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And had Orion fixed the issue with her collar while she slept?

Was it now properly suppressing any heart magic as well as her mind magic?

Briony’s body had been too weak to try earlier, but she reached for the pulsing vein in her chest, searching for heart magic.

Then the humming thread between her eyes, her mind magic. Nothing responded.

A horrible thought materialized: Was this collar permanent? Would she never be able to take it off?

“Briony.” Mallow’s crooning voice interrupted her thoughts. Mallow faced her and clasped her hands behind her back. “Where is your cousin, Finola?”

She blinked. She couldn’t hold back her surprise before Mallow saw it.

“What?”

Toven’s head snapped to her. “You will address her as Mistress,” he hissed, eyes burning into her.

Briony almost glared at him. He’d warned her to be obedient.

“Finola Rosewood,” Mallow continued, stepping forward. “Her safe houses. Her distant family on her mother’s side—the Nottingdales, if I’m not mistaken?”

As Mallow inched closer, the air thinned in Briony’s lungs. Her heart thrummed as she stared into the glinting eyes searching her.

Briony tried to remember the question as Mallow tilted her head like a tiger.

Finola. Finola was Phoebe’s older sister.

Finola was the person who’d taught Briony advanced mind magic after the war started—cloaking, blending, advanced subterfuge.

Anytime she was home from a mission, she focused all her attention on lessons for Briony.

She worked as a top adviser to the Eversun militia and had coordinated many of the strategic attacks on Bomard in the four years since Briony’s father’s death.

Finola was the first person who showed Briony that she didn’t have to just be a pretty face for a political marriage. She could be useful to the militia, to the king’s cabinet—even to a Bomardi cabinet had the war not broken out.

Briony’s throat felt stuck on Mallow’s questions, but something was becoming clear.

This was the reason why she hadn’t seen Finola in the Trow dungeon. She’d never been captured.

And for some reason, Mallow was threatened by that.

A fire burned in her gut, something that she thought had been extinguished the moment she felt Rory’s barrier fall.

“Finola was the Eversun army’s head strategist and lead instructor in cloaking,” she said. “Even if I had an idea of where she’d go, I’d be wrong.” A slow smile spread up her lips. “I’m quite pleased to inform you that if Finola is out there, you won’t find her until she wants you to.”

Mallow’s black eyes narrowed at her, and a moment too late, Briony remembered Mallow could take her tongue for that comment. Mallow’s fingers traced a gesture, and Briony braced herself for painful magic, a punishment—

Something slammed into her face, stinging her cheek and snapping her neck to the side. She stumbled, regaining balance and pressing her hand to her face. Her eyes rocked in their sockets.

She searched for the weapon, preparing for another strike. Her gaze refocused as Toven lowered his hand, a sharp stone ring on his middle finger glinting at her. Her lip was wet with blood.

He’d backhanded her. He’d hit her, and she was bleeding.

“Watch your mouth. You are addressing the Mistress of the Realm.”

She shivered at his voice and looked away from his icy eyes.

Though her head rang, it was the least of what could have been sent her way tonight.

Mallow seemed pleased with Toven’s response. “She still has quite a bit of fire left in her, Toven. I look forward to watching it doused.” She turned her gaze back on Briony and continued her questioning. “We know Finola Rosewood spent time on the outskirts of Kilwoven, on the coast. Where else?”

Briony stared at her, licking the blood off her lip. She had no idea what kind of answer would best protect Finola.

Mallow tilted her head. “I’ll just take a look for myself.”

She slithered forward as Briony realized what she meant to do.

Briony tried to step back, but her muscles were locked.

Her throat closed in terror as Mallow circled her, coming around to her front again and leaning in to her face.

Briony looked into the black tunnels of Mallow’s gaze, pulled to them inexorably.

And then there were daggers in her brain, sinking into her eyes and twisting deep. She couldn’t breathe as memories floated through her head, yanked forward and pushed back.

She saw Finola with a sharp stinging pain, a teenager with wide teeth and braided honey-blond hair. She sat in the grass with six-year-old Briony, blowing dandelion tufts out into the field behind Claremore Castle. Her cheeks puffed wide, and Briony giggled.

Briony’s mind was on fire as Mallow clawed through her thoughts, her memories—using magic only advanced mind magicians knew.

Briony had heard of Mallow’s power with mind reading—the benefit of the dragon bond—but this was so much like poorly done mind magic.

