“I prefer the old Bryony.”

“When I was grumpy and mean to you?”

“Aye, she’s my favorite.”

“Figures coming from the man who’s made getting in drunken tavern fights a sport.”

“I try to stick to doing what I’m good at.”

“Fair enough. Then perhaps I should go back to being grumpy and mean to you.”

“Would you? Oh thank you. That’s a relief.”

She snorted but said nothing more until they reached an iron gate, the chordlings shifting to either side to make a path for them. “Thank you,” Bryony said as she stood before the man who’d removed his blindfold earlier.

I have a final message from the Daughters, he said. Your auguries are a pair of twisting shadows. Alone, they will be burned off by the fire, but entwined, they are unbreakable. Do not forget this.

Words of such a vague nature would normally make Bryony laugh and roll her eyes, but the man said it with such conviction that she only had one response to offer. “We won’t.”

Without anyone having touched it, the gate opened outward, and, side by side, they stepped through it.

Returning outside, Bryony felt like one of the blinded servants of the Daughters of Ereniel, the light so bright she couldn’t see her own fingers in front of her face.

She jammed her eyes shut. “Are you as blind as I am?” she asked.

“Only half as blind,” Ludo said.

She cracked her eyes open slightly, letting a small amount of the piercing light inside the veil of her eyelashes. “I set myself up for that one, didn’t I?”

“Pretty much. Bryony, look, there’s something I need to—”

“Don’t,” she said.

“Don’t?”

“Whatever it is you were going to say, just don’t. I don’t want to talk about what happened in there. About our auguries. Not now. Maybe not ever.”

“Was it that bad?”

“Worse. Yours?”

“Horrifying. Nightmarish. The kind of stuff I wouldn’t wish upon my enemies.”

“Nice. We can thank the Daughters of Ereniel for that.”

“They should really change their name. The Demons of Ereniel?”

“The Sadistic Mad Old Women of Ereniel?”

“Has a nice ring to it. Kind of long though.”

“The Sad Mad Ladies of Ereniel.”

“I like how you subtly changed ‘old women’ to just ‘ladies’.”

“I thought it was a nice touch. Anyway, I think our auguries are meant to be held close.”

“What about the thing he said about ours being entwined?”

“Those are just words.”

“You really believe that?”

“Yes, I do. We met by happenstance, we’ve chosen to travel together for convenience as our missions are the same, but either one of us could walk away from the other right now and it wouldn’t change anything.”

“Sounds like you’ve got it all figured out.”

“That’s because I do.”

“Good.”

“Yes, good. Now can we get moving?”

“After you.”