“Ly…” He tried to gather his breath. “Hurry. We…we need you. Hilda, Nightlark, you too.”

“What happened?” Something had gone horribly wrong.

Kael raked dirty fingers through his hair. “Skul Drek.”

Dammit. A vow, a threat, a promise to attack had felt half like a dream. It was a nightmare. The phantom of the mirror land also lived in reality—not a myth, but a true killer.

A killer who knew exactly who I was.

Out in the corridor, Kael tried to keep a cool demeanor as we hurried down the staircase, hallway, then another winding set of stairs, leading toward the Stav Guard wings.

Kael paused outside a door. Behind it, muffled voices gave up at least two other people in the room. “You must keep quiet. We don’t want a panic. He was…he wasn’t supposed to be there.”

I spared a glance at Hilda and Emi, but nodded and followed Kael into the room.

My pulse froze.

Blood-soaked linens covered a bed. Edvin moved about gathering supplies, cursing and pleading to the gods all in the same breath. Roark was hunched over the man on the bed, holding wounds closed with his bare hands. Sprawled on his back, tunic shredded over his bloodied chest, Prince Thane was unmoving, too still, too pale.

“Thane.” Emi rushed to the bedside of the prince.

Her cry drew Roark’s attention. In his eyes was a look of pure fear. In three steps the Sentry was in front of me, bloody fingers waving in a panicked plea I couldn’t follow.

I clasped Roark’s fingers; blood—the prince’s—was slick on my palms.

“Roark,” I whispered gently. “Slow down. What do you need me to do?”

He blinked through his haze, swallowing with effort, then lifted a trembling hand. Soul bone.

It was then I took note of a basket—taken from the king’s stores, no doubt, and filled to the brim with pale bones.

“For Prince Thane?” To heal him, the way it had healed Kael.

Roark’s mouth tightened. He gave me a stiff nod.

“Yes,” I said, squeezing his hand still locked in mine. “Of course.”

The Sentry did not approve of soul bones—to ask it meant he truly believed the prince would not survive without one.

“Edvin.” I knelt beside the prince’s bed, taking up a shard. “Will you mark it?”

He didn’t hesitate. His ability to bend and manipulate bone grooved new rune etchings into the flat piece of bone, symbols to summon the essence of the soul who’d left their bones behind. When the edges burned in the familiar gold, I pressed the bone into one of the many wounds over Thane’s chest.