But she always just missed the unicorn, catching only a glimpse of white as he rounded another corner. Her breath came loud and fast, and her first steps echoed heavily. She reached the next corner, then stopped. Two corridors branched in front of her, one left and one right … but neither held the glow of the unicorn. Holding her breath, she tried to make out the delicate clip of hooves on stone, but all she heard was a slight rustle to her right, behind a closed wooden door. She pushed it open.

“Claire?”

“Sophie!” Claire stepped inside. It was a small room for the Citadel, and aside from two sapphire Gemglows in one corner and a looming statue of someone Claire thought might be King Anders, there was just Sophie here. No unicorn—well, not a four-legged one.

Sophie gasped as she saw what was in Claire’s hand. “The Crown of Arden! It’s been remade!”

“Yes,” Claire said. “I need to give it to Nadia but I’m looking for the unicorn first. What are you doing here?”

Sophie made a face. “Nadia didn’t tell anyone about my, um, condition, but she did tell them that Queen Estelle would be targeting me, as the oldest Martinson girl. So everyone’s roots and spectacles and whatnot have all been on me. Hovering—and you know how I hate hovering!”

Claire did.

Sophie shook her head. “I needed to go someplace where I could just be …” she trailed off and finished with “be.” She waved her arm around them. “So here I am.”

“Which is where?” Claire asked, pulling out her pink marble to take a better look. Its rosy light mixed with the sapphires’ blue, washing everything in lavender. The room was octagonal in shape, and the ceiling arched into a dome above them. Claire realized they had to be in one of the many squat little towers that ran the edge of the precipice, one of the towers long ago abandoned by the Gemmers as superfluous and left to collapse. No wonder there had been so many Forbidden signs.

“I’ve never been here before,” she said, and her eyes fell to the floor. Among the marble flagstones sparkled a mosaic of a unicorn. Its hooves were lifted proudly, and its spiraling horn glittered in the light. It seemed to have been set with bits of opal shards and diamond dust.