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At first, she’d been shocked by how little the guards here…

well, guarded. But after a week or so, it made sense.

For the few miles directly around the Isles, the sea was nigh unnavigable, the ash so thick in the air that you could barely see a yard in front of your face.

The only way the prison barges were able to make it was by following the steel lines in the water, anchored to the Auverrani shore and the island’s beach, laid by the first generation of prisoners.

Every once in a while an inmate would disappear, but it was chalked up to either suicide or murder.

If you were on the Second Isle, those were the only two ways to get off it.

Lore walked slowly across the beach, since there was no guard to prod her on. She wanted to spend as little time at the lighthouse as she could and already felt the first pangs of hunger. It’d be bad tonight. When you worked dock duty, Martin decided if you got your rations or not.

The Burnt Isles’ harbor hardly deserved the name.

Five sun-bleached docks jutting out into the surf and a barnacle-encrusted lighthouse a few yards out, barely visible before the curtains of fog and ash closed over it, both thickening over open water.

Depending on the tide, you had to either climb over sharp rocks to reach the lighthouse or wade through the ocean and hope you didn’t trip over them.

Today was a wading day. Lore hitched up the baggy trousers she’d been given upon her arrival—too long in the leg, too tight in the waist—and made her way to the lighthouse. The current pulled at her from the moment she stepped into the sea, forceful as hands on her ankles.

Martin was waiting. The lighthouse keeper lounged in the doorway and watched her approach, his tall, thin frame giving the impression of a spider lingering in a web.

A sly smile revealed blindingly white teeth in a sunburnt white face, his cut-short hair turned the same grayish not-color as the sky.

His neck was tanned, but his arms were nearly as pale as his teeth, as if he covered them up when he went outdoors. “If it isn’t the Queen.”

Lore stopped on the rock closest to the lighthouse, blessedly flat and mostly out of the water, locking her legs against the wind. “You called?”

He pushed off from the door, hands in his pockets, eyes flickering lazily up and down her form. She’d been wrong before. He wasn’t like a spider; he was like a snake, eyes slitted against the ashy light, body primed for striking.

“I have work for you.” Where most of the other guards on the Isles spoke roughly, Martin always had a superciliously polite air about him, carefully articulate. “Both inside and outside. Which will it be, Your Majesty?”

A seemingly benign question. But Lore had an advantage, the one kindness her fellow prisoners had shown her.

Space in the communal bunkhouse was reserved for prisoners who found at least five valuable pieces a day, and Lore never had.

Her first night, she found a shallow cave with a relatively soft sandy floor, one that already held a few others who’d had the same idea.

One of them was a girl who’d been on the Isles for weeks, and she gave them all a rundown of the guards.

“Gellert is an ass, but he’ll let you get an extra drink from the trough if you’re quick about it and no captains are watching.

Don’t try to go down a tier in the mine, or the seniors will jump you, and the guards won’t do shit about it.

And if Martin calls you to the lighthouse, never tell him you want inside work.

” She’d narrowed reddened eyes, pointed with a broken-nailed finger at no one in particular.

“Or do—I’m certainly not above sticky work for a favor—but be smart about it.

He’s the kind who doesn’t just want that. ”

The bruises on her cheekbone had told the rest of the story.

The girl had been gone in the next couple days. No one looked for her. Martin started calling up new girls for the lighthouse afterward.

And it hadn’t taken long for him to ask for Lore by name. This was the third time he’d called her here, given her the choice of inside or outside work. They both knew what he was really asking.

And they both knew a time was coming when she wouldn’t get the luxury of choice.

“Outside,” Lore answered, same as she always did.

The smile on his face turned sharp at the corners. Martin advanced a step, out onto the flat rock where Lore stood. She fought the urge to step back, knowing it’d just send her toppling into the water—onto the rocks. The tide was going out.

“You think you’re too good for me?” He still spoke with that polite tone, and it made gooseflesh ripple up Lore’s arms. She’d had similar things spat at her before when she rebuffed an advance in a tavern or alleyway, but none of those catcallers had been in a position of power over her.

“You think that because you were a Queen for two minutes, I can’t have you whenever I want?

I keep asking because I like them willing, but I’ll be having some of what the King was having, deathwitch. ”

Gods, she hated feeling afraid. She’d fielded many unpleasant emotions recently, but fear was always the worst, the most helpless. Lore’s fingers worked back and forth, metaphysically clawing at the rock below her, the dead driftwood on the beach, the stone of the lighthouse.

“Outside work,” Lore said again. Then, choking on it, “Please.”

Martin stood right in front of her, now. Still smiling, he shook his head. “No. I think you need some inside work today, Hemlock Queen.”

“What about a trade?” she said, quickly, the words racing her disgust so they couldn’t be overtaken. “I’ll do something for you if you do something for me.”

“ Something ,” Martin scoffed. “Say it. I want to hear it.”

The back of her throat tasted sour. “I’ll choose inside work if you get me a boat.”

Martin stared at her, near-colorless eyebrow raised to near-colorless hairline.

