We bow to the king. Closest to the door, I lead us out of the queen’s rooms toward a common area where a group of hallways meet. To our left, a staircase winds upward into the ceiling—that’s how the king typically enters the Glass Tower. Bookshelves waist-high line the adjacent walls below massive tapestries depicting the forests of Vyrinterra. The halls are empty save for us. Only the royal family and sentinels are allowed on this level.

“Skies keep us,” Renna says finally. “The crown prince.”

“I don’t want to believe it,” I say. “But the king is right not to send warriors. If—”

“Time is already against us,” Renna says, cutting me off. “If the prince had more time, we could try to make amends. The humans have the right to be angry.”

The confusion must be clear on my face, because just then, Hammond lets out a deep sigh.

“Renna, my old friend,” he says. “Shirene doesn’t know.”

The other woman turns sharply. “What?”

“She doesn’t know,” he repeats, looking at me with that familiar fatherly expression. Only this time, it is mixed with something else. Regret? Worry?

“What don’t I know?” I ask. “What’s going on?”

Renna sinks into a nearby chair. “Do you want to tell it, or should I?”

“I can,” Hammond says. “Do you want to sit down?”

“I’d prefer not to,” I say. “Please. What is going on?”

The older sentinel pulls out a chair and takes it himself. “A little over a year ago, the humans began leaving messages in bottles that they put purposely out to sea. The Sea Queen’s ambassadors brought them to us after their people found them floating in the water. The messages were simple, but clear. They even wrote it in our own language, skies know how. The humans wanted peace.”

“What?” I gasp. “Why?”

“A famine,” he says. “They offered peace so they could feed their people with the food from Vyrinterra.”

I start to pace, my body seeming to know this information is too much to process while keeping still. “Why did the king refuse?”

“All four kingdoms did,” Hammond replies as Renna lets out a bitter scoff. “We couldn’t trust the humans to keep their word. It could have been a trap. Besides, we had been successful at keeping the humans at bay for decades. It wasn’t on us to help the humans when we were comfortable keeping things as they were.”

“Warriors still die in battles out at sea and at the Cliffs,” I reply. “How can you say that’s ‘comfortable’?”