“If this is the best that Rishiya has to offer,” she said, “then I don’t know why I was so worried.”

“Get back!” Nolan said.

He kept the backpack clutched to him and reached inside to pull something out. Tavia’s hand lingered by Wesley’s gun, just in case, only when Nolan pulled the first piece of magic he seemed to find, it was a far greater weapon than the one she had.

The purple liquid swam inside the vial, lighting the ground and banishing the moon’s glow from that patch of the forest.

The Loj elixir.

“Where did you get that?” Tavia asked.

“Get back,” Nolan said again, still flat on the ground. “I’ll use it, I swear. It’ll knock you into a haze!”

“It would do more than that,” she said.

Tavia stepped toward him and drew Wesley’s gun.

“Drop it,” she told him.

And, as if there was something in her eyes he had never expected to see—something she had never expected to feel—Nolan did as he was told.

The Loj elixir was outside of Creije, in the very city Tavia and her friends had hidden themselves. She didn’t know how it had gotten here, but if it wasn’t contained anymore, then that meant that it could be anywhere.

It meant that they had been wrong, thinking Dante Ashwood wanted Creije first.

He wasn’t taking on Uskhanya a city at a time, starting with their home before making his way across the realm.

He was doing it all, everywhere, right now.

LESS THAN ten minutes later, Tavia pushed Nolan onto the ground.

Around her, the two dozen buskers she had woken from their night’s sleep for backup smiled in that same slow and deadly way that Wesley had taught them.

The way only a Creijen could.

She didn’t wake Saxony or Karam. She didn’t want them to be here to see the side of her that she needed to show.

“Shall we kill him?” one busker asked.

“Nah,” said another. “Let’s just cut out his tongue so he can’t talk.”

Nolan tried to sit up a little more, but it looked like the dizziness from all the alcohol was getting to him. So instead he slumped back onto his elbows and glared like he didn’t fear death half as much as he feared losing.

“You,” he said to Tavia, still a little drunk. “This is your holier-than-thou alternative to the Kingpin?” He spat on the ground by her feet. “You dirty traitor.”

Tavia picked the dirt from her nails with her knife, unfazed. “This is a trial by your peers,” she said. “You might want to stop being so volatile. I could lose my temper.”

Nolan’s laugh was like a gunshot. “Like you scare me.”