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F ilak didn’t hesitate, or question Daisy’s request. Instead he only nodded beneath his cloak, and then clasped her hand, and guided her back into the mountain.

As if… as if he still wasn’t even angry with her. Not over Lew , or her fear, or the way she’d responded to the news of their son. The way she’d left.

But he didn’t say anything else, and maybe Daisy couldn’t either, not with everything else still shouting behind her eyes. All the things she hadn’t seen, all the knowledge she’d ignored. All the truth she needed to finally learn.

They found Jule in a meeting-room high in the mountain, together with her mate Grimarr and a half-dozen familiar-looking others, including Joarr , and John - Ka , and Rosa . And upon catching sight of Daisy at the door, Rosa’s expression went from surprised, to relieved, to… triumphant?

“I told you she would come!” she said to Jule , her voice loud and decisive. “ I told you she had nothing to do with it!”

Jule betrayed an obvious wince, while Daisy blinked at her, and back at Rosa . Rosa had thought Daisy had had nothing to do with it? With what? With … Sybil ?

“I… presume you all know, then?” Daisy asked them, her voice tentative beneath all the watching eyes. “ That Kalfr’s new mate ‘ Margaret ’ isn’t who she claims to be?”

Jule winced again, and cleared her throat. “ Yes , we’re aware,” she replied. “ Lew Wallace’s attack against us includes multiple women like her. The women’s goals are to ally themselves with orcs, and build close relationships with them, in order to gain access to our mountain. And then…”

Her voice faded, but Daisy’s eyes briefly closed, as the answer rose thick and bitter in her throat. “ And then, the women will launch the attack,” she whispered. “ The women will spread those poisons, and try to kill us all.”

There was an instant’s silence, but no one argued it — and when Daisy met Jule’s eyes again, the confirmation was there, stark and clear. Of course that was the plan. Of course that had been the plan, this entire damned time.

Sybil was part of Lew’s attack. She was here to trick the orcs, and gain their trust, and murder them.

Daisy had to haul in a deep breath, force her whirling brain to pull it all together, alongside everything else she’d learned out in the garden. Sybil’s involvement in Lew’s awful project had never made sense, on its face. She hadn’t been a botanist, or a scientist. She certainly hadn’t seemed like part of the military. And what, exactly, had she actually been doing, there in Lew’s apartment that day? Enthusiastically fucking a man, proving what she could do.

And gods, Daisy should have seen it. If not back then, at least at some point during her weeks here, once she’d finally noticed that there seemed to be no drills, no military efforts, no obvious attempts at evacuations or fortifications. And she especially should have seen it once Lew had hired that off-duty regiment to follow her, and thereby forcibly reminded her that he didn’t actually have any soldiers or spies or infiltrators waiting at his command. Lew wasn’t a soldier, or a captain. He was a scientist.

So the plan had been… something else. And now, that plan was finally clear, here in front of Daisy’s face.

The plan had always been to use women. Spies . Infiltrators .

And that had been the beginning of the attack. That had been the two weeks Jule had given her. And gods, had Daisy even counted it properly, because Sybil’s arrival had probably been right on schedule.

“How many women is Lew working with?” Daisy’s hollow voice asked. “ As part of the attack?”

Jule sighed again, but she only looked resigned, now. “ About a dozen,” she replied. “ All of them instructed to seek out lone orcs, in isolated locations away from the mountain. Thereby seeking to reduce any suspicion from our side, while ensuring that mate-bonds between the women and their targets could be formed at length, without interference.”

Daisy’s head had begun distantly pounding, and her whirling thoughts flashed back to Kalfr in the garden. To that look in his eyes. That … longing. A mate-bond .

“And do the orcs — know?” Daisy demanded. “ Does Kalfr know his lovely new mate is being paid to try to murder him?”

There was an instant’s awful silence, filled only by that rising thunder in Daisy’s ears — but then Jule sighed again, and nodded. “ Yes , they all know,” she said. “ We’ve been sending orcs out to meet the women, with a goal of continuing the charade until we can stop the attack. We didn’t like sending Kalfr , but” — she exchanged a glance with another bulky orc down the table — “since he already has two strong mate-bonds, with both an orc and a woman, he’s much less likely to become permanently bonded to someone new.”

Wait. Daisy blinked at Jule , the relief tangling up with confusion, with even more scraping unease. Kalfr already had two mate-bonds? With a woman and an orc? Who ? And was that why he’d looked like that, with such longing in his eyes…

“And how long is Kalfr supposed to keep up this farce?” Daisy’s sharp voice asked. “ When is the actual attacking and poisoning supposed to start?”

