Élise squirmed uncomfortably next to me. She’d already told me that it would be Zoé who would come with me into the mines. She hated tight spaces.

I swallowed hard. “I can do it.” I met the miner’s gaze. “I need to know what I’m fighting for… who I’m fighting for.” I squared my shoulders. “I need you to give me a reason why I should risk everything for you.” This was part of the speech I’d used to convince Zoé and Élise to help me: I needed something worse than coddled lady’s maids or even forlorn street sweepers to motivate me. I needed to see the worst in order to understand why Tristan had chosen to lead a revolution against his father. The mines were the worst.

“I reckon we can do that,” Tips said softly, then watched silently as the girls tucked a miner’s cap over the braids binding my hair to my head. They smeared black grease over the parts that showed and rubbed a bit of grime over my cheeks. I was already dressed in the grey trousers and tunic the miners wore.

“Will do,” he said when they finished. “Mind you keep your face down – those pretty blue eyes of yours will give you away.”

I walked in the center of Tips’s gang, doing my best to imitate their unconcerned amble while keeping my head down. Zoé walked next to me, providing a second ball of light as part of my disguise.

“Has he noticed yet?” she asked under her breath.

“No,” I whispered back. “It’s too early – he probably just thinks I’m at one of my lessons.” It was the one flaw, albeit a major one, in our plan. Tips’s gang’s shift ran from seven in the evening until seven in the morning. There was only another hour until curfew fell, and although I wasn’t subject to punishment for breaking it, he would wonder what business kept me out of the palace. And that was only if he didn’t notice that I was suddenly a league below Trollus. I had no doubt he would figure out what I was doing – the only question was whether he would interfere or not.

The entrance to the mines was at the opposite end of the valley from the River Road. It looked innocuous enough – a wide set of white stone steps leading underground. The groups of exhausted and filthy miners coming up the stairs and making their way into the city were all that marked it for what it was.

All that changed the moment I took my first step down the stairs. A cacophony of sound assaulted my ears: the clanging of metal against metal, the dull roar of explosions, and the din of countless half-bloods crammed into a too-small space. