that all you have?” Kate demanded, feeling her fury still there within her even if the power to back it up wasn’t.

So it is anger with you, the voice said, seeming to emanate from the walls. Well then, come and take your prize.

The pool of shadows seemed to grow still, a path opening in it that would allow access to the stone. Kate started towards it, guessing that there had to be some kind of trap to it, but not knowing what it might be.

She approached it, and another form started to rise up out of the pool. This one looked human, but their features seemed to shift and change as Kate watched, formed from shadow. One moment the figure was male, the next female, tall then short, young and then old.

“What is this?” Kate demanded. “Have you decided that you want to talk after all?”

The figure shifted again, and Kate knew the shape that it took on now. The same shape that had caused so much of her misery: the Master of Crows.

“You hate this one so much,” the shadows said. “You want to kill it, but maybe there are others you should want to kill more.”

More shadowy figures rose from the pool, and Kate recognized her brother and sister even before they were fully formed.

“How about it, Kate?” the pool’s version of the Master of Crows asked. “Will you kill those you love to get what you need?”

CHAPTER TWENTY

Lucas tightened his hand around the spirit blade he held, feeling a little afraid as the creature approached. Not afraid for himself, because he was confident in the skills he had learned from his sword masters, but afraid that he might not be able to do what his sisters needed him to do.

Afraid for Elanora, too. She stood behind him, with a serene expression as if she was totally confident about Lucas’ ability to protect both of them and take on the beast. Even after the short time that he’d known her, Lucas found himself thinking about her, about how wonderful she was, about how much he wanted to protect her, and about the kiss that they’d shared.

Lucas leapt forward to engage the hulking thing, its branches swinging down towards him. One bark covered arm swept at him, faster than most people could have dodged, but Lucas wasn’t most people. He swayed aside and cut a shallow blow with the blade Elanora had produced for him, not wanting to cut too deep until he was sure that the blade would not become stuck.

With another blade, perhaps that precaution might have been needed, to stop the sap of the creature’s trunk from claiming it. This one didn’t seem to cut the flesh, though. Instead, it passed through the tree beast’s bark without leaving a scratch or a wound, but still left the beast bellowing in pain.

It swung one of its smaller branches at him, and Lucas found himself forced to parry. For this, at least, the sword felt solid enough, although right then, Lucas wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or not. The force of the blow was nearly enough to stagger him even with the blade in between them. He struck back, and once more, it passed through a section of the creature’s trunk, wounding it in ways Lucas couldn’t understand.

“The blade wounds the spirit!” Elanora called out. “Keep going, Lucas!”

Lucas nodded, and looked back to his opponent in time for it to spit a shower of wood chips, each one splintered and shard-like. Lucas managed to get his arms in front of his face in time to keep from being blinded, and threw himself to the side so that only a few hit him, but even so, he could feel the pain as the splinters punched into his flesh.

He struck back, cutting at a branch that came too close, then at a root that whipped up from the floor to try to wrap around his leg. The creature pulled back each time Lucas struck, but it kept coming, and worse, he was having to give ground to it.

Step by step, it forced him back through the boneyard it had created, so that Lucas had to pick his way around the skeletons of the fallen to avoid being tripped by them. He saw the creature’s knot-like eyes shift from him to Elanora and knew what was coming next even before it took a step towards her.

Once, Lucas had asked official Ko if it was really so difficult to kill someone as all his sword masters made out. Official Ko had laughed that infuriating, knowing laugh he had.

“It is easy, so long as you don’t mind dying when you do it. Is there anything you think it is worth dying for?”

At the time, Lucas hadn’t been able to think of anything. Now, he had plenty, and it seemed that Elanora was one of them.

“No!” Lucas yelled, and threw himself within the wide sweep of the creature’s arms. Thorn covered branches tore at him, ripping into his flesh. Vines appeared from the bole at the tree’s heart and tried to strangle him. Even the leaves seemed to have sharp points to them, more like those of the holly than oak or chestnut.

He plunged the spirit blade down into the heart of the creature, and maybe a normal sword couldn’t have made its way through so much of the trunk, but the one Lucas held could when it was propelled by his strength. He felt it pierce something, not any organ that a body normally held, but something nonetheless.

The tree grew still, freezing in place so that it was a tree once more, and not just a monster wearing one’s shape.

“You did it,” Elanora said, breathlessly. “You killed the guardian. After all the people who have tried, you’re the one who has managed it.”

She reached up towards the piece of paper fluttering in the tree’s branches, seemed to remember herself, and paused.

“Are you ready, Lucas?” she asked.

“I… don’t know,” Lucas admitted. Now that the rush of battle was gone, the truth was that he ached. He had cuts all over his body, while his ribs ached from a blow he could barely remember landing.

“You were incredible,” Elanora said. “I didn’t think that anyone would finally clear the way to the stone.”

“Clear the way?” Lucas said.

“Sorry, Lucas,” Elanora said. “I do like you.”

She grabbed for the piece of paper on the tree, her hand closing around it, and she vanished from Lucas’ sight before he could react.

He grabbed for the paper after her, and found himself in an empty, sunlit clearing, no bigger across than a large room might have been. A pillar of golden wood stood at its heart, Elanora by its side. On it…

At first glance, Lucas couldn’t see the sphere that sat on it, yet as he looked closer, it was there in outline, a shifting thing of pure spirit, flickering only where it met the world. Elanora reached out her hand for it, clasping it to her like a hummingbird about to be let go.

“Elanora, no,” Lucas said.

“I’ve wanted this for so long,” she replied, “but the guardian was always too strong for me. Don’t you see, Lucas? The spirit stone is the only way to make myself something more than spirit.”

“But I need it to fight the Master of Crows,” Lucas said. “The world needs it.”

“Does it have to be like that, though?” Elanora asked. The spirit of the stone seemed to flow around her like lightning. “We could work together, you and I. We could do everything… together.”

She took a step towards Lucas, and he didn’t know what to do in response. He couldn’t bring himself to strike at her, and the spirit stone seemed to hover above her palm, as if ready to dart away at the hint of a threat.

“We’re not enemies, Lucas,” Elanora said. “I don’t want to hurt you. I see a future where you’re here, with me.”

She moved closer, and there was a moment where Lucas could have stabbed her, but the moment passed in a blink. She kissed him then, the way that she’d kissed him before, and Lucas felt himself fall into that kiss. He kissed her back instinctively, needing her touch, needing to be close to her.

He felt, as he’d felt that first time, the faintest sliver of something precious transferring from him to her. The last time Elanora had stolen some of his reality, it had been the faintest trickle, but now it was like a storm pouring out of him.

He tried to pull back, and Elanora’s hands clasped onto his arms, holding onto him. It might have felt like passion, if Lucas hadn’t been able to feel the power being pulled from his body. He could feel Elanora growing more real moment by moment until he managed to push back away from her.

“I’m sorry, Lucas,” she said, “but I need all the reality I can get.”

“You can’t do this,” Lucas said, drawing his sword, or trying to. As he grabbed for it, his hand slipped through the space where the hilt was, not able to grab onto even a thing that was only half real.

“Trying to kill me?” Elanora said. “That isn’t very nice, Lucas, and there’s still plenty of reality that I could take from you.”

“I thought you said you liked me,” Lucas shot back.

“Oh, I do. You’re a beautiful thing, but also a real one, and that’s more important right now. I’ll keep you here, of course. I do like you, and it will give me a reason to come back to the Isle of Spirits once every century or so.”

“Every century!” Lucas shook his head, trying to get to her. “My sisters-”

“Your sisters don’t matter,” Elanora said. “The world doesn’t matter. It’s doomed anyway. If the Master of Crows doesn’t rip it to pieces, then the one to come… but I’m getting ahead of myself, and I’d rather concentrate on now. You do kiss beautifully, Lucas…”

She leaned forward so that her lips met his again, and even as the moment was exquisite, Lucas felt himself trying to fight back. He didn’t have the strength, though. There was nearly nothing left of him, and soon, soon he would be trapped completely.

CHAPTER TWENTY ONE

Emeline could feel the pressure of the Master of Crows’ search bearing down on her with every moment that they traveled. His crows filled the skies, and there was little enough that she could do to stop them from watching, but she could at least keep him from sensing Violet outright.

That was anything but easy though. Violet shone with power, literally shone with it when it came to the eyes of the spirit. She was like a baby sized hole in the universe, punched through to some brighter thing beneath. To hide that from something like the Master of Crows took effort, and meant that she didn’t dare rest.

“Are you all right?” Cora asked her.

“I’m fine,” Emeline lied.

That just earned her a look that told her Cora knew exactly how tired she was.

“What do you want me to say?” Emeline asked. “I have to keep going. We all do.”

The inn in the distance would be no more than a brief respite. They wouldn’t be safe until they got to Monthys; maybe not even then, when the estate’s defenses hadn’t been fully rebuilt. Everyone was going there on the strength of a vision she’d had of the place strengthened by magic, but what if she was wrong? What if-

The second vision hit her as hard as the first had, and Emeline almost fell from the saddle as she watched it. She saw riders in New Army uniforms ranging ahead of a larger force. She saw them fall on her and the others, finding them not because of any clever hunting but because they’d simply moved faster on the road to Monthys. She saw Sebastian cut down, saw Valin and Edmore shot. She saw Cora dragged from the saddle, a knife rising…

“No!” Emeline screamed out, and the volume of it was enough to bring her back to herself.

She looked round to find that the others were staring at her.

“Emeline, what is it?” Cora said. “Are you all right?”

“Did you see something else?” Sebastian asked.

Emeline managed to nod, but it took a long sip from her water bottle before she was able to say anything.

“They’re coming,” Emeline said. “The Master of Crows’ people are coming. They find us, and they kill us.”

She couldn’t help talking about it as fact even though none of it had come to pass yet. She’d seen it. She’d seen the people around her, her friends, with blood on them. She’d heard their screams. Their deaths felt real, even though they were there in front of her, obviously still alive.

“How do they find us?” Sebastian asked.

“I don’t know,” Emeline said. “I think that they just guess that we must be heading for Monthys.”

“So we could turn off the path?” Valin said.

“There’s nowhere else to go,” Sebastian said. “We could try to make for the coast, but from here, we would be taking the same road, and finding a ship from there without being caught would be just as hard.”

That was the problem: wherever they went, it was a worse option. They would be travelling through a land that might or might not hold battalions of the New Army, trying at best, to flee from the country. Somehow, Emeline suspected that this time, there would be no coming back from it. Worse, she suspected that they would follow wherever Violet went. The child stood out through the eyes of those who could see, shining like a beacon to attract the enemy.

An idea came to her. It was dangerous, desperately, stupidly dangerous. It might mean dying. It might mean worse than dying, if she fell into the hands of the Master of Crows… but it was the only thing that Emeline could think of.

“You need to go to Monthys,” Emeline insisted. She’d seen it in all its glory; had seen the safety that it offered. “It’s the only place that all of you will be safe.”

“That we will be safe,” Sebastian corrected her, but Emeline shook her head.

“If we all go, then the New Army will catch up to us.”

“So what are you planning to do?” Edmore asked. “Stand here and hold them all back while Sebastian gets the child to safety? All of us together couldn’t hold them back at Stonehome.”

“I can’t stand against them,” Emeline said, “but I can draw them away.”

Softly, she reached out, brushing her hand against Violet’s head. Looking with the eyes of the spirit, she saw a strand of pure white follow her hand, joining with her own, far less impressive, aura of power. Emeline could change that, though. She dropped the shield she’d been holding against the Master of Crows and put all of her effort into making herself shine out like a beacon, copying Violet’s aura of power.

“The Master of Crows will follow the pattern of Violet’s power,” she said. “So if I copy it, he will follow me, not all of you. I’ll lead them far enough away that you’ll have a good head start, then disappear from view.”

“No,” Sebastian said. “That plan would be suicide.”

“Suicide is hoping that we can outrun a cavalry division on a straight road,” Emeline shot back. “Edmore, you need to take over shielding Violet from the Master of Crows’ view, if you can.”

“I don’t have your power,” the warrior said. “But I’ll try to hold it a while.”

“Sebastian, you will need the heart stone of Stonehome,” Emeline said. She took it out and held it for him to take.

Sebastian didn’t move to grab it though. “This is a bad idea, Emeline. I won’t let you do this.”

“It’s not about whether you let me or not,” Emeline said. “I’ve already done it. I’m burning like a torch for the Master of Crows to see, and if you don’t want to be here when he arrives, you need to go.”

Sebastian looked as if he might say something, stopped himself, and took the pouch containing the stone from Emeline.

“You… I don’t know what to say, Emeline. Thank you. Thank you for protecting my daughter.”

Emeline turned to Cora. This would be the hardest of the goodbyes.

“I just wanted to say-”

“You don’t have to say anything,” Cora said.

“I do,” Emeline insisted. “In the time that I’ve known you-”

“You don’t have to say anything, because I’m coming with you.”

“What? No!” Emeline said, caught unprepared by the shock of it. How could Cora think that was the right thing to do. “You can’t.”

“You can, so I can,” Cora said. “Or did you think I was going to let you go off alone to do this?”

“But I have to go,” Emeline said. “I’m the one who can pretend to be Violet for long enough, but you don’t have to have a part in this. You can be safe in Monthys.”

“I’ve already lost the man I loved,” Cora said, tears in her eyes. “I’m not going to lose my closest friend as well.”

“But if you come with me-” Emeline began.

“Then I can help you,” Cora said. “We’ve escaped plenty of things together before, so why not this? You’re shining like a beacon, right? So we use that to lead them away, and then we turn it off. We disappear into some woods or something, and we make our way to Monthys, or Ishjemme, or somewhere else that’s safe.”

Emeline appreciated the offer more than she could say, but she also knew that if she agreed to it, Cora would be in more danger than she needed to be. Emeline could do all the things that Cora had just suggested without her friend having to be there. That way, the only person who would be in danger would be her.

“Cora, I-”

“Just remember what you told Sebastian,” Cora said. “This beacon of yours is already there for the Master of Crows to see. Every moment you spend arguing with me is a moment where he could be getting closer.”

Emeline tried to think of a good argument to counter that, and swore when she couldn’t.

“All right,” she said. “All right, we’ll do this together. You’re going to have to give the baby back to her father then, Cora. Keep her basket though, and cover it. That way, if a crow looks down, it will still fool its master.”

Cora nodded, and gingerly reached out, holding Violet out to Sebastian.

“I’m going to miss you, little princess,” she said. “You be a good girl for your father. I know he will protect you no matter what happens.”

It sounded too much like a final goodbye to Emeline. Even though they were both talking about coming back afterwards, they both knew what this might mean. Having the whole of the New Army chasing them was not a scenario that they could guarantee turning out well.

Emeline waited for Cora to finish handing over Violet, then nodded her own goodbye to Sebastian.

“This is it,” she said.

“Good luck, both of you,” Sebastian replied. “And thank you. Thank you for more than I can say.”

Emeline wished that there was more time. She wished that they had an opportunity to say goodbye properly, or think of a better plan, but there was no time. The New Army was coming.

Heeling her and Cora’s horse into a run to one side of the road, she set out to draw it to them.

CHAPTER TWENTY TWO

The Master of Crows leaned low over the head of his horse as he forced it to gallop forward, not caring if it meant the creature’s death from exhaustion. He didn’t care about the men who followed him on their own horses either. All things died. All that mattered now was finding the child.

The horse he rode was a large black thing that seemed half terrified by the Master of Crows’ presence on his back, although maybe at least a part of that was due to the crows that perched on it, their claws digging into its flesh. That just made the beast run faster though, its hooves sounding out a staccato rhythm on the forest path beneath.

“I want them found,” the Master of Crows called out, and not for the first time. “A reward for the man who brings me the child!”

He charged on through the forest, hoping to outpace Sebastian and the others as they ran. With a child, there was only so fast that they would be able to move, while he was prepared to ride horses to death and push men until they were all but dropping.

“We will find them,” he whispered to his crows. “We have to.”

He reached out with his magic, seeing through the eyes of his pets. The trees obscured a lot, but he still saw the house set back in them, well away from the road. He stretched out his magic, searching for the bright shine of the child’s power, but there was nothing to be seen right then.

“She is being hidden,” he muttered to himself.

“What’s that, my lord?” a soldier not far from him asked.

The Master of Crows was so intent upon the hunt that he even ignored the impertinence.

“There is a farm house in this direction. I want it searched, and the inhabitants questioned. I want to know if the child was here.”

“Yes my lord.”

The Master of Crows thought about leaving the search to his men, but the truth was that he wanted to make sure of things. He didn’t want to leave anything else to an underling that might result in the loss of something so precious.

He rode with them to the cottage, obviously the home of a forester and his family. The man did not come out immediately, and the Master of Crows had no time for pleasantries.

“Set fire to it. They’ll come out soon enough,” he ordered, loud enough that anyone inside would hear.

His men moved to obey, and quickly, a family hurried from the house: a man with a bow slung over his back, a woman, a cluster of children ranging from the very young to the nearly grown. Idly, he wondered how many of them truly understood the danger that they were in.

“Tell me where the child is,” he asked.

“What child?” the man called back.

The Master of Crows flicked a finger, and one of his crows darted forward. Its claws raked at the man, drawing a cry of pain and leaving gashes down the side of his face.

“Search the house,” he ordered. His men stormed in, the crashes as they worked saying that they were being thorough about their jobs. While they were in there, the Master of Crows gestured to another of his birds. It moved to sit on the shoulder of the oldest looking child, a girl who trembled as she tried for bravery.

“This is very simple,” he said. “I will ask questions, and you will answer them. I will know if you lie, and if you do so, my bird will take one of your daughter’s eyes. When she has run out of eyes, we will move to the next oldest child, and so on. When you run out of children, I will move to you. Do you understand?”

“Y-yes, my lord,” the man managed.

“Very well,” the Master of Crows continued. “I believe that a group of individuals came this way, carrying a child. Did you see them? Think carefully before you answer.”

The forester said nothing for several seconds. In that silence, a small voice piped up.

“I saw them,” a young girl said. She ignored a nudge from one of her brothers. “I did. I was out playing in the trees, and I did.”

“Tell me what you saw,” the Master of Crows said. The child was very small, although it had been a long time since he had cared enough to be able to judge exactly how old it might be. Not the youngest of them, perhaps, but young enough not to be scared,

“I think you’re a bad person,” the little girl said.

“Such things do not matter. Only the crows matter. Now, tell me what you saw, or I’ll have one eat your sister’s eyeball.”

The little girl looked horrified for a moment, glancing across to her mother and father.

