Pallas’s offer hung in Ephyra’s mind like a specter, haunting each moment of her confinement. For six days, she’d had nothing else to do except stare at the walls and ponder how to get a message to Beru. Servants brought her meals twice a day, and every night a Witness knocked at the door and asked Ephyra the same question.

Would she become the Hierophant’s executioner?

Every night, Ephyra gave them her answer.

Tonight’s messenger was a woman, barely older than Ephyra herself, with a sharp face and an intense gaze.

“I want to see Beru,” Ephyra told her.

“Very well,” the Witness replied. “You only need to say the word, and I’ll take you to her myself.”

“Take me to her now, and I’ll think about it,” Ephyra countered.

The Witness smiled thinly. “We’ll try again tomorrow.”

She turned back toward the hall.

“Wait,” Ephyra said, the command escaping before she’d thought it through.

The Witness paused, expectant.

Ephyra swallowed. She missed Beru like a limb. And she hated being alone, she always had. After six days of it, she felt like tearing through the walls.

Pallas’s offer taunted her. The thought of using her Grace to kill at his command made her skin crawl. But what difference did refusing really make? Whomever Pallas planned to execute would be killed anyway, whether it was by Ephyra’s hand or someone else’s. And her hands were already stained. What did a few more deaths matter?

She met the Witness’s gaze. “Can I get some more firewood? This place is freezing.”

The Witness’s eyes narrowed in irritation before she turned and swept through the door without another word.

“I’ll take that as a no!” Ephyra called after her. The door clicked shut, locking Ephyra inside.

She slumped back against the edge of the bed with a shiver. She hadn’t been joking about the cold. Summer had turned over rapidly into autumn, and what were once balmy nights had slipped into the kind of chill Ephyra could feel in her bones.

Heaving a sigh, she crossed the room to the hearth, brushing away the ash of last night’s fire. Something lay crumpled in the cinders, and it took Ephyra a moment to realize it wasn’t just detritus from the fire. It was a long, thin strip of paper.

Ephyra froze, her heart in her throat. A message from Beru—it had to be.

She reached for the paper with shaking hands. But when she unraveled it, she knew immediately that someone else had left this for her. Because this message was coded, the exact same way the location of Eleazar’s Chalice had been coded. And the only other person here who knew that cypher was Illya.