Fione sighs and shakes her head like she’s instructing a child. “They have magic, Mal. If they wanted to gut us, they would’ve done it already, and there’s nothing we could’ve done to stop it.”

“A practical—if chilling—thought,” I agree cheerily.

“I’m serious,” Malachite insists, lowering his voice so just we can hear. “Luc’s not really one of them. They could turn on him. And if they do—”

“We’ll use our words like grown-ups.” Fione straightens. “Or rather, I will, because I can’t trust you to string two civil words together when it comes to Lucien’s safety.”

“What about me?” I point at myself.

Fione’s grin is barely there in the fire-washed gloom. “Unfortunately, Lady Zera Y’shennria, you make far too many jokes for your own good. Or for the good of political bargaining.”

“Fair.” I smirk.

The building is labyrinthine, and the farther we get from the entrance, the colder it becomes. Curls of mist hang on the ground, swirling into nothingness as they’re displaced by our shoes. Windows start to appear, or what I think are windows. It’s actually great jagged insertions of glass—not the thin sort, but the thick, unpolished, raw sort I saw outside. This time it grows into the sandstone walls—from the sandstone walls in irregular patches, almost like veins of ore. It’s so thick it lets no light in at all, only captures it. Nothing can be seen beyond it. Not windows, then, and neither was the glass intentionally built—it looks far too…organic.

Nightsinger points Lucien down a series of twists and turns, eclipseguards watching silently as we pass. The glass veins become more common the deeper we go, and bigger—taking up whole walls, arcing over to replace entire sandstone tunnels with glittering black.

“Interesting design choice,” Malachite murmurs in awe.

“It wasn’t a choice,” I mutter back. He doesn’t press it, but he does start to narrow his ruby eyes at the glass with a newfound suspicion.

Suddenly, Nightsinger stops us before a seemingly innocuous wall. She nods at a nearby eclipseguard, and the guard nods back. They lift their spear, and next to me I feel Malachite tense, but the spearhead whips around to hit the wall instead. The impact should be short-lived, metal on solid stone, but it rings like a bell. Exactly like a bell, hollow and lingering. Lucien makes a step back as the wall begins to crumble, rubble spilling over the misty floor like an ancient, too-dried thing. No dust, which means we can see the door revealed in the wall clearly—stone. Pure stone, and far too heavy to open with manpower alone.

Which is why, when the doors part swiftly and easily peel apart, I know it’s being done by magic.

Lucien tries to immediately march in, but Nightsinger stops him with a hand on his shoulder. “A moment, Your Highness.”