“Tell me the truth, now,” the Master of Crows snapped.

“There were people,” the little girl said in between sobs. “Just people, on horses. There were some men, and two women, and a baby, all on horses. They rode past, and I tried waving to them, but they didn’t see me.”

“Which way?” the Master of Crows demanded, and the girl pointed. “Thank you. As a reward, I’ll let you do something that none of the rest of your family will.” He smiled at the girl’s hopeful expression. “You get to live. Kill the rest, quickly. Then mount up.”

For his part, he sent his attention back into his crows as the screams started. The deaths of a few peasants weren’t interesting enough to bother watching, and right then even the most exquisite execution wouldn’t have torn him from his task. He had to find the child.

He sent his birds along the line of the road, searching as they went, his attention moving faster than any horse could run. He kept his senses wide open, looking for that giveaway brightness that marked the child’s magic. On the road ahead, he thought that he could make out riders…

…then his attention was pulled away to the left as he caught sight of the one thing he’d been hoping he would see: pure white light, blazing so brightly that it might have been the sun. He got his crow to fly closer, and he saw two figures on horseback, a basinet between them. White light surrounded them, bright enough to obscure almost anything else as they made their way along the edge of the forest.

He took a moment, savouring it and trying to work out where they were in relation to the place where they currently stood. As soon as he was sure that he had it, he brought his awareness back to himself, running for his horse.

“This way!” he yelled as he ran. “Leave the family. They don’t matter anymore!”

He reached his horse, leaping up into the saddle and kicking the beast into a run. When it wasn’t fast enough, he whipped it to try to get extra speed from it, ignoring its snorts of exertion.

When it wasn’t making good enough time on the road, he plunged into the trees, ignoring the way that they whipped around him. He dodged and ducked them with the speed of a bird flitting through the branches, although a glance behind told him that not all of his men were being so lucky. One hit a branch with a sickening crunch, before collapsing to the ground.

The Master of Crows continued on, a part of him tracking that bright white glow of power using the circling of his crows. He followed across ditches and small streams, his horse leaping them effortlessly while he clung to its back. He followed through tangled thickets, barely even feeling them as they tore at his skin.

He felt his horse start to collapse from exhaustion, and leapt down with all the grace of a landing rook. He didn’t let it slow him, continuing to race on with the kind of speed that only magic could provide. If he spent some more of what he’d gained, what did it matter so long as he gained the child at the end of it?

He ran to the edge of the forest, to the spot where he should have intercepted the riders with their burden. He looked around for the white hot glow of power, wanting to be sure that he had found the right spot.

It winked out as surely as a blown candle.

“No,” the Master of Crows said as he saw the bassinet abandoned in the road, so casually that it could never have contained a child. “No!”

He’d been tricked. He’d been lured into going this way. He’d been slowed down to buy others time to escape. But there was one advantage to that: if the ones here had been working to protect the child, then they must know where it was.

“There are people nearby who did this!” he shrieked as his soldiers started to arrive. “Find them! Find them and bring them to me!”

CHAPTER TWENTY THREE

Sebastian hated leaving Cora and Emeline behind. In any other situation, he would have stopped them from doing it; he wouldn’t have let them sacrifice themselves like this. More than enough people had died for him already. Hans, Will, even Asha…

Only the presence of Violet in his arms prevented him from turning back to try to save his friends. He couldn’t risk his daughter; he had to protect her. Besides, he told himself, Emeline’s plan relied on distance between her and Violet, so that when she turned off her false aura of power, the Master of Crows would not just be able to track them through Violet. Staying away from them actually kept them safer.

Sebastian tried to tell himself that, but it was hard to truly believe it.

“We’re almost there, Your Majesty,” Edmore said. Sebastian could see that the man was sweating. It was obviously an effort for him to block out the Master of Crows. It made the way Emeline had done it all the more impressive.

“Once we’re in the inn, we’ll be able to rest,” Sebastian reassured him. He could see Valins looking around warily. “We’ll be safe.”

“Will we?” the soldier asked. “The whole of the New Army is coming. Will the few of us be able to stay safe against that?”

“At Monthys we will,” Sebastian said. He had to believe it. He had to believe that there would be somewhere that was safe.

They continued their ride to the inn, and the closer they got to it, the more worrying it looked to Sebastian. The place was obviously uncared for, with ivy climbing up the walls disguising holes in them, and a yard before it whose cobbles were almost worn through. If there hadn’t been people there around the courtyard, Sebastian might have believed the place to be abandoned.

A track led from it down in the direction of a river perhaps a mile distant, and on the water there, Sebastian could see drab boats and barges, punctuated by the occasional flash of color.

“We could make for the river and take a boat,” Valin suggested.

Sebastian nodded, maybe that would be a good idea. The rivers would connect to others, and might get them anywhere, from Monthys all the way to the coast.

“We’ll decide tomorrow,” he said. “For now, we need to stop. It’s starting to get dark, and I don’t want to be outside with Violet.”

The need to keep Violet safe made everything else secondary. No matter how odd this place felt to Sebastian, they had to stop here, so he rode in with her and the others, one hand holding her, the other resting on his sword.

The people in the coaching yard stared in silence as they came into it. The look wasn’t unfriendly, exactly, more uncomprehending, as if they couldn’t understand why any stranger would dare to come to their inn.

“Is there stabling for the horses?” Sebastian called out.

No one moved to help, so he dismounted and led the horse around to a hitching post.

“I’ll see to them and join you inside,” Valin said.

“Thanks,” Sebastian replied. “I’ll try to find us rooms.”

He went in with Violet in his arms and Edmore by his side. As they entered the inn, it fell so completely silent that it was impossible not to see the eyes upon him from every corner. There were men and women there, some in brightly colored clothes, some in dull grey that reminded Sebastian a little of a priest’s robes.

The interior of the inn was an odd place. The ceilings were low and cramped feeling, with the only light provided by tallow candles hanging in sconces and a fire burning halfheartedly in a grate.  The result was a dim orange light that only made the people around the inn look shiftier and more dangerous. Sebastian found himself wondering what would happen if he announced who he was, and decided that he didn’t want to know. He pulled his cloak around himself and his daughter, keeping his face turned from the light to make it harder for anyone to recognize him.

“Oh, you don’t have to bundle the little one up like that,” a woman behind the bar said. She was a round woman in her forties, with elaborate earrings in both ears and a curling tattoo on one side of her face. “They’ll be warm enough with the warmth of the fire. I’m Kasai. Me and my husband, this is our inn.”

“My friends and I are passing through,” Sebastian said. “We were hoping for food and rooms for the night. We’re on our way to-”

“I find it’s best not to tell people where you’re going or why you’re out here,” Kasai said. “One of the rules of my inn: you don’t tell people which side you’re on, or which one you ran from.”

“You think I’m a deserter?” Sebastian said, caught by surprise.

“Oh, my boy, I think all kinds of things about you, but none of it’s important. So long as you stick to the rules, there are no problems here. You mind your own business. You don’t bring up your side, or your cause, or what you think is right or legal. You don’t pick fights with my patrons. You pay for your drinks. Do all that, and everything’s fine.”

Sebastian nodded. “We’ll need rooms. There are three of us, plus my daughter.”

“There’s a crib in one of the cupboards,” Kasai said. “I’ll put it in the top room for you. I’ll bring her some goat’s milk and you can put  her down to sleep there while you have something to eat.”

A part of Sebastian didn’t like the idea of leaving his daughter alone, and the innkeeper must have noticed it.

“It’s all right. I’ll have one of the girls watch her. She’ll call out if anything happens.”

“There’s no need,” Valin said. “I’ll watch her while you eat, then you come up to watch her while I do.”

Sebastian nodded. It wasn’t ideal, but the truth was that he and the others all needed to rest. Kasai showed him to a room that was at the very top of the inn, where patches of the ivy covered up holes in the walls, with beds set around the edges. She brought out a crib, which was, in truth, just a basket on a stand. Valin took Violet, with surprising gentleness for a former soldier. He and Edmore settled down at a table, eating stew from a great pot that at least made it unlikely that anyone was going to try to poison them. Kasai brought wine, and Sebastian drank sparingly.

Once he’d eaten, Sebastian headed upstairs. Edmore made to go with him, but Sebastian shook his head.

“You and Valin enjoy yourself for a while. I’ll look after my daughter.”

He said that partly because he knew that the man needed as much time to recuperate as possible, and partly because Sebastian wanted at least a little time alone with his daughter on this journey. He went upstairs and nodded to Valin, who was sitting by the crib Kasai had found.

“Barely a sound from her,” Valin said. “No sign of any trouble from the rest of the inn, either.”

“You go down and eat,” Sebastian said. “I’ll watch her for a while.”

He took Valin’s chair, wishing that he could pick up his daughter and cradle her while she slept, but he didn’t want to risk waking her, not then. Instead, he sat back in the chair, watching her, thinking of how precious she was as she lay there.

“Your mother will come back to us soon,” Sebastian whispered to her. “Then, everything will be all right.”

He had to believe that Sophia would return at some point. She’d gone to find her parents, but even in Morgassa, he guessed that she would hear about the war in her kingdom soon enough. Sebastian would hold on until she got back; he would make sure that her kingdom, and her daughter, were safe.

Sebastian sat there watching Violet until his eyes started to close. They’d been riding so hard now, for so long, that it just wasn’t possible to stay awake.

He dreamed of the past, of the days when he had been very young. Even then, his mother had been fierce and demanding, hard edged and even frightening to a small boy. For so much of the time, Sebastian had found himself watched by tutors and nurses, and he found himself dreaming of being followed around the palace by them, searching for him as he went off in search of… in search of what? He was looking for something, and he couldn’t find it, while all the while, in the background there was the wailing of a child who was hungry, or lost, or…

As Sebastian snapped back to wakefulness, he couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong, something was missing. The candles that lit the room had gone out, and Sebastian scrabbled around until his hands found one of them. He lit it by feel, biting his lip in frustration as he did so. Flickering light filled the room as Sebastian held it up, and as he did, he gasped.

“No…”

One of the ivy covered gaps was now uncovered, revealing the night beyond, while an empty space now stood where the crib once had. Sebastian felt panic building up inside him.

His daughter was gone.

CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR

Sophia headed for Stonehome, and an army grew around her. With almost every step that she took, it seemed that more people joined her, coming in from the places that they’d run, and from the small villages that they passed through.

“Why Stonehome, my lady?” Lani asked. “The survivors say that it is gone.”

“It is the last place that I know my daughter was,” Sophia said. If she was going to find Violet, she had to start somewhere, and Stonehome was the best place that she could think of. “And it’s more than that. I have to see it. I have to know what they did.”

“Will the Master of Crows’ men be there?” Aia put in. The warrior didn’t seem entirely worried by the possibility, merely interested.

“My hope is that they’ve moved on,” Sophia said. “The New Army is like a plague of locusts. It moves in and it kills, then moves again.”

She tried not to think about what that might mean for the people she cared about. The Master of Crows wasn’t someone who took prisoners, or held back. He didn’t compromise or negotiate.

“I shouldn’t have gone to Morgassa,” Sophia said.

“If you hadn’t, then you wouldn’t have found your parents,” Lani said. “And I would not be free. Forgive me, my queen, but there are some things that should not be unwished.”

“I’m sorry,” Sophia said. “I didn’t mean it like that. It’s just… if I’d been here, I could have done something.”

“You do not know what you could have done,” Aia said. “Perhaps you would have been able to stop everything, but perhaps you would have died. A warrior deals with what is.”

“I’m no warrior,” Sophia said.

“You defeated more men than even the twelve could cut down,” Aia said. “You command us, and a forest cat that can kill just as easily. You might not fight with blade and pistol, but you can win wars with you mind.”

“Then I should have been here,” Sophia insisted.

Aia shook her head. “Because you went to Morgassa, you have us by your side. You have the fire stone to use. If you’d stayed, could you have stood against the Master of Crows?”

“I…” If Sophia had been Kate, she would probably have said yes straight away. Instead, she shook her head. “I don’t know.”

“And now you have the power that’s needed to defeat this evil,” Aia said.

Sophia thought about the stones that Kate and Lucas had gone to find. “Part of it.”

“Focus on that,” Aia said, “no matter what we see in Stonehome.”

Sophia did her best, and they kept going on the road to Stonehome, marching now, a column of those who had fled and those who had been waiting for her to arrive. There were soldiers in it, and warriors from Stonehome, and more.

Even so, when they got to Stonehome, Sophia felt her heart break.

There were no soldiers around it now, although the churned up moorland on every side showed just how many there must have been. Sophia didn’t need any skill in tracking to see the direction that troops had gone, heading north in a great wave of men and horses. They’d been moving quickly too; quickly enough to abandon their cannon because they would only slow them down.

Within Stonehome, there were the dead.

They lay in piles and circles, almost too many to comprehend. With so many of them, they almost became numbers rather than people. Almost. Sophia saw Vincente’s body, fallen at the walls amongst a pile of enemies. She saw the bodies of men and women she had met, some soldiers, others just people who had run from Ashton. One woman had been a servant at the palace, and it made something tighten in Sophia to realize that she didn’t even know her name.

There were crows there everywhere, hopping amongst the dead, feasting in a way that would have been horrifying even if Sophia hadn’t known that every peck of flesh they took was feeding power to their master, and even if she hadn’t known the people they feasted on.

“Get away!” she yelled, drawing on the power of the land, sending a flicker of it out in a burst that scared the birds into flight.

“They will report back to their master,” Aia said.

“Let them,” Sophia replied. “We were never going to sneak up on him.”

“We need to bury them,” Lani said.

“We need to burn them,” Sophia replied, and she wasn’t sure if that was the fire stone’s influence or not. It made sense though. Burn them, and the crows couldn’t feast. Burn them, and the Master of Crows wouldn’t be able to take his toll. “Gather the bodies up. Build pyres. Work quickly. I need… I need to look.”

She needed to look for Sebastian, and her daughter.

Sophia stalked among the dead, not able to push back the horror of it all as she had to stare at body after body, wanting to be sure, needing to be sure that Sebastian and Violet weren’t there somewhere. She felt tears falling down her cheeks silently at the sight of so many dead, even while the people who followed her collected them for the pyres, the people of Stonehome collected with reverence, the soldiers of the New Army thrown into hastily dug pits.

Sophia was still walking among the dead when a man approached, bowing. He looked exhausted, as if he had walked the length of the kingdom.

“Your Majesty,” he said, gasping for breath. “I heard that you were back in the kingdom. I have news!”

A part of Sophia wanted to say that whatever it was, it could wait until the dead were collected, but there was something about the way he said it that suggested that it couldn’t. Then there was the fact that he’d obviously kept walking even past the point of exhaustion.

“What news?” Sophia asked. “Who are you?”

“My name is de Lacy,” the man said. “I escaped from here, along with a few others, when the attack came. We met the king and the princess on the road.”

“Sebastian and Violet are still alive?” Sophia demanded. “They’re safe?”

De Lacy nodded. “They were safe enough when I saw them, although I can’t say for sure now. They were talking about going north to Monthys, and that’s just... not a good idea. They had a couple of others with them.”

Hope flared in Sophia. Violet and Sebastian had survived this. They were on their way to safety, and Sophia knew where they were going. She would be able to find them, and together in Monthys, they would take the kingdom back from the Master of Crows.

“Thank you,” she said, taking de Lacy’s hand. “Thank you.”

“My queen,” Lani said. “The pyres are ready. Will you speak?”

“I…” Sophia knew that she should. She had to find the words to tell the people around her that all this death would be worth it somehow. She had to tell them that there was still hope. She could do that though, because she had hope.

“I’ll be there in a minute,” she promised. “There’s something I need to do first.”

She reached out to the land beneath her, connecting to it with her magic. She felt its furthest reaches, and she knew it as intimately as she knew her own skin. She sent her attention out along the road north towards Monthys, looking for her husband and her daughter.

She quickly caught the blazing light of Violet’s power, white and pure, almost blinding in the distance. It made her easy to spot, and Sophia took some comfort in that, but there was also fear. If she could spot Violet so easily, then so could others. So could the Master of Crows.

Even as Sophia moved her attention closer, she could see the cavalry of the New Army thundering along in the direction where Violet lay. She saw the Master of Crows running along into trees that hid him from view.

She saw the light of her daughter’s spirit wink out.

“No,” Sophia said as she pulled back from the sight of it. “No.”

Before, the grief that she had felt had been a general thing, for too many people at once to cut right through her. Now, it felt as though the whole world was collapsing in on her. Sophia collapsed down to her knees, wrapped up in the pain that seemed to fill the world in that moment.

Her daughter was dead.

She cried until she felt that she might have been able to fill a lake with it, sobbing so hard that it shook through her body, and felt like it was ripping her apart. Somewhere in that pain, Sophia felt a storm beginning above her in response to her stretched out power.

Arms wrapped around her, lifting her to her feet. Lani and Aia were there, holding her between them.

“My queen, we should get you inside. The rain-”

“The rain doesn’t matter. None of it matters,” Sophia said. “Violet… my daughter is dead.”

She wept again, the weight of the loss all but crushing her.

CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE

Kate moved towards the shadows who stood in the pool. “I know you aren’t real,” she said. “I know that you’re just an image of him, and not the real thing. Sophia and Lucas aren’t real either.”

“Your hatred is real though, and your anger,” the Master of Crows’ shadow said. “That is the part of this that matters. Has anyone showed you Will’s death yet?”

“No,” Kate said, and she didn’t know if she was just replying, or begging not to be shown. It didn’t make any difference. The pool of shadows shifted, and in it, Kate could see Will standing there, trying to distract the Master of Crows, trying to set light to a damaged cannon to attempt to destroy him. She saw Will smiling in victory before doing it, and the Master of Crows fleeing with inhuman speed.

“Why show me this?” Kate asked. “Are you just trying to hurt me?”

“Not just,” the shadow said.

Behind her, Kate heard the sound of footsteps and spun to see Lisare there.

“Kate, you can’t do this. You need to prepare yourself more before you try to take the stone!”

“Stay back!” Kate warned her, holding out a hand as if to ward her off. “I need to see this.”

The shadows in front of her laughed then, all three, and both Sophia and Lucas’ voices were perfect.

“You do need to see this,” the shadow whispered, and now it shifted so that it was her. “You need to see who your real enemies are. Is it the Master of Crows, or is it the ones who stood by and let the boy you loved die, when they had the power to prevent it?”

“No,” Kate said. “I won’t listen to you.”

Inside, she ached with pain at seeing the way Will had died. She wished that she could have been there for him. She wished that she’d had the power to keep him safe.

