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  She managed to turn her head. Spit out the blood. It speckled bright on the crunchy brown leaves. She tried to scream but it was barely a weak warble of a cry.

  All at once, the wind died down. Sarai knelt at her side, picked her up like she used to do when Elodie was a toddler. “It’s okay,” she whispered, carrying her back toward the palace. “No one will know.”

  Elodie broke the surface of her dream and came gasping into the real world. The filaments of her nightmare drifted invisibly around her, a spider’s web she had been caught in for over a decade now—because it was not only a dream, but a memory. That day, the night before her seventh birthday, had been the night of the Silver Coup. She had been pursued into the forest by assassins and shot with a poisoned arrow. Sarai had been the one to save her, to kill the assassins and carry her afterwards to their cousin and physician Albinus, who managed to concoct an antitoxin in time to save her. But the poison, much like the memory itself, had lingered—had sunk itself into her and claimed her, biding its time to do its deadly work. It necessitated a monthly administration of the antitoxin to stave off its effects, a regimen that she would be forced to adhere to for the rest of her life. And her father, he hadn’t even been that fortunate. His body had been found later, dead in his rooms, throat opened by an assassin’s dagger.

  She was breathing too fast. Her eyes were open but her mind could not yet absorb her surroundings. Too much of her was still entrenched in the nightmare. It sank ghostly talons into her shoulders, knifed coldly through the gap between her ribs, surrounded her with the smell of dead leaves and wet scorch-moss. The dream, the memory, it had been so powerful this time. Details had surfaced that she hadn’t remembered before. She didn’t want to remember them. She had no idea where she was now, but wherever it was, she would far rather be there than sunk in the quicksand of her own mind.

  Her mouth moved. “Hello?” she whispered. No one answered, but something shifted beneath her hand, and she realized that her fingers were tightly curled in something warm and furry. It breathed, its ribs moving gently up and down beneath her palm like a ship rocking at sea, and after a moment her own breathing began to slow to match it.

  She looked down. Bluish-white eyes met hers. It was the dog, the gray one that had been with her and Tal on the ice.

  Her breath stopped. Tal. He had been injured, close to death. She shot to her feet—a mistake, as she was quickly unbalanced and toppled over, smacking her cheekbone hard against the stone-tile ground. The fall only slowed her for a moment. She sat up and braced herself against the wall, about to use it to climb to her feet once again, when she heard the rattle of a chain and felt something cool and unyielding clamped around her wrist.

  She froze. It was a manacle. There was one on each hand. She was chained to a cedar-planked wall. Imprisoned. Trapped. But no longer half-naked, she realized, looking down at herself. She wore unfamiliar, roughspun trousers along with Tal’s shirt and jacket. And the points of pain on her back and sides where the mooncat had bitten her were gone. Movements made clunky by the chain, she pulled the shirt up and twisted around to try to see the injuries. Had they given her healing tincture? Surely if they had, they would also have healed Tal. Unless…unless the Saints knew nothing about him except that he was her guard. Unless they considered him no better than her, and more expendable, in which case they might have executed him already.

  The thought sent starbursts of panic flickering over her skin. She yanked hard at the chains holding her, tried to call up her fire to melt them, but nothing happened.

  From one of the dark corners of her little room, a female voice spoke. “Well. That’s reassuring.”

  Elodie jerked around. The panic intensified to hot, fizzing trails of sparks. If only she could will them into existence, could wield them to defend herself, to free herself—but no matter how fiercely she concentrated, the sparks tormented only her.

  “Who are you?” she demanded, squinting to find whoever had spoken, tugging her shirt back down while she did.

  The person stepped forward. Guileless light brown eyes, curly black hair and freckled brown skin, a mouth that looked made for smiling. She was shorter even than Elodie and perhaps a year or two older, with more generous curves and a sturdy frame. Every inch of her proclaimed kindness and naivety. “I am Helenia,” she said. She moved closer, just out of reach of Elodie’s chains, and held out something. A loaf of bread.

  Elodie stared at it. They were feeding her? What did this mean?

  Helenia’s mouth curved slightly. “It’s only rye bread. I was going to bring you a bowl of soup, but the others worried you might use the bowl as a weapon. You’re far less likely to bash me in the head with a loaf of rye, although I will admit it’s probably stale enough to do at least a little damage if you care to try.”

  Elodie’s stare moved from the bread to the girl. Her mind worked furiously. She had many, many questions, but the person asking the questions usually held the least amount of sway in any given conversation, so she stayed silent a moment while she debated what to do. Her priority was to find out about Tal. But if she was going to regain at least a shred of control, she couldn’t reveal that she cared about him or he might be used against her.

  She blinked. She cared about Tal—and not only because he had been the only person she could trust to protect her in the cesspit of the palace. The thought was a revelation that only added to her panic. She was more vulnerable now than she had been half-naked on the ice, and she couldn’t let this girl or any of her other captors know that or they would surely tear her to shreds.

  They had to know she was the Destroyer. They wouldn’t have taken so many precautions with her otherwise. If they thought her dangerous, she would conform to their expectations, and in so doing gain back some leverage.

