“As am I,” said Dinara. “I’ll go just for the look on the Scyre’s face.”

“I . . . ,” Crier said weakly. “I can’t ask you all to . . .”

“My lady,” said Faye. “Don’t you know? You’re not the only one who wants to end this. Before the death toll grows.”

The heart that did not belong to Crier throbbed inside her chest. Part of her wanted to cry. Part of her wanted to keep arguing with them. Part of her wanted to say thank you, thank you, I didn’t want to be alone for this, I have never wanted to be alone. But she’d already dawdled long enough. The yellow flicker of Kinok’s army was drawing ever closer, so close now she could see the details of the family crests on the war flags. An owl, a serpent, a sword and shield, a red crystal shaped like a teardrop. She knew them all.

She closed her eyes for a moment.

In the palace, in the music room, there was something worth dying for. Worth living for.

Crier opened her eyes.

“Stay close,” she said, looking at all five of them in turn. “Kinok wants me alive. But only me.”

“Don’t worry,” said Hook, giving her a tiny smile. Crier remembered: golden hills, Lake Thea swallowing the horizon, yellow grass rippling in the wind. Are you my friend? she’d wondered then. Perhaps this was the answer. “We’ll stay right by your side.”

There was a story Crier had read and reread about a thousand times. She had memorized every word of it, could picture each illuminated page, could flip through them in her mind.

As she walked to meet Kinok’s army head-on, Crier told herself the story of Hana and Winter. She let the story unspool inside her. She thought of Hana and Winter and old bones, ice fields, starlit hearts. And the heart that did not belong to her continued to beat steadily, and the symbols on her skin held their strange silver-white glow.

They walked, and around them the gloaming fell into place. That was all right. Crier could see in the dark. She could see Kinok’s army, maybe two hundred strong—so much smaller than she’d expected. She could see the war flags and the torches and lanterns and illuminated faces. She could see thirteen members of the Red Council right up front, and behind them a sea of familiar faces: nobles and landowners and other elites, Automae she had seen at balls and weddings and political gatherings, Automae who had visited the palace each year as a gesture of good faith to the sovereign. The sovereign. Truth be told, Crier couldn’t blame them for defecting, for rebelling against him. She’d done the same thing.

But she could blame them for the black flags.

For the man they’d chosen as their new king.

And there he was.

Kinok, the war hero, the Watcher of the Heart, the Scyre, the hunter, the scientist, the angry boy playing at war. There he was, emerging from the front lines, his customary black robes switched for red. His army was a silent mass behind him. They had stopped marching. The space between Kinok and Crier had shrunk to the length of a courtyard. Here they were, at the place where the sovereign’s fields met the low, grassy hills. Crier drew a map inside her head: half a mile north, the road that led to Yanna. The River Daedus. She and Kinok were facing each other across an expanse of grass that looked black in the gathering darkness. Everywhere, there were patches of tiny white flowers. Stardrops.