“The stone can give you power,” the shadow said, as if it had heard her. “It can give you the power to strike at all those who deserve it.”

The shadow of Sophia stepped forward then. “Did you see that Will was alone? I was his queen. If I’d been there, I could have ordered him back.”

“I took us around the world,” Lucas’ shadow said. “If I hadn’t come, then you would have been there with Will, not all those miles away across the ocean.”

“Of course, you know who you really blame,” the shadow of Kate said, locking eyes with her. “You could have been there by his side. You could have saved him.”

“Kate,” Lisare said, holding out a hand. “Step away from the pool. Each stone has power, and this one’s will overwhelm you if you go to it now. It will turn you into a twisted version of yourself. It will use all your worst traits to fuel itself.”

“But then,” the shadow said, and now it wore Siobhan’s form, “you know that game already, don’t you, apprentice?”

“You’re dead,” Kate said. “Nothing you say or do can hurt me now.”

“Dead, along with so many others,” the shadow said. “You said that it wasn’t your fault when you were possessed, that you couldn’t be held accountable for what happened, for who you hurt. Yet, who left herself open to being taken? Who gave herself over just to be more than some peasant girl aching for vengeance?”

“I was trying to be a warrior,” Kate said. “She tricked me.”

“She told you the price of what you wanted,” the shadow said. “You wanted it, but you didn’t want to pay the price. You set in motion things that set you against the Master of Crows and killed the boy.”

“I…” Kate wasn’t sure what to say to that, because beneath her in the pool of shadows, chains of events were unfolding, showing her actions, showing her again and again how they led inexorably to Will’s death.

“Don’t listen, Kate,” Lisare said. “Come on, step away.”

“You can’t step away now, can you?” the shadow said. “You know it’s your destiny, Kate. All you have to do is give in to your anger at your brother and sister. All you have to do is strike down their shadows.”

“I don’t hate them,” Kate said, shaking her head. “I love them.”

The shadows shifted, showing her parents. “You always loved us, but why? We left you. We abandoned you as a child, then again when we let death claim us. We didn’t take you with us. We left you in the House of the Unclaimed.”

“That wasn’t how it happened!” Kate yelled. “You’re twisting things!”

“That’s what the stone does,” Lisare said. “Kate, your feet.”

Kate looked down at her feet, and saw that she’d stepped into the shadows. They lapped at her ankles like water, yet felt more like smoke.

When she looked back up, Sophia and Lucas were there again in shadow form, the Master of Crows standing behind them.

“Look at them,” he said. “Such power in them, and so little in you. They pity you, you know, Kate? They think you’re the weak one, the helpless one.”

“It’s true,” the shadow Sophia said. “You were always the foolish sister who fought too much and didn’t think enough. When you had power, you were useful, but now… no wonder I sent you away.”

“No,” Kate said, shaking her head. “That’s not how it happened!”

Distantly, she was aware of Lisare’s voice there saying something, but she couldn’t make all of it out.

“…listen… it exists for trickery… it twists things…”

“Sophia doesn’t need you now that she has me,” Lucas said, speaking over it. “You should never have been born, really. If I hadn’t had to go away, no one would have needed you.”

“Will never needed you,” the Master of Crows said. “He said nothing about you when he died.”

“No!” Kate screamed, lunging forward. She plunged through the shadows of her brother and sister, bursting them apart as she plunged her sword into the Master of Crows’ shadow again and again. It became a shadow of her, and Kate kept stabbing, hating herself almost as much as him. She hadn’t been there for Will. She had caused so much pain.

She spun with the shadow, grappling with it, then saw the shadow stone at its heart. Kate reached out, grabbing for it, her hand plunging deep inside it. She felt her fingers close around a stone that wasn’t a stone: a thing of pure shadow made solid. She tore it out, roaring in anger even as she plunged her sword deep into the thing in front of her.

It melted away, revealing Lisare reaching out to her behind it, the blade protruding from her chest. She seemed to try to say something, and then fell back, her blood flowing into the shadows of the pool.

They seemed to boil, writhing up around Kate.

Another death for your sister’s toll, a voice whispered inside her. If she hadn’t sent you here, none of this would have happened. There is a battle brewing, and you know what you must do, don’t you Kate?

Kate knew. She had to kill Sophia, had to kill Lucas, had to kill everyone who got in her way. She could feel power flowing back into her as the shadows ran through her, opening up the channels that she had burned out in their service, that they’d destroyed so that she wouldn’t be a threat to them.

Kate understood their evil then. She understood the way that they’d used her to become things as vile as the Master of Crows had ever been. Sophia had always been a manipulator, and now Kate understood all the steps that she’d taken in manipulating her way to the throne, and why Will had died because of it.

She saw everything so clearly now, even though the world seemed to be wrapped in a veil of shadows that Kate couldn’t lift. She saw all the secret desires in people’s hearts, from Sebastian’s murderous hatred of his family to the people of Stonehome’s need to control her and others. Compared to all of them, there was something almost pure about the Master of Crows. At least he didn’t pretend to be something other than he was.

Kate smiled at that as an idea came to her; the kind of idea that wouldn’t have occurred to her until she grasped the stone. She wouldn’t have had the clarity that she needed until that moment. Now, she saw all the connections, all the things she could do to make a world that matched the chaos that she felt inside right then. She saw all the deaths that there had to be.

Now, she had the strength to do it and more. Kate reached out for the shadows around her, feeling the ways that they connected to a deeper darkness, and from there to all the shadows of the world. She wrapped them around her like a cloak, and disappeared.

CHAPTER TWENTY SIX

Rika wished that she had more magic as her fleet got closer and closer to the Isle of Spirits.  If she’d had the magic to talk mind to mind, she could have called out to Lucas and spotted where he stood on the island. She might even have been able to call him to them, warning him of the things she’d seen in her vision and saving him without having to set foot there.

Then again, if she’d had that talent, maybe she wouldn’t have had the skill to see what she had.

“We need to make landfall,” Rika said. She pointed to a cove. “There!”

Her flagship, and it still seemed strange to have a flagship, turned towards the place she’d pointed, and the rest of her fleet swung in behind her.

They moved closer, and Rika wished that they could go faster, because she suspected that every second they delayed put Lucas in more danger. Around them, ghostly ships rose from the waves, in a variety of styles that spanned centuries and seemed to come from around the world. There were galleys and galleons, long ships and stranger things that looked as though they should never have been able to float. They flowed around the fleet, ghostly ballistae and cannon firing.

“They aren’t real,” Rika declared. “They’re trying to drive us off. Ignore them. Send word.”

Rika wasn’t sure whether the others there truly believed what she said, or whether they went along with it because she was their duchess. Whichever it was, the ships didn’t respond to the incoming fire, but kept going, heading for the beach. These were Ishjemme craft, and that meant that they got so close that Rika was able to leap off into the shallows, strong, tough warriors following her, all looking to her for direction.

“We need to search for Lucas,” Rika said. “But stay in contact. In a place like this, others must be able to see you at all times. If you see anything, blow a horn.”

They set off across the island, and Rika started to see the spirits there, moving between the trees, touching the strips of cloth that stood there, vanishing and reappearing. Rika saw them staring at her and her men, starting to gather round, some shifting and changing, looking more warlike by the moment.

“We’re not trying to invade,” Rika called out. “We’re looking for our friend.”

From one side, Rika heard a horn blowing, and she ran in the direction of the sound. She found one of the spirit warriors there, blowing a horn of curved horn, obviously trying to distract her.

Rika heard more horns sounding around her, one after another.

“Pull back together,” she commanded. “Don’t let them isolate you.”

She was about to order them to retreat from the island, unwilling to risk any of them until she could find some way to make peace with the spirits. Then, out of the corner of her eye, she saw the figure seated there cross legged beneath one of the trees, shimmering slightly.

“Lucas!” Rika yelled running across in his direction.

Lucas looked… strange. There was something almost translucent about him there, as if he were slowly fading into the fabric of the island. Beside him, Rika could make out the outline of one of the ghosts, a woman. Lucas seemed to be holding a sword of some sort, along with the stone that he’d been sent to find.

He didn’t look at Rika as she approached, didn’t respond at all as she waved a hand in front of his face.

“Lucas? Lucas, can you hear me?”

“He’s not yours,” the spirit woman said. “He must stay here.”

“Who are you?” Rika demanded.

The spirit woman smiled. “I am Elanora, and Lucas loves me. He wants to stay. He has given me his reality.”

She turned from Rika, and Rika grabbed for her wrist. Her grab passed through, and Elanora danced back.

“There’s nothing you can do,” she said. “He will give me everything. He will stay here, and I will be free.”

“The moment you become real enough to kill, I’ll put a knife in you,” Rika promised.

Again, the spirit woman smiled. “Then we must do something about you. Help! They’re attacking! Invaders!”

The spirits came to them then, warriors and stranger things, beasts and monsters that could never have existed in the flesh. They charged at her soldiers, and although the spirits seemed insubstantial, some of the weapons struck home. Not all though, not even most. Most passed through.

Rika could see the difference. The men who found themselves struck by claws or blades or teeth were the ones who flinched, or tried to block, or even struck out in the expectation of hitting. A wolf-like thing pounced at her, jaws wide. Rika forced herself to stand, ignoring it. It wasn’t real. It was just a spirit thing.

Convincing herself of that while the wolf leapt was one of the hardest things she’d done. Her every instinct was to flinch, to react, to lend reality to this thing that sought to kill her. Instead, she stood there, and let its jaws pass through her flesh, feeling only the cold brush of spirit as it went.

“We are not invaders,” she said to it, as calmly as she could. “I only want Lucas back safely.”

She turned to the rest of her men, some of them fighting frantically against creatures they couldn’t hope to match, some of them letting swords slide through them, and raised her voice.

“Focus on what’s real,” Rika yelled to them. “Focus on one another, on the people you fight with and care about. You are real, and the spirits are not!”

She walked across the battlefield, deliberately walking through the spirit things. She might not be Sophia, to summon magic against them, or Kate, to outfight them, but she could show her men that they weren’t real.

She walked through the middle of fights, ignoring the creatures that came at her, determined to show no fear. On impulse, Rika walked down to the beach, reaching into the boat that had brought her and pulling out a carefully wrapped package.

Rika took out a hand harp and started to play, walking as she did so. Her music spread out around her, in old, comforting songs. She played old airs of Ishjemme, and hearth songs of its families. She used the music like a thread to connect to the men around her, reminding them that this was real, and the rest of it was only a false imagining.

Her men gathered around her, and now Rika walked back towards Lucas, step by step, letting the music become a kind of shield for those with her. Perhaps it even persuaded some of the spirits there that she was not an invader, because what kind of invader did it with music?

“We are not your enemies,” Rika said between songs. “We will not harm you. We will not fight you.”

One by one, the spirits stopped attacking. The beasts turned their claws away from the men, the warriors held back their swords. Some disappeared deeper into the island, while others shifted, becoming more human, less threatening.

“What are you doing?” Elanora demanded. “You should kill them!”

“I don’t think they believe your lies,” Rika said.

She saw the spirit woman’s expression turn nasty. “It doesn’t matter,” Elanora said. “I have the spirit stone. I have the reality he’s giving me. There’s nothing you can do to stop me, and I’ll be long gone before you can try to stick a knife in me, girl. The paths of the spirit can take me a long way from here.”

She turned back to Lucas, caressing him almost tenderly. Her lips touched his, and if it hadn’t been for the thread of energy passing from Lucas to her, it might have seemed almost loving.

“Lucas, come back,” Rika yelled. “Pull away from her. Focus on what’s real.”

“It won’t work,” Elanora said. “He got very good at going deeper, believing that this is real. You can’t touch him, let alone bring him back.”

“Watch me,” Rika said. She might not be able to touch anything in the spirit world directly, but there was one thing that she’d always known could touch someone’s soul, and it was the thing that she’d thought she was wasting her time doing back in Ishjemme. She’d been the sister who had wasted her time on music while her siblings devoted themselves to the serious business of war. Now though, it might be exactly what they needed.

She sat down in front of Lucas and started to play, picking a tune that spoke of need and return, home and safety. She poured herself into the playing, reaching down into her emotions, hoping that it would be enough. If it wasn’t… well, she could already see him starting to fade.

CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN

Cora felt like an animal hiding between hunters as she and Emeline made their way through the forest. She had known that it was dangerous to come with her friend to distract the New Army, but now the true scale of that danger was starting to hit home.

“Are you starting to wish that you hadn’t come with me?” Emeline asked.

“And make you do this alone?” Cora countered. She shook her head. She would be there with her friend for this, whatever it led to. She pointed to a space between the trees. “This way?”

“This way,” Emeline said, pointing to a different path. Cora trusted her. Emeline was the one who could see where the soldiers would be, after all.

“How many are there?” Cora asked.

The fact that Emeline hesitated before answering told her most of it. There were too many. They’d tried to draw the New Army down on themselves and they’d succeeded far too well.

“Just remember that every moment that we keep them hunting for us is a moment that they aren’t going after Sebastian and Violet,” Emeline said.

Cora nodded. That was what this was about: keeping the child safe. They set off deeper into the forest, trusting to its cover to hide them as much as possible. Cora could see Emeline sweating with the effort, and she didn’t think it was just about running.

“I’m still able to hide us from him,” Emeline said, “but I don’t know how much longer it will last, or how much good it’s doing. There are crows everywhere now, and men.”

That was the problem. The plan had been to slip between the hunting squads while they were still searching for Violet, yet now, Cora had the feeling that the New Army was searching for them.

“I guess the Master of Crows doesn’t like being tricked,” Cora said.

“Who would have thought it?” Emeline said. She frowned for a moment. “Damn it. Run!”

Cora didn’t hesitate as a group of crows landed in one of the trees nearby. Instead, she broke into a flat run, clinging to Emeline’s arm so that her friend wouldn’t be left behind, and wouldn’t try to do anything stupid like slowing the enemies down.

They zigged and zagged through the trees, trying to confuse any pursuit. Even so, a soldier in the uniform of the New Army broke from the trees in front of her. Cora drew her sword and hacked at him, keeping running as he fell back from her.

“Here!” he yelled as they passed. “They’re here!”

More of them came from the trees, and then more after that, so that it felt as though a whole pack of them was chasing now, leaving Cora and Emeline with no time to rest or to risk a false step. Another opponent moved in front of Cora, and she barged him out of the way, sheer momentum letting her barrel past.

Muskets sounded, and Cora saw tree bark splinter around her as lead shot struck it. She hadn’t thought that there was room for more fear inside her during this chase, but somehow, she found it.

“Which way?” Cora called out to Emeline.

For almost the first time since she’d known her, Emeline looked panicked.

“I… I don’t know,” Emeline called back.

Cora picked a direction at random and kept them running. She’d only gone a few strides when Emeline tried to pull her back.

“Not that way. That way is-”

Crows surged from the forest, and the Master of Crows stepped after them. Cora turned to run, and now there were soldiers in the way. It didn’t stop her from plunging into them, driving her sword home beneath the ribs of one of her opponents. The soldier twisted as he died though, tearing the weapon from her hand.

Cora felt Emeline ripped from her grip almost as quickly, the soldiers pulling her away. Cora kicked one of them back, but there were more there then, one diving low to slam into her legs. More of them grabbed hold of her, pinning her in place and dragging her arms behind her back while she fought them. They tied her there and then dragged her upright next to Emeline, who was staring at the Master of Crows with obvious hatred.

He sat on a tree stump as calmly as if he’d been holding an audience in a royal chamber. He had a long, slender knife in his hand, while around him, crows hopped and gathered, turning the forest floor into a blanket of blackness.

“Bring the cart, I think,” he said, looking past Cora.

She didn’t understand until she felt another length of rope tied to the one she was bound with, then thrown up to wrench her arms high behind her. A soldier dragged her onto a wooden cart, then kicked the back of her knees, forcing her to kneel, and the pain was excruciating. Emeline cried out as they did the same with her.

“I will not insult your intelligence by promising you your lives if you tell me what I want to know,” the Master of Crows said. “You both know that you are going to die for your role in this trickery.”

“But we did trick you,” Emeline said. “You’ll never find Violet now.”

Cora saw the Master of Crows smile, and that smile was as terrifying and dangerous as the rest of him.

“Ah, you’re trying to make me angry so that I kill you both quickly and don’t learn anything. It takes a special kind of opponent to try to make even her death into a weapon. It will not work, though.”

“We won’t tell you where Violet is,” Cora snapped at him.

“They won’t.” Cora recognized Endi as he stepped from the trees. “These are some of Sophia’s most loyal friends. They’ll keep her secrets to the death.”

“You,” Cora spat. “You betrayed all of us.”

Endi shrugged. “I betrayed a usurper. You should talk. I’ve seen what our general can do.”

“You disgust me,” Cora said, looking away from him and trying to ignore the pain in her arms.

“Enough,” the Master of Crows said, holding up the hand with the knife. “You’ll tell me what I want to know soon enough, and the one who tells me will be rewarded.”

“You’ve already told us we’re going to die,” Emeline pointed out beside Cora, speaking through gritted teeth. “I’m not sure rewards count for much.”

“Death can be a reward,” the Master of Crows said. He turned the knife so that the light caught the edge of its blade. “Eventually, one of you will see it that way, when the torture gets to be too much. The one who talks will be killed quickly. The other will have days in which to regret not talking sooner.”

Cora swallowed, knowing that the thing in front of her was all too serious. She tried to imagine the horror of what was about to happen, and just the thought of it was too much to bear.

“Tell him, Cora,” Emeline said. “We’ve done enough now. I don’t want to watch you suffer.”

Cora shook her head. “You tell him.”

“Perhaps you could both tell him,” Endi suggested. “Save yourselves some-”

He was still talking when a shadow coalesced behind a tree, slowly acquiring human shape. Cora saw a figure step out from the shadow of the tree, move forward, and thrust a sword through Endi’s chest.

“I never liked him,” Kate said as her cousin crumpled to the ground. Cora started to breathe a sigh of relief, but then she saw the way Kate looked at her: without concern, without even interest.

“You!” the Master of Crows said, standing. “If you’ve come here to fight, you’d best prepare yourself to die slowly. I’m going to break you. You’ll tell me where your niece is, even if the others don’t.”

Kate smiled, and Cora could see the shadows writhing over her, flowing in waves over her skin. To Cora’s horror, she shrugged.

“I guess she’ll be at Monthys,” Kate said. “That’s where the battle is. That’s where Sophia will be. That’s where she saw this ending.”

“And you came to kill me before all of that?”

