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“Where is my stone?” I shot back. I was done giving her the show she was asking for.

“Right down to business, then. You never did like playing games.” She squinted at me like a child, suspicious but intrigued, nonetheless. “All right I’ll give you a hint. So far, you’ve collected two parts of your soul, correct?”

I nodded.

“One from the hand of your lover, and one in the hilt of his weapon?”

I nodded again, that sick feeling finally arriving.

“So one might say, the most common thread throughout this entire ordeal is: a very hunky, ambitious but ill-prepared, ‘god’ with a habit of lying straight to your face?”

Kalen’s chin shot up from where he’d been staring at the floor. I forced myself to look away from him. Do not give her the show.

Melany picked up her skirts and sashayed back to the Kalen. Her free hand traced one long finger across the back of his shoulders, circling him. With each touch between the two, a Shadow sprang forth. Just a twirl of smoke, and then a strap of darkness until Kalen was squirming against the binds that appeared on his body.

Melany stepped back, assessing her handiwork, then smiled. “Now Gwyn, I’ve been told you’re good at mathematics. What is two and two, again?”

Kalen’s voice reached me through a fog.

“Gwyn,” he said.

I pinched my leg at my sides, angering some other part of me to distract from my heart’s fury. She was lying. Kalen and I hadour secrets from one another, yes, but those secrets were buried now, in another life. So much had happened since the night of my second stone.Wehad happened, and that meant something. It meant the Truth.

A thought struck me, something Kalen had told me about Yields that lifetime ago.

Their soul...it serves its master.

When I failed to reply, Melany started again. “Alright, I will give you another hint. It’s only fair since you have become so mindless over the years.”

I didn’t take my attention off of her, but I could feel the other Sages and the Astralites, even Ione. Pity poured out from where they stood and watched.

“Now, I’d have been blind to not notice your reaction when I asked about that scar–the hidden one, underneath his chin? And surely he must have told you that I put it there?”

“You did,” Kalen barked, but Melany tightened her powers around him until his breathing wheezed. I wanted to help him, to move, to do anything. But I couldn’t. I needed to know.

“I’ll assure you, Gwyn, I opened that wound on his neck. Happily. But I am not the one who closed it.” She paced the floors, throwing her arms to the ceiling. “I mean imagine, Gwynore, how surprised I was when my Faders told me the body I’d ordered them to go fetch was still breathing. Naturally, I couldn’t help myself but use him to my advantage.”

A flash happened around Kalen, a burst of what little Light he still held onto that shirked Melany’s Shadow back just long enough for him to get in a word. “You’re lying.” He said to her, and then his eyes met mine. “Gwyn, she is lying, I would have never given you up to her.”

“No, of course you wouldn’t, my sweet,” Melany cooed. “Not unless I asked nicely.”

The Shadow Sage grabbed Kalen by his face and pressed herthumbs deeply into his temples. “Remember,” she summoned. A streak of Shadow passed over the milk of his eyes and was gone, leaving only devastation there as he looked at me. It had only taken her a heartbeat, a heartbeat to undo the past few months of my life.

“I...” Kalen’s voice stuck in his throat. He swallowed, and let out a hoarse cry of my name. “Gwyn.”

I backed away.

It was true.

My miraculous return from the Binding, the scatter of my stones, the crow, the horses, Kalen....they all hung from the tips of her fingers. In the right time and place only because she put them there. But each will was their own. Their legs had carried them to their destinations, their wants and desires led them to act. Melany had only Shadowed the Truth, had only pulled the strings. Kalen had wanted me back, but that wasn’t why he’d rescued me at all.

Even Ione. Ione had wanted revenge, wanted to see me caught, unprepared. Dead. And here I was. Caught and devastatingly unprepared. Feeling as if I was about to die.

I looked around the room, meeting each of the Sage’s eyes. There was nothing they could offer me, and hell if there was anything I could offer them in return. I had come here with one purpose, and maybe Melany was right. My mindlessness had gotten me into a situation I would never have been prepared for, would have never had enough time or enough stones to get through. But it was because of that naivety that I was brave enough to do it anyway.

So, I asked into the quiet hall. “Why am I still alive?”

Melany drew back, blinking. I asked the question again, and she laughed. “I mean we can make other arrangements if you like, but—“