  She pulled the memory of her old self over her like a coat of Smithed armor. The Destroyer settled into the lines of her expression, the cant of her shoulders, the cruel and ready grace of her stillness. “Where,” she said, her voice steady and slow and deadly, “is my guard?”

  “With his sister,” Helenia answered, “preparing for your transportation to the Saints headquarters, where your trial will be held.”

  In a single sentence, Helenia stripped away all of Elodie’s imagined control, and she did it without ever letting her smile fall. Elodie began to realize that she had underestimated this girl. Helenia’s face still radiated warmth and naivety, but Elodie began to see now how she might use that as a weapon.

  Elodie’s mind raced through the information that Helenia had revealed. Tal was alive. He was with Nyx. He was well enough to travel to her trial, an event which would certainly not end well for Elodie.

  Helenia lifted the bread. “Go on, take it. You must be starved.”

  Elodie was indeed starving after more than a full day of eating nothing, but if she accepted this kindness it would only weaken her. She lifted her chin.

  The other girl sighed. “It’s not poisoned. Though I suppose I would be the type to kill with hospitality, if I were planning to do a murder.”

  “But my murder you shall leave to the jury of Saints,” Elodie said, threat weaving through her voice like a bone viper slipping through the grass. “Who will be the witnesses during this trial? Tal and Nyx and a horde of Saints, of my victims’ kin? That hardly seems fair. Will I even be permitted to make an appearance to defend myself?”

  Helenia’s smile dropped like a light flicking off. “So you do know her name. How long did you torture her before she gave that up?”

  The memory of it dropped back into Elodie’s head, and it felt like falling through the ice all over again.

  You are a bitch.

  What do you know of loss?

  One day soon, you will face a reckoning.

  Her scream. The smell of burnt hair. Nyx’s blustering bravado, the way it broke, the way she kept going anyway.

  Elodie had tortured her because she’d feared Nyx held sway over Tal, and she wanted no one in
that position except herself. She had nearly killed someone precious to Tal because she was precious to Tal.

  An emotion rose thick in her throat. She could hardly breathe past it. It was alien, sour, unbearable. It demanded action but there was nothing she could do.

  What was happening to her? She felt like her past was half a dream, like her memories were no longer quite part of the equation that was her. She did not know herself. It was as frightening a sensation as she had ever felt. She longed for her power, longed for the tongues of fire that would cloak and conceal her, and just as strongly wanted to be sick at the thought of wielding her magic again—as if it would swallow her up as wholly as it had all her many victims.

  Helenia was watching her, gaze sharp and assessing as if she were picking thoughts out of Elodie’s head and examining them one by one. “Interesting,” she murmured.

  “What?” Elodie snapped, realizing too late that she sounded nothing like the Destroyer.

  “You regret torturing Nyx.”

  Elodie said nothing. There was nothing she could say. If she agreed, it would be taken as false posturing in the hope that the jury might be merciful and grant her a quick execution. Even so, she couldn’t bring herself to deny it, either. “What do you want?” she demanded instead, giving up on her useless attempt to gain control of the conversation. “Why did you come in here?”

  “I came to bring you bread. And to see, with my own eyes, the one who tortured the girl I love.”

  Elodie inhaled. The panic that had been sparking over her skin liquefied and congealed, coating her whole body like a plaster. She didn’t move, lest it crack.

  Helenia tilted her head, observing, seeing too much. “Regret is not absolution.”

  No. Of course it wasn’t.

  After another long moment of silence, Helenia shrugged one shoulder, tore a chunk of bread from the loaf, and tossed it into the air. Elodie flinched before she realized the other girl was feeding the dog, who was still lying placidly at Elodie’s feet. He lifted his head to snatch the food from the air and swallowed it in one gulp, then settled back down as if nothing of any import was going on.

  Elodie nudged him with a toe. He grunted his annoyance but didn’t move. It was foolish of the Saints, she reflected, to leave this animal in here with her. If he was supposed to be a guard dog, he was a poor one. Still, she said nothing about it, because she was afraid if she did Helenia might take him away and then she would be even more alone than she already was.

  “I want to see Tal,” she said. She tried to make her voice imperious and cold again, but it wavered on his name.

  Helenia snorted. “Certainly not.”

  Elodie flinched. “Is he—is he well?”

  Helenia’s eyes narrowed. “Exactly how much do you remember?”

  “Of the accident on the ice? Enough to recall he must have been near death when you found us.” She said nothing of Tal’s silver blood, which was probably what Helenia was truly asking. She couldn’t imagine they hadn’t already figured out he was a Smith, but if they didn’t know, she wasn’t about to betray him to them.

  “No,” Helenia said. “Of your past.”

  She wanted to know if Elodie remembered being the Destroyer. Which meant Tal must have told them how she had forgotten, how the poison must have made her forget, how it had stripped away her powers and her very self. If they knew that, then she had nothing left to threaten them with and no vestige of control over her situation. She was at their mercy, and they were unlikely to show her any at all.

  She had heard of Saints trials. Sometimes they sent the bodies back afterwards. The Cobalt Baroness had been torn apart by wolves. When Albinus had performed the autopsy, he found she’d been half-eaten before finally dying. One of the lesser ladies of the platinum court had been assassinated more recently, poisoned with a toxin that had rotted her from the inside out. Her screaming had wracked the palace for days before Sarai finally gave the order to end her suffering.

