Amara heard, among the other calls, the trumpets of High Lord Riva’s Legion sounding the assembly, from deeper in the city. As Citizens in service to Riva, Bernard and Amara had been assigned to the support of the First Rivan Legion. Bernard glanced up. He’d heard the sound, too. “I’ll go,” he said. “See what you can find out.”

Amara bit her lip but nodded and turned back to Veradis. “Lady, can you fly?”

“Of course.”

Amara turned back to her husband, took his face in her hands, and kissed him. He returned it with brief, fierce intensity. When they broke off the kiss, he touched her cheek with the back of one hand, then turned and vanished into the crowds.

Amara nodded to Lady Veradis. “Show me,” she said.

The two of them lifted off into the night, two small shapes among many who were flitting through the skies over Riva, while the Legion horns continued to blare.

CHAPTER 12

CHAPTER 11

“You have no idea of the potential for destruction in the forces you are tampering with,” Alera said calmly. “None whatsoever.”

Tavi stood in his command tent, looking down at a large map of the Realm spread out across an entire tabletop, its corners weighted with small white stones. The air hummed with the tension of a windcrafting that would prevent their voices from carrying outside. His dress-uniform tunic was folded neatly on the cot in the corner, ready for his dinner with Kitai. “Then perhaps you should educate me,” he murmured.

Alera looked as she always did—serene, remote, lovely, garbed in grey, her eyes shimmering through one metallic or gemstone hue after the next. “It would be difficult to truly explain, even to you. Not in the time that remains.”

Tavi arched an eyebrow at that remark and studied Alera more closely. The human-appearing fury folded her hands before her, the posture of a proper Aleran matron. Had they been trembling? Did the nails look... uneven? Ragged, as if she’d been chewing upon them?

Something, Tavi decided, was definitely off about the fury tonight.

“If it isn’t too much trouble, perhaps you could explain what sorts of problems I might be letting myself in for if I go through with the plan.”

“I don’t see why,” Alera responded. “You’re going to do it in any case.”

“Perhaps.”

She shook her head. “What you are asking is going to set certain cycles into motion. The ultimate result of those cycles could be the slow freezing of the world. Glaciers that grow and grow each year, slowly devouring all the land before them.”

Tavi had just picked up a glass of watered wine and taken a drink. He half choked on it. “Bloody crows,” he croaked. “When?”