As carefully as though she were unwrapping a precious oil painting, Claire pulled the rags away from the bundle she held. Gasps filled the pine-scented space as the Spinners’ Love Knot, Tillers’ Oak Leaf, and Gemmers’ Stone tines glittered in the chandelier’s tea lights.

Bolt seemed at a loss for words, his mustache framing a round O of surprise. Reaching behind his breastplate, he pulled out the fourth and final tine: the Hammer. But he did not put it with the others. He gripped it in his vice-like fist.

“All right,” the Spinner director said, tilting his head at Claire. His splendid white velvet doublet and matching cape had somehow managed to survive the queen’s attack unscathed, but his white-blonde hair still looked a bit like an exploded firework. “You have our attention. I would like to hear what this girl has to say because, if I’m not so mistaken, she and I have met before, yes?” He raised an eyebrow at her. “In the Historium?”

“Er, yes,” Claire said with a blush. “That’s right.”

“Then tell, why do we need to crown Nadia?”

Nerves swept through her again, but Sophie placed a hand on her shoulder, and it felt for a moment like Sophie had adjusted her sails, keeping Claire upright. They were so close to completing the Crown of Arden! Just one more explanation, and Nadia could become queen.

The pressure pushed on Claire’s stomach, but the fire crackled as though it were cheering her on. Claire took a deep breath and began. “I had never seen a ladder in a fireplace …”

Slowly, she told them everything, the truth behind Queen Estelle and her brother, Prince Martin, and who she, Sophie, and Nadia were to him. She told her story, all of it, letting the secrets unspool from her. With each one she cast off, she felt lighter. She only held one thing back: that Sophie was a unicorn.

Finally, she told them about her arrival in Needle Pointe and how the Spyden had told her that the only way to stop Estelle was with another queen, and what Estelle wanted: to make her wraith army able to withstand the sun.

Horrified gasps erupted around the table.

“If we are going to stop Estelle and the wraiths from taking over,” Claire said, raising her voice and keeping her eyes on the tines, which in the candlelight seemed more like broken off bits of darkest seawater than points on a crown, “Nadia must be made queen.”

Silence filled the Seed Cellar, and Claire wondered if she had done enough.

“One thing I don’t understand, though,” a Tiller grandmaster said slowly. “Is why it must be Nadia who is crowned. Why can’t it be, for instance, me? Or General Scorcha or Grandmaster Bobbin?”