  Elodie looked at a point in the distance over Helenia’s shoulder. “I remember enough to know that my sister will raze you all to the ground if you kill me.”

  That was true enough. Elodie didn’t necessarily trust Sarai—she and her sister loved each other fiercely, but Elodie was her weapon as much as she was her family—but she knew without a doubt that Sarai would bring the entire empire crashing down around the Saints in retribution for Elodie’s death.

  Helenia tore off another hunk of bread and tossed it to the dog. “She already suspects you’re dead. Any retribution she has planned is likely in motion against us as we speak.”

  Elodie’s gaze snapped to Helenia’s. If the Saints were already facing the empire’s full wrath, perhaps they might ransom her back to stave it off. But before she could demand more information or ask how long it would take to travel to the Saints facility, Helenia tossed the rest of the loaf of bread toward her. It landed with a hollow clunk on the tiles at her feet. The dog lifted his head and looked at it, licking his lips.

  “You’d better eat that before Maluk does,” Helenia said, and then turned on her heel and left without another word.

  “Wait,” Elodie called after her involuntarily, straining to the end of her chains. They clanked dully against the wall and against the delicate bones of her wrists. Her heartbeat was a mad, flailing thing, a rabbit trapped in its own burrow. “Please, let me see Tal.” She hated begging, hated the film it left on her tongue, but she needed to see him. She couldn’t fully believe he was alive and well otherwise.

  Helenia stepped outside the threshold of the door, which had been kept ajar this whole time, and into the shadows on the other side. “Do you really think we would let your protector in here, so that he could die defending you from his own kin?”

  “No, that’s not—that’s not what I want,” Elodie said, but was at a loss for what she did want.

  Helenia paused for a moment, the faintest hint of pity in her kind smile. “I do not believe you will see Tal again.”

  She closed the door, leaving Elodie in darkness.

  THE RUSTY SHEARS RASPED AS THEY SCISSORED THROUGH NYX’S CURLS. The sound was gratifyingly violent, the strands of burnt hair landing at her feet even more so. With each twist of her wrist, she sawed off more memories. When she was finished, she would sweep the hair into a pile and burn it the rest of the way. She would never have to look at it again.

  She raised her head to check her progress, eyeing her reflection in the polished tin plate that served as a mirror. It reflected her well enough: muscled shoulders, strong, straight nose, brown skin, brown eyes that simmered appealingly with anger. She wasn’t sure if she liked her hair this length, though. Her curls haloed close around her scalp in a way that made her look too much like her mother.

  What kind of a mother sends a daughter to be tortured?

  Nyx set her jaw and tossed her shears into the handwashing bowl, where they splashed loudly into the dirty water. Saasha hadn’t “sent” Nyx to be tortured. She had gone with her. She had risked her own life to ensure the success of Nyx’s mission, to make sure Nyx didn’t waver. She’d had to watch Nyx be tortured. Surely that was just as hard, if not harder, than what Nyx had gone through.

  But still: what kind of a mother, whispered the words in the back of Nyx’s mind, and it no longer quite sounded like Helenia’s voice. It sounded like Nyx’s own.

  Nyx snatched up a straight razor and bent toward the mirror. She placed the blade at the back of her scalp, planning to shave herself bald.

  “That,” said a ragged male voice from her back, “looks like a terrible idea.”

  The razor clattered to the floor and went spinning. Nyx cursed and leapt back just in time to avoid getting a toe sliced off. A hand, paler than her own, dipped down to grab the razor’s handle mid-spin.

  Nyx’s gaze jerked up as Tal straightened to standing before her. He had grown in the last two years. She had known that, of course she had known that, but it was easier to take in the details of his t
ransformation now that he was neither trying to kill her nor attempting to bleed out on a frozen lake against her express orders. His hair was longer than when he’d left home, his cheekbones sharper, and the shadows beneath his eyes looked permanently carved there. But it was the way he held himself that was the most different. He’d always had the strait-laced posture of a soldier, but now it looked fragile, as if he held himself together only by force of will.

  When he held the razor out to Nyx, the echo of another moment drifted between them: him standing above her with his blades drawn, anguish and horror bleeding over his expression when he recognized her. Now, though, he only looked haggard and a little bit lost. She accepted the razor from his hands and then lunged forward, throwing her arms around him in a hug.

  He was stiff at first, shocked for a few beats too long, as if he’d forgotten what an embrace felt like. After a moment, he softened slightly and his arms went around her. “I love you very much, Nyx,” he said, a tiny trace of his old humor in his voice once again, “but it is perhaps not the best idea to throw yourself at people while holding a razor.”

  She sniffled loudly and withdrew, blinking her tears back. “You woke up,” she said unnecessarily. “How are you?”

  Tal glanced around, rubbing his head with the manner of a person still half-befuddled with sleep. “I am well enough, I suppose. What happened? Where are we?”

  “At a Saints outpost. We’re a few days’ journey from the main facility, where we’ll be headed once you’re ready.”