“It was not intentional,” she promised her friend. “I only wanted her to tell the truth, and the skyfire came unbidden. She’s … she’s not—”

“No,” Jinx answered, standing. “She only got a bit of a shock. She’ll be fine. But we need to move. She will have quite the story to tell when she wakes. We need to be lost to the winds by then, your mother too.”

Together they heaved the queen’s deadweight from the bed, dragging her too-thin arms around their shoulders as an anchor. Then they each wrapped an arm about the woman’s waist and hefted her up between them. Aurora was more than half a head taller than Jinx, which left most of the queen’s weight on her. Rora was fine with that. She’d carry her mother across Caelira if she had to.

She said, “We need to go out into the hallway. There’s a tapestry there with a passageway behind it.”

Jinx left Aurora holding her mother, and opened the door just enough to peer outside.

“Any soldiers?” Aurora asked.

“None that I can see.”

“They must know the rebellion is inside the palace. Hopefully, they will be preoccupied with them long enough for us to find Nova and get out.”

They shuffled into the hallway, the queen’s feet dragging helplessly against the ground.

“That one,” Aurora said, jerking her chin toward a tapestry woven in rich blues and blacks. It depicted the day the Time of Tempests began, when the very first storms poured from the goddess’s hands out on the land below.

Carefully, they peeled the tapestry away from the wall, revealing a latch that opened and slid back a door to show a narrow stone passageway. Maneuvering slowly, Jinx slipped in first, followed by the queen, and finally Aurora, who returned the tapestry to its normal place as best she could.

Aurora looked at the dark corridor, wondering how they were going to get down the long and winding route to the royal storm shelter where this particular passage led.

“Maybe I should go on alone,” Aurora said. “You could stay here with my mother, and I’ll bring back Nova.”

Jinx gave one firm shake of her head. “We stay together. If something happened, and I lost you, Thorne would throw me out and let the fog have me.”

“He would not,” Aurora huffed.

“Perhaps we should get your mother free, and try for your friend another time.”