Then she’d realized what was missing.

On the first night—after they’d reconvened with Queen Junn’s guard at the seastone, which turned out to be a large greenish rock; after they’d been given their own sturdy mountain ponies; after the queen’s soldiers had returned with Dinara and the rest of the human rebels, who’d been locked away in one of the many chambers of the Heart, and the prisoners from the blood room; after they’d completed the long, arduous trek down the mountainside, which took the rest of the night and most of the morning; after they’d met the rest of the queen’s party at the base of the mountain, switched their horses for fresh ones, and kept going, riding to a campsite a few leagues away, reaching it just as darkness fell—after all that, on the first night, Crier hadn’t been able to hold it in any longer. Knowing full well she was being reckless, not finding the energy to care, she marched right up to Queen Junn’s heavily guarded tent and said, loud enough that there was no way the queen wouldn’t hear, “Your highness. I wish to speak with you.”

She’d been expecting a dismissal. But a moment later the tent flap lifted and Junn slipped out into the night air, a small figure dressed in deep blue, blending in with the dark. Her hair was loose around her shoulders. She was careful to fasten the tent flap shut behind her, careful not to let Crier see more than a sliver of what was inside. Crier thought back to that night Junn had spent in the sovereign’s palace, the night Crier had wandered the halls and heard soft, lilting noises coming from Junn’s room, two voices ringing out. The queen and her adviser. Scandalous to take a human lover, Crier had thought. Now she knew that lover was Ayla’s long-lost twin brother. Was that what the queen was hiding in her tent?

“Come, Crier,” said Junn, motioning at the guards to stay put. “If you wish to speak, we’ll speak.”

They found an outcropping of rock at the edge of the camp, secluded enough that even Automa ears wouldn’t be able to listen in. Junn clambered up onto the biggest rock, a moonlit boulder shaped like a tortoise shell, and beckoned. Crier, somewhat at a loss, climbed up to sit beside her. Together they looked out over the dark hills. High above, the moon was a waning crescent, a white-toothed grin.

“Speak,” said Junn.

Crier’s bravado faltered. She was angry. For Reyka, she was angry. She wanted to confront Junn, to demand answers. She’d spent weeks preparing for this moment, drafting furious speeches inside her head, thinking wildly of justice and remorse and Junn begging for forgiveness, but now the moment had come, and they were face-to-face, and all the words left Crier at once.

“I want answers,” she said. “You said we were allies. You asked for my help, you said we should work together, I—I gave you names, Laone and Shasta and Foer, and you killed them, fine, I should have expected that, they were too close to Kinok, but—of all the names—I never gave you hers.”