Briony supposed there was no reason for Mallow to refine the technique into something less obtrusive and painless, as mind magicians studied to do.

Mallow’s magic felt like claws ripping at her cranium, prying open the plates.

Like a rubber band snapping inside her, Finola was now a young woman, standing next to Phoebe at King Jacquel’s funeral.

Briony was a passenger in her own mind, aware of her own presence and Mallow’s presence in every moment.

A ricochet to Biltmore Palace, and Finola was teaching Rory how to call upon their father’s army—Rory’s army now—as Briony took notes.

“Vindecci developed this himself,” came Finola’s melodic voice. She unrolled a large map across the dining room table. “You simply hover your palm over the castle that you wish to call upon.”

She demonstrated by opening her hand over the picture labeled Biltmore . Twenty-one-year-old Briony gasped as the candles blazed hot, flames jumping to the ceiling, then dimmed as Finola took her hand away.

Finola turned to Rory. “The strategic advisers reside at Kilwoven.” She tapped the map. “I’ll take you there tomorrow—”

And like a whip cracking across her mind, she jerked to see Finola seated on Briony’s bed at Biltmore Palace, with her arm wrapped around eighteen-year-old Briony’s shoulders.

“No, it’s not mutual.” The younger Briony laughed through her tears. “I’m just an idiot.”

Briony felt her heart hammering in her chest even as the pain of Mallow’s mind cut through her thoughts, sizzling her nerve endings. Her pulse spiked, and her body tensed further.

No, no, no. Mallow couldn’t see this …

There was a moment of stillness as Mallow seemed to hover, clueing in on Briony’s reluctance to show this memory. Mallow’s consciousness slithered through the scene, twisting around the two women on the bed and examining them.

“You’re not an idiot,” Finola said, pushing hair over Briony’s ear. “I had a crush on a Bomardi boy when I was your age.”

Briony looked up at her with surprised eyes. “What happened?”

“He married the day after school ended, and I begged your father to use me in any way but for a political betrothal with Bomard. He let me join the strategists’ council instead.”

Briony snorted. “ My father? That would never be an option for me.”

“You’ll see. Come with me to Southern Camly this solstice. I have friends there who can teach … you … cloaking …”

Finola slowed, though she hadn’t seven years ago. Mallow was pulling them backward, replaying the scene.

“… Southern … Camly …”

Through the pain in her mind, Briony felt like screaming for other reasons. She’d just given Mallow a place to start looking for Finola. The country of Southern Camly, across the sea.

She waited for Mallow to release her mind, to be alone in her own head again and deal with the pain from there.

But Mallow was still staring at the two women on the bed with curiosity on her face. She pulled them backward again.

“I had a crush on a Bomardi boy when I was your age,” Finola repeated.

Briony felt her real body twitch with terror, hovering in the receiving room of Mallow’s castle. Her mind screamed at her to close off, like locking doors and shutting windows against a storm.

Suddenly, they were sliding through waves of memories and images. Briony’s mind was forced to slither backward. She tried to fight, to pull any other moment forward, but Mallow’s curiosity could not be quenched.

Briony was standing behind an oak tree, watching a boy with mismatched socks sit in her favorite spot under the willow on the lake.

Then she was in elixirs class, mixing together ingredients while the same boy read instructions to her.

“The dragonflies need to be more finely chopped—”

“Not for this one,” Briony said. “The more uneven, the better.”

“What are you talking about?” Toven said. He reached for her hand where it grasped the knife. “The bodies, yes, but not the wings.”

Briony’s gaze slid up to him as he showed her how he would cut the dragonfly wings. Her eyes ran over his jaw, his mouth, the way his cheekbones seemed to cut the air.

Briony watched her younger self stare at Toven, everything written on her face.

Mallow’s consciousness hovered next to hers. Briony could feel Mallow inside her head, looking not at the younger her but at the one viewing her own memories. Briony turned inside her mind and met Mallow’s shrewd, smirking face.

In the memory, Toven turned to look down at her, her body jerked away, and the knife fell to the floor.

Like a hook around her waist, Briony was tugged backward in time.

She was at the Bomardi Circus at seven years old, her first time in Bomard. She and Rory were in matching Eversun-green tunics. Her father was shaking hands with Orion, and Serena Hearst stood behind a cool-eyed seven-year-old with gray hair.

“They’ll enter school together, I believe,” her father said conversationally.

The gray-haired boy rolled his eyes.