“Not before,” Kate said. “There are too many other people who need to die, and you can help me with that, dead thing. You need to pay, but there are too many other people who need to pay first for the things they’ve done. The shadows have shown me that.”

She stepped back, heading back towards the shadows again.

“Kate, please!” Cora called out.

Kate looked back at her, seeming to listen to something. “If you and Emeline hadn’t been there, Sophia wouldn’t have lived to hurt me. Will wouldn’t have died.” Cora could see tears in her eyes, and those tears seemed to be shadows. “Maybe I’ll give you a chance though. The shadows want the chaos. I’ll see you in Monthys, Master of Crows.”

She stepped back into the shadows and vanished, leaving Cora and Emeline kneeling where they were. She saw the Master of Crows smile that horrific smile again.

“It seems that neither of you have earned your reward,” he said. He pointed to his crows. “They will take days about eating you as we travel. All of you, with me! We ride to Monthys!”

The men left, following their leader. Cora might even have felt relief at that, except then the crows descended, claws extended.

CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT

Henry d’Angelica stood in the fields before Loris’ home, surrounded by so many men that it made him dizzy just to think about them. He stood there holding Witchsnare, the spear probably drawing at least as much of their awe as he could. Imogen and Loris stood nearby, and perhaps another man might have thought that they were basking in the reflected glory of it all, but he was grateful for their presence.

Imogen’s especially.

No, he wouldn’t think like that. He forced himself to concentrate on the crowd of soldiers around him rather than on anything to do with her. It was the only safe way. Henry lifted the spear like a banner, calling for silence.

“All of you have heard the stories,” he shouted, although he doubted that any man could shout loud enough to reach all of them. “You know what this is: the spear of Thom Witchbane!”

They cheered, and if Loris and Imogen were the ones prompting that, Henry didn’t mind. What mattered was that the men saw this, and understood that they now had the power to take down their enemies. Imogen had been right about that, which meant…

Which meant he had to demonstrate that power.

Soldiers pushed forward a ragged looking figure in leathers, a man of perhaps twenty, but little more than that. He was strongly built, and taller than Henry. No doubt that was deliberate. It would have looked bad for him to cut down someone smaller and weaker. Henry felt bad enough as it was, even though this man was a witch, and thus the enemy of all good people.

“What is your name?” Henry demanded of the man.

“Nils,” he shot back after a moment’s thought.

“And you are a witch, are you not?”

“I’m a warrior of Stonehome,” the man replied. “Let me out of these ropes, and I’ll show you how much of one.”

“In a moment,” Henry said, which probably wasn’t what the other man was expecting at all. He certainly seemed surprised by it.

“You? You think you’re going to out fight me?” he demanded.

Henry nodded. “No doubt you have magic though, to give you the advantage. Why not tell people what you can do?”

“So you know exactly what I’m going to do to you?” Nils said.

Henry stood there, annoyed that anyone should suggest he would seek that kind of advantage, even as he knew that he had a much bigger one in his hands. “So that my warriors see the danger you would normally represent, and my victory is greater when I fight you.”

Nils shrugged. “If you really want. I have more speed and strength than you. I can read most folks’ thoughts, too.”

“A dangerous foe,” Henry declared to his waiting men. “One who could read the moves of an opponent before they made them, strike harder than any man has a right to, and move so fast you could never hope to defend. Yet I shall stand against him in single combat!”

Nils gave him a look of mistrust. “And what do I get for playing your game?”

Henry had already prepared his answer for that. He had known that a man like this would never fight simply for the honor of it.

“I am king of this land,” Henry said. “And I declare this to be a trial by combat! Succeed, and you will be innocent of all your crimes, free to go!”

The other man still looked around as if unsure whether to believe it or not. Only when one of Henry’s soldiers cut him free and handed him a two handed blade did he look more confident.

“You’re serious about this, then?” Nils said.

“I am,” Henry replied.

“Then die!”

He charged forward, sword swinging. He was fast, and it was a skillful blow, but it wasn’t nearly as fast as it might have been. Henry felt the spear thrumming in his hand, and somehow he knew that it was absorbing the magic that would have made this man too fast to fight.

He parried the blow with the spear, feeling the jarring impact, but there wasn’t as much strength there as there might have been, either. Henry shifted to the side, taking up his stance while the other man looked confused.

“What have you done?”

“Forced you to fight as a man, not a monster!” Henry replied.

Nils charged forward again, sword slashing in cut after cut. Henry gave ground, deflecting blows and moving aside from others. Finally, he planted his feet, set his grip, and thrust.

The spear took the witch through the chest, stopping his forward momentum and leaving him with a look of shock as he stared down at it. Henry felt the weight of him as he collapsed, and put a foot on him, dragging the spear from the now dead man’s corpse to hold the bloody weapon high.

The cheer from the men around him was almost overwhelming.

Henry didn’t feel their elation. He stared down at the man there, so still and shocked looking in death. He didn’t look different to anyone human, didn’t seem at all demonic in his death. It was hard not to look at him and feel sorrow for the killing that Henry had just enacted. The fact that it had been easy only seemed to make it worse.

Loris and Imogen didn’t seem to share that sorrow, though. They came up to him, Loris clapping Henry on the back, Imogen resting an arm on his.

“Amazing,” Loris said. “Truly amazing!”

“It works,” Imogen whispered. “I knew that you could do this, Henry.”

“Goddess save the king!” his men started to shout. “Death to witches!”

The strangest part was that, after this, Henry wasn’t so sure that he wanted to kill anyone. He stumbled back in the direction of Loris’ home, leaning on the spear for support. Somehow, he’d thought that killing witches would feel different.

“I’ll find a servant to get us drinks to celebrate,” Loris said, as they reached the house. “Our finest brandy!”

He set off in search of it before Henry could protest that this wasn’t a moment to celebrate.

“He won’t be back for a while,” Imogen said. She took his hand. “Come with me and tell me why you’re feeling so sad at a moment you should be happy about.”

“Is it that obvious?” Henry asked.

She kissed his cheek. “It is to me.”

Henry didn’t even try to argue with her about the kiss this time. Instead, he pulled her into the nearest available empty room, a small study, and shut the door firmly behind them.

“Here?” Imogen asked.

Henry kissed her. “I’ve been holding back because of what I should be, yet here, now, I feel as though all I should do is a lie.”

“You’re succeeding, though,” Imogen said. “You have the power to finally defeat your enemies.”

“Yet, looking at that poor man… I wonder if I can truly hate them, Imogen. Without his powers, he was just flesh and blood.”

“We’re all flesh and blood,” Imogen said. “And if you don’t succeed, we might find out just how fragile we all are. Do you think the others will suffer anyone who has declared himself king to live?”

“No, I…”

“You’re thinking too much,” Imogen said, pulling him to her and kissing him, laying back on the study’s desk and holding out a hand to him. “Sometimes, it’s better not to think.”

Henry nodded, set aside Lord Thomasin’s spear, and went to her.

***

Henry was still lying beside Imogen when the knock came thundering at the door.

“What is it?” he demanded, hurrying to dress. “Who is it?”

“Your majesty,” a servant called from beyond the door, “there’s a man who says he must speak with you.”

“There are always men saying that,” Henry snapped back, without opening the door. “It seems that everyone from dukes to the butler needs to speak to me. I’ll see him in good time!”

“He says that he knows the location of the traitor, Sebastian of house Flamberg.”

Henry was over to the door in an instant, opening it and stepping through, only remembering when he was halfway through doing it that the man would get a glimpse of Imogen, still only half dressed there. He shut the door quickly behind him.

“Take me to him, now,” Henry instructed. He followed along at something close to a jog while the servant led the way to a small receiving room.

The man inside it looked like one of the kingdom’s former soldiers. He had been disarmed, and a pair of Henry’s men sat there, along with Loris. The sight of his friend only made guilt rise in him.

“Who are you?” Henry demanded. “How do you claim to know the whereabouts of Sebastian the traitor?”

“My name is O’Llan,” the man said. “I know where he is heading, because I met him on the road after the fall of Stonehome.”

“You’re a witch?” Henry demanded. His fingers reached for Lord Thomasin’s spear, but it wasn’t there. It was still back with Imogen, and the thought of that just made his guilt all the greater.

The man shook his head though. “A soldier, your majesty. When Ashton fell, I got caught up in the crowds of refugees.”

Meaning that he was a deserter. Still, if he had news, Henry could ignore it.

“Where is he?” Henry demanded.

“He’s headed to Monthys,” O’Llan said, “and I believe… I believe that the New Army is following him.”

Loris looked around, and Henry half expected there to be a look of accusation on his face. Instead, he looked eager.

“This is our chance, Henry,” he said. “Don’t you see it? At least two of our enemies will be in one place, weakened after the fall of Ashton. We can strike!”

If it hadn’t been for what had just happened with Imogen, perhaps Henry would have counselled caution, and letting the foes burn themselves out. Instead, he knew that he couldn’t stay here now. He couldn’t risk the temptation again. He couldn’t betray Loris like that.

“You’re right,” he said. “I will ride for Monthys with the army at once. You men, prepare yourselves. Loris, take a contingent and defend things here for my return.”

“Defend things? I need to help you!”

“And you are helping,” Henry commanded. “I need you and Imogen safe after all you’ve done. I need people I can trust here. I’m sorry, Loris, but there’s no time to argue. Your king commands it, and I… I have to ride to finish this!”

CHAPTER TWENTY NINE

Sebastian ran from the inn, trying to find signs of the people who had taken Violet. It couldn’t have been long, or he would have noticed, wouldn’t he? He hadn’t been away for Violet for long, so they couldn’t have gotten much of a head start. At least, he prayed that it was true.

“Have you seen my baby?” Sebastian demanded, as he ran out into the inn’s main yard, Edmore and Valin running out there with him. They had their hands on their weapons, as if there might be someone there to fight, rather than a group of sullen looking local inhabitants, standing there staring at them without comment.

“My baby!” Sebastian shouted to them again. “She’s been taken.”

One of the men there shrugged, and Sebastian grabbed him, hard enough that he all but lifted the man from his feet.

“Don’t just stand there shrugging!” Sebastian yelled at him, not knowing what else to do. “Don’t pretend as though you didn’t see anything.”

Valin and Edmore managed to pull him back, and the man backed away. One of the women there made a vague gesture in the direction of the back of the inn.

“Might have seen some people back there,” she said.

“And no one did anything?” Sebastian demanded.

“Thought they were just trying to rob you,” the woman said. “Didn’t know there was a babe involved.”

Sebastian tried to work out what kind of people were happy to stand back and let others be robbed, but he already knew the answer to that: they were just the people from the kingdom that his mother and brother had helped to make.

He ran around in the direction that the woman had pointed, and from down there, he thought he could make out the spot where the people who had broken in must have entered, the hole to their attic room obvious from here. Looking around, Sebastian could see a mess of footprints down below the window, suggesting that there had been a whole group of people there, and that this had been more than just a random attack.

“I can’t work out which way they went,” Sebastian said to the others. He could feel himself panicking in a way that he knew would never help, but that he couldn’t stop. He ran down to the front of the inn, looking in both directions along the road, hoping to catch some glimpse of riders in the distance.

“Can you see them?” Sebastian demanded of the others. Both Valin and Edmore shook their heads, obviously just as anxious to get Violet back as he was.

“Either they left further back than we think, or they didn’t come this way,” Valin said.

Sebastian wanted to snap that the other man wasn’t helping by pointing out the obvious, but managed to stop himself. In part, that was because he knew that it was just his fear for his daughter that was making him react like that, and in part, it was because he was already thinking. Valin was right: the kidnappers hadn’t come this way.

Which way had they gone then? What did that leave? Sebastian looked down towards the waterways not far from the inn, where dull and colorful boats mingled together, crowded on the water in a floating tangle that seemed impossible to unpick. If the kidnappers had gone anywhere, it had to be there, didn’t it?

“There,” Sebastian shouted to the others, starting off as fast as he could towards the closely packed boats below. He stumbled as he ran, but picked himself up and kept going, not daring to slow even for a moment while his daughter was still in danger.

The boats were getting closer now, some so dilapidated that it appeared that they might barely float, others brightly painted and obviously cared for. The problem for Sebastian now wasn’t the lack of people, but that there were too many. Amid the traders and the bargemen, the travelers and the river pirates, how was he meant to make out one small child?

Then he heard the sound of a baby’s cry, away to the right.

Sebastian was already running when he heard it, dragging his sword from its sheathe even as he hurried in the direction his daughter’s cry had come from. He could see one of the brightly colored boats there now, hooded men and women aboard, not wearing the colors of any faction or house that Sebastian knew. One of a group by the docks was passing up a small bundle to one of the women there, and Sebastian knew instinctively that it was his daughter.

“Stop!” he yelled, hurrying forward.

Half a dozen men moved to block his way, armed with swords and knives. Sebastian didn’t hesitate, but plunged straight into the fight. He struck out at one of them, the sound of steel on steel coming as the man parried. Sebastian had to set aside a knife thrust in turn, then aimed a lateral slash at another of the men there. He swayed back, barely out of range of it.

The others moved to try to surround him, but Edmore and Valin were there then, wading into the fight without hesitation. Edmore wasn’t as fast as some of the most dangerous warriors of Stonehome, but he still moved quickly enough to weave a web of steel with his blade. Valin, meanwhile struck out with the calculated violence of a soldier, protecting Sebastian’s side while Sebastian fought to get closer to the boat.

“We need to get through!” he called out to the others. “It’s leaving.”

One of the hooded men swung a blade at Sebastian in that moment, and he ducked, cutting back in a swipe across the man’s gut that brought him down screaming. Sebastian stood, aiming a barrage of strikes at another, but the man gave ground, and Sebastian had to step away to the side as a third man came at him.

He could see Edmore struggling at close range with an opponent, stabbing him, but Sebastian could see another of the hooded men coming up quickly.

“Edmore, watch out!” he called.

It was too late. The man Edmore was engaged with had enough strength remaining to hang onto him, giving the man coming at him enough time to stab the warrior in the back. Sebastian pushed his opponent clear long enough to cut the man down in turn, but it did nothing to help Edmore as the warrior fell.

He and Valin stood back to back then, the two of them against the three remaining kidnappers. Worse, Sebastian could see the boat starting to pull away from the dock. He couldn’t stand there and wait while the men planned their attack.

Instead, he charged at one of them, roaring a battle cry as he lifted his sword. He came almost into range, saw a flicker of something in the man’s eyes, and changed direction, turning in time to parry a blow from the one who came in behind him and cutting hard across the man’s throat.

He spun back, sweeping his blade down in front of his body, and managing to catch a thrust from the man he’d charged towards. Sebastian cut across the man’s thighs, sending him screaming to the floor, then spun in time to see Valin stabbed by the last of them, his eyes turning glassy as death took him. Sebastian charged forward, all but hacking the hooded man’s head from his shoulders.

He spun back towards the boat, running for it as it left, but it was already too far from shore to even hope to catch up to. Sebastian could only scream out his rage as he watched it floating away, the scream turning to tears of despair at the thought that he had lost his daughter.

He turned back to the fallen attackers, returning to the one whose legs he’d cut from under him. The man stared up at him, features strange somehow, not quite real.

“Who are you?” Sebastian demanded. “Where are you taking my daughter? Tell me!”

“Or you’ll kill me?” the hooded man replied. He laughed. “If it’s my destiny to die, then I’ll die. We can’t avoid our destiny, and you can’t keep your daughter from hers!”

“What do you mean?” Sebastian asked.

The man shook his head. “I’ll tell you this: if you ever want to see your daughter again, there is only one place to go now. You need to complete your journey to Monthys. Chase, and you’ll lose your daughter. Hesitate, and you’ll lose your daughter. This is the only way that fate works with you seeing her.” He smiled. “I wonder if you’ll like what she becomes?”

Sebastian had put up with enough. He lifted his sword, and brought it down sharply.

He stood there in the wake of the blow, trying to decide, trying to think past the pain that was rising up inside him now that the rush of battle was done. What could he do? Where could he go?

There was only one answer to that, no matter how much he hated it. If it truly was the only way to see his daughter again, he had to go to the place he’d been heading for all along.

He had to get to Monthys.

CHAPTER THIRTY

All Lucas could think of, all he could feel, was Elanora’s touch. Her lips were on his, her skin brushing his flesh, and those small moments of contact seemed to fill his entire world.

Dimly, he could remember that there was a world beyond that touch. He’d been doing something, fighting something… a tree, he’d been fighting a tree, although how trees managed to fight, Lucas couldn’t remember. Beyond that fight…

He was sure that there must be other things beyond that, but Lucas couldn’t remember what they were. Elanora was all he could think of, all he wanted. He’d come here wanting something else, but how could he possibly have wanted anything other than her.

“I love you so much,” he whispered, in a brief moment when Elanora pulled back from him.

“You’re very sweet,” Elanora said. “So delicate too. So unreal now. Soon, this will be the only place you can be.”

“It’s the only place I want to be,” Lucas said.

Elanora smiled at that. “If only you’d said that before.”

Lucas held one of his hands up to the light. It seemed strangely translucent, like the wing of a butterfly flying too near to a lamp. He had the vague feeling that he hadn’t always been this way, just as he had the feeling that he shouldn’t be kissing Elanora, but it was impossible to remember why.

He wanted to lose himself in her. He wanted to lose everything except this.

Brief flashes of memory came to Lucas: him sitting with a fat man, learning lessons that seemed to make no sense, him with two girls he felt sure he knew well, him fighting against a thing that looked human, but that hadn’t been human in a long time. Each memory seemed to shift and fade, pulled out of him through a slender stream of soul stuff that connected him to Elanora.

Lucas hadn’t even noticed that until now.

“What’s this?” Lucas asked her.

“Nothing important,” Elanora assured him. “I want to be as connected to you as possible. You want that too, don’t you, Lucas?”

Lucas nodded. Of course he did.

He was about to resume kissing Elanora when he heard something that didn’t seem to fit with the place where they sat. Music drifted in from some unseen place, and Lucas couldn’t see where it might be. There was a stringed instrument in the music somewhere that he recognized, although it took Lucas a moment to focus on it enough to remember that it was called a harp.

“I know someone who plays a harp,” Lucas said.

“Ignore it, my love,” Elanora said. “It is nothing but a distraction from the two of us.”

Lucas did his best, because he didn’t want to displease Elanora, but it was hard to do when his mind insisted that there was something important about this music, something familiar.

There was a voice too: a woman’s voice, soft and melodious, swooping and soaring, pure and rhythmical, all at the same time. Lucas knew that voice. He knew it as surely as he knew anything in this place. He knew the words to the songs she was singing. He’d heard them before in a place of ice and mountains. He knew this voice.

