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“Mímir’s a traitor. You can’t just believe anything he says.” Magni looked at Eyfura, and Kolfinna didn’t miss the way his lower lip trembled. “She liked you. She wouldn’t have lied about that. She’s not the type of person to be double-faced. Eyfura is a good person. She’s not like me, or Truda, or Blár. She’s a good person.”He looked away from Eyfura, as if he couldn’t bear to keep staring at her dead body. “Shewasa good person.”

Kolfinna wanted to believe him more than anything, but her brain was mush and she didn’t knowwhatto believe anymore.

Magni pointed to Eyfura’s body. “Look inside her uniform.”

Kolfinna froze at the request—she didn’t want to touch Eyfura’s cold body. She didn’t want to be around her at all.

“She made something for you. Before we left for this mission.” Magni’s voice grew stronger—more confident. “She didn’t betray you.I know it.Check her pockets.”

She didn’t want to face more disappointment and feel more of the sharp edge of betrayal, but curiosity got the best of her. Kolfinna inched closer to her body. Eyfura’s uniform, which had been pristinely white, was now spotted with blood, dirt, and grime. Her naturally pink cheeks were pale and Kolfinna choked back another sob as she slipped her hand into her pocket. Her fingers met with something flat and she pulled out a makeshift wooden badge with a lion carving. For a second, she didn’t know what it was. But then it hit her: it was a Hope Badge.

Kolfinna’s sight blurred with tears, her heart sinking as it dawned on her. A Hope badge was given by friends and family to people trying to become a Royal Guard.

“She made it for you,” Magni said. “She needed help with the carving, so she came to me, but I didn’t want to help her because … well, I just didn’t. But she didn’t give up. She tried to do it all … She wrote your name on the back.”

She flipped the badge and sure enough,Kolfinnawas etched into the back with a tiny flower beside her name.

Her fingers curled around the badge and she cradled it close to her chest.

She let her tears fall freely down her cheeks. She hadn’t trusted Eyfura in vain. There were a lot of things that didn’t work out, but at least Eyfura hadn’t betrayed her. She had made one friend at least.

“Okay, we can all cry sometime later,” Blár interrupted. “We have to focus on getting out of here before they come back for us. You guys don’t seem to realize we’re on a time crunch.”

Truda raised her head. “And what are we going to do once we get out of here?”

“Kill that hag and weasel pair,” Blár said, as if it was that simple.

“Kill them?” Truda scoffed. “No way! Let’s just get out of here! Who knows what that lady has up her sleeve?”

“That lady killed Eyfura,” Magni said, and they all tried not to look at Eyfura’s crumpled body again. He clambered up to his feet and dusted his pants. “There’s no way we’re not avenging her death.”

“We’re not going to run away,” Blár said. He cracked his knuckles slowly.Pop. Pop. “Besides, if this lady is really part of this organization that’s trying to enslave humans, I think it’s our job to stop them. Imagine if this comes to bite us in our asses five years from now. How shitty would that make you feel?”

Truda pushed back her stringy, dirtied brown hair out of her eyes. “They won’t succeed.”

“They better not, and that’s why we take care of thisnow,” Blár said. “Not five, ten, or fifteen years from now.”

“I don’t like this,” Truda said, and Kolfinna noticed the dried blood caking Truda’s hair and neck.

Magni snorted. “I didn’t think you were a coward.”

Truda jumped to her feet, fire practically lashing from her tongue. “I can handle things that I understand, but I don’t understand any of this. Rune magic? No magic in certain rooms? Being teleported into different dimensions? This stuff is just out of my realm, okay? And yeah, I’m scared of it all!” Truda waved to the runes in the room and turned her angry eyes to everyone. “But if we’re going to fight, I’ll fight.”

Kolfinna rose to her feet alongside Truda. “I’ll fight too.”

“You don’t have to. You’re not human,” Blár said. “This is our fight.”

“I want to,” Kolfinna said. “Because this is my fight too.”

She didn’t want to die here, and she couldn’t continue to wallow in self-pity because she had thought Eyfura betrayed her. She had been momentarily blinded with guilt and treachery, but she couldn’t justgive up.

Kolfinna turned to the runes. They were too high up in the walls for her to reach on her own. But she was sure she wouldn’t have been able to break it anyway. Maybe she could write a clause like Revna did?

Cracks lined the gray walls between the runes, but that didn’t deter them. It was like the runes hoveredoverthe walls. Chipping away at the physical wall would likely not do anything since it was the magic itself in the runes that made the runes work, rather than the physical form of the runes. This was all speculation, though, because Kolfinna didn’t know much about runes in the first place.

She placed her hand over an empty space on the wall with the runes. In the room with the coffins, Revna’s runes had worked even though she hadn’t written them directly below or next to the existing runes. Did that mean the runes only needed a wall, or space, to be connected?

Kolfinna’s mana spilled from her fingers.Clause, she narrowed her eyes at the gray wall, imbuing her magic with every thought.Kolfinna can use her magic. Her mana splayed against the walls, but it got absorbed and disappeared. She paused, waiting for the words to shimmer and glow against the gray stones, but nothing happened.