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M ALLOW DIDN ’ T COME AT NIGHTFALL .

Briony stood at the window that faced the front gates, watching the horizon for the sizzle of a portal, but it never came.

The Hearsts didn’t come up to check on her, either.

Briony focused her energy on her mind barriers, pulling together everything she needed to hide from Mallow and finding a place for it all on her mental shelves.

She went over everything with a needle and thread, just as Serena had done inside the female nurse’s mind, until Briony wasn’t even sure if Cohle hadn’t tried to take her that morning.

She wrote over her own memories of her fist squeezing, threading over them with the image of a paler, more delicate wrist until it was Serena whose hand had contracted in Heartstop.

If she concentrated, she could find the truth in her mind, but it was also easy to think of that morning and have the fabricated scenario pull forward.

At four in the morning, there was a thunder of wings in the sky.

Briony looked up just in time to see the belly of the last dragon in the world skating over Hearst Hall, wings long and spindly.

Briony narrowed her eyes at the beast. So the dragon was not dead.

no dragon, don’t Worry

She puzzled over the words again as the dragon fluttered—almost elegantly—over the forest where Vesper lived, settling gently in the field next to it. In the beginnings of the dawn sun, Briony could just make out a rider sliding off its wing, her long black hair shimmering down her back.

Deep inside Briony’s mind, beneath the shields and behind the bookshelves, she wondered at the necessity of bringing the dragon, much less riding it. Surely a portal was quicker.

The figure glided through the gates and down the lane. Once Mallow disappeared inside the front door, Briony returned to her chair to wait. Either the plan had worked, or it hadn’t.

Twenty minutes later, her door opened and Toven stepped inside.

“Mistress Mallow wishes to see you.”

His face betrayed nothing. She could be walking into anything.

Briony followed him down the stairs and into the drawing room. Her memories shivered on the bookshelves in her mind, but she was pleased to note they were the fabricated ones.

Mallow stood near the fireplace, the glow illuminating her silhouette, with Orion and Serena at her side.

Though Briony had only seen her two nights ago at Biltmore Palace, it felt like it had been months.

When she turned, Briony noted that her eyes were exhausted.

Again, she wondered what Mallow’s true age was.

Cohle’s body lay in between the couches, like a coffee table.

“Briony,” Mallow hummed with a soft smile. “I hear you had a little procedure yesterday morning.”

Briony said nothing. Toven stood just off to her left.

Mallow slid forward, her long dress moving around her like oil.

“Did you know all along that you could still have children?” Mallow asked.

Briony hadn’t prepared her memories of the nurses who severed her first fallopian tube, so there was no reason to lie.

“I suspected it.”

“You will address her as Mistress,” Orion said firmly.

Her eyes flicked to him. Briony added, “Mistress.”

Mallow’s lips curled. “What else are you hiding, Briony?”

Her heart skipped, but her mind remained focused.

“What do you mean, Mistress?”

Mallow stood in front of her, her gaze black and her mind brushing up against Briony’s.

“Your country is Nevermore,” Mallow said. “Your people have lost, but still you find ways to rebel against my authority, don’t you?”

Briony’s mind shook, every volume she’d tucked away threatened to fall to her feet. Collars and notes and grapes. She focused on Mallow’s gaze.

“You must tell me what you know, Briony,” Mallow said.

And then the knives were in her mind.

Briony gasped as her memories were flayed. Mallow’s technique was blunt. Where Serena endeavored to get in and out without notice, Mallow wanted to be felt for days later.

She prepared herself to fight the knives, but Mallow swirled around a familiar scene.

General Meers was standing in her father’s study. “I really must object to so many ears in a confidential meeting—”

“You’re a fool if you think Briony’s ears to be the least useful of the five of us here,” Rory said.

Briony waited as Mallow slithered through the scene like a serrated blade, leaving her mark everywhere.

There was little she could do to hide anything. She had no idea what to hide.

Mallow flew through her mind, circling memories of Rory like a serpent.

She spent ages in family gatherings from fifteen years ago with aunts and uncles who had been dead for years.

She slithered through any memories Briony had of her father, winding around the difficult lessons he would dole out and the requests he made that Briony be less of who she was so Rory could be more.