“You don’t need to remember, Lucas,” Elanora said. “You need to forget.”

Lucas felt the pressure of something around his mind like a giant blanket enveloping everything. Just moments ago, he might have given into it, but now, he found himself remembering something the fat man in his memories had shown him: how to close himself off and control himself, how to be secure in the only place that mattered.

His mind.

“You’re pushing me out, Lucas,” Elanora said. “Don’t you love me?”

“Of course I love you,” Lucas said. “It’s just… the music.”

He let the music flow through him, focusing on it, filling the space that he’d created inside himself and letting it pull up fragments of other things. He let it fill out the space that seemed to be so empty, and he found it connecting to memory after memory.

Rika. It was Rika singing.

“Lucas,” Elanora said, less than gently. “I told you to forget.”

Instead of forgetting, though, Lucas remembered. He remembered Rika in the halls of Ishjemme, along with his sisters. He remembered the war against first the Dowager’s forces, and then the Master of Crows. He remembered his parents, and the stones they’d sent him and the others to find. He remembered the moment of their death…

“You don’t have to remember the pain,” Elanora said, but Lucas ignored her.

He looked around, and now, it felt as though he could see the world layered, one spot atop another. He saw the space where the stone lay, and the space where he’d fought the tree, and a dozen layers below that, each stacked atop the next. He could see it now, and he could see how to pull back from it.

“No, you can’t! I won’t allow it!” Elanora said.

Lucas could feel her pushing magic into him, pushing away what made him who he was. Lucas focused on the music he could hear, latching onto it like a drowning man clutching at a rope.

“If it’s the music, I’ll deal with the stupid girl making it,” Elanora snapped. Lucas saw her hold out her hand, and the soul stuff around her coalesced into crackling lightning.

“You can’t touch real people,” Lucas said. “It will pass through her.”

Elanora smiled like a shark. “Oh, no, Lucas. That was before I absorbed so much of your reality. Now… now I can send her screaming to her death for interfering. For stopping be from touching your world.”

Elanora drew more lightning into her palm, until it was a crackling ball of the stuff. She drew her arm back, and it seemed that she was only waiting for enough of it to gather before she threw it at Rika. Lucas knew he needed to stop her, but he didn’t know how. He couldn’t see a way…

And then he did.

The sword Elanora had made for him sat there on the floor, close enough to touch, close enough to reach. Lucas reached out for it, his hand crawling across the floor an inch at a time when he didn’t have the strength to do more. He felt his hand close around the grip.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

He didn’t have much strength left, but Lucas put all that he had into the thrust. It passed into Elanora and through her, the blade real and unreal all at once. It might not touch the flesh, but it carved into the soul easily, plunging deep into the insubstantial stuff that Elanora was made of and piercing through her heart.

She screamed once, and dissipated like smoke.

Lucas felt his strength pouring back into him, along with his memories. He reached out, taking the insubstantial round form of the spirit stone and holding it in his hand. Holding it there, he could feel it trying to lure him into going deeper into the spirit realm, but Official Ko’s lessons let him hold it. Rika’s music helped too.

Lucas stepped through the layers of the spirit isle, coming back to himself and standing, just in time for Rika to throw her arms around him.

“Careful,” he said with a smile. “This sword is sharp enough to cut the spirit.”

“I saw,” Rika said. She hugged him tighter for a moment. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be,” Lucas said. “You didn’t make her try to turn me into spirit. How are you here though, Rika? How did you know where to come?”

“I dreamed it,” Rika said. She looked down for a moment. “I dreamed more than that, Lucas. There’s a battle coming, against the Master of Crows, and… and I don’t know what’s going to happen.”

“We’re going to win,” Lucas promised her, even though it didn’t feel like a promise that anyone could truly make.

“I hope so,” Rika said, “but we’re so far away from Monthys, and I don’t even know if my ships will get us all there in time.”

Lucas only worried about it for a moment, because the spirit stone gave him an answer. He understood then how the layers of the Spirit Isle could connect to anywhere he wanted.

“There’s another way,” he said. “Get the men together, along with their weapons. There are paths that have nothing to do with water.”

“I’ll do it,” Rika promised.

Lucas held out the spirit stone. He thought he understood how to use it. If he did, then they had a chance. They could get to the battle in time. If he didn’t…

If he didn’t, they would probably all be lost in the realms of the spirit.

CHAPTER THIRTY ONE

Kate stepped from the cooling embrace of the shadows onto one of the hills above Monthys. From here, she could see the estate that had formed her family’s home for so long, spread out and only partly rebuilt by Ulf and Frig’s efforts.

They were two more to add to the list of the dead. The Master of Crows would eventually pay for them, but so would her sister. So would everyone. The shadow stone let her see the ways that all the individual decisions of the past interconnected, showing her who was truly at fault; who deserved to pay.

In the distance, Kate could see the columns of dust approaching as armies vied to get there first. The shadows showed her the approach of the New Army, grinding forward across the countryside with horse and foot and cannon. They showed her Henry d’Angelica’s forces, following close enough behind that if the New Army halted too long for rest, the battle might not be where Kate anticipated.

There were spots that were harder to see, blocked off by the powers and the deceptions of others. Kate could see Emeline and Cora, still kneeling as the crows came to them, and on impulse, Kate turned a strand of shadow near them into something sharper, slicing the barest flaw into their ropes. The shadow stone didn’t seem to care either way, so long as it got chaos and trickery, betrayal and all the dark emotions of human life.

“That’s what you want, isn’t it?” Kate said aloud. She wasn’t such a fool as to think that the shadow stone wasn’t trying to affect her; that it didn’t have its own more than human need for the things related to it.

She could feel that need, but it didn’t mean it was in control of her, the way the foolish priestess had thought. It had merely shown her the truth of things. Briefly, Kate suspected that she should have felt worse about cutting down the woman by accident like that, but Lisare had been the one trying to stop her from getting her powers back. She had been the one to run into the wrong place at the wrong time. Looked at like that, it was her fault really, not Kate’s at all.

There had been so many other deaths in the time since this had started, but now, Kate could see the way that they all fit together in a pattern. She could see the way that others had put those deaths in front of her too, from the first woman Siobhan had made her kill, to every soldier sent against her. All so that they could hurt her more.

“It will be all right, Kate.”

Will was there, and even though Kate knew that it was just a shadow version of him, it still made her feel better to see him there.

“I know you’re not real,” she said.

“I’m as real as you want me to be,” the shadow Will said. “And this seems like a good conduit to use to speak to you.”

“You can’t give me Will back,” Kate said.

“I can give you something so close that it doesn’t make a difference.”

Kate shook her head, reaching out for the shadow and pulling it back into the stone. She was in control, not it. Everything she was doing was because she wanted to do it, not because it made her. If she ever summoned back that shadowy form of Will, it would be because she wanted to, not because it gave him to her.

Below, Kate could make out people in Monthys. Reaching out to look through the shadows showed her that they weren’t the Master of Crows’ men, but a combination of ordinary looking people, soldiers of the free companies, and clansmen from up in the mountain lands to the north. There even seemed to be some warriors of Ishjemme and Stonehome among them.

“They must have decided that Monthys was a safe place,” Kate murmured.

Or they’re a trap set by your sister, in case you come by, a whisper within said. Kate dismissed it. She could recognize the shadow stone’s lies now.

Is it a lie? Look.

Kate looked down the slope to the estate, and saw half a dozen men coming out, heading up towards her. All of them were armed and armored. All of them were heading her way.

“They must have seen me,” Kate murmured.

And now they want to kill you.

Kate didn’t believe it yet, but even so, she made sure that her sword was loose in its sheathe, just in case.

They will want to take you back. They’re afraid to face you alone. They will want you where you’re helpless.

“Who goes there?” one of the advancing soldiers said. “Answer, or we attack.”

“Kate Danse,” Kate said, stepping where they could see her.

The men looked at one another, and while a part of Kate said that it was shock at seeing her there, another pointed out glances between them, told her that they were plotting something. She couldn’t even touch their minds, since one of them seemed to be shielding the others, and that only made her more suspicious.

“Your Highness,” the man who had spoken said, “we didn’t realize that it was you. You should come down into the buildings, where it’s safe.”

Mistrust flared in Kate. This was exactly what the small, suspicious part of her fueled by the stone had suggested would happen.

“I’m happy up here,” she said.

“But Your Highness, there are soldiers coming. I have to insist.”

The soldier reached out for her, and in that moment, Kate understood that they truly did mean to kill her. In an instant, her sword leapt from its sheathe, and she buried it to the hilt in the man’s chest.

The men cried out and grabbed their own weapons, but by that point, Kate was moving, all her old speed and power flowing through her veins. She rolled between two men, hamstringing one as she went, then used the power of the stone to step from one man’s shadow to a second, coming up behind him and stabbing him in the back.

A soldier tried a cut at her, only proving that they were there with murder in mind. Kate swayed aside from it and brought her sword across his throat, then caught his weapon in her off hand as he dropped it in death. She slashed both blades in a complex pattern through one of the remaining soldiers, then plunged them down into the one she’d only wounded.

That left one, a Stonehome warrior who was frantically lifting a pistol as if that would stop her.

“Why?” he demanded.

“Why?” Kate countered. “Do you think I don’t know what you were planning? What my sister has been doing all this time? They took Will from me, and now they were going to kill me. Well, the battle that’s coming will change that. It will scour all this clean.”

“That’s…”

Kate didn’t let the man finish. Instead, she threw herself to the side, and came up with a dozen shadow versions of herself moving in every direction. The warrior picked one and fired, the ball passing through the shadow self harmlessly.

Kate moved forward in one smooth motion, snatching up the sword that she’d dropped and thrusting it home in her enemy. She held him there for a moment, feeling the strength that let her do it, and then let the man tumble to the floor.

She sat there for a while among the bodies, waiting for the first of the carrion birds to come to them. She looked at them almost the way that she might look at a friend, even though she doubted that the Master of Crows would ever be that.

“Tell your master to hurry,” Kate said. “There are so many people coming to the battle, and I would hate for him to be late. I would have to start killing without him.”

For the most part, the birds ignored her, but one took to the air, flying in the direction of the advancing armies. The New Army would be here soon enough, Kate guessed, and Henry d’Angelica, but it was the others who were coming who were of more interest to her.

“Where are you, sister?” she said to the air. “It’s time for this to finish.”

This would be where it ended, the shadows promised, and Kate would be the last one standing.

CHAPTER THIRTY TWO

Sophia could barely see through her grief as she and her makeshift army marched north. It seemed to take all the strength that she had to keep putting one foot in front of the other along the small roads and across the fields along the way. Only one thing kept her going:

The need to see the Master of Crows dead.

She had not thought that anything could make her hate him more than she already did, yet the sight of her daughter’s power winking out like a candle flame had done it. It had set a fire of anger burning inside her that was almost enough to satisfy the stone she carried, and that turned the rain that fell to steam before it hit the ground.

The fire stone wanted more than that, of course. It wanted to burn the kingdom around Sophia, wanted to turn it all into a funeral pyre for her daughter. Sophia pushed back that urge though, because her love for the rest of her kingdom outweighed even her grief. Burning it would just make her feel more pain, more anguish, even than this.

“How could there be more than this?” Sophia asked aloud.

Someone put a hand on her shoulder. She didn’t know who. It wasn’t Lani or one of the twelve. Right then, there were so many people around her, so many strangers, who had chosen to travel with her because she was the queen, and because they felt that she knew what to do to make things better for all of them.

Sophia hoped that she could live up to everything that they needed from her.

They grew closer to Monthys step by step, hour by hour. The landscape changed as they marched, with hills replacing the flat ground of the south, the ground rising as her people walked over it. Sophia could remember coming this way before, walking with Emeline and Cora at her side, trying to get to somewhere safe.

Now, it was about safety of a different kind. For as long as the Master of Crows and the New Army were still there, the kingdom would not be safe. Her child was gone, thanks to them. How many more people would lose their children because of him?

“None, if I can help it,” Sophia promised.

There were so many people there with her now that the journey was a difficult one. Crossing the river with so many people was far harder than just three, while finding food for them along the way was a far bigger challenge. Aia and the others of the twelve were helping with that, while there seemed to be plenty of people who could hunt among Sophia’s grand procession, but even so, she was sure that some of them were hiding their hunger, not wanting her to see their suffering.

“Are you all right, girl?” she asked Sienne. The forest cat padded along quietly beside her, not leaving her side as though sensing Sophia’s grief. Sophia put a hand down to her and she brushed against her.

“We’re getting close to Monthys, my queen,” Lani said. “Another couple of hours, at most.”

“And then the battle,” Sophia said. “Aia, we need to decide what to do.”

She halted for a moment, reaching out with her sense for her kingdom, trying to see how things lay. She could see the armies spreading out, not just the New Army, but another as well, converging on Monthys. She could see other figures heading there: Sebastian ahead, looking frantic by a riverbank, Kate… Sophia saw her for a moment, and then she seemed to slip into the shadows around Monthys.

The estate itself looked strange, because from here, Sophia could see whole networks of power around it, webs of it set up but dormant. Sophia could see the places where fire might leap up if she touched them with the energy of the stone she’d taken from Morgassa. She saw other spots that could be touched by ice, or stone…

She also saw the crows, circling above.

“There’s no trickery to this battle,” Sophia said. “We can’t sneak up on the New Army, and I’ll see any move that they make.”

“We could use magic to block some of their ability to see us,” Aia said.

Sophia thought for a moment. “That might work for small groups, but not for a whole army. Maybe small groups will be enough though. Aia, I want you to pick groups of Stonehome’s warriors, people who can hide and move. I want them to be ready to strike at the fringes of the New Army.”

“Yes, my queen,” Aia said with a nod. “There is still the question of some of those travelling with us. Are they all going to fight?”

Sophia was about to ask the other woman what she meant, but one look around at her forces told her the answer to that. With every step that they’d come north, they’d picked up refugees as well as warriors, those too young, or weak to fight; those without the skills to do it. Sophia couldn’t take a horde of children and the old into the kind of battle that was coming.

“Everyone halt!” Sophia called out, using a flicker of magic to amplify her voice. “I need you to listen to me.”

The army gathered around her, and the sheer numbers of the people there took Sophia a little by surprise. She could hardly believe that so many people had joined her along the way. There were almost too many to count, and Aia had been right to ask her about them: far too many of them looked like women and children who would never be able to fight.

“We’re close to Monthys,” she said, and a great cheer went up from the people there. Sophia held up her hands. “It’s an important moment, but it’s also a dangerous one. We’re about to go into battle.”

She could see the fear on some of the faces there.

“I can’t force anyone here to fight for me. I won’t. I need fighters though, and I ask you to do it.”

Another cheer rose up from the people there.

“Not all of you, though,” Sophia said. “Some of you don’t have weapons; some of you don’t know how to fight. I know you want to help, but right now, the best way to do that if you aren’t armed is to wait behind. Keep yourselves safe, and help to keep the children safe. I won’t drag you into the middle of a battle.”

The people with her started to separate, so that there was a group of warriors on one side, and a group of those who had merely chosen to march with Sophia on the other. She addressed them.

“You will have a role to play when this is done,” she promised. “You will help us to rebuild.” Although right then, it felt as though nothing could help to rebuild her heart. “Right now though, we march to battle!”

Sophia stepped back as her army started to move, and it was still an army, even without the many people who stepped aside from it. Sophia was surprised to find Lani moving into step with her.

“You should stay behind too,” Sophia said.

“No, my queen,” Lani said. She had a spear in her hand now. “Where you go, I go.”

Sophia thought about arguing with the girl, but she could also see from her thoughts that arguing would do no good.

“All right,” Sophia said, “but stay close to me. Aia, I want you with me too. The others of the twelve will command sections. It will make it quicker to relay orders.”

“Yes, my queen,” Aia said.

They marched in the direction of Monthys, seeing it spread out before them. Sophia could make out the house now, but she could also make out the other forces there, drawing themselves up into lines, readying themselves for battle. Sophia could see the cannon there and the massed ranks of pike men, the muskets and the cavalry.

For a moment, she wanted to hold back from the slaughter that would surely follow. For a moment, she wanted to say that nothing could be worth this. Then she saw the Master of Crows standing at the head of his army, the man who had caused so much pain in the world, the man who had killed her child.

“Advance!” she called, and her forces plunged forward into the space around Monthys, ready for battle.

CHAPTER THIRTY THREE

Sebastian made his way along the road to Monthys as quickly as he could, not wanting to waste a moment after what the hooded man had said. If this was the way that he got to see his daughter again, then he wouldn’t slow down until he got there.

He galloped his horse until he was sure that the animal couldn’t take it anymore, only slowing when there was no other choice, only stopping when the animal needed to be fed or watered. His own comfort meant nothing to Sebastian right then. All that mattered was getting to Monthys, doing as the hooded man had said, and seeing Violet once more.

The landscape changed around him, becoming hillier and less tree covered. Sebastian pressed on, knowing that every mile he ate up mattered, and that it couldn’t be that much further to Monthys. Already, he could see the route that led there, and the mountainous slopes that hid it from view.

Ahead, he started to hear sounds that he hadn’t expected to hear: the boom of cannon and the blare of trumpets. It could only mean a battle, and around Monthys, Sebastian was sure that could only involve one set of forces.

He started to push his horse forward again, as fast as he could.

He didn’t go the direct route, picking a path that looked as though it might lead around to the back of the estate. Alone, he didn’t dare plunge into the heart of the battle, but perhaps he could avoid it entirely.

He rode up around the mountain, taking a pass that gathered in steeply on both sides. He cut around a corner…

…and found himself face to face with a pair of New Army soldiers coming the other way.

Sebastian drew his sword and cut in one movement, slashing down at the first of them. He caught the man across the collarbone, smashing him down to the path. The second of the men lifted a musket, firing blindly, but Sebastian was already throwing himself from his horse. He hit the ground and felt the sword jar from his hand, but he didn’t hesitate. Instead, he barreled into the second soldier as the man reached for his own blade.

They went to the ground together, punching and grappling. Sebastian managed to get on top for a moment, striking down at the man, but then the other man rolled him, coming up on top with a knife in his hand.

Sebastian trapped the other man’s wrist with both of his hands, forcing the knife away from him. He struck the man with his elbow once, then twice, then forced the knife around as the man tried to plunge it down. The soldier gave a gasp as the knife went into him, and he toppled over.

