Sitting here on the riverbank across from Crier, Ayla forced herself to imagine it: destroying the Heart, the source of heartstone. The leeches wouldn’t die out immediately. There was plenty of heartstone circulating outside the Heart—in traders’ caravans, in storehouses, in cellars, in every town, village, city, estate, in Rabu and Varn and Tarreen. The humans would have to take up post in the Heart, to defend it when the leeches came, which they would. But say they lost. Say the humans held the Heart, and there was no new heartstone. It might take months, even years, for it to run out. But it would.

Ayla imagined what it would look like: Crier wasting away. Crier, starved and limp. Eyes glassy, skin cold to the touch. And she imagined Queen Junn, and Wender from the Queen’s Feast. The children in the Midwiferies. Lady Dear, newbuilt. The faceless Delphi. Small bodies beneath white sheets, created and destroyed just like that. Made. Terminated.

That was what Kinok wanted for humankind, Ayla thought. That destruction, that endless crush of death, that massacre . . . He was evil for wanting it. Rotten inside, worm-eaten, putrid.

The Automae did not deserve Ayla’s forgiveness. She would not give it. But she also wouldn’t let them turn her into that kind of monster.

“I’m going to stop Kinok,” said Crier. “I don’t know how. But I will.”

Ayla shook away the images of death. Refocused. “We need to make a plan.”

The we hung between them like the bone-handled knife. Another offering.

“We do,” Crier murmured. She raked a hand through her tangled hair, an oddly human movement. She seemed almost flustered. “And you? Why have you come all this way, if you were safe under the queen’s protection in Thalen?”

Ayla let out a breath. “Have you heard about the monsters?”

“The Shades? The Automae poisoned by Nightshade? Yes, I know a fair bit.”

“Well, the queen doesn’t,” said Ayla. “I was supposed to talk to heartstone traders. Gather information. It was supposed to be easy. I should’ve known better. But really, I thought if I had anything to worry about, it’d be the monsters. The Shades. I didn’t expect bandits.”

“People rarely do,” said Crier, and Ayla was startled into laughter, and Crier’s eyes went very wide.

“Plan, we need a plan,” Ayla said abruptly. Her face felt hot like she’d been basking in summer sunlight, not sitting on a cold riverbank in winter. “We can figure this out.”

Crier nodded. “Yes.”

“We’re gonna stop Kinok,” said the part of Ayla that felt new, nascent, like the bud of a sun apple blossom right at the tail end of winter. “We’ll find Tourmaline. Before he does. Before he destroys the Heart.”

“First . . . you’ll need this,” said Crier. She reached beneath the neckline of her shirt, pulling out—a delicate gold chain. Ayla’s necklace. Her locket, dangling from Crier’s fingers, winking in the sunlight. Crier had tried to return it to her once before, in Elderell, but at the time . . . at the time, Ayla had been reeling with shock and confusion, trying to make sense of the memories they’d fallen into—and everything that came before. (Crier’s hands on her face, Crier’s breath on her lips.) She’d rejected the locket. I don’t want it. Keep it, I don’t care anymore, just stay away from me. Then, in Crier’s bedroom, she had seen it once more. As she stood over the bed, clutching the knife, trying to convince herself she could do this, she could kill, she could draw blood—she’d seen the locket in Crier’s hand. Crier had been sleeping with it.