“I see,” said Crier.

“Do you want to know why I tried?”

Crier looked pained. “Do I?”

“That night, we were trying to steal something from Kinok’s study,” said Ayla. “That special compass you told me about. The compass that points not to the north but to the Iron Heart. We were trying to steal it, so we needed a distraction. It was me who came up with the idea of setting off your chime. Drawing the guards to your bedroom.”

“Your idea,” Crier repeated, more to herself than Ayla. “Right. Yes. Of course.”

“I was angry. At Kinok. At your father. Your Kind. You. Myself.” She let out a sharp breath. “Myself more than anyone. I was fucking furious with myself, Crier. And terrified.” Of what I felt for you. I still am. “So I made a choice. It was the wrong one. Not—I don’t mean not killing you was the wrong choice—I mean everything leading up to that. Planning it. Letting myself into your bedroom that night. If you hate me for it, I can’t blame you. I’d hate me for it, if I were you.” She swallowed hard. Her voice sounded harsh and miserable even to her own ears, that same anger bleeding through. That same fear. At herself, of herself. “It was stupid, okay?” she said. “It was stupid.”

Crier’s lips parted.

It wasn’t the full story. But Ayla had spent years thinking only of revenge on Sovereign Hesod. He’d killed her family; she would kill his. Blood for blood. Ayla hadn’t told anyone that story. There had only ever been three people who knew the truth of her past: Benjy, Rowan, and Storme. The truth was sunk so deep inside her. She wasn’t yet ready to haul it up from the ocean floor.

“I will not make that choice again,” she said only. She grabbed the nearest bit of broken shell and dragged it through the clay by her foot, drawing whatever symbols came to mind—salt, iron, gold. “Anyway, I think we’re on the same side now. So.”

“We were always on the same side,” said Crier.

Ayla shook her head. “No. Not when I was your handmaiden.”

“Oh.” Crier seemed to consider that, gazing out past the tree roots to the river beyond, the quiet rush and roar of the water, smooth on the surface but surging beneath. “I see,” she said. “But now that I’ve defected . . . ?”

“Tell me the story of how you ran away from your wedding, Lady Crier,” said Ayla.

“Crier,” said Crier. “It’s just Crier.”

“Okay, Just Crier,” said Ayla, and listened as Crier told the story of Faye risking her own life to help Crier escape. The story of confronting her father about Kinok’s plan to destroy the Iron Heart.

It was all Ayla could do to not visibly react.

The Revolution’s goal had always been to destroy the Iron Heart. To wipe out the leeches in one go, the way the servant Nessa had sprayed poison over a swarm of locusts until their tiny iridescent bodies littered the ground in the thousands, the tens of thousands. That was what Rowan wanted. What Benjy wanted. What Ayla wanted, beneath the fire. For so long.