Where else? The unpopulated jungles of Tarreen? Somewhere far across the ocean?

No. Kinok’s next move was to find Ayla. If Crier left, there would be nothing and no one to stop him. Wherever Ayla was, Kinok would find her.

Crier couldn’t let that happen.

She’d had this fight with herself a hundred times over the past two weeks, and she always came to the same conclusion: She would marry Kinok. She would remain at his side. It was the only way to stop him. To protect Ayla. Part of Crier knew it was pathetic, humiliating, to care so much about Ayla’s safety after what Ayla had tried to do. The darkness, the knife. Certainly Crier’s father would lose all remaining respect for her if he found out how she felt. But it was how she felt. She couldn’t change it, and if it came down to her dignity or Ayla’s life, well. That wasn’t even a choice.

“Malwin,” Crier said, “I need a favor from you.”

“Anything, my lady.”

“Find the scullery maid called Faye,” said Crier. “She’s usually stationed in the laundry rooms. Bring her to me. If she resists, tell her—tell her it’s about sun apples.”

Malwin hesitated. “My lady, there’s only a few minutes before you’re meant to be in the grand ballroom. . . .”

“So I will appreciate your haste,” Crier said.

Once alone, Crier sank onto her bed. Faye. All summer, Kinok had forced the scullery maid to work for him in secret. She’d been overseeing shipments of what she thought were the sovereign’s prized sun apples but was actually a dangerous substance called Nightshade. After she’d learned the truth, she tried to back out. To punish her, Kinok had killed her sister. Luna.

Faye had never been the same. Carved into a new person by grief, she seemed to occupy this world only half the time. The other half, she was lost in her own mind, somewhere far away, unreachable.

Crier almost put her head in her hands—such a human gesture—but then remembered her makeup. Instead she sat there, back straight, and stared across the room at her tapestry of Kiera, the first Automa. The first of their Kind, created by the greatest of the human alchemists, Maker Thomas Wren. But that wasn’t true, was it? Crier knew now that Wren had stolen the blueprints for Kiera from a mysterious woman called H. He hadn’t Designed anything; he’d just taken credit for H’s work.

There was a stitched-up scar in one corner of the tapestry from where a guard had torn it from the wall that night, after Ayla fled. But Kiera was intact. Saffron-yellow dress, red mouth, rich brown skin. Eyes of golden thread, catching the morning sunlight. Crier gazed into those eyes, unblinking, as the minutes dragged on.

A knock on the door. “Enter,” said Crier, and Malwin slipped inside, followed by a stumbling, sunken-eyed Faye. Malwin was clutching Faye’s wrist; maybe she’d put up a fight.

“Thank you, Malwin,” said Crier, standing up. “You may wait for me outside.”