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At the last one, my eyes shot to the old scar. It was larger now—a jagged cross of lines where before it had been one clean swipe. But the black veins stretching out from it were entirely gone. Only healing pink skin remained.

“We got it all out,” Tolek assured me, watching with worried eyes as I processed. “Everyone is safe.”

It was gone. And all of my friends survived the attack.

The queen’s power no longer tainted my blood. As if to test it, I called on my Angelblood—the power that had warred with the queen’s within me—and prodded the wound internally.

It was silent in response. No hint of Kakias or her claim on me existed in my blood any longer.

I am free of the queen.

A sigh slipped from my lips, so heavy I thought it would crack my chest wide open. And for the first time, I let the tears fall.

I’d been so scared and powerless against the queen at the trench, I wasn’t sure I’d ever be free again. I thought the only future was to succumb. To give myself over in order to build a safer world for those relying on me.

But Tolek saved me.

As I cried, I curled into him, letting his arm band around my shoulders and his soothing assurances steady me.

I didn’t know how long I sat there with these two men I loved so fiercely watching me break beneath fears and relief, but eventually I righted myself. Taking in big gulps of air, I calmed my breathing, wiped my cheeks, and tugged the fur tighter around me.

“She was there,” I stated.

“She was,” Tolek confirmed. His fingers drifted over my shoulder, as if he was unable to calm the nerves rioting through him. “Hope was not on our side for a moment there. But something happened when I—” He flinched. “When we got the poison out of you, Kakias collapsed.”

The scream that had wrenched the air, so pained it could crumble realms—it had been her.

“It seems whatever she was doing to you was taking a toll on her own power so when she no longer had you to siphon from, she fell,” Malakai added.

“Or whatever the power was rebounded,” Tolek suggested and Malakai nodded. “We can’t be sure, but we didn’t stay to find out.”

“What happened to it?” I asked nervously. “The power.” It had been a sharp, physical presence in my arm. The ghost of it lingered.

“When it came free, it was a mirror of those tendrils Kakias wielded, inching across the ground. Santorina took it.” My eyes widened, but Tolek continued, “She has it contained with some of her other supplies and has been studying it. It seems to be losing its solid form and now exists as a syrupy substance.”

“It’s unlike anything we’ve seen,” Malakai warned. “It almost seems…aware.”

I mulled over those details, creeping coils of Kakias’s power curling around the edges of my memory. Blood and searing pain and the grass gripped in my palms as I writhed against it. A physical source of power melting and gaining sentience.

“It doesn’t make sense that not having me would weaken Kakias,” I mused, watching the fire, not really addressing either of them. “She needs me dead to fulfill her immortality ritual. You’d think a disconnect would make her stronger.”

“I have a feeling none of this is what we assume,” Malakai said. Tolek and I both nodded in agreement. Every day we were walking uncharted paths, trying to make sense of routes that crossed and dipped and peaked without warning.

The mystlight fire crackled, pulling my attention back into the room. Sighing, I asked, “Where are we now?”

Malakai looked at Tolek. A swallow worked the latter’s throat, but he answered without breaking my stare. “We’re in an underground system of tunnels in Mindshaper Territory.”

Panic seized my chest. “We can’t be here.” My head pounded as I shot to my feet and stumbled. Enemy territory. And they’d said I’d been unconscious for a day already. Where were my weapons?

But Tolek’s arm wrapped around my waist, tugging me back to the cot beside him and securing the blanket I’d shucked. Mindshaper Territory explained the chill in the air.

“We can be here,” he said.

“No, we can’t.” I looked between him and Malakai who nodded, standing against the wall with his arms crossed.

“Relax, Alabath.” Tolek rubbed a hand down my arm. “We’re safe.”

“Safe?”