“She’s alive,” I said. “Mephi is with her.”

She turned narrowed eyes on me. “I told you to leave.”

“I… drank Ragan’s memories,” I said. “I came to warn you. He coerced his ossalen into bonding with him.”

“Too late. I figured it out on my own.”

“Am I too late or just in time though?” I pressed my lips together as she gave me a withering glare.

“I don’t want you here,” she said, each word a bite meant to wound.

Each word struck true, and I wished I could go back in time all over again. I wished I could take back what I’d done, to have trusted her sooner and to have told her the truth. I couldn’t regret what I’d done; there was no way I could have known her intentions so early on. But this was about more than my betrayal. I lifted a hand to the soldiers behind us.

The cheer was deafening.

“They want me here,” I said. “And if you want to hold this Empire, if you want to help its people, you’ll have to acknowledge that you need me.” I reached for her hand but she pulled away. I swallowed past the lump in my throat. Here, standing in front of her, all I wanted was to hold her again, to close the distance between us. My mother had pitied her for how lonely she seemed, how isolated. “You may feel like you are, but you aren’t alone.”

Her expression softened, the pain in her eyes clear even in the dark. And then she focused beyond me.

I whirled to see Mephi and Thrana crawling onto the path. Both shook off the dirt and the rain. A scratch ran across Thrana’s muzzle, and she looked a little dazed, but otherwise unharmed. Lin went to her, climbing onto her back.

There was something about seeing her up there that felt right. Again I wondered what had happened to the ossalen of the past Alanga. Why hadn’t I seen them depicted in any of the tales or the artwork? Or had they all treated their ossalen the way Ragan did – coercing them into bonding with them and then hiding them away?

Thrana was getting a little difficult to hide.

I could make out the individual constructs now, shambling their way up the slope. I cleared my throat as both Thrana and Lin towered over me. “I know you meant to have me executed if I returned, but can we call a temporary truce on that? It’s a little difficult for me to use my gifts with my head disconnected from my body.”

She looked as though she wasn’t sure if she should laugh or scowl. “When they’re close enough, send them back down the hill. Try not to collapse the palace. There are still people inside.”

“I’ll do my best, Eminence.”