He turned away, continuing to stir. “The bones are there,” he said, and pointed out the obvious pile of dragon bones behind him.

“Dev, please look at me,” Thisbe whispered. She glanced over her shoulder anxiously, then reached out to him. “It’s me. Thisbe. I’m your friend.”

Dev was quiet, making Thisbe wonder if she was actually getting through to him or if the spell he was under was making him not know how to have a conversation. She feared the latter.

“The bones,” said Dev again, though his voice faltered. He pointed a second time.

A couple of the Revinir’s original soldiers came into the room. “Ha-ha! I heard she was back,” one said with a sharp edge to his voice. He poked the other guy.

The other one was unimpressed—she’d gotten past him in her escape with Rohan, which had made him look bad. He sneered at Thisbe. “Don’t try anything stupid.”

Thisbe really wanted to practice her boom spell on him. But that would blow her cover and keep her from freeing Rohan and the others. She wasn’t ready to make any hasty moves. She needed to learn a lot more about how things worked before going into attack mode, and figure out some way to get at least a couple of the other slaves to help her free the rest of them. In the meantime she needed to raise zero doubts in anybody’s mind about her being under the Revinir’s mind control. This wasn’t going to be easy when she was regularly interrupted by people she couldn’t stand.

Dev wasn’t one of those people, though. How she wished she could talk to him! To get him to snap out of it! She wanted to know everything about what the Revinir had accomplished in the months since her escape. And what she was trying to do next. And at the back of her mind was the worry about Fifer. How far would the dragon-woman go to track her down? Would she go all the way back to Artimé if Fifer didn’t appear locally like Thisbe had said she would?

As Thisbe began constructing a dragon-bone broth on her fire, she sent out silent wishes to the universe: Please let Aaron and Florence and the others figure out some new spells to take down the Revinir. Please let them be safe. Please make the Revinir forget about Fifer. Please.

The soldiers moved on to continue their rounds, leaving Dev and Thisbe alone together like old times. But now it was awful. Thisbe tried talking to him again, but he just kept his back turned to her and ignored her. Soon Thisbe gave up, too worried about him reporting her.