She couldn’t say what it was that pulled her up mid-stride, but some primal instinct made her look again, more carefully. Her eyes scanned the looming walls and skybridges more urgently until she saw it: the fire in the braziers was green. Like goblin fire.

Twelve had only half worked out what that meant when something hit her hard on the back of the head and everything went dark.

Chapter

Thirty-Six

She was being dragged by the ankles, her head rasping painfully across uneven ground. Senseless images flared blindingly, then faded to darkness.

A great gate swung open silently.

Walls hemmed in the darkening sky.

Down. Each step cracked painfully on the back of her skull.

Stillness.

Cold.

Silence.

When Twelve next woke up, she had no idea where she was or how long she’d been there. Arcs of pain shot through her, radiating from her head along every nerve in her body. Her shoulder still throbbed where Dog had bitten her, and her mouth tasted of old blood. With a groan, she curled into a tighter ball.

What had happened?

She was lying on scratchy straw at the back of a cell. A single candle burned low between the bars of the door. She was unmistakably in the Hunting Lodge’s dungeons. For a confusing instant, she wondered if everything had been a dream until her head gave a particularly powerful throb and her fingers found a wet, sticky warmth there.

She pushed herself up, ignoring the pain screaming through her, and squinted around.

“Widge?” she called, her voice barely a croak. “Widge, are you here?”

She strained her ears for any sound from him, but everything was ominously silent. Twelve’s heart twisted agonizingly when she realized her squirrel really wasn’t there. Looking around her prison, she saw it wasn’t only Widge that was missing—her bag, axes, and the moonstone were also gone.

Slowly, quelling her rising panic, Twelve tried to remember what had happened.

Foxpaw. Oakhammer. The terrible fight.

Where was Widge? Where were the others? Were they looking for her? Did she even care? Shame gnawed at her over the things she’d said. She had an irrational urge to apologize to Six, which she pushed away. She hoped he and Five would forgive one another and in the next instant she hoped they wouldn’t. Confused emotions raged back and forth inside her until she wanted nothing more than to escape from her own head.

If only she hadn’t found out that Six and Seven were cave clan. The thought was almost a longing. She’d been starting to think of Six as a friend. And Seven was so like Poppy. Saving her would never have brought back her little sister, but it would have been something. Something good. Now everything was ruined—Six was a liar and Seven . . . Seven was gone.