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Yennes pulled her knees in tighter, until she resembled an infant. She let the Queen’s words circle inside her mind, caught in an endless loop. They became louder and louder, until she had to squeeze her eyes shut again.

“I’ll return this evening,” Alvira told her. “Once you’ve had time to think it over.”

“No!” Yennes called, her voice choked and cracked. She could not remember when she had last had anything to drink. “No. I… I need to get out…”

“Yes, it is rather a despairing place,” Alvira agreed, looking about the keep as though they were discussing the décor. “Smells terrible.”

“Let me out,” Yennes begged, voice rising. “Please.”

“And the Queen Consort?” Alvira asked, her hands suddenly gripping the rungs, knuckles white. “Let me be blunt, witch. If she dies,youdie. Do we understand each other?”

Cressida was asleep when Yennes entered the bed chamber on shaking legs.

Grey-skinned and cheeks sunken, she seemed not long for this world. Her short, shallow breaths rattled on inhale, as though it could not quite reach her lungs. It was a sound Yennes was acquainted with. The sound of drowning. On the Ledge, most died young, but if the cold could not pry one from this realm quickly, then it would settle for stealth. Lung sickness took those who survived every other test of the Ledge, and the rattle of their last breaths always sounded the same.

Servants hovered around the Queen Consort’s bed, useless in their frivolous ministrations. No amount of cold compress or treacle could cure what had already set it. Alvira knew it. She looked upon her wife with glazed eyes, the lines around her mouth deepening with the effort it took to conceal emotion – but the anguish was clear. It was emanating from her in waves. “Get out,” she ordered the lady’s maids and they hastened to scramble away.

Yennes waited for the doors to close before speaking and as soon as the room was empty of any other, she took a trembling breath. “Do I have your word that I will be released, should I save her?”

Alvira answered hastily, impatiently, as though Yennes’ life was of little consequence. “You have it,” she said. “Hurry. Please.”

Cressida coughed and her body jolted with the force of it. Dark specks dotted her lips and chin and Yennes quailed. The Terrsaw Queen was right to worry.

Doubt quickly interceded as Yennes lowered the bed covers from Cressida’s chest. What if she was unable to do what had already been promised? Did she have strength enough to heal a person so close to death?

She pressed her unsteady hands to the woman’s chest, feeling the rapid movements as her body fought its last. Yennes closed her eyes and, in silent prayer, beckoned to the iskra.

Mercifully, it unravelled within her.

“Ishveet.”

She had practiced this spell with Baltisse, with her own cuts and abrasions, with the mending of tools and fabric. It was not difficult for the magic to find what was damaged. The iskra flowed through her palms easily. It seeped into the Queen Consort and entangled with her blood.

When Yennes opened her eyes, Cressida’s cheeks were less hollow, her eyelids less veined. Her cracked lips became fuller, pinker, and her breaths eased into a steady rhythm.

The Queen’s wife awakened, healed.

Yennes was pushed to the side as Alvira rushed forward, kneeling beside the bed and grasping Cressida’s hand in her own. “My darling,” she whispered, bringing the hand to her lips. “Mother, bless us.”

Cressida’s eyes roam the room, pausing on Yennes first, and then finding her wife. “Alvira,” she said. “What did you do?”

But Alvira stood and pressed her mouth to Cressida’s, thwarting the woman’s confusion.

Yennes smiled. Not at the Queens. Not them. But at her hands.

Cressida blushed slightly at the open display before company, then looked to the company in question. “Am I to assume you managed to smoke out that mage you threatened me with?” she asks wryly.

“Something of the sort,” Alvira answered. “Do you feel any pain?”

“None.”

Indeed, the more the seconds passed, the more colour returned to her complexion. She sat upright, groaning as she cricked her neck. “Saints, that feels divine.”

“I’m glad for your improvement, ma’am.”

“Your Majesty,” Cressida corrected.

“Your Majesty. Lung sickness took my mother up on the Ledge. It is a cruel way to die.”