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The Aveum dungeons were made of ice.

Of course they were.

The first few levels were easy enough to navigate and talk her way into, but the deeper she delved, the harder it became. It wasn’t long before she opted to use her remaining stash of the soot root powder Wren had gifted her, creating the perfect cover of darkness for her to slip past the more dedicated guards.

By the time she got to the last level, she was shivering, despite her cloak and hood.

Here, even the bars to the cells themselves were made of thick blocks of ice. She passed several unconscious prisoners, strung up in chains within. Around her, the quiet festered like a disease, pulsating with a keenwrongnessthat set her teeth on edge. For all the pristine glass halls and awe-inspiring views of Aveum above, this horrific place existed beneath the surface.

Then, she saw him.

Through bars of ice, there was no missing Wilder Hawthorne’s powerful body pulled taut between thick chains that came from the ceiling and floor. They’d stripped him ofeverything but his undershorts. His breath clouded before his face, and the chains rattled with his shivering.

He’d been beaten.

Nothing could have quelled the guilt that lanced through Thea as she surveyed his bloodied and bruised appearance. They had hurt him. Hurt him because of her. She gripped the bars of the cell without thinking, and Hawthorne looked up, strands of dark hair hanging loose in his eyes.

Her horror must have been written all over her face.

‘The cold is worse than the scratches, Princess,’ he muttered, his voice hoarse.

‘I…’ But what could she say? He had explained it all to her, the reason for his betrayal, how not all was as it seemed in the midrealms. He’d even told her who was responsible. And she hadn’t believed him. Hadn’twantedto believe him. She had clung to her own anger so desperately it had blinded her.

He watched her, as though he could sense every thought that passed through her.

The gaze she met was no verdant stare of evil, but one of soft silver. The Warsword before her wasn’t the betrayer of whom Queen Reyna’s vision spoke.

‘I need you to do something for me,’ he rasped. ‘I’m in no position to bargain, but… go to the end of the cell row.’

Thea’s heart stuttered. ‘What?’

‘The end of the row.’

Her feet moved of their own accord, though she was shaking uncontrollably and her chest tugged painfully as she moved away from Hawthorne, further into the dungeon. She was numb as she put one boot in front of the other and found herself closer and closer to the cell at the end of the corridor.

She nearly choked on her gasp.

Inside the icy cell were severalchildren. They were all huddled together, barely conscious.

At their backs were membranous wings.

Some of them had darkened fingertips, some had black veins around their eyes, but there were no wisps of shadow around them, no scent of burnt hair, no malice in their stares.

They were… children. Just children.

None of them looked up at her. They averted their gazes as though they had learnt the hard way not to make eye contact with whomever approached from the other side of the bars. They trembled beneath her gaze, huddling closer together, tugging what little clothing they had tighter around themselves.

Thea backed away in horror, finding herself back at Hawthorne’s cell.

‘You saw them,’ Hawthorne managed, struggling now to lift his head.

‘But…’

He met her gaze then. ‘I tried to tell you.’

Thea’s words were lodged in her throat and she scoured her mind for some sense of logic. She knew that often in times of war, hard decisions needed to be made, that there might be explanations… but this?

She tried to reason with herself, with him, that her actions, the very ones that had led them to this point, had been justified. ‘You led me on a wild goose chase…’ she forced herself to say. ‘You did everything in your power to avoid capture, to hand us over to every monster imaginable.’