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“Darling Farrin.” She placed one warm hand on mine and leaned forward to meet my eyes. “Don’t you think I would have told you, long ago, if that were the case? I would’ve easily sensed such a thing, and revealing that truth could have prevented years of strife between your families, perhaps even served as the first step toward peace.”

I’d never felt such relief in my life. Yvaine’s expression was open, honest, clear; her voice brimmed with compassion. She wouldn’t lie to me, not about this.

I closed my eyes, laughed a little. “Thank you. I wouldn’t have been able to stop thinking about it if you hadn’t…” I bit back the awkward tumble of words; I’d already taken too much of her time for this small, selfish thing. I resolved to put the whole matter out of my mind, at once, and keep it there.

“A very odd weight has been lifted,” I said simply. “Thank you.”

“You are most welcome,” she said, and then, more quietly, she added, “But I think this isn’t the only reason you’ve come to see me.”

I shook my head, the euphoric rush of relief fading fast. “No, it isn’t. Far from it.”

Yvaine looked suddenly very old. Outside, the clouds shifted, and harsh afternoon sunlight fell upon her face. “And none of what you have to say is very good, is it? You feel as gray as I do.”

“I won’t lie to you—no, none of it is very good. Some of it, maybe all of it, you won’t like to hear. But hear it you must.”

Yvaine went very still. I saw the last traces of happiness drain from her expression and wished passionately that I could forget all of this, that I could simply sit with her and talk about unimportant things: silly palace gossip, or Gareth’s latest romantic catastrophes, or what it felt like to be kissed by Ryder Bask. I could accompany her shockingly off-key singing on the piano, or we could go to the kitchens and raid the pantry, or she could teach me—with limited success, if past attempts were any indication—whatever dance was the latest fashion at court.

But instead, Yvaine nodded and raised her gaze to mine, cool and regal. “Speak, then.”

I tried not to be hurt by that voice and instead be glad for it. It would make things easier. We were not friends in that moment, with years of love between us; we were a queen and her subject.

“First,” I said, “and I must ask you to be completely honest with me, as we’ve always been with each other. Are you ill?”

Her answer was unflinching. “Yes.”

I swallowed hard. It wasn’t a surprise, and yet I still had to fight back tears. “What is the extent of it?”

“I don’t know. No one knows. I…” Yvaine’s brow furrowed slightly. “Sometimes my powers manifest in surprising ways, without my permission. It’s as if for all these years, I’ve been a tightly capped bottle, and now the glass of my body is starting to crack. Things are getting out that shouldn’t. There are whole days that I can’t remember. I’llwake up in the strangest places, my advisers frantic because for two, three days they couldn’t find me anywhere. And I can’t tell them where I’ve been.”

Her voice grew quieter as she spoke. When she finished, she looked up at me, imploring, her white hands tightly clasped in her lap.

I tried not to let the absolute horror I felt show on my face. This was worse than I’d expected. “All right. Thank you for telling me that. And…” I paused, gripping the sofa cushions hard to keep myself from giving her false reassurances—that everything would be fine, that there was no reason to worry. “And your healers, they can’t name the affliction?”

Yvaine smiled a little. “They have nothing to compare it to. I’m the only one of my kind, after all.”

“But memory loss, unpredictable powers, involuntary use of power—those have to be common symptoms of other illnesses.”

“Of course they are.” She started counting off points on her fingers. “The degradation of magic due to advanced age. The degradation of the mind due to advanced age. Loss of magic entirely, again, due to advanced age.”

I wasn’t sure how to phrase my next remark without sounding indelicate. “And I suppose youareof advanced age…”

She regarded me with fond amusement. “I both am and am not. I’m ageless, Farrin. I’m a pet of the gods. Hundreds of thousands have lived and died during my lifetime, and hundreds of thousands more will live and die, and still I will be here.Lifetimeis, for me, an absurd unit of measurement. You know this.”

“I know, but…is itpossiblethat…” I shook my head, miserable in every way. “Something’s wrong with the Middlemist. And with the Crescent of Storms and the Knotwood. And something’s wrong with you too. Are these things connected? Is…” And this was a fear none of us—not even Mara in all her grim letters—had yet voiced. “Is ourworld in danger, Yvaine? Is the end of your life coming? And will that mean the end of Edyn?”

Yvaine’s eyelids fluttered. She drew in a sharp breath, hesitated. “There’s…there’s something wrong with the Middlemist?”

I stared at her, my shock too overwhelming to mask. Terrible fear, colder and greater than any I’d ever known, dropped over me like winter come all at once. She didn’t know. No one had told her, none of her advisers—but worse than that, she couldn’t sense the truth on her own. She, Yvaine Ballentere, high queen of Edyn, chosen by the gods thousands of years ago to keep us safe.

Suddenly I felt childishly terrified, and hugged myself, and looked down at my feet. The weight of this moment crashed down onto my shoulders with thunderous force, but I wouldn’t cry; I refused to cry.

Yvaine touched my hand. I looked up through a glittering sheen of barely restrained tears.

“Tell me everything you know,” she said, with the sort of calm patience that reminded me of my mother and hit me with the force of a blow from Ryder’s staff. My mother, when our home was complete, content. My mother, before everything had changed and she had left us to endure it alone.

I dashed a hand across my face and obeyed. I told her everything: what Talan had learned in his travels, what Mara had said in her letters—the Mistfires, the sickness spreading through the Mistlands—and everything the Warden had told us too. When I spoke of Devenmere, and of the binding magic the Warden had been using to keep the state of the Mist a secret, Yvaine’s expression hardened.

“Llyleth,” she muttered angrily, and I realized that this must be the Warden’s true name. “That use of power is well beyond her authority. I will send for her at once and speak to her.”