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Around the sinkhole hummed a ring of magic, invisible but obvious, the sizzle of it like cooking meat. A bitter scent filled the air, and my mouth turned sour and strange, as if I’d put my tongue to an old metal coin. Next to this barrier of magic, forming an adjacent ring, were a dozen tired-looking people, all of them wearing pale robes embroidered with intricate shapes: a language, I thought, but one I couldn’t read. Strewn around them were books and scrolls and plates scattered with crumbs. Some of them stood facing the sinkhole with raised hands, murmuring what must have been spellwork. Two rested on velvet pallets.

All twelve of them snapped to attention when they saw us coming.They smoothed their tunics, scrambled to their feet, hastily tried to hide the abandoned dishes. One of them came to greet us, a squat pale man who smiled at the queen with obvious relief.

“This is Brogan,” said Thirsk, the queen’s adviser. He patted his brow with a silk handkerchief. “The Royal Conclave appointed him to oversee the reinforcement efforts.”

“Your Majesty,” said Brogan with a hasty bow, “thank you for coming so quickly. As you can see, there have been several…disturbances today, and…well, we’ve been pushed back from our previous position by two feet.” He pointed to the air above the sinkhole, where a faint circle of blue specks turned slowly in the air, precisely echoing the sinkhole’s perimeter. They were small and glinting, like dust motes in sunlight. Within their circle was another, this one bright red, and smaller.

Yvaine stood there for a long moment, very still. My heart thundered as I took in the scene. A ring of shimmering air formed a barrier between the sinkhole and the surrounding space. Dusty piles of shattered floor and broken tiles had been swept into tidy piles.

“A sinkhole of light and shadow,” Ryder murmured, a fearsome expression on his face. “Just as the guards said when they released us from your prison that night.There’s a sinkhole, they told us.And the chimaera crawled out of it.” Ryder looked sharply at Yvaine. “And you haven’t closed it.”

Yvaine’s expression was distant, bleak. “I can’t,” she said quietly. “I’ve tried.”

The room rang with her words as if she’d shouted them. My mouth went dry; I was suddenly, fiercely glad for the strong arm of my sister.

Gemma, holding on to me, said in a small voice, “I don’t understand. You are high queen of Edyn. If you can’t close this thing, then what—”

“Who made it?” Alastrina snapped, turning away from the sinkhole in disgust.

“I do not know,” Yvaine replied, still with that strange, faraway look on her face. “Here is what I do know. The night of my midsummer ball, I placed Lord Ryder and Lady Alastrina in prison for their assault on Lord Gideon. Weeks later, a sinkhole opened without warning, and chimaera emerged. In a panic, my guards released Ryder and Alastrina in the hopes that their wilding magic would prove effective against the creatures.”

“And it did,” Alastrina added. Her eyes cut to me. “You’re welcome.”

“Only you didn’t use your magic againstallof them, did you, Lady Alastrina?” said Brogan, his face flushed. “You saved yourselves and ran. Twenty-two people died that day before we managed to subdue the beasts. Twenty-two. Do you know any of their names?”

Abashed, Alastrina fell silent. Gemma’s hand tightened around mine. I was glad; I felt faint.Twenty-two.And we had run, all of us, just as the man had said. We’d run to the Old Country and used our power there to save Talan. But if we had stayed at the palace only a little while longer, could we have helped prevent some of that bloodshed?

“Your blame is misplaced, beguiler,” Ryder said, hands in fists at his sides. “It took all of my strength and my sister’s to turn back just one of the chimaera. And the Ashbournes couldn’t have done even that, not before…” He stopped himself. I knew what he’d nearly said:Not before they went to the Old Country, where something in them was awakened.

Gemma, rending trees from the earth and tearing the cursed crown from Talan’s head.

Mara, impossibly strong, fighting necromancers and demons like a one-woman army.

And me, distracting Kilraith, giving Gemma the time to fight him, using only my voice raised in song.

I swallowed hard. These were not memories I’d allowed myself to consider over the past month since we’d returned home. Thinking of them was like looking at a strange version of myself in a dark mirror, an eerie reflection I did not recognize.

Yvaine went on as if nothing had been said. Her voice was airy and strange. “My advisers tried everything to keep me locked up in my rooms. They wanted to protect me; that is their duty. They exhausted themselves, used all their magic. But I got out, and I slayed the beasts that remained. I closed my fingers into a fist and said a prayer to the goddess Kerezen—ruler of the senses, engineer of all bodies—and I stopped their beastly hearts.” She turned to look at me. “But I do not know who sent them, or why, or from where, orhow. I do not know what this thing before us is, nor do I know where it goes.”

I couldn’t think of what to say. Yvaine was frightening me. She looked so lost, so young and imploring, her white hair lit up eerily by the blue-and-red light of the floating rings. In this moment, Yvaine seemed less like my friend of many years and more like what I supposed she actually was: high queen of Edyn, chosen by the gods, unfamiliar and untouchable and unknowable. I clung to Gemma’s arm.

Gareth crouched a safe distance from the sinkhole. He held his chin in his hand, deep in thought. “You rotate the strains of ward magic daily?”

Brogan bustled over to him. “Yes, Professor. The queen visits every morning and crafts a new design. She teaches us how to bolster it. We do so until she returns the next day.” He lowered his voice, looked at Yvaine in awe. “We catalog every variation she devises. The language is entirely new. It does not match the syntax of any recorded spellwork.”

“Have any other creatures emerged from it?” Gemma asked.

“No,” Yvaine said quietly.

“No,” echoed Brogan, “but every few days, the aberration’s perimeter expands, despite all our efforts.” Nervously, he glanced back at the queen. “If it continues at this rate, we estimate it will engulf the entire Citadel by the end of the year. Perhaps sooner, if the rate of expansion accelerates.”

Gareth stood. “Have you consulted the Committee for New and Emerging Magics?”

“No, Professor. We’ve been instructed to—”

“No one can know,” Yvaine murmured, staring at the sinkhole. “They would be so afraid.”

Brogan looked helplessly at us. “The queen has forbidden us from working with any other institution to address this issue. We operate alone with her. To prevent a panic, she says.”