Sebastian stood. His horse was gone, run off down the slope, but he was able to collect his sword, and he still had Stonehome’s heart stone in his belt pouch. He hurried on along the path, hoping that there wouldn’t be more of the New Army there.

There wasn’t, but the closer he got, the more the sounds of battle increased. Sebastian just hoped that there would be a way to get to the house without having to wade through the middle of it. Below, he saw the battle spread out, with men in the royal colors caught in battle with the massed ranks of the New Army and a third force that fought under a banner Sebastian didn’t recognize.

The battle was far enough from the house that Sebastian was able to run for it, one of the doors opening as he got close and a trio of men pulling him inside. They barred the door.

“Your Majesty,” one of the men said. “We had hoped that you would come to Monthys, but not under these circumstances.”

Sebastian had no time for explanations. There was only one thing that he wanted to know.

“Where’s Violet? Is my daughter here?”

The man stared at him blankly, and that was enough of an answer in itself to send Sebastian’s hopes crashing even before the man spoke.

“Your Majesty, your daughter hasn’t been here. Isn’t she with you?”

Even though he’d been told that Violet wasn’t there, Sebastian had to make sure. He ran through the house, seeing the other warriors there, soldiers of the realm, men of the various free companies, and more. There were men and women there, even some children as families obviously took refuge from the events in the kingdom.

There was no sign of Violet though, wherever Sebastian looked.

“No,” Sebastian said. “They said…”

The man had said that this was the only chance to see his daughter again, and Sebastian had believed him. He’d been a fool to do it. He’d lost his daughter. He’d failed to keep her safe.

Sebastian stumbled through the house, into what looked like the fire damaged wreckage of an ancient ballroom. There were patterns set around the walls, with spaces where jewels had obviously once sat, while the windows provided what would have been a grand view out over the estates if armies hadn’t been battling there for supremacy.

Sebastian looked out then, and he saw his wife.

Sophia stood on one of the hills near the estate, surrounded by an honor guard of warriors, her forest cat at her side. Sebastian had thought that she was away across the sea. He hadn’t even thought to look for her here, yet there she was, standing there directing the royal army.

“Why are you in here?” Sebastian demanded of the soldiers in the house. He pointed to the outside. “Your queen is out there, fighting for her kingdom, and you’re still in here.”

The man who had dragged him inside looked at him as if he’d gone mad.

“There’s not enough of us,” he said. “There’s no cover, and there are too many of them! We can’t even hold this house for long.”

“Then why stay in it?” Sebastian demanded. He looked around at the designs on the wall. The slots for jewels looked faintly familiar, pricking at something in his mind. He took the pouch from his belt, opening it, but being careful not to touch the stone within with bare skin.

“A perfect fit,” Sebastian murmured, lifting the heart of Stonehome to the wall. It locked into place with an audible click. Power seemed to flow along the designs on the wall and floor, turning some of them gold, then copper, then a deep burnished silver.

One of the warriors in the house came to him. “Is that…”

“The heart of Stonehome,” Sebastian said. “It needs power though.”

“I’ve powered the circle there,” the man said. “I can do this.”

He seemed to concentrate, and Sebastian saw the stone brighten with energy. The designs on the floor glowed just as brightly.

Outside, Sebastian heard a rumbling sound.

He looked through the window and saw the ground outside of the building shifting, walls appearing out of nowhere, ditches spreading out.

“I can control it, a little,” the Stonehome warrior said. “But you need to tell me where you want the defenses.”

Maybe that would have been a problem for someone else, but Sebastian’s mother had tried to turn him into a prince who knew the tactics of war, had tried to make him everything she’d hoped a ruler should be. Thanks to his tutors, he knew where the defenses should go to give Sophia all the advantages she needed.

“There,” Sebastian said, pointing. “I want walls there and there. Ditches along the flanks of the enemy’s army, standing posts in the mid-ground to break up charges.”

The ground outside shifted like a potter’s clay. At the same time, Sebastian saw the walls of Monthys closing up, healing like wounds, becoming more castle like by the moment.

He wasn’t done.

“Form up!” he yelled to the men waiting in Monthys. “That is your queen out there, and I am your king. We are going to join this battle, and we are going to win it!”

It was enough to get the men there on their feet, or perhaps that had something to do with their shock at the way the battlefield had just changed. They had all the cover they needed now to approach the enemy. Sebastian just hoped that it would be enough.

They formed up before the great doors at the front of the house, preparing themselves. Sebastian took a breath, turned to the man next to him, and nodded. The man threw open the doors, exposing the battlefield before them.

Sebastian charged.

CHAPTER THIRTY FOUR

Sophian hated commanding people to their deaths, but here, now, there was nothing but death. Everything around her consisted of killing, the screams of the dying and the pleas of the people about to die.

She felt the moment when the ground shifted, felt the power involved in doing it. She stared towards the house, trying to work out who could have done it, who could have had that kind of power. She thought about Stonehome, and the power that had been involved in its shields and mist. This felt the same, but this felt like more than that at the same time.

“I have my own power,” Sophia said, taking out the fire stone. She concentrated on the New Army’s cannons, thinking about what she’d done before with the powder of the men attacking her. She reached out for the powder there, feeling the dryness of it, and the potential that existed within it. She reached out with the power of her kingdom, focusing it through the stone, unleashing it.

The New Army’s cannons exploded.

They shattered in a shower of metal that seemed to engulf the world for a moment. Around them, men died, cut down by the slivers of gunmetal and the flames that rose from the powder. Flames rippled out around them, killing more, and it took an effort from Sophia to keep from spreading that death out through the battle as a whole. Doing that would kill her own people, and Sophia wouldn’t risk them, wouldn’t sacrifice them on the altar of her power.

“Aia,” Sophia said, “have the hidden units strike now.”

“Yes, my queen,” the warrior replied, and concentrated for a moment. Across the battlefield, Sophia saw squads of warriors rising up from hidden spots, striking at the commanders of enemy units, cutting into the flanks and backs of their formations.

“It’s not enough,” Sophia said.

Her forces were brave, and the powers she had at her disposal helped to even the odds, but even so, there were too many of the enemy. The New Army alone would be a dangerous prospect, but Henry d’Angelica’s forces only added to the problem. His cavalry harried at the edges of Sophia’s forces, while units of his infantry moved in with almost mechanical precision, cutting down her warriors through the efficient grind of their pikes and shot.

Sophia sent fire towards the cavalry, sending a brief sheet of flame up in front of the horses to panic them, but there were more coming in from the other side. They slashed into the flank of one of her formations, cutting into it like a scythe and then pulling away. As the men there turned to face the new threat, the Master of Crows’ army struck at them from the other side.

“I can’t control everything,” Sophia said, feeling horror rising at the deaths all around her. “I can’t stop it.”

“The people here chose to be here,” Lani said, beside her. “I chose to be here.”

Sophia still found herself wishing that the other woman had chosen to stay with the non-combatants. She hated that so many people had to die for all of this. She found herself wishing that it could have just have been some contest between her and the Master of Crows, yet all of this… at least it might bring an end to this. At least it brought a chance of peace with it.

She struck out with the magic that she had again and again, summoning fire, trying to use what she could see of the future to direct the troops under her command. There was so little that she could do at this point though. Now that the battle was joined, there was no more room for maneuver. The earthworks that someone had raised around them had given them a chance, cutting down on the New Army’s ability to flank them, but they still didn’t have enough people. They still didn’t have enough raw power to overcome the threat.

Sophia called down more fire, raining it directly onto part of her enemies’ forces. It was hard to do it, and not just because she suspected that the screams of the dying would haunt her dreams for the rest of her life. The stone she held lent her focus and made it easier to draw on heat, but the power still had to come from somewhere. There was only so much that Sophia could draw from her kingdom. She wasn’t the Master of Crows to use the power of the death around her, and she wasn’t some immortal with infinite power. She couldn’t draw down enough fire to win this directly, and even if she could have, Sophia couldn’t see a way to do it without burning half of her own troops in the process.

Worse, there was a space where nothing seemed to touch the enemy’s forces at all.

“What can we do?” Sophia said to Sienne. Of course, the forest cat had no answer for her. Aia did, though.

“We need to be bold, my queen,” Aia said. “We need to find a strike that will end this.”

“We need more men,” Sophia said, but there were no more men.

And then there were. Not many, but there were. Men came rushing out of the main house to man the defenses that had seemed to spring up from nowhere. They fired muskets down at the rear of the New Army, but Sophia had a greater moment of hope than that. She could see Sebastian there with them, fighting at their head, a part of this sudden burst of reinforcements.

“We strike at the Master of Crows,” Sophia said. “He’s the enemy who counts. He’s the one we can’t negotiate with, can’t force to run. If we kill him, the New Army has no more reason to fight.”

She looked around for him, trying to seek him out amid the chaos of the battlefield. She half expected to see him standing on his hill, reveling in the death and destruction that his forces were wreaking. That was the other problem with this battle: every death fed the monster at the heart of all of this. Every death only added to the power of their foe.

She saw him then, wading down into the battle. She saw him cut down one of the twelve, then start striking left and right with those blades of his. He was as fast as ever; faster than Sophia could hope to fight. She didn’t have Lucas’ skills as a warrior, or those that Kate had built up in the time when she had served as Siobhan’s apprentice.

She couldn’t hope to fight him head on, but there was still something that she could do. Sophia started to gather every scrap of power that she could, feeling how little there was for her kingdom to give right then, but knowing that she had to find something. She took everything she could find and she focused it through the fire stone, building the fire in her hand.

“I only need one clear  moment,” Sophia whispered to Sienne, while the forest cat growled at anyone who got too close. She could blast the Master of Crows, and whatever men he had close to him. She could end this.

Then she saw her sister, fighting by his side.

Shock filled Sophia at the sight of Kate there, using her sword like a scalpel to cut through every man and woman who got in her way. She moved with all the unnatural speed that Sophia remembered from her most dangerous days, while around her, tendrils of shadow lashed, killing anyone who got too close. Sophia saw her cut down one of her soldiers and then another.

Kate, Sophia sent, what are you doing?

Kate looked over at her in that moment, in a clear space that held only her and the Master of Crows. If she had been able to bring herself to throw the fire that she held in that moment, Sophia could have ended it then, could have slain the creature that had killed so many for the loss of only one more life. The trouble was who that life was.

Sophia couldn’t kill her sister.

I’m doing what I should have done a long time ago, Kate sent back, and there was a shadowed edge to her sending that was almost painful to touch. I’m coming for you. I’m paying you back for Will, for me, for everything you’ve done.

Sophia stared as Kate continued to fight her way towards her, and in that moment she snuffed out the fire that she held. She couldn’t fight her own sister. She certainly couldn’t strike her down with the agonizing death that the flames promised. What could she do though? Kate was still coming, and it seemed that when she got there, death would come with her.

CHAPTER THIRTY FIVE

In the silence and near dark of the paths of the soul, it took everything Lucas had to keep the soul stone shining. He was the guide here, and he had to trust that he would be able to find the way, whatever it took.

Behind him, Rika continued to play her harp, providing the loudest sound in a land of faint winds and low moans. The sound felt like armor against the fear and the otherworldliness that the place seemed to have at its heart. It was also a string, tying the men who followed to them, letting Lucas lead them through a place that none of them should ever have been able to step into.

“How far now?” Rika asked, without ceasing to play.

“Here, it’s not a question that makes much sense,” Lucas said. “Distance is…”

He didn’t have words for what distance was in a place like this. It was a flutter of a butterfly’s wing, the distance of a last breath, and simultaneously every ocean in the world, all at once. All he could do was walk it, feel the direction that they needed to go, and hope.

“I don’t think it’s far,” he said anyway. It felt as though it wouldn’t be long, when travel here was as much about achieving the perfect state of being as about crossing distance. Lucas could feel the connection to his sisters, and he used that to pull him closer to the spot where they were.

He could feel their power too, and he knew that they’d succeeded in the quests that their parents had sent them on. They had found the magic that they needed, become what this moment required of them.

“Lucas,” Rika said while her fingers continued to trill over the strings. “I think… I think that there are things nearby.”

Lucas could make them out too, the spirits gathering around them. There were spirits shaped like people and like animals, spirits of plants and of stranger things that had never been alive. After all that had happened on the Isle of Spirits, he should have been afraid of them, but he felt as though he understood them.

He certainly understood how to control them; the spirit stone let him do that much. Lucas reached out with its power, tying them to Rika’s song, because that felt like the most real thing there.

“Follow us,” Lucas said to them. “Help us.”

“Why should we?” one of the spirits demanded.

“The thing we’re fighting eats death, eats what’s left of the spirit,” Lucas said. “Help us.”

They fell into step with the others then, swelling their ranks and turning an army of Ishjemme’s soldiers into something far more dangerous. The human ones marched next to their fleshly counterparts, while the others flitted or stalked through the ether of the spirit world, moving in ghostly silence.

Ahead, Lucas though that he could see the spot where the battle was waiting for them, marked by the passage of spirit after spirit into the realm that they walked through. The ghosts poured in, some still screaming in anger or fear or pain, others silent in terror.

Beyond them, Lucas saw the world as if through a veil of gauze, able to take in the sight of men tangled in combat now, fighting sword to sword, shield to shield. He saw a man cut down by the sweep of an axe, only for his spirit to pop into place there, staring around as if unsure of what was happening.

He saw Lucas and charged at him.

“No,” Lucas said, holding out a hand. The power that he’d gained on the Spirit Isle was enough to stop the man’s ghost. “The time for fighting is done. You have passed from the world.”

The spirit blinked with a lack of comprehension that Lucas could only sympathize with. How could he explain to this man what had just happened to him? How could he offer even a crumb of consolation for this death in the name of a cause he probably didn’t even believe in?

Somehow, slowly, it seemed to sink in for the spirit that it was dead. It stood there staring for long seconds, and then it faded. Even Lucas didn’t know where it went to. More came and went as soldier after soldier died the distance of a thought away from them.

“We’re actually here,” Rika whispered beside him.

“Don’t stop playing,” Lucas warned. “I think your men need it.”

Rika nodded. “I won’t.”

Around them, Ishjemme’s soldiers stood waiting with a sense of certainty that Lucas couldn’t imagine having in their place. They seemed so confident that Rika would know what to do; no, that he would know what to do to get them back into the world. Lucas could only hope that they were right.

Beyond the thin gauze leading to the world, Lucas could see the way that the battle was unfolding. He could see the forces of Henry d’Angelica piling into a fight that should have been between the New Army and Sophia’s forces, pushing back formations, changing the shape of things. He could see that his sister needed more soldiers to even have a chance of winning this fight.

More than that, he could see the impossible: Kate fighting on the side of the Master of Crows, clearing the way for him to move forward towards Sophia.

“It’s like the worst things that I saw in my dreams,” Rika said, and for a moment, her music faltered. She took out something that Lucas recognized instantly as the heart stone of Ishjemme, shard-like and crystalline, filled with power. “I know I’m supposed to get this to the house, but I feel… what if we’re already too late?”

“We’re not too late,” Lucas said. “We just have to get through in time.”

That was easier said than done though. From the Isle of Spirits, sliding into the spirit world had been as easy as willing it with the stone in his hand. Now though… now a complex web of power seemed to play around them, emanating from Monthys. Lucas recognized shades of his parents’ handiwork, but also other, older things. Whatever working had been put in place here, it had been waiting for them for a long time, and it made breaking through into the world hard.

Lucas could see how though. He lifted the spirit blade that Elanora had made for him, and he set the spirit stone into its hilt, letting it shine out in misty brilliance as he took it in a two handed grip. He swung it at the veil between worlds, and that veil seemed to fall away, cut in two as easily as one of the paper walls in Official Ko’s garden house.

“Forward!” Lucas yelled, charging through, knowing, hoping that the others would follow. He plunged into the battle beyond, and he heard the cries of the enemy as Rika’s full force of soldiers, plus a contingent of spirits, descended on them as if from nowhere. Lucas cut into a man, his sword passing through armor without a trace, only for the man to fall as dead as if he’d been hit with steel. He parried a blow, and the blade was solid.

He waded into the battle now, not holding back for a moment. Lucas cut his way into Henry d’Angelica’s forces, but his eyes weren’t on the men around him, except to keep himself from falling to their blades. He was too busy cutting a path through them, past them.

“I’m going to make for the house!” Rika called out, above the screaming and the metallic clang of weapons on armor. “I think… I think that’s where I’m supposed to be.”

Lucas nodded. He could understand that as well as anyone. He clasped his cousin’s hand.

“Good luck. I would go with you, but…”

“But you have your own destiny in all this,” Rika said. She ducked under a sword blow, and one of her men cut the attacker down. “Go, Lucas. Do what you have to. Make all of this turn out all right.”

Lucas hoped that it would be that easy as he turned his attention back to the battle. The presence of the Ishjemme contingent was helping to turn the tide, but there were some things that would require far more than that to stop.

One was the Master of Crows, who strode towards Sophia with Kate at his side. Lucas pushed through the hordes of his enemies, trying to get to her, just hoping that he would be in time.

CHAPTER THIRTY SIX

Sophia braced herself as Kate and the Master of Crows moved forward across the battlefield, trying to steel herself to fight her sister, and knowing that there was no way that she could. How was she meant to prepare herself to try to kill someone she cared about that much? She couldn’t do it.

It seemed that Kate had no such limits, though. She cut through the men trying to keep her from Sophia, bringing them down with both her sword and with spikes of shadow that lashed out to impale those who approached her. She saw Kate step into one man’s shadow, only to reappear in another’s stabbing him from behind before he could react.

Sophia used the fire stone to cast a glow around her strong enough to dispel all the shadows there. She wanted to believe that Kate wouldn’t try the same thing with her, but she knew better than to leave it to chance.

“Betrayer!” Kate yelled as she continued to cut her way towards Sophia. She jabbed a finger in her sister’s direction. “Murderer!”

I haven’t murdered anyone, Sophia sent back at her sister, but the sending bounced off her like rain from a soldier’s shield.

Kate lunged forward, and for a moment, Sophia was sure that she was going to die. She had none of the speed and power that her sister possessed; her talent was all about using magic. Then Aia slammed into Kate from the side, interrupting her charge and smashing her away.

“I’ll kill you too, if you’re helping her,” Kate promised, her sabre flashing high and low. Sophia heard the clang of steel on enchanted armor, Aia moving almost as fast as Kate as the two exchanged blows. She was doing well until the Master of Crows leapt into the fight, joining in with slender thrusting blades. Now though, faced with two opponents at once, she started to fall back towards Sophia.

