“You’re sure you lost them?”

“Positive. Anyway. Got a couple meat pies, if you’re hungry.”

He glanced over at her, and she couldn’t help but glance back. Just for a split second, just long enough to catch a glimpse of his face, tawny skin and big doe eyes, the freckles on his nose visible even in the shadows. “You know full well I’m always hungry.”

“How could I forget the bottomless pit,” she said dryly. “Well, come on, then. We can eat on the way into Thalen.”

The plan was to find Ayla’s brother, Storme. It was a horrible plan, as it involved sneaking into the single most dangerous and heavily guarded place in all of Varn: the Mad Queen’s palace. Best-case scenario, Ayla and Benjy would somehow, by some miracle, get to Storme and tell him everything they knew about Scyre Kinok. About why they’d risked everything to sneak into Sovereign Hesod’s palace that night. The night Ayla had stood above Lady Crier’s bed, knife in hand, failed to do the one thing she’d been fantasizing about for years, and fled with Benjy, surviving the night only because they knew the treacherous sea cliffs better than the sovereign’s guard.

Kinok had been a Watcher of the Heart, a member of the elite guild of Automae who dedicated their lives to protecting the Iron Heart. Automae didn’t need to eat like humans did—their bodies depended on heartstone, a red gemstone imbued with alchemical power. The Iron Heart was the mine that produced heartstone. As it was the sole source of the Automae’s power, and therefore their greatest weakness, its exact location—somewhere in the vast, thousand-league spine of the Aderos Mountains—was known only to Watchers. Only one Watcher had ever left their post. Kinok. For those last weeks at the palace Ayla’s goal had been to steal a special compass Kinok had in his possession. She was positive its arrow pointed to the Iron Heart itself. That was the main reason she and Benjy and the others had staged the attack on the sovereign’s palace: to break into Kinok’s study and steal the safe containing his valuables. But the only thing in the safe had been a piece of paper with three words: Leo. Siena. Tourmaline.

She needed to tell Storme about all this and more. About Kinok’s desperate search for Tourmaline, a potential new life source for Automae. About Nightshade, the mysterious black dust he’d given to his followers to consume instead of heartstone, even though it seemed only to ruin their bodies, to drive them half mad.

Best-case scenario, Storme would relay the information to Queen Junn and—Ayla didn’t know. The queen would arrange for Kinok’s death? And Storme would finally give Ayla the answer she was looking for, the answer to a question that had been reaffirming itself with every beat of her heart since they’d first been reunited for those few precious days: Why did you leave me after the raid on our village? Why did you let me think you died along with our parents? I thought you were dead, I mourned you, I never stopped mourning you, how could you leave me? And Storme would give her a completely reasonable answer, and everything would make perfect sense, and she would forgive him, and they would embrace as brother and sister, and then Ayla and Benjy would live out the rest of their lives in the luxury of the queen’s court. Best-case scenario.