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Maia snorted, the bleakness leaving her. “A brothel suits you. Just—not a pillow room.”

Isak bared teeth sharper than they’d been seconds ago. “None of my whores would be indentured. The practise makes me physically fucking sick.” And his own brother had been forced into that work. Isak’s face twisted as he imagined how torturous andviolatingit must have been for Jaro. Isak jumped when something landed on his knee, and gave Maia’s gold, elegant hand a baffled glance.

“I know,” she murmured. And she did. If Isak felt like this, how must she feel knowing that had happened to her soulmate?

“I was there,” she said, removing her hand. “When Eosantha was destroyed. I—I killed everyone inside. Enryr turned everything else to ruins.”

Isak’s jaw dropped. “What do you mean you killed everyone inside?”

“They’re dead,” she twisted her hands together in her lap, her shoulders curled inward. “Every last one.”

Every person Isak had seen, spoken to, argued with, fucked, brawled with—every person was dead. If he’d still been in the city, would he have been murdered, too? Saints. Holy fucking saints, that was a lot of power. He waited for Viskae to chime in but like in all his dreams she was silent.

“Well,” he said finally, after a too-long pause. “Guess I don’t have to pay Scraggy Stahra that money I owe her.”

Maia’s head snapped up and she just stared at him. Searching for the same things he often did—disgust, revulsion, fear, hatred. He didn’t let her see them. Not a single one.

“Scraggy Stahra?” she asked finally, her voice thick and raw.

“Tall woman, as thin as a streetlight, scraggy blonde hair.”

“Right,” Maia said, pinching the bridge of her nose again. “Could you have a normal reaction for once in your life?”

“Nah. Goes against my personal beliefs.”

She shook her head, but she was almost, almost smiling. Isak could not explain why he wanted to see her smile again quite so badly.

“So. No apothecary,” he murmured.

“No,” she agreed. “And—did you saySaintsgarde?”

“So far I’m not a fan,” he told her sadly. “I know it’s your birthplace, but the gatekeepers are far too good at their job and the people stank of sweat and unwashed bodies on the bus here. Possibly because they’d been travelling for hours. And Imight not have been sweet-smelling myself, but that’s beside the point.”

She laughed. Small and rusty but a laugh undeniably. “What the hell are you doing in Saintsgarde?”

“Rescuing you and my brother, and the rest of your merry band.”

Her face fell, vulnerability making her eyes round, a deeper shade of gold. “You can’t save us, Isak. One man against saints? I’m not delusional enough to think that’d work even in my dreams.”

“Oh, ye of little faith,” he replied, nudging his shoulder against hers. “I might rally an army, you never know. I’m very charismatic. I could sell sin to a priest.”

She wasn’t smiling. “Don’t. If you’re really in Saintsgarde, stay there.”

“I can—”

“You don’t know what it’s like,” she hissed, her body knotted with tension. “You don’t know how it feels to be near the saints, all that power, thepressure,the screaming inside your own mind. Their magic is endless. Stay in Saintsgarde.”

She turned away from him, curling up again, and Isak’s hands twitched, eager to touch her. But this fantasy had spun out of control, more upsetting than it was comforting, no longer a distraction from his fears but a reminder of them.

“It’s just a dream,” she murmured to herself, her head bowed. “Just a dream.”

Isak reached for his stick to run his thumb over the groove in the handle, the motion familiar and reassuring, but it hadn’t come here with him. It was still propped against the sofa in his new friends’ small front room.

“You never told me your darkest desire, North,” he said as a last attempt to recover the fantasy.

“Freedom,” she whispered, her back to him. “I just want to be free.”

CHAPTER SIXTEEN