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“Well, for one thing, the hapless idiots have flown to the valley, and it’s a battlefield that works in our favour. They won’t fare so well in the heat. For another, the human woman was hard to ignore. Very convincing, she was. Had a whole speech prepared.” Brennick affects a high-pitched voice. “‘If Adrik is to be stopped, the time is nye.’” He chuckles. “She’ll have us believe some of the Terrsaw guards will be waiting to side with us too.”

“Human woman?” Dawsyn cuts in. She steps forward. “What human woman?”

Brennick reads the tension that suddenly becomes Ryon, as well as the vicious curl of Dawsyn’s tongue as she says the name. His eyes dart between them. “Some sort of magic woman,” he says. “She appeared out of nowhere right in the middle of the village. Yennes, she called herself.”

Ryon’s belly rolls. He pictures once more the way Yennes had averted her eyes as she’d left them in the middle of the Chasm, answering the beckons of Alvira. His hand flexes. He resists the urge to reach for a sword.

Dawsyn, however, does not bother flirting with resistance. Her ax is already in her hand – a hand coated in frost.

“Where is she?” Ryon asks evenly, though he cannot supress the edge of malice that escapes.

Brennick frowns at him. “Do you know her?” he asks, all traces of eagerness quickly dissipating. “Who is she?”

“A traitor,” Ryon says, eyes already scouring the lane ahead. “One that is likely leading you all into a trap.”

Brennick runs agitated hands through his hair. “Fuck,”he spits.

“Get everyone on the ground,” Ryon tells him, marching past him down the lane. “No one leaves Glacia, Bren, do you hear me?”

“I hear you,” he says, following hurriedly, stride for stride. “What about this Yennes?There were a few who seemed to know her. Trust her.”

Ryon barely hears him. “Where is she?” he repeats.

“Headed toward the palace. Said she needed time to recover some. She was dead on her feet when she turned up.”

“She folded a long way,” Dawsyn murmurs. She walks swiftly on Ryon’s other side, her sights set on the spires ahead. “She will be weak.”

“We’ll find her. Get everyone out of the skies,” Ryon tells Brennick again. “Tell them to wait.”

“What are you going to do?”

Ryon feels his blood cool in his veins. He feels the violence come over him. “I’m going to pry the truth from her.”

It takes them little time to reach the castle and they do not bother to hesitate at its gates. They enter the tunnels, Dawsyn unlocking the portcullises they meet.

“Keep up,” Ryon calls over his shoulder to the others. They do not have time for Esra and Salem to gawk at their surroundings.

The palace feels colder than usual when they finally set foot within its walls. It is eerily quiet despite the unending stone that quickly reverberates each tiny movement. They move swiftly along its corridors and Ryon cannot shake this feeling of unease, of apprehension.

How he detests these walls. These ceilings. He longs to see it burn.

“What is she doing here?” Dawsyn asks aloud. It is the question on every mind.

Ryon’s jaw is set hard. “The better question is, what has Alvira sent her here to do?”

“It doesn’t make sense,” Dawsyn continues. “What ploy would include luring the mixed to the valley if they resist Adrik? Surely if he wants them dead, he would use them for the pool?”

Ryon cannot think on her words around his own rage. Had he not had his reservations towards Yennes on first sight? He should have listened to his instincts. There was always something about her that was shrouded, difficult to discern.

They hear nothing as they walk the vast hallways, coming closer and closer to the throne room. He cannot imagine finding her anywhere else. Where else would an iskra witch be but beside the pool that made her?

And there she is.

Yennes is draped in layers of shawl and delicate fabrics designed to keep her hidden. It is in keeping with his experience of her. She only ever showed glimpses of herself: in the nervousness of her hands, the twitch of her lips, the shirking glances that bolted if ever one tried to hold her gaze.

The woman stands before the pool, her back turned to them. She does not come close to its edge, but still, she seems taken by it. It illuminates her, already absorbing whatever vibrancy she is made of, turning her to shadow.

She turns slowly at their approach, for they have not come quietly. They come with revenge in mind, her betrayal still fresh, and she seems to know it, to expect it. She holds her hands at her sides rather than clasped together, clumsily folding and unfolding. She stands tall and ready. Unflinching.