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‘I’m scared that if I open this…’ She swallowed. She couldn’t finish the sentence.

‘If you open it, you’ll know the truth. At least about him,’ Kipp told her, gently nudging her with his elbow.

Biting her lower lip, Thea nodded. With trembling fingers, she began to peel away the brown paper.

When the wrappings fell to the floor, she was left with a dainty wooden box. It was plain in design, with a simple sliding lid that she removed easily. Reaching inside, she found a small silver ball within, and slowly, she drew it out to hold it in her palm. It was covered in a flourish of engravings, a language Thea recognised but didn’t understand. The same language that graced the length of Wilder’s spine in ink, the same language carved into the blade of her dagger.

Glory in death, immortality in legend.She knew those words like the back of her hand. And she could just make them out across the ball’s surface, amid a web of others.

‘What is it?’ Cal asked, brow furrowed.

Thea turned the object over, tracing the engravings. ‘I don’t know…’

But Kipp was staring in awe. ‘I didn’t think those things were real. If it’s what I think it is… it’s from realms far beyond the Veil, from other races that have mastered magical objects in a way that we can’t even fathom. The name is in a language I can’t pronounce, but it’s a memory orb. There should be a small divot at the top…’

There was. Kipp’s eyes widened as Thea tilted the object to him in confirmation.

‘I think Cal and I should go,’ he said. ‘And then you should press it.’

‘But what —’

‘Just trust me, Thea,’ Kipp said, tugging on Cal’s sleeve and pulling him towards the door. ‘Trusthim,’ he told her, before he pushed Cal from the room and followed, closing the door with a click behind them.

Alone, Thea gazed at the silver sphere, heart pounding, eyes burning with unshed tears. Whatever magic it held, she knew a reckoning was coming, one she wasn’t sure she was ready for.

But Thea had never run from a fight before.

She wasn’t going to start now.

Taking a deep breath, she brought her finger to the divot and pressed it. Time stilled for a moment.

And then the room was awash with golden light.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

WILDER

In all his years of fighting, Wilder had never been taken prisoner. Injured in battle, yes, but never chained up like an animal, never left to freeze and starve belowground. He knew Talemir had never faced such a thing either, but Malik… A long time ago they had suspected that Malik had. A mission beyond the Veil, wherein he hadn’t returned for three months and when he had, he wouldn’t speak of it. Until now, that had been Wilder’s only measure for such things.

His body ached from the constant assault of shivering. They had left him in his undershorts and nothing more. He supposed he should be grateful for that small dignity, especially in this cold. But he was finding gratitude hard to come by with his teeth chattering so violently his head hurt.

Instead, when he closed his eyes, he pictured Thea at the bars of his cell, her celadon gaze horror-stricken, her whole being taut with shock. He hated that it had come to this, that she’d seen him like this, that she’d seen the brutalised innocents who occupied the great ice cells of Aveum. But it had been necessary.

Now he just needed to get out.

Adrienne had known things might go awry, but whether she’d been able to get word to the shadow-touched to call for help was another thing entirely. And Thea… He wasn’t sure what she was going to do, whether being down here and seeing the children had been enough to sway her.

He cursed himself silently for leaving the memory orb for her on her name day like that. He had gone to great lengths to obtain such an object. They were nearly unheard of in the midrealms, save for conversations among academics and scholars of the realms beyond the Veil. He should have known Thea would act in anger, that everything he had gathered to show her would end up buried beneath the snow of the forest floor or at the bottom of a now-frozen river.

Wilder took a shallow breath. He needed to regulate his body temperature, he needed to grit his teeth through the pain, and he needed to figure out how to remove the alchemy-treated chains. He had no doubt now that they were indeed Wren’s invention – a genius one at that. He only wished she hadn’t shared the details with the midrealms just yet.

Shifting in his irons to relieve some of the pressure around his wrists, he peered out through the bars of ice. There was no rotation of guards this far down, for the prisoners were so cold they could barely move. There was no natural light either, and as such, there was no knowing how long he had been down here already, or how long the shadow-touched had been.

He couldn’t stand the feeling of being helpless, couldn’t stand the press of tainted iron against his skin, muting that Furies-given strength that had seen him through so many tight spots. He tried to think, but he could feel his mind slowing from exposure to the cold. His fingers and toes were painful blocks of ice, and the frigid air had latched onto his bones. Unconsciousness tempted him, an escape from the pain and discomfort, a reprieve from the mess in his head.

He heard Thea, though, heard her call his name. Not ‘Hawthorne’, as she’d used for the better part of their recent time together, butWilder. His given name, the name she’d whispered against his lips and said with a softness he hadn’t seen from her in a long time. He missed it, missed her.

It was with thoughts of her that he let oblivion lure him under. The ice and pain faded as his eyes closed, and then all he saw was black.