“Not for another few weeks,” Jule replied, with another sigh. “ Their plan is to first put all the women in place, and then to have them send back detailed interior plans of the mountain, and as much information as they could find about exits and vents. Then , once that was assessed, the women would be given the poisons, along with detailed instructions on how and when to activate them, and escape.”

Daisy fought down a sudden bizarre urge to laugh, because it was all so absurd, and so fucking stupid . As if all those women would ever escape something like that. And the bastards in charge — Lew and Lord Nash and gods knew who else — would sit back and watch, and wait for those poor women to do all their dirty work for them. Not even sending a single damned soldier.

“I hope they paid the women in advance, at least?” Daisy asked, clipped. “ And warned them that they might never come home again?”

Her spinning thoughts snapped back to Filak’s sálugjald , to the way his people had also paid their women to move underground, without any promise of coming home. But now, in comparison to this, it almost seemed like a fair bargain. An honest agreement on all sides.

“Of course they didn’t warn the women,” Jule replied, with a hard little laugh. “ And they only offered them a quarter of the payment up front. A nice little ploy to keep costs down, likely with the full expectation that most of the women would conveniently poison themselves in the process.”

Gods, it was so vile, so unbelievably horrifying, and Daisy had to choke down the bile rising in her throat. “ So what the hell are you actually doing, then?” she demanded, before she could catch it. “ You’ve known about this plan for weeks, you said you were dealing with it! Why haven’t you put a stop to it yet? Why are you making poor Kalfr walk around pretending as though he’s found a new mate? Isn’t he trying to reconcile with — with one of the first ones? What if they find out about it?!”

Beside Jule , Grimarr had betrayed a low, menacing growl, perhaps in response to Daisy’s tone — but Jule put her hand to his arm, and held Daisy’s eyes. “ I assure you, we’ve been trying,” she said, and suddenly she just looked exhausted, and frustrated, and sad. “ But you must see the other side of it, can’t you? What will happen next if we try to retaliate? If we try to stop these women, question them, lock them into dungeons?”

She shot Daisy a bitter little smile, and Daisy stared back at her, fought to shove aside that familiar stab of fear in her chest. No , no, the orcs couldn’t lock the women in dungeons. Because unlike when she’d first come here, these women would all have people monitoring them. Waiting for them. Expecting reports and information. And if the women suddenly disappeared, what would Lew and Lord Nash do next? Attack ? Launch another full-on war?

“Can’t you just — refuse the women entry, and tell them you know everything?” Daisy asked, her voice plaintive. “ Or — or bribe them, somehow? Make them an offer?”

She was thinking of the sálugjald again, but Jule again shook her head, looking even wearier than before. “ And then what?” she asked. “ The women stay here, so Lord Nash can still claim we’ve unjustly kidnapped them? Or we let them run back to our enemies, looking for the payment they’ve been promised? You can’t think these men haven’t considered those outcomes? That they don’t have a convenient alternative ready and waiting?”

Daisy’s heartbeat was thundering through her skull now, drumming with fear and dread, and Jule gave her another wan, empty smile. “ According to our intelligence, they’ll still offer to pay the women if they’re sent back empty-handed,” she continued flatly. “ But only on one condition. If the women will loudly and publicly proclaim their vile mistreatment at Orc Mountain , in clear violation of our peace-treaty. An excellent way to rile up the masses, and gain an easy justification for another war.”

What? Surely a dozen women wouldn’t help do such a horrible thing… or would they? Gods , they’d already agreed to come here and poison innocent people, right? And it would only take some of them, or even a few, or maybe… maybe even one good instigator. Someone beautiful and articulate, perhaps, and…

“And that so-called Margaret , out there with Kalfr right now?” Jule went on. “ She’s not just any woman off the street. She’s Lord Nash’s favourite long-term mistress . Sent all the way here to help Lew Wallace implement this project, and lead the charge against us.”

No. No , Sybil couldn’t be, or could she — because damn it, damn it, of course it made sense. Of course that was the rest of it, curse Lew and his greed and his stupidity. And there had to still be a way through this, there had to be…

But it was all tangling together now, dark and cloudy and confounding, too thick and dense in Daisy’s scrambled thoughts. Lew , Sybil , women, war, attacks, sons. All the things she’d avoided for so long, all of them still here, even stronger than before. And one more unanswered question, still maybe strongest of all…

“Why did you hide all this from me?” Daisy asked Jule , her voice strained and empty. “ Why didn’t you tell me, all this time?”

But even before Jule answered, Daisy knew. She knew from the look in Jule’s eyes, from the betraying wince from Rosa down the table. And most of all, from the telltale twitch from Filak’s body behind her, a silent shrieking reminder of the chain, the dungeon, the darkness…

“You still thought… I was one of those women,” Daisy whispered. “ You still thought I’d come to kill you all.”