Sophia let out a blast of fire towards the Master of Crows. He laughed and absorbed it with a veil that seemed crow black and feathered. At least the distraction gave Aia enough time to barge into him, cutting at close range as they traded blows with grim determination.

That left the way free for Kate to rush at Sophia again though. She charged at Sophia, disappeared into a shadow, and charged from another all in one movement. Only Sophia’s precaution with the fire stone saved her, forcing Kate to come at her from further away. It gave Sophia a moment in which to turn and throw herself back, and even then she felt Kate’s blade score across her skin.

“Kate, why are you doing this?” she demanded, as Kate came at her again. Sienne leapt at her sister, snapping and growling, swiping with paws and trying to use her bulk to pin her. Kate wheeled away.

“You know why! You set all of this up! Will is dead because of the choices you made.”

“Kate,” Sophia said, backing away. “That’s not true.”

“Don’t lie to me!”

Sienne leapt to get in the way again, and Sophia heard her give out a yelp of agony as Kate cut at the forest cat with her blade. Sophia had never thought that her sister would do something like that, but then, she’d done it before, hadn’t she?

“Kate, you’re being controlled somehow. This is all some kind of lie, like it was when Siobhan took over your body. You need to fight this, Kate.”

Kate shook her head though. “I’m not being controlled. The shadow stone just showed me a few things. It showed me all the connections that you didn’t want me to see. It showed me you trying to kill me!”

She lunged for Sophia, and the only thing Sophia could think of to do was to try to clamp down around her sister’s mind, trying to stop her from doing any more harm. From the corner of her eye, Sophia could see Aia on the ground, injured or dead, with the Master of Crows stepping past her to rejoin the fight.

“That won’t work!” Kate yelled. “I won’t be controlled by you. I won’t be second to you anymore! I won’t be abandoned by you, and our parents, and everyone else!”

She seemed to ball up shadow like cloth, but Sophia suspected that it would be far more dangerous than any cloth where it struck. Sophia summoned fire, and the fire met Kate’s shadow as her sister flung it at her. For a moment, they stood there, streams of fire and shadow perfectly matched, steam rising where they touched one another.

“Please, Kate,” Sophia said. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

“Do you think I don’t know all the ways that you’ve already tried?” Kate demanded. “You sent me off alone when we first left the orphanage.”

“You wanted to go,” Sophia pointed out, still holding the power of her magic.

“You put me at the front of battle after battle.”

Sophia shook her head. “I was terrified for you each time, but I knew that war was your talent, and that you wouldn’t have wanted me to hold you back.”

“You made me leave when I could have saved Will!”

“I didn’t do any of this,” Sophia insisted. “I’m not in control of everything that happens.”

“Yes you are!” Kate snapped back, and Sophia could feel the hurt behind the words even if she couldn’t break through the barriers her sister had up. “You can see the future. You can see what’s going to happen, so you know where to throw the stones to get the ripples you want.”

“I’m not Siobhan,” Sophia said. “I get dreams and glimpses of things, that’s all.”

“So you say,” Kate insisted, redoubling her efforts to push shadow towards Sophia.

Sophia couldn’t think of anything to say to stop her for a moment, but then, horribly, she could. She stepped to the side, letting her burst of flame fall. “Violet is dead.”

“What?” Kate said.

“I saw him chasing her,” Sophia said, pointing at the Master of Crows. “Then I saw the power of her magic wink out. She’s gone.”

Telling her sister hurt almost as much as experiencing it for the first time. It brought fresh tears to her eyes, and Sophia knew that she couldn’t fight Kate anymore. She stepped back.

“Kate, if I could manipulate things the way you say, do you think that I would have done it in a way that got my daughter killed?”

“I…”

“I’m not going to fight you,” Sophia said. “You’re being manipulated, but not by me. I’ve felt the kind of power that the stones have. My guess is that the shadow stone is showing you twisted versions of things, trying to control you. You have to pull back from it, Kate!”

“I have to…”

For what seemed like forever, Kate stood there in silence, and Sophia could only guess at the argument that she was having within herself. Kate looked up at her, and for a moment, just a moment, Sophia thought that her sister was listening.

Then Kate raised her sword. “I don’t have to do anything you tell me!”

She leapt at Sophia, blade extended to kill.

CHAPTER THIRTY SEVEN

Sebastian pushed and fought his way through the battle, not even caring about the result now, just trying to get to his wife. He’d been apart from Sophia for so long that now, in this moment when he’d had everything else torn from him, all he could think of was getting to her.

He hacked down a New Army soldier who got in his way, then shoved aside another for the men following him to deal with. They formed a wedge with him at the point, charging through the heart of the melee, cutting through with sheer effort. They kept moving, because to stop in that moment would have meant enemies on all sides, but even so, Sebastian could feel the momentum slowing. They had to break through.

“For the queen!” he called, trying to boost his men’s morale as they fought in his wake. He thrust his blade through one of Henry d’Angelica’s men, then blocked a spear blow aimed at another of his men. With enemies this close on all sides, it felt to Sebastian as if there were hungry blades in every direction.

He didn’t care about that though; he just wanted to get to Sophia.

He hadn’t been able to save their daughter, but he would do anything he had to in order to make sure that his wife was safe. He’d sworn to love her forever when he married her, and he wasn’t about to let a little thing like a battle come between them.

What a battle it was now! Around Sebastian, men from the three great sides that contested the kingdom fought and died, cut and killed in such a frenzy that it was hard to be sure exactly who belonged to which faction. He raised his sword to hack at a man, only to turn it aside when he saw a flash of Ishjemme’s colors beneath the mud and gore that mired him. Around them, the melee swirled, and it had reached a stage where it seemed that tactics would make no difference, only the frantic efforts of the men there: their strength; their will.

Beyond the melee, Sebastian could see that his efforts to reshape the battlefield were bearing fruit. The walls that encased the flanks of the New Army meant that they couldn’t attack on a front wide enough to use their full strength, and it allowed Sophia’s soldiers to fire down at them from there, inflicting terrible casualties.

In addition to the stone, Sebastian started to see ice and snow at play, falling even though the day was too hot for them, obscuring the view of enemy gunners and rendering the ground slippery for men as they tried to charge. He saw translucent men and beasts charge into the hordes of the enemy, passing through some without harm, but managing to cut down others, and sending a whole contingent running in fear. He heard the crack of muskets, and saw the groups that came out of hiding to strike at the enemy’s officers. He could see the New Army starting to fold in upon itself, held back by the efforts of their forces, and the confusion of the strange, three way battle that was unfolding.

Through it all though, Sebastian only really had eyes for Sophia. He watched her while he fought his way forward, seeing the Master of Crows there, and the stranger sight of Kate fighting beside him.

“We have to get to Sophia!” he yelled to his men. “Whatever it takes.”

He continued to fight his way forward, pushing through while around him, men died in the fight for every scrap of ground. Sebastian saw men with him fall, cut down by the enemy. He watched them pushed aside by the sheer weight of numbers. He even saw them trampled by the boots of the others, the press of men too great for anyone to withstand.

Sebastian cut his way through all of it, hacking at the enemies who got in his way, leading the charge to get to his wife. He saw Kate and Sophia starting to fight, fire and shadow meeting in between them. Sebastian started to run.

He pushed his way through the fight, not even bothering to engage with the enemies now, just running to get to Sophia before the fight ahead could hurt her. He saw the Master of Crows bring down a golden armored opponent and move to join the fight between Sophia and her sister. When the shadow and fire flickered out, Sebastian almost slowed for a moment, but then he saw Kate lift her sword again.

He leapt forward, into the space between them, lifting his sword to try to block the blow. The impact jarred his hands, and Sebastian felt pain shoot through him as the strength of Kate’s attack burst through his defenses. He looked down to see the blade of Kate’s sword sticking from his torso, and he gasped, trying to take in more air. It didn’t matter though, because at least he’d managed to stop the attack getting through to Sophia.

He swung a punch around, feeling it connect with Kate’s jaw and spinning her around. He knew it wouldn’t buy more than a second or two, but even as he felt himself collapse, he knew that it didn’t matter. He’d already lost his child, but he would do anything he had to in order to protect his wife.

The problem now was that, as he looked up from his knees, Sebastian wasn’t sure what more, if anything, he could do to save her. Above him, Kate stood there looking at him, and then wrenched the sword back out of him. She lifted it, still covered in his blood, and lifted it ready to kill.

CHAPTER THIRTY EIGHT

Emeline cried out as another crow came down and pecked at her flesh, trying not to flinch from it, because every movement, every reaction, wrenched at her shoulders. Cora was screaming too, the crows flitting from her to Emeline and back, while around them the battle continued to rage.

The worst part wasn’t the pain. It wasn’t even having to watch her friend suffer alongside her, although that broke Emeline’s heart every time one of the creatures landed on Cora, scratching or pecking at her flesh. No, the part that hurt most of all was the thought that every moment of it was adding to the Master of Crows’ power, feeding him some fragment of extra energy, while they were helpless to help their friends.

It looked as though their friends needed the help too. Emeline could see Kate fighting with her sister, could see the damage she was doing. She even saw the moment when Kate threw herself at Sophia, and succeeded in plunging her sword deep into Sebastian’s chest. Having to kneel there waiting while that happened was too much.

“We need to find a way out of this,” Emeline called to Cora.

“How?” her friend shot back.

“We need to find a way to break these ropes.”

Emeline wrenched at them, crying out in pain at the effort of it when they held her shoulders fast, her arms pinned painfully behind her.

“You’ll hurt yourself, Emeline,” Cora said. Emeline could see the tears in her friend’s eyes. “You’re hurting me.”

Emeline wanted to apologize to her, wanted to tell her that she wouldn’t try again, but then she twisted her head around enough to look at the ropes holding them.

“It’s one rope,” Emeline said. “I’m hurting you because it’s one rope binding us together.”

“I know it’s one rope,” Cora said, and then cried out as another crow came at her. “I can feel it every time you move.”

“But that’s it,” Emeline said. “It’s our way out. I’m not strong enough to break the rope, but if we both pull in different directions…”

“We can rip each other’s shoulders out?” Cora said.

“We have to try.”

They had to. They couldn’t leave their friends like this. Any longer and Kate would kill both Sebastian and Sophia. Then she would never forgive herself, if she even got a chance to do it. This was just like when she’d been possessed by Siobhan, except that now the threat wasn’t just to Sophia and her child; it was to everyone in the kingdom and beyond.

“Ok,” Cora said. “I guess… I guess this is going to hurt. Pull!”

It hurt. It hurt more than Emeline could have imagined as they pulled in opposite directions, trying to find any weaknesses in the ropes that held them. Emeline felt as though her arms were going to snap, but she kept on pulling, not willing to give up on the chance to be free, or on her friends.

When the ropes finally gave way, she tumbled to the floor of the cart with a thud.

“Cora, are you all right?” she asked.

“I just need to get my arms free,” her friend replied.

Emeline knew that she needed to do the same, in spite of the pain that ran through her. She struggled against the ropes that still held her, using the slack that was there now to be able to wriggle her wrists out.

A crow flew towards her and she caught it in midair.

“We’re coming for you,” she promised.

She started to run. She ran with Cora at her side through the battlefield, snatching up a sword on the way from a fallen soldier. Cora did the same, and was far quicker to use it, swiping at any enemy who got too close, and stopping briefly to exchange blows with an axe man before ducking under his swing and thrusting the blade up into his belly.

“There’s no time,” Emeline yelled to her, and kept running towards Kate and the others.

By the time Emeline reached her, she was pulling back her sword to aim a killing blow at Sebastian.

“Stop!” Emeline demanded, and she put every scrap of power she could muster behind it.

Kate turned to her, an amused look on her face.

“I gave you a frayed rope to see what you might do with it,” she said. “I’d hoped that you would do something more interesting.”

“Have you heard yourself, Kate?” Emeline demanded. “That’s not you talking; it’s the stone. You think that you’re controlling it, but the truth is that it’s controlling you. Can’t you see that?”

“All I can see is the power that it’s given me,” Kate said. “That and the clarity. I can see every lie that anyone has ever told me, every manipulation.”

“What about every truth?” Cora asked beside Emeline. “Has it shown you that it was true when we said we were your friends? Has it shown you that it was true when Will told you that he loved you?”

“Do not talk about him!” Kate cried, and Emeline knew that she had to act, or her friend would kill all of them, herself included.

“I’m sorry Kate,” Emeline said. “I’m pretty sure that this will hurt.”

She threw magic against the power of the stone, and Kate cried out, then laughed.

“You think that’s going to be enough?”

“With some help, it will,” Emeline said, and reached out to the others there. “Sophia, all of you, help me, or she’s lost!”

She felt them add to her. She felt Aia’s power where she had fallen, pushing in what magic she could while still trying to survive the wounds the Master of Crows had inflicted on her. She felt those with magic around the field lending their strength. More than that, she felt the full weight of Sophia’s power, levelled now to try to free her sister.

Even with that, it felt like trying to move aside a mountain by pushing at it. The shadow stone had its hooks too deep into her, or perhaps the problem was that what it offered was so seductive that Kate was clinging to it with all her strength. Even between them, they could only match her strength.

Then another source of power added itself to them, and Emeline felt Lucas’ strength flood into the connection. Emeline used it to push at the grip the shadow stone had, ripping its tendrils away from Kate’s mind. She saw her friend standing there, her sword poised, but with a look of confusion on her face that said that she no longer understood why.

“Emeline… Sophia… what’s going on? I was… I was so certain that you were trying to kill me.”

“It’s the stone that you sought to give you back your powers,” Emeline explained, while Sophia ran to Sebastian, placing her hands over the wound in his chest and summoning magic to try to heal him. “I think it twisted what you thought.”

“It twisted what I saw,” Kate corrected her. “It’s like… like I could see everything in the past or future, but all of it was a lie.” She winced. “Again. I’ve been controlled again.”

Emeline was still tied to Kate enough to feel the pain of that, and the shame that went with it. She moved forward to put an arm around her friend, reassuring her that it would be ok, and that it wasn’t her fault.

“Oh, how very touching,” the Master of Crows said, stalking towards them. “Although I suppose it means that I have lost an ally. Still, I would have had to kill her sooner or later anyway. Now seems as good a time as any.”

He stretched out his arms, and Emeline saw the crows flock around him, in numbers so great that they blacked out the sky. Even with Kate saved, this wasn’t over. They still had an enemy to face, and Emeline…

…well, Emeline wasn’t sure that they could win.

CHAPTER THIRTY NINE

Henry d’Angelica had been so certain that he and his army would win. He had the forces, he had the support of the people who mattered. He even had Thom Witchbane’s spear. More than that, he had right on his side, and if Henry wasn’t naïve enough to think that was all that counted, then at least it ought to count for something, shouldn’t it?

Instead of being the clear, decisive victory that he’d been hoping for though, he’d found himself mired in the middle of a strange, multi-sided battle where nothing made any sense. His men were hemmed in by stone walls that hadn’t been there when the battle started, slowed by ice, burned by fire… the spear offered some protection, but only for those nearest to him.

“Should we sound the retreat, my lord?” one of the nobles there asked.

My lord now, Henry noted, not your majesty. The fighting had seen him go from the only true king there to being just a lord again, and a minor one at that.

“No,” he declared, “I will not retreat. I will not.”

Many of his men, however, seemed to be taking matters into their own hands. The free companies were running, Masked Goddess knew that was what mercenaries did best when the going was tough, but so were the peasants who owed him fealty, and even some of the noblemen who he had reckoned some of his closest allies.

“My lord,” the nobleman said. “If we don’t retreat now, then you might not be able to get away from this battle at all. Isn’t it better to regroup?”

Henry bit back an angry response. He knew that the other man was only trying to do the right thing and protect him. What the man didn’t realize was that there could be no regrouping after this. With a loss like this one, his supporters would start to drift away. He would never have an army like this again.

“What is there for me now?” Henry mused aloud. “A minor seat somewhere I will not be found? A retreat to being Loris and Imogen’s guest for the rest of my life? A life as a wanted man, or worse, a forgiven one?”

Henry could imagine every possibility, from being hunted down to fading, from a long siege to pitiful insignificance. Whatever happened from this point, he knew that he would not be a king. The witches had seen to that.

“My lord…” the noble began.

Henry drew himself up straight. “Retreat if you wish. I will not ask you to risk your lives for me.”

“If the cause were not lost…” the other man began, but he was already edging away, quietly signaling to the others there.

“The cause was never about making me king,” Henry said. “That was what was needed to fulfil it. The cause was getting justice!”

That was one thing that he could still achieve. He still had the skills of a warrior. He still had the spear. He could hang around being an embarrassment to the people he called friends, or he could go into the darkness as the man who got justice for the murdered queen.

Put like that, there was only one option.

Henry looked around until he saw the spot where Sophia Danse stood, and plunged into the battle, those few men who were prepared to follow him at his back. He shoved soldiers out of the way, and cut with the head of the spear, sweeping it before him the way a stable hand might have used a brush.

The spear was more than sharp enough to cut wherever it touched, and it killed more often than not where it cut. He hacked a path like a man cutting through dense undergrowth, determined not to slow, determined not to stop.

The men who had come with Henry started to fall around him. One man dropped as a volley of musket fire came at them. Another died with a sword in his guts, and Henry cut down the man in return. He kept pressing forward, no matter how many men died around him, not caring when a sword nicked his arm and a lead ball grazed his cheek. He had a mission to accomplish, and everything else was secondary.

One of the warriors of Stonehome came at him, and the witch slowed as the magic of the spear took effect, draining magic from him. Henry deflected the man’s sword blow, then brought the spear around in an arc, slicing through the man’s throat.

He was getting closer now, so that he could see the traitor queen and her friends not far away. Just a little further, and he would be upon them. Henry was still watching when he saw the sticklike figure of the Master of Crows step up in front of them, corvids of all sizes and types surrounding him like a second army. They flew above in a flock that was almost a cloud, circled over the men there, and filled the air with dark power.

Pain shot through Henry, and he looked down to see a sword sticking out of him. He turned and cut down the man who had stabbed him, then looked around for the rest of his men. The ones who hadn’t fallen by now were fighting away from Henry, cut off by the swirl and press of the battle.

Henry coughed blood as he tried to keep going, forcing his way forward. He would get there. He would do this.

He could see a golden armored warrior approaching now. Henry knew that when the man got here it would be over. He’d seen them fight, and they didn’t rely just on speed and strength. Wounded as he was, he couldn’t hope to survive, even if this wound didn’t kill him first.

