When the Revinir had inspected everyone, she stood back and towered over them, looking highly dissatisfied. Smoke floated up from her enlarged nostrils, and her suspicious gaze kept tracking to Thisbe and Dev. Thisbe tried hard to ignore her and held her blank stare.

“Thisbe and Dev, where did you get the broth that you gave to the soldiers?” asked the Revinir.

Dev remained silent—he hadn’t done it.

Thisbe said evenly, “From the throne room table.”

“Did you choose vials from the right or the left side of the table as you were facing it?”

Thisbe’s heart skipped a beat. Why was the Revinir asking this? In the back of Thisbe’s mind, she could sense what she should answer. “Left,” Thisbe blurted out. It was a lie, and she wasn’t sure she knew why she had said it.

The Revinir seemed satisfied with the answer. “The oldest bottles?”

Again Thisbe got a strange premonition of what to say, though she had no idea if they were still the oldest after so much time away from the catacombs. “Yes, Revinir.” Those bottles on the left might have been the first that Thisbe had placed, back when she was making broth before her and Rohan’s escape.

Then, inexplicably, Thisbe thought, We should throw them out.

“Perhaps there’s a limited shelf life,” the Revinir mused. “The old ones have gone bad. That would explain it. Thisbe, did you do anything to that broth before you gave it to the soldiers?”

“No, Revinir.”

“Dev, did you?”

“No, Revinir.”

“Hmm.” Everyone remained silent as the Revinir seemed to come to a satisfactory conclusion as to why most of the slaves didn’t have visibly more scales than before.

The phrase popped back into Thisbe’s head. We should throw them out.

“Everyone, go back inside,” the Revinir said. “Kitchen staff, pour out all the old vials of broth and start fresh. When your first batch is done today, bottle it up and deliver it to the soldiers for dispersal.”

Thisbe’s heart pounded. It was obviously a coincidence that the Revinir had said what Thisbe was thinking. But this new development of dispersing the broth later today could actually help things along a great deal.

“Yes, Revinir,” said Dev.

“Yes, Revinir,” echoed Thisbe.

“All right. Back to work.”

The slaves filed back into the elevator. As Thisbe waited for her turn to enter, she caught sight of Drock at the far end of the square with a few other dragons, including Arabis and Hux. All three stood perfectly still, even Drock, staring blankly at the Revinir as if waiting for her to tell them what to do next. Thisbe’s heart sank, but she kept moving. Drock was either a surprisingly good actor, or he had somehow succumbed to the Revinir’s recent call. All Thisbe knew was that Drock never stood perfectly still. So this was a bad sign.