Her body shook, knees weak. Mallow held her upright in the center of the room. Her mind could just barely recognize the scene—the shape of Mallow in front of her with wild black eyes, and the pale gray of Orion out of focus, twenty feet back.

She had no idea what Mallow was after. Briony kept from hyperventilating even through the pain, knowing that she needed the secrets she had to remain secret.

At odd moments, she felt another presence in her own memories.

Where Mallow was cutting and opening with wrenching slices, there was also a smooth glide, like that of a pen. Careful to remain hidden.

After what felt like hours, Briony simply followed Mallow through her own mind like a guest.

Mallow was determined and laser-focused in her quest, leaving Briony suspicious of what exactly Mallow was looking for. The pain exhausted her, making Briony reckless. An idea slithered into her head while Mallow was elsewhere. If Briony could only know precisely what Mallow wanted …

The knives in her mind were attached to Mallow’s thread of mind magic.

And just as she had slid down the thread into Toven’s mind weeks ago …

Just as she had joined Serena on a single thread that morning into the nurse’s mind …

Briony waited until Mallow was focused on a memory with Rory and Sammy Meers, and then she walked that thread like a spider, sliding down, down, down, and into Veronika Mallow’s mind.

She balanced on a needle, like Serena had taught her, careful not to disturb anything.

But she needn’t look long. There was a question tattooed on the back of Mallow’s eyelids, living at the front of her mind without any barriers to fight it.

Where is he?

Briony felt her consciousness floating. Her heart hung suspended. And before she could fully process what she’d found, she climbed up the thread, surfacing out of Mallow’s mind.

A mind that Mallow didn’t bother to barricade. Arrogance? Or stupidity?

As Briony latched back onto the path Mallow was taking through her memories, she focused on maintaining her heartbeat, unwilling to feel anything other than confusion and pain.

Because there was one he Mallow was examining in her mind.

Something’s not right with her.

The male nurse said Briony would be killed if she could conceive.

And the only thing Briony could focus on while her mind was flayed was the dragon outside the gates. The unnecessary shows of power. The exhaustion in Mallow’s face.

no dragon, don’t Worry

The dragon that had refused to bond to any magician for six hundred years until Mallow.

A magician with a dragon familiar wouldn’t bother with any mortal problems. They would be all-powerful.

Unless the dragon wasn’t her familiar.

no dragon

Briony felt herself outside her body. She could see the scene in the drawing room.

Orion and Serena at the fireplace, having prepared to be interrogated over Cohle’s body.

Toven standing to her left, waiting for his heartspring to be returned to him.

And Mallow—not caring at all about the dynamics of the Ten or the death of her second in command. Mallow not concerned with the way things happened yesterday, only caring to search Briony’s mind for something she was missing— again .

Perhaps the nurse was close to the truth, but not quite.

Mallow was concerned about an heir to the Rosewood line who would stand to defeat her—the Heir Twice Over.

Only it was the same one she’d been battling with for four years, since their father’s death.

don’t Worry

Briony thought it was strange that she didn’t feel it when her brother died.

And maybe that was because he hadn’t.

The collar didn’t work on Briony because she had given her heart magic away to her brother. What if she still was giving it?

Magic freely given couldn’t be taken.

The room was silent except for her gasps of pain, but she was separate from herself now, in a world where Rory might still live.

Her mind was elsewhere as Mallow flew through her memories.

The sun was up.

And Briony had work to do.

She reached inside herself, finding a moment, fabricating it quickly. Sewing over it the way Serena would, then inking it clean like Orion.

She and Rory sitting on the cliffside at Biltmore. Briony asked him what he would do if he wasn’t their father’s heir.

I don’t know , Rory said. Maybe I’d be a sailor. I’ve always loved the harbors at Daward.

Briony took the moment—the fabrication—and slipped it inside a box in her mind.

When Mallow was ready to move on from a solstice gathering from years ago, Briony dropped it in her path, like a stolen bracelet, fallen out of her dress.

Mallow was quick to grab it up. The box opened for her.

And sooner than Briony expected, she was alone in her mind, and her body was dropped on the floor of the Hearst drawing room.

She was barely conscious as Mallow turned and moved to the window overlooking the grounds. The window that faced the dragon in the field.

Briony fought to hold on to the present, panting on the floor.

Orion stepped forward. His movements smooth … like a well-inked pen.

“Mistress, how can I be of service?”