Was he close enough to throw the spear? Henry hefted it, trying to judge the weight. He’d been planning to administer justice at close range, but perhaps a sudden bolt thrown from the blue would be enough. He drew the spear back, concentrating on the figures standing out there in front of him, the traitor queen was there… but so was the Master of Crows. Which counted for more, vengeance, or the chance to rid the world of an evil like that?

Henry made his choice and threw.

The spear sang through the air, arcing like something out of legend. It was, Henry thought as he collapsed to his knees, a throw worthy of Thom Witchbane himself. He tumbled forward, but he was still able to see the moment when it struck the Master of Crows, plunging through his flesh and sticking.

“I’m sorry, Imogen,” Henry whispered as the darkness started to close in on him. The last thing he saw before death claimed him was crows falling from the sky.

CHAPTER FORTY

Lucas saw the crows start to fall, and he leapt at the Master of Crows. In spite of the spear sticking out of him, the other man was still fast, twisting aside from the blow, so that Lucas struck the haft of the spear and sheared it in half.

He struck back and Lucas had to dodge in turn, parrying low and high to prevent the Master of Crows from killing him. They circled one another, blades probing, seeking an opening.

“You think that this will weaken me enough for you to kill me?” the Master of Crows demanded, with a jerk at the spear. “It might cut me off from more death for a while, but after all the power I’ve absorbed, I can still kill you. I’ll feast on all of your corpses.”

His blade flickered out, forcing Lucas to parry again and again. Lucas cut back, scoring a line of blood on the Master of Crows’ flesh, but the price for it was a wound of his own, as his opponent’s shorter blade caught him just above the hip.

“I’ll kill you a piece at a time,” the Master of Crows said, the wound on his arm closing. Lucas tried to take comfort from the thought that it must have cost him power to do, but even so, it was a reminder of just how much power his opponent still had. He couldn’t hope to beat him alone.

Then it’s a good job that you aren’t alone, brother, Kate sent. She was there then, circling the Master of Crows in the opposite direction to Lucas. She landed a cut at his ankle, and when he spun to parry, Lucas was able to sneak a cut past the other man’s guard. The Master of Crows struck back at him, forcing Lucas to parry, and Kate sent a blisteringly fast cut towards his shoulders.

They struck again and again, working from both sides, striking out the way a wolf pack would, each of them driving the Master of Crows towards the other, each striking while he turned his attention to parrying attacks from one direction or the other.

He was still a deadly opponent; the sheer amount of experience he had in war made that inevitable. Lucas saw Kate cut by a thrust of their opponent’s dueling blade, and Lucas winced as the same sword cut along his arm. The Master of Crows feinted towards him and then kicked back towards Kate, catching her in the stomach. Lucas returned the blow, buckling the other man’s leg.

“You can’t wear me down,” the Master of Crows said. “You can’t hope to outlast me.”

He’s trying to force us to do something desperate, Lucas sent to Kate.

Then let’s do something desperate, she sent back.

She leapt for the Master of Crows, sending a barrage of cuts his way. Lucas saw her drop her sword as her opponent lifted his blades to defend, grabbing his wrists instead of trying to cut him, holding him in place.

Lucas seized his chance, plunging the spirit blade home in the Master of Crows’ chest. The New Army’s leader swayed in place, then collapsed to his knees.

“This won’t stop me,” he wheezed, the breath bubbling in him. “I have the power to hold this. I can survive this. I can survive anything that you can do.

Right then, Lucas suspected that he might have a point. He’d just dealt the Master of Crows what should have been a fatal blow, but the man was still there, still breathing, still dangerous.

Sophia stepped forward.

“You took my daughter from me, and my kingdom,” she said. “You almost took away the man I loved and my family. Let’s see exactly what you can survive.”

***

Sophia reached out to the power around Monthys, feeling the threads of power that sat there, and the web of magic that was woven into the very fabric of the place. She could feel the way that elements of it connected together with the power of the stones she and her siblings held, as well as the ones that sat in the main house. She felt fire and shadow, ice and earth and spirit, all interlinked, all feeding through networks of magic that channeled power the way a canal might guide water.

Part of Monthys had been designed for this moment; Sophia was sure of that. It fit together too perfectly, it focused on this spot too well. She shouldn’t have been surprised by that, when her family had been able to see so much of the future. Sophia had the feeling of destiny closing in around her, of this being a moment that all of her siblings had been working towards. This needed all of them here and now.

When the Dowager had tried to kill them and destroy the house, she hadn’t just been targeting her family, Sophia realized, she’d been trying to destroy the magic underpinning them. She’d been trying to avert a moment in the future.

They were still here though, and now Sophia knew what she needed to do.

Join with me, she sent to her siblings, and they gave her their hands, Kate’s in her right hand and Lucas’ in her left. Sophia could see how the mechanism of her family’s estate worked now, and as the others lent their power, Sophia sent it through the workings, along channels designed to guide it for exactly this. Sophia sent power circling around the Master of Crows, wrapping around him like a web, or a cage made from insubstantial strands of the elements.

“You are a thing that can’t be reasoned with,” Sophia said. “If we let you go, you would come back. If we tried for a truce, you would only bring more death. More importantly than that, much more importantly, you killed my daughter.”

“She isn’t dead,” Sebastian said, rising to stand beside Sophia, her healing holding him up. “Sophia, she isn’t dead.”

“I saw her power die,” Sophia said. “I was looking for her, and he was chasing her, and…”

“That was me,” Emeline said. “I was luring him away.”

“So she’s safe?” Relief almost made Sophia let go of the power she was holding. “Sebastian, is our daughter safe?”

Sebastian shook his head. “It isn’t that simple. There are people who… they’ve taken her, Sophia.”

Sophia let out a cry and squeezed her hands tight onto her siblings’. The power she held in the workings of Monthys contracted like a vise, the elements the stones channeled pouring into one tiny spot, filling the Master of Crows to bursting and beyond.

He vanished in a spray of dust, reduced to less than ash.

In the wake of it, Sophia fell to her knees, feeling hollowed out, and not just by the magic. It was Sebastian who lifted her to her feet, although he seemed to be leaning on her as much as she leant on him.

“Is it over?” Sophia asked him. “Please tell me that it’s over.”

“Look for yourself,” Sebastian said, gesturing to the battle. To what had been the battle. Now, the last of the fighting seemed to be fading away, men who had been trying to kill one another moments before staring at her, at her siblings, and at the space where the Master of Crows had been. Black feathers fell from the sky like rain, and Sophia stood there, letting them fall around her before she turned to Sebastian and kissed him.

“It’s done,” she agreed. “Except for one thing: we still have to find our daughter.”

CHAPTER FORTY ONE

They searched for her the way only a king and queen could search for her. They sent out messengers, posted rewards, and splintered the army in a thousand different directions to look for her. In that moment, it didn’t matter that the remnants of the New Army and the nobles had fought against them in the last battle. All that mattered was that they were willing to try to find Violet.

That shared search seemed to do more to bring the kingdom back together than a thousand speeches could have done, a hundred attempts at rebuilding. Still, it seemed like too little to find her daughter. Sophia paced the halls of Monthys, hands balled into fists, unwilling to let go of the tension that filled her until this was done and she had her baby back.

“We will find her,” Lucas assured her. “I am searching with magic, and so is everyone with the power to look. Kate is charging high and low, trying to locate where they might have taken her.”

“But who are they?” Sophia demanded. “We don’t even know that much. People who vanish into rags when you kill them? Hooded people who talk about destiny and know just where to strike to take my daughter? How can they be that powerful, and we don’t even know who they are?”

“Because they’re that powerful,” Kate said, coming into the room. “There’s a way to find them though. They obviously deal in secrets, so the shadow stone will know.”

“Kate, it’s too dangerous,” Sophia said.

Kate shook her head. “No, it’s not dangerous enough, not to make up for half of the things that I’ve done. And for Violet, any risk is worth it. I think… I think that here, with Monthys’ guards around it, then it should be possible.”

Sophia wanted to tell her sister that she shouldn’t risk it, but Kate was right: for Violet, it was worth it.

Kate took out the shadow stone, fitting it into a spot on the wall that seemed designed for it and placing her hand over it.

“Hooded men,” she murmured. “Bright boats. A child. Come on, you piece of rock. You owe me for what you made me do.”

Sophia could see the battle between her sister and the stone, and she reached out to put a hand on Kate’s shoulder, seeing her expression ease as she did it. Lucas did the same. Maybe that was why, when the shadows flickered, all three of them saw the boat.

The figures on it looked strange, as if their flesh was a kind of mask, worn badly. Sophia didn’t care about that though. She only cared about the tiny figure there on the deck with them, held in one of their arms as they sailed down river.

“Violet!” Sophia cried out, and in an instant, the scene shifted from a shadowed thing to something real. She, Kate and Lucas were truly standing on the boat’s deck, truly there where her daughter was…

…truly surrounded by foes.

Kate and Lucas’ blades sprang from their sheathes as they sprang forward. The hooded men and women were fast and strong, but Sophia’s siblings were even more dangerous. They cut into them like farmers claiming the harvest.

For her part, Sophia struck out with magic. She clamped down on the minds of the kidnappers, holding them in place. She lashed out with fire from the stone she’d claimed, burning them to ash. Her kingdom rose in response to her mood, filling the sky with lightning that lashed down to strike more of them.

“Give me back my daughter!” Sophia yelled.

One of them stood by the edge of the boat, Violet held in her hands as if she might jump with her into the water. Sophia couldn’t strike at her then, not without sending them both tumbling into the river.

“Christina has a destiny!” the woman called out. “You cannot stop it. No one can stop-”

She fell silent, and for a moment, Sophia didn’t understand what was happening. Then she saw the tip of the blade sticking out of the woman’s chest, and saw Kate, stepping out of her shadow, just in time to catch the princess as the woman vanished, leaving only the cloak she wore.

“Her name is Violet,” Kate said, taking Sophia’s daughter.

She carried her over to Sophia, and Sophia looked around to find that the boat was empty and drifting. She, Kate and Lucas had cleared it of their foes, leaving only empty cloaks littering the decks.

“Who were they?” Sophia said.

“I don’t know,” Kate admitted, “but that’s not the important part. The important part is that Violet is safe.”

Suddenly, a cackle rose in the air. Sophia looked everywhere for the source, but could find none.

“We will come back for her,” sounded an unearthly voice. “One day, we shall come back.”

And just as quickly, the cackle faded.

Sophia exchanged a horrified glance with the others, wondering what was true.

Kate handed Violet back to Sophia, and Sophia realized the important part lay in her arms. Whatever future these people had in mind for her daughter, here, now, they couldn’t inflict it on her. Violet was safe.

Sophia held her baby in her arms, and a warmth spread through her that she could never have imagined was possible.

She wept with joy as she stared into Violet’s eyes.

It was over.

Finally, it was over.

CHAPTER FORTY TWO

Sophia stood on one of Monthys balconies, looking out over the sea of people below her with something close to disbelief. There were so many here to hear her, so many people who were slowly rebuilding their lives after the war.

Around Monthys, she could see more literal rebuilding, as houses had started to spring up like mushrooms, built by ready hands. No one, it seemed, wanted to go back to Ashton after all that had happened there. Sophia was happy enough with that. Let it become the kingdom’s second city. Let the Assembly and the people come here. It would be a good place from which to rule.

“Are you ready?” Sebastian asked, stepping onto the balcony with Violet in his arms. He looked as perfect then as he had on the first day Sophia had seen him, back at the Dowager’s ball.

Sophia took Violet from him. “I am now.”

She looked out, seeing people there she knew and people she didn’t, people who must have come over with the New Army, and others who had been displaced by the war. She spoke to all of them.

“We have all been through so much in recent times,” she said. “We have suffered war, and we have suffered hatred. I will say this: it is over now. We will rebuild our lives. We will rebuild them, not the way they were, but in a better way, a more just and beautiful way.”

She looked to the people there, making a silent promise that she would rule in a way that listened to them, and that worked for all of them.

“I’ve learned a lot in the last few months. I’ve learned about who I am. I’ve learned to use magic that I had never thought possible.” She looked down to Violet, and then over to Sebastian. “And I’ve learned that none of it, none of it, is as important as the love we can find. We will rebuild this kingdom based on that love, and it will be better for it.”

She kissed Sebastian then, because she could, and because of all the times that she had almost lost him. They held Violet between them while the crowd cheered, and even though Sophia knew there would be more to do soon, more problems to deal with in ruling a kingdom, in that moment, everything seemed perfect.

It wasn’t just enough.

It was all that she had ever wanted.

COMING SOON!

ONLY THE WORTHY

(The Way of Steel—Book One)

“Morgan Rice did it again! Building a strong set of characters, the author delivers another magical world. ONLY THE WORTHY is filled with intrigue, betrayals, unexpected friendship and all the good ingredients that will make you savor every turn of the pages. Packed with action, you will read this book on the edge of your seat.”

--Books and Movie Reviews, Roberto Mattos

From Morgan Rice, #1 Bestselling author of THE SORCERER’S RING, comes a riveting new fantasy series.

ONLY THE WORTHY (The Way of Steel—Book 1) tells the epic coming of age story of Royce, 17, a peasant farmer who senses he is different, that powers reside within him beyond what he can understand. When his true love, Genevieve, 17, is stolen from him, he must risk it all to wage war with the nobles and save his love.

Banished from his homeland, sentenced to the infamous Red Isle—a barren island known for turning boys into warriors, and for leaving behind more dead than alive—Royce must hope to survive.

Genevieve, meanwhile, desperate for Royce’s return, is forced to inhabit the cruel and conniving world of aristocracy, immersed in a world of cutthroats and liars.

As Royce’s powers develop, and as he learns of his secret lineage, he can only wonder: is he the destined one?

ONLY THE WORTHY weaves an epic tale of friends and lovers, of knights and honor, of betrayal, destiny and love. A tale of valor, it draws us into a fantasy world we will fall in love with, and appeals to all ages and genders.

Book #2 and #3 in the series will also be available soon!

ONLY THE WORTHY

(The Way of Steel—Book One)

Did you know that I've written multiple series? If you haven't read all my series, click the image below to download a series starter!

Books by Morgan Rice

OLIVER BLUE AND THE SCHOOL FOR SEERS

THE MAGIC FACTORY (Book #1)

THE ORB OF KANDRA (Book #2)

THE OBSIDIANS (Book #3)

THE INVASION CHRONICLES

TRANSMISSION (Book #1)

ARRIVAL (Book #2)

ASCENT (Book #3)

RETURN (Book #4)

THE WAY OF STEEL

ONLY THE WORTHY (Book #1)

A THRONE FOR SISTERS

A THRONE FOR SISTERS (Book #1)

A COURT FOR THIEVES (Book #2)

A SONG FOR ORPHANS (Book #3)

A DIRGE FOR PRINCES (Book #4)

A JEWEL FOR ROYALS (BOOK #5)

A KISS FOR QUEENS (BOOK #6)

A CROWN FOR ASSASSINS (Book #7)

A CLASP FOR HEIRS (Book #8)

OF CROWNS AND GLORY

SLAVE, WARRIOR, QUEEN (Book #1)

ROGUE, PRISONER, PRINCESS (Book #2)

KNIGHT, HEIR, PRINCE (Book #3)

REBEL, PAWN, KING (Book #4)

SOLDIER, BROTHER, SORCERER (Book #5)

HERO, TRAITOR, DAUGHTER (Book #6)

RULER, RIVAL, EXILE (Book #7)

VICTOR, VANQUISHED, SON (Book #8)

KINGS AND SORCERERS

RISE OF THE DRAGONS (Book #1)

RISE OF THE VALIANT (Book #2)

THE WEIGHT OF HONOR (Book #3)

A FORGE OF VALOR (Book #4)

A REALM OF SHADOWS (Book #5)

NIGHT OF THE BOLD (Book #6)

THE SORCERER’S RING

A QUEST OF HEROES (Book #1)

A MARCH OF KINGS (Book #2)

A FATE OF DRAGONS (Book #3)

A CRY OF HONOR (Book #4)

A VOW OF GLORY (Book #5)

A CHARGE OF VALOR (Book #6)

A RITE OF SWORDS (Book #7)

A GRANT OF ARMS (Book #8)

A SKY OF SPELLS (Book #9)

A SEA OF SHIELDS (Book #10)

A REIGN OF STEEL (Book #11)

A LAND OF FIRE (Book #12)

A RULE OF QUEENS (Book #13)

AN OATH OF BROTHERS (Book #14)

A DREAM OF MORTALS (Book #15)

A JOUST OF KNIGHTS (Book #16)

THE GIFT OF BATTLE (Book #17)

THE SURVIVAL TRILOGY

ARENA ONE: SLAVERSUNNERS (Book #1)

ARENA TWO (Book #2)

ARENA THREE (Book #3)

VAMPIRE, FALLEN

BEFORE DAWN (Book #1)

THE VAMPIRE JOURNALS

TURNED (Book #1)

LOVED (Book #2)

BETRAYED (Book #3)

DESTINED (Book #4)

DESIRED (Book #5)

BETROTHED (Book #6)

VOWED (Book #7)

FOUND (Book #8)

RESURRECTED (Book #9)

CRAVED (Book #10)

FATED (Book #11)

OBSESSED (Book #12)

About Morgan Rice

Morgan Rice is the #1 bestselling and USA Today bestselling author of the epic fantasy series THE SORCERER’S RING, comprising seventeen books; of the #1 bestselling series THE VAMPIRE JOURNALS, comprising twelve books; of the #1 bestselling series THE SURVIVAL TRILOGY, a post-apocalyptic thriller comprising three books; of the epic fantasy series KINGS AND SORCERERS, comprising six books; of the epic fantasy series OF CROWNS AND GLORY, comprising eight books; of the epic fantasy series A THRONE FOR SISTERS, comprising eight books (and counting); of the new science fiction series THE INVASION CHRONICLES, comprising four books; and of the new fantasy series OLIVER BLUE AND THE SCHOOL FOR SEERS, comprising three books (and counting). Morgan’s books are available in audio and print editions, and translations are available in over 25 languages.

TURNED (Book #1 in the Vampire Journals) ARENA ONE (Book #1 of the Survival Trilogy)  and A QUEST OF HEROES (Book #1 in the Sorcerer’s Ring), RISE OF THE DRAGONS (Kings and Sorcerers—Book #1), A THRONE FOR SISTERS (Book #1), and TRANSMISSION (The Invasion Chronicles—Book #1) are each available as a free download on Kobo!

Morgan loves to hear from you, so please feel free to visit www.morganricebooks.com to join the email list, receive a free book, receive free giveaways, download the free app, get the latest exclusive news, connect on Facebook and Twitter, and stay in touch!