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“Sorry. Woman? Guard? Miss—ugh.” He winced. “I’ve just heard a lot about you. They say you’re a legacy guard. Killed two beasts with your bare hands.”

“Three,” she said without slowing. “Call me Lorna.”

We slipped into a narrow tunnel beneath the camp; the air was damp and still.

Every footstep echoed against stones and falling snow.

When we emerged, a clearing opened before us, lined with weather-beaten sheds and sagging rooftops.

At the center stood a glowing iron circle, its edges pulsing with faint heat.

Two armed guards flanked it, as still and silent as statues.

“Shit, I’ve never seen the Grand Portal,” Kian whispered. “There are six. One leads to the academy, the others to various edges of the Continent. Good for fast travel if the area’s unstable or can’t be portaled into.”

“Kian,” Lorna snapped. “Stop giving away secrets.”

He lifted his hands. “My bad. ”

She pointed to a shed at the far end of the clearing. “That one’s mine. Malachi and Severyn, stay there tonight. Kian, find a bunk elsewhere.”

“No. He stays,” I said quickly. “He’s my friend.”

“First-year guards swore an oath,” she said. “He broke it the moment he talked back to Callum. So did Ellison. Not my problem.”

“Then what is your responsibility?”

“Treason. Executions. Criminals,” she said flatly. “I’ve been off-Continent for the past three months.”

Malachi let out a faint scoff. “Executions? Are you going to kill me, after all that?”

Lorna’s snow quell shimmered faintly in the air. “Enough,” she said firmly. “Go to bed. Lock the door, and don’t open it for anyone. The shed is magically warded, no one can enter except me. There are a few spare cloaks and a uniform in the drawers. Make do.”

Inside, the air was thick with the scent of ink and something older. The space was cramped, the walls lined with narrow bunk beds. Books, broken quills, and warded maps lay scattered across the floor.

Malachi knelt beside me.

“Are you okay?” I asked softly. “This is… messed up.”

She shook her head, slow and hollow. “You shouldn’t have brought me back.”

“I didn’t have a choice. Callum forced me.”

“You don’t understand how bad this is, Severyn.”

“I think I do now,” I murmured. “I see why my quell is forbidden.”

“That’s not what I mean.” Her voice had gone distant, like it had to travel from somewhere far away. “The Seekers scribed a Herring’s blood to stain the ground. They didn’t follow that with, ‘and then she woke up weeks later.’ ”

“Klaus…” My voice cracked. “It had to be him.”

“Klaus drowned.”

“Then I die,” I said, the words empty in my throat. “Seems likely at this point.”

She trembled. “I didn’t want to come back. My skin feels wrong. My head is full. Like it’s been stuffed with someone else’s thoughts.”

I reached for her, but she flinched. “What happened during the final trial?”

“The wind’s too loud,” she whispered. “You’re too loud.”

“Tell me what you hear,” I asked.

“I hear screams circling in a vortex.”

I reached for her again, slower this time, and gently took her hand. “Give them to me,” I murmured. “Let me carry them for you.”

We had shared our quells before, but this was different. This was grief, pure and unrelenting, and it poured into me the moment our hands touched.

“I hear his voice every time I close my eyes,” she said, voice barely audible.

“Who?”

“Monty. We share a rider bond. It started as something useful… and then it became something more.”

“What are you saying?”

“That we’re living the same life, Sev. A man willing to kill to save the woman he loves. Damien took my life at the trial. And Monty… he tried to take yours before it ever came to that.”

I stared at her, breath thinning in my chest. “I almost married Damien.”

She didn’t flinch. “He’s evil, Sev.”

“I almost married him, but the wedding was null.” The words tasted bitter. I didn’t want to unload it all. Not onto her. Not now .

Malachi grimaced. “Thank the Gods I was dead for that. So I can be your bridesmaid when you marry someone you actually love .”

I huffed. “I never want to stand still long enough to be hemmed again.”

A smile tugged at her lips. “I missed you.”

“I missed you, too,” I said softly. “Even that day we didn’t sleep lying four breaths apart back in our dorm.”

Malachi wasn’t just my cousin. She was my friend. Maybe the first real friend I’d ever had.

We lay down, and the silence grew thicker than the dark. As I drifted toward sleep, my thoughts refused to quiet.

Had I really had two lives left to save when I flew to Demetria? Or had Damien never died at all? Maybe he’d twisted my mind to believe he did. Damien was Victor’s heir in every sense. He had tricked me before. But this—this betrayal was something else.

It was unforgivable.

Maybe the cruelest lie he ever told was the one I believed—that in another life, if I’d been born with ice in my veins, I might have grown to love him. He played his part well, pretending to be my friend, all while knowing I’d been promised to him.

But that girl—the one who might’ve chosen him, no longer existed.

Whoever I’d been before… she was long gone.