Then he brayed a laugh. “You think you’re in a position to bargain?

” His leathery hand closed around her wrist. Instinctually, Lore jerked backward, losing her balance—he used the moment to pull her to his chest, his breath in her face, hot and harsh and smelling like cheap alcohol.

“Even if I gave you a ship all to yourself, you wouldn’t be able to get off this island.

The prison galleys can barely navigate through the ash even with the steel guidelines. What makes you think you can?”

Nothing did, but she was desperate. Lore’s fingers worked and worked as she tried to pull away from Martin, weaving at magic that was no longer there.

She’d held all of it, every drop of Mortem left in the world. And now there was nothing.

It’d happened right as the barge approached the shoreline of the Second Isle, a deep ripping feeling, something vital as an organ torn out. Lore had gasped, pressing a hand against her middle. Nyxara?

Something happened , the goddess had murmured, a thrum of anxiety in the back of Lore’s mind.

She knew even before she reached for magic that it was gone, her grasping hands gripping nothing. No darkness, no death, just the stale, smoggy air of the Isles.

What do I do? Panic made her heart race and her breath come heavy.

I don’t know , the goddess said, sounding as helpless as Lore felt. I don’t know.

The next morning, the gray stars on Lore’s palms had faded. She could feel Mortem, but she still couldn’t wield it. And though that was something she’d always wanted, now it felt like a punishment. One she couldn’t figure out what she’d done to deserve.

Especially since the damn Buried Goddess was still in her head.

Not now, though, as the sun burned high behind the ash, this awful man trying to haul her toward the door and not caring about anything but showing his own power.

Now Nyxara was silent. Cowed once again by a man who looked at a woman and saw nothing but a vessel for his violence, a tool for his use.

Lore’s feet fought for purchase on the rock, her hands pressing fruitlessly at Martin’s chest, trying to keep him away.

“Stop fighting,” Martin said, slapping the side of her face, the barely healed lines of her new scar. “I own you, Lore Arceneaux.”

And something about that—how it reminded her of Apollius, reminded her of how she was married to Bastian when Bastian had been locked inside his own mind—made Lore’s fear alchemize into rage.

She tore away from Martin, letting the momentum force her off the rock and into the churn of the sea. The currents pulled at her ankles, but she didn’t topple. “Don’t touch me.”

“Have you forgotten where you are?” He crowded her again, his face mere inches from her own, gaining extra height from his position on the rock.

“I can do whatever I like, and then I can throw you in the sea, and no one will care. No one will come looking for you.” He smiled again, sour wine fuming into her face.

“I’ll make you call me Your Majesty while you’re choking on—”

Maybe it was the reminders of Bastian. Maybe it was something that had been brewing ever since she set foot on the Isles, so near to the Golden Mount and the Fount the gods had broken.

Or maybe it was just plain desperation making her try something she wasn’t sure would work.

Part of her didn’t expect that she could use Spiritum anymore.

Mortem had been pulled from her grasp when she arrived here; she assumed the same thing had happened to the power of life, especially now that she was separated from Bastian, their Law of Opposites sundered.

Using magic didn’t really fit into her tentative plan to become an irrelevant face in the crowd, unmarked enough to someday, somehow slip away.

But when she reached for the threads of Spiritum lurking in Martin’s skin and bone and blood, they jumped to her like they’d been waiting.

Lore channeled it through her, second nature. She tugged on a strand, and Martin’s heart sped, galloping behind his ribs. He dropped back, hands pressed to his chest, his face turning red and his veins swelling like leeches.

Martin stumbled on the rock, gasping, crawling toward the lighthouse door. When he reached it, he pulled himself up, his face an alarming shade of purple.

She let the thread go, slowly. Let it wind its way out of her, let his heart regain its rhythm, his veins return to their usual dimensions.

“Be careful, Martin,” Lore said quietly. “Seems like your heart isn’t doing so well. You probably don’t want to get too excited for the next few days.”

Martin said nothing, still gasping, the doorframe the only thing keeping him upright. Watching her like she was the spider now, and he the fly.

Stupid of her to try bargaining with him. But her chances of success were already thin and getting thinner.

Martin closed the door, apparently content to leave her be for now.

That was all well and good, but she still needed a mop.

Sighing, Lore picked her way around the lighthouse, headed for the back entrance. The incoming tide swept over her boots and soaked the too-long hem of her trousers.

Mops and buckets for swabbing the prison ships were right inside the back door. Lore stepped into the lighthouse and grabbed one, enjoying the momentary coolness and a break for her eyes from the constant itch and glare.

Something moved in the shadows. One of the other prisoners, probably; one who’d taken the risks of Martin’s attentions along with the easier labor. Lore opened her eyes, sure she’d be shooed out.

A familiar face stared at her from the spiral stairs that led farther up into the lighthouse. Blond hair. Blue eyes. Beautiful.

For a minute, Lore thought it was Amelia, come back to haunt her.

No, not Amelia. Her sister.

“Dani?” Lore breathed, but the other woman was already gone.