“Worthless girl,” Kinok said to her. “Softened, rotted, worthless girl. I am going to cut your handmaiden’s heart out of her body, and you are going to watch.”

“No,” Crier said, the word wrenched out of her. She threw herself forward, her entire body weight, everything she had, straining against the chains. Kinok was raising the sword, preparing to cut. It would not happen. It could not happen; Crier would not allow it. Her mind gave way to a singular goal: pulling the chains from the stone wall. She strained against them. It felt like her arms were going to dislocate, rip clean out of the sockets. She pulled. He was smiling. He was about to cut out Ayla’s heart and he was smiling.

She heard the sound of cracking stone. Tiny eggshell fissures, growing—

Then, a thousand times louder, the piercing sound of a chime.

Crier and Kinok froze in unison. The chime was so loud Crier gasped, wishing she could cover her ears; it was reverberating in her skull. It was a high, nauseating noise, like fingernails on slate, so loud it seemed to shake the walls. Then—footsteps in the corridor outside the cell. How many—a dozen? Moving panic-fast.

The door to the cell swung open with a scrape of iron on stone. A Watcher stood in the doorway.

“What in all hells,” Kinok snarled. His expression was a rictus of cold, incredulous fury.

“There’s been a breach, Scyre,” said the Watcher, cowering in the face of Kinok’s rage. “The prisoners are escaping. The Heart has been compromised.”

17

“What?” Kinok snarled, and Ayla pressed her lips together so she wouldn’t make noise when his hand jerked and the tip of the sword skittered sideways across her collarbone. “What do you mean there’s been a breach?”

“In the western sector. The human prisoners were set free from the outside. And—provided with weapons.”

“By who?”

Had Dinara done something? Ayla had never seen Kinok like this. His composure had shattered; he was wild-eyed, mouth like a knife slash, voice harsh and furious. Gone was the cold, calculating scientist. In its place was what could only be described as a child throwing a fit.

“We are not certain, Scyre,” said the Watcher. “They overpowered the Watchers of the western sector and stole an Iron Compass. By the time we discovered what had happened, they had already made it to the labyrinth. We are attempting to track them—”

“Shut up,” Kinok snapped. He straightened, looking down at Ayla for a second. She could practically see him trying to decide whether he should just kill her now and get it over with or wait until later, when he could draw it out for ages like he’d wanted, when he could make Crier watch the whole thing, a sick dissection. Efficiency . . . or control?

She knew which he’d choose.

Sure enough, Kinok sheathed the sword. “Once again I’m forced to clean up your mess,” he said to the Watcher. “Overtaken by a dozen humans. You disgrace our Kind.” He swept from the room, Watcher at his heels, and the thick iron door shut behind them.