Varia turns, her face unreadable as she walks on the right side of the grating with sure steps, as if she’s been here a thousand times. Maybe she has—Vetris was where she grew up, after all. My legs move me after her, even as I crane my neck to look everywhere. Guards patrol inside the wall, too, marching up and down the grating, and among their armor I spot the odd brown robe of a wandering polymath. A wall this big requires maintaining, no doubt.

“Old Vetris was what the kingdom of Cavanos was called a thousand years ago,” the princess recites briskly. “It spanned the entire Mist Continent—from the Twisted Ocean to the Northern Strait, from the Feralstorm to the Avellish Sea. It was the largest kingdom in the world.”

“And they say witches aren’t nice to their Heartless,” I offer, my voice echoing off the high metal ceiling. “Yet here you are, giving me a free, boring history lesson.”

She ignores me completely. “But the Old Vetris we know—the one that built this city—was not comprised solely of humans. A wall this size, of this strength, is still impossible for us to build today. Do you know why that is?”

“Magic, right?” I blow an annoying strand of hair out of my face, my hands riveted at my sides. “The humans and the witches built Old Vetris and lived in harmony together.”

The princess shoots me a look over her shoulder. “So you’re smarter than a schoolchild after all.”

She stops abruptly in front of another brass door and opens it, revealing a spiral staircase descending into utter darkness. She steps onto it without an ounce of fear, and my body blindly follows her, strapped tight to the order. Despite the fact that it gets darker as we descend down the spiral stairs, Varia doesn’t proffer a light or seem to lose her footing in the slightest. And neither do I.

“Witches hate humans,” her voice rings out. “Humans hate witches. My father and the High Witches are mired in a hate far older than any of them could imagine.” She pauses, our footsteps echoing nakedly. “Father will go to war very soon. Whether you had taken my brother’s heart for the witches or not, he would’ve gone to war—of that much I’m sure. His father went to war before him, and his grandfather before him. Fighting witches gives Cavanosians purpose. It’s built all their traditions, their religions, their culture. Helkyris reveres knowledge. Avel reveres beauty. Cavanos reveres war. It has built itself a life out of killing.”