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Wilder clenched his jaw to stop himself from delivering another verbal lashing. Instead, he beat down his anger and turned to the unit as a whole.

‘Time’s up,’ he barked. ‘Form up.’

They manoeuvred their horses into a crooked line, and it was all Wilder could do not to drop his head into his hands in defeat. He guided Biscuit to the front of the unit and made a point of meeting every gaze that stared back at him.

‘You must hold the line.’ He ensured that his deep voice projected to the far reaches of the group. ‘It’s easy enough here in these fields, but when a charge is hurtling towards you, it’s another story entirely. I want your reins held short.’ He demonstrated with his own. ‘I want you to keep pace with the man or woman on either side of you. The horses will want to gallop – do not let them. If one breaks formation, they all will. We cannot have that.’

Silence followed.

‘Like getting blood from a fucking stone,’ he muttered before addressing them at full volume again. ‘You must hold the line,’ he repeated. ‘Do you understand?

Still nothing.

Hanging on to his patience by a tattered thread, Wilder rose to his full height in the saddle, let his Furies-given strength emanate from his body, and unsheathed his blades from their scabbards. ‘I said, do you understand?’

A chorus of yes filtered through the ranks.

‘Good. Then we go again. Form the fuck up.’

They did as he asked, albeit messily. He rode through the whole unit, positioning each person exactly where they needed to be, pointing out markers for them to remember, so they could line themselves up properly next time.

He had them canter across the paddock, wincing as he saw the weak links in the armour he was working so hard to forge. Wilder was watching his unit so intently that he barely registered Torj’s approach until the Warsword’s Tverrian stallion brushed up along Biscuit’s side.

The Bear Slayer grimaced at the state of his unit.

‘This is going to be a problem,’ Wilder muttered.

‘No shit,’ was Torj’s only reply.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

THEA

To Thea’s great relief, she and her sisters weren’t thrown into Aveum’s ice dungeons, but nor were they taken straight to the queen. They had been escorted to the royal guest quarters, which Thea found laughable considering the heirs of Delmira were still considered threats to the realm. But threat or not, apparently there was no greater danger than to offend a visiting royal. The quarters they’d been given were the most lavish Thea had ever seen. It was a suite of adjoining rooms, each housing a four-poster bed draped in silks, each with its own hearth, bathing chamber and balcony that overlooked the great frozen lake below.

The rooms opened out into a formal lounge and dining area, as though Thea, Wren and Anya might feel the need to entertain their own guests in the floating domes. Another laughable consideration. The only person they wanted to see was Queen Reyna, and she hadn’t deigned to answer their request for an audience, not since they’d arrived three days ago.

Thea tried to keep at bay her growing sense of dread that Reyna might be colluding with King Artos, giving away their whereabouts and holding them here until he arrived. But they were not treated like prisoners. All three of them had left their suite and perused the domes as freely as they might have done in their own homes, but their patience was wearing thin.

In secret, they worked on their magic together, sharing the methods they’d used to control their own, trying to figure out how to forge a connection between the storm within each of them. But the confines of a palace were no place for summoning thunder and lightning, and so their practice was limited. When they weren’t discussing magic, they talked of their family and what little they could remember of their parents.

On the third night of their stay, Anya showed Thea and Wren the letters she’d found, written in their mother’s hand. The young women pored over the pieces of parchment before the fire, getting to know the former Queen of Delmira by her loopy scrawl and loving descriptions of her daughters to her friend, Queen Yolena of Naarva.

‘It’s so surreal,’ Wren murmured, tracing over the cursive. ‘She’s talking about us… Anya had a dress she wouldn’t change out of. Thea had a favourite stick she carried everywhere, and I… Apparently I had a tendency to eat grass.’

Thea laughed, but seeing Wren’s expression taut with anguish, she went to her. ‘It’s not fair that this is how we meet her. That this is all we get.’

‘No, it’s not.’

Anya watched them closely. No doubt she had already gone through the same grief when she’d first discovered the letters, but judging from her watery gaze, she shared their pain anew.

‘Yolena talks about her sons…’ Thea ventured. ‘It’s strange to think that somewhere out there are lost heirs of Naarva.’

Anya nodded. ‘Not that they’ll be any help to us now… Where are you up to?’

Thea glanced down at the letters. ‘Our mother is writing about… her sense of dread, for the days to come.’

‘I think she might have suspected Artos all along,’ Anya said. ‘She doesn’t name him, but there’s a lot of references to feelings that seem unexplained, reactions that don’t align with the situation. That sounds like empath magic to me. Like he was there, manipulating everything for a long time before the kingdom fell.’