When I grow tired of sitting, I prowl the narrow space between walls. My wrist shackles attach to a chain in the floor, which doesn’t allow me to move more than a few paces in any direction. I tug irritably at them. Despite Prince Meilek’s reassurances, these chains are proof he’s equally wary of me.

I’m not even sure he has any intention of taking my case to the queen or if I’m to be left here until the fight has been bled from me through hard labor and starvation. I grit my teeth. I won’t allow that. I’ll escape well before that can happen.

If I focus, I still sense Saengo’s presence nearby, a candle in the dark. It’s unsettling, but given the circumstances, also reassuring. She’s my only anchor in all this.

The irony is that I loathed her at first. We met in our first year at the Prince’s Company, when we were eleven. She’d kept to herself and hardly spoke to anyone. I assumed she thought herself better than the rest of us. One day, after I’d bested Jonyah at swords, he cornered me in the armory. He would have broken my arm if Saengo hadn’t intervened. Jonyah was a bully, but Saengo was the heir to his House, and he knew his place.

After that, Saengo always chose me for her sparring partner. I was suspicious at first, but she never seemed to resent losing. Instead, she liked that I fought her as an equal, and I liked that she treated me like one. In the years to come, I would learn that the only thing she truly resented was that she, too, knew her place. And she wanted nothing to do with it.

The longer I languish in this cell, the more certain I am that my window to sneak back into Vos Talwyn has closed. Queen Meilyr will be securing every entrance into the city, making it impossible to penetrate. I can’t rely on Kendara to speak for me, assuming she even would.

Besides that, now that I’ve had time to consider the situation more fully, I realize I hadn’t thought about the ramifications of the attack for Evewyn as a whole. The queen’s treatment of the shamanborn might have sparked current tensions between the races, but the hostility goes back for centuries. Given this blatant attack by Nuvali shamans on Evewynian land, unless the Spider King can maintain the tenuous peace, this could very well mean war.

My muscles tense with dread. Evewyn’s armies have always been a formidable force, even during times of peace. But would my fellow wyverns, who graduate within the month, truly be prepared? I’d wager the most violence they’ll expect to meet as soldiers is from local criminals, maybe a pirate or a sellsword. War is a wholly different beast.