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“No,” she breathed, her voice a mere rasp. “It’s not possible.”

Alastrina collapsed against Illaria, her breathing shallow and quick. “It’s not possible,” she whispered, echoing Philippa’s words.

“Itcan’tbe,” they cried in unison.

Not once since we’d met Philippa at Wardwell had she shown any sign of shame, apology, or fear. But now she seemed to shrink into herself. Her eyes flickered blue and gold, and her image rippled before me—fading, then returning, like a flame sputtering in the wind and threatening to go out.

Anger shot through me. I hurried to Philippa and grabbed her arms. “No, don’t youdareleave us yet. What did you see? Tell me, quickly and plainly.”

Philippa’s expression was wretched with agony, tears streaming down her face. I hated the sight of her, how pathetic and vulnerable andhumanshe looked, how much like the mother I remembered. With all her calm coldness gone, she seemed not mighty but haggard.

“My brother is alive,” she said hoarsely. “He’s alive, and he’s in chains. He has him.” She wrapped her hands around my arms, drawing me closer to her. “Kilraithhas him.”

Gemma came to us and sank down slowly beside me. Her face was white, and her hands were bare; the glittering scar Kilraith had marked her with grinned up at me. “Your brother,” she said quietly. “You mean another god. Caiathos?”

I went cold. I heard Talan mutter an angry, horrified curse. Suddenly the particular madness of Mhorghast made sense to me— Alastrina’s clouded eyes, the humans who laughed when the vampyr slew her victim. Ankaret herself had told us the answer, hidden in the folds of her many riddles.They are not themselves. They are made to do things they don’t want to do.

“No,” I said quietly. “Not the god of the earth.” I met Philippa’s eyes. “Jaetris. God of the mind. Father of readers, furiants, figments, sages.” My heart twinged, thinking of Gareth. I glanced back at Talan. “Father of the greater demons.”

Talan’s gaze was hard and dark. “And Kilraith is using him as a weapon, a tool to draw people to Mhorghast and hold them there.”

“And to torture them.” I closed my eyes, my gorge rising as I thought of Ryder in that place, of Gareth, of the horrors that now lived in Alastrina’s mind.

“I don’t understand,” Father said faintly, still standing behind Talan’s chair. He gripped the back of it hard. “How can a creature—any creature—control a god?”

I saw the answer in the sadness and sudden, wide-eyed fear on Philippa’s face.

“Because he’s newly reborn,” I said, echoing her words from Wardwell. “A mere shadow of what he once was.”

Philippa nodded. Her gaze shifted as I watched her, from the watery blue eyes of a human woman to a god’s frantic flickering gold. “But even a god reborn is still a god.” She looked to Father. I thought I saw a flash of regret on her face. “Think of what I did to you, how quickly I opened you up and made you bleed.”

Father was grim. “And if you didn’t have control of your power, if someone else was using it? You’d be a murderous puppet with a monster pulling your strings.”

“And the egg must be an anchor of theytheliadcurse,” Gemma added. She looked to Talan, a softness in her eyes. “He’s using it to control Jaetris like he used the crown to control Talan.”

“It would give him strength and mobility,” Talan agreed quietly. His brow glittered with its own swirl of lines and thumbprint scars, partners to those on Gemma’s hand. “Allow him to use his influence—and that of Jaetris—in both realms.”

“And plant visions in people’s heads,” I whispered, thinking of Mara’s story—the woman driven mad by the images in her mind, the woman who’d attacked her brother. “Making them sick, driving them to him.”

“Some he abducts himself,” Father added, “or else he sends that shadow magic to do it for him. An army of figments, maybe? Quick,skilled at deception.” Father’s hands were in fists. “It’s a strange strategy. Untidy. Chaotic.”

Philippa hid her face in her hands. “Chaos is just what he wants.”

“Chaos is just what he wants,” Alastrina whispered, leaning against Illaria and staring at the floor.

“Chaos,” Talan agreed darkly, “and entertainment. That’s always been a part of it. He’s playing a game. Whatever ends he’s aiming for—whatever dark plots he’s engineered throughout the realms using me and the others before me, now using Jaetris and the captive humans he’s making certain the effort is fun. He has all the cards, and he’s enjoying it.”

“And look at this.” I reached in my pocket for the invitation. “He’s not even hiding himself away anymore. He wants us to go to him.”

As soon as I withdrew the shimmering piece of paper, the world went deathly silent—the house, my heartbeat, my breathing—except for a high, faint whine in the distance.

Philippa reared back from me, her mouth open in a silent scream. Our gazes locked, and when her body started to flicker again, fading in and out of existence, I dropped the paper and grabbed on to her bare wrist.

She sucked in a breath and held me to her for a brief moment. The world’s silence roared in my ears.

“I have to go,” she told me—jewels in her hair, bones for armor, eyes of liquid gold. “If I stay, he’ll find me. Burn that thing immediately. It isn’t what it seems.” Her arms came around me again, then let me go. “I’m sorry, my little bird. It’s to protect you. What I do is always to protect you.”

Then the world went white, and when it faded, when sound returned, all of us were gasping for breath on the floor, and Philippa was gone.