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“Do you think it will be enough to force her hand into joining the efforts?” Mila asked.

Esmond contemplated, balancing the odds of various possible outcomes and the forces on each side. The number of warriors his clan may be able to offer while keeping infirmaries staffed.

“It might be. She’ll need to be sent every detail we’re aware of to be persuaded.”

“Mila, will you help him write the report?” Lyria asked.

“Of course.” Immediately, she and Esmond pulled out chairs at the small kitchen table, discussing in low voices. The Bodymelder scrawled a quick note—probably notifying his chancellor of what was to come—and the two set to work on the larger correspondence.

“How far have they gotten?” Cyren asked from the background.

“They’d barely passed the Pthole city limits.” Lyria pointed to the metal ax in Bodymelder territory marking the Engrossian troops. “That’s the last we heard, but they’re likely further north now.”

I thought of Darrell and his family who had hosted us on the journey here, and a lump formed in my throat. Their serene, hard-working way of life didn’t deserve to be upheaved by any kind of raid of their village. Most of the towns we’d stopped at weren’t fit to defend against an Engrossian host. They were spread too thin between the fields and infirmaries.

“How many were there?” I asked.

“A host of two dozen.” As Lyria said it, Rebel trotted over. Where he’d come from, I didn’t know, but he carried a scrap of parchment in his mouth. Lyria took it from him, seeming unsurprised.

When she read it, her face paled. “Kakias travels with them,” she muttered.

Tension congealed in the air.

“My mother is in Mindshaper Territory,” Barrett said, but disbelief lifted the edges of his words. “Your spy said so.”

“Apparently the information was bad.” Lyria tore from the table, crumpling the note and tossing it in the fire. When she spun back toward us, she was trying to cover her delicately frenzied state. Hands on her hips, eyes scanning the board. “It was wrong or planted, but Kakias is definitely in Bodymelder Territory.”

Cyren immediately left to conduct a session in the town’s temple. A growl rumbled through my chest as I watched them go, scars from the last Starsearcher who had offered to help us threatening to open.

That had only been Vale and Titus, I reminded myself. Some agreement between the two of them which Ophelia seemed much more eager to untangle than I was. When I saw the numbers on Lyria’s statistics sheet, it was hard to come up with an excuse as to why we shouldn’t accept the troops. Overall, and when it came to this war against the queen, we could trust the Starsearchers. Titus’s army was our army.

“But Kakias isn’t making a claim for land,” Dax considered. “Her strategy has never been about conquering territories. Not even in the last war.” His voice was firm, much different than the Engrossian I’d traveled with for weeks. When it was only Barrett and us, he was affable. Now, though, surrounded by people who once thought him an enemy, he proved himself a strong ally, wrought of experience and insight.

“But this path would make sense to move into Mystique territory,” Quilian added. “She’d either have to cut through Bodymelder or Seawatcher land. Which is more direct and less of a threat?”

It clicked into place with the reminder, and dread rattled my chest.

“That’s not what she’s after, though.” My eyes flicked over the map again, tracing the red lines marking Kakias’s path. “We know she isn’t after land or power—not solely. She’s after Ophelia.”

And then, it was like those routes jumped off the page, each one tugging against the lifeless tattoo on my chest.

No.

Those arrows pointed to one clear destination, and Lyria saw it, too.

“She’s after Ophelia,” she muttered, eyes wide. “That scar—the one from Kakias’s knife…” Her head snapped up, looking between me and Barrett.

“It’s been bothering her since the summer,” Barrett gasped, racing to the table where Mila and Esmond had fallen silent.

“I don’t follow,” Amara said.

In as little detail as possible, I explained the confrontation between Ophelia and Kakias at the Battle of Damenal. How the queen had left our Revered with a poisoned wound, and she nearly didn’t survive—how it had plagued Ophelia ever since. Left out the bit about Kakias’s immortality ritual—they didn’t need to know that.

“So you all think the power left behind in this wound is somehow…summoning the queen to Ophelia?” Quilian asked, uncertain. “I’ve never heard of magic of that kind. Not even in Artale’s legends.”

“Ophelia and the others left Damenal and headed straight east to Brontain precisely when Lyria said her spies caught the first party heading north.” I drew it for them. “And now they’re heading toward Firebird’s Field and Kakias cut back south.

“Barrett!” I shouted, whirling to find him already bent over a piece of parchment.