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For once, I didn’t dream.

For once, visions of Ling’s death didn’t fill my mind.

I don’t know how long I slept that first night – or was it day? Up here in space, day and night have no meaning – especially so in this brightly lit room.

The doors won’t open. We’re locked in from the outside. I have to fight the urge to take the tiny Orb-Blade out from where I’d hidden it and cut the doors open…

I’m pent up.

When we awaken, Tessa barely talks. She just shivers, despite the heat, and I have to urge her over and over to eat even a few mouthfuls of the tasteless gruel that the replicator spits out. She responds to my voice with only single word answers – more robotic than the Sentinels.

I try to keep active, pacing around our prison, but I don’t want to show off my new strength to Tessa. I don’t trust her – and I also worry that there’ll be cameras watching us even now. In fact, I feel sick when I think about activating the tiny Orb-Knife that Lucius had slipped me. For all I know, there could be cameras in the bathroom.

If there were, though, surely Bullfrogs would have come andtakenmy weapon from me.

They would have done.Right?

Unless Oblog wants me to think he doesn’t know. But could he know I have a weapon? And what could his goal be, in letting methinkI’ve hidden it securely?

Lord Oblog has always been three steps ahead of us.

My mind, which had felt so clear and sharp after being Bonded, is becoming a jumbled mess the longer I’m cooped up. Now, I’m questioning everything I heard. I’m questioning if I understood the Toad language I’d overheard, or whether the words ‘kill,’ ‘empty,’ ‘two,’ or ‘obsidian’ were real, or just something I’d imagined.

I’m going crazy.

I’m in a room with someone who should be my friend, and yet I’ve never felt so alone. It drives me mad that I can’tfeelmy three men.

For all I know, they’ve already been caught by the Aurelian Enforcement, questioned over the contents of their shipment, and hung as smugglers and traitors.

But traitors to what? What are they mixed up in?

What the fuck does a Toad Finger want to have to do with the Aurelian Priesthood? The question is rooted in my brain, along with the worry that once this damned ring is finally off my finger, the three Aurelians won’t reappear in my mind – that they’ll have been snuffed out while on their mission.

All this time, I’ve tried to stay strong – but it’s getting harder and harder.

I harden my resolve. I can’t give up now. If I let myself show weakness, Tessa will falter.

Then, the doors finally open.

I’m jolted out of my thoughts, and ready myself in a battle-stance. Tessa wakes too, looking at me for reassurance. Then, her eyes turn to the doorway, and she scrambles back in terror.

A Bullfrog is standing there, looming and ugly.

Panicking, I look for the familiar scar of Gab’nah – and then relax slightly when I don’t see it.

“Come.”

This nameless Bullfrog grunts out the command in the Common tongue.

I ask: “Both of us?”

He nods. Tessa shivers.

“Don’t worry, Tessa,” I reassure her. “Perhaps it means the Aurelians are already back. Perhaps you’re going free!”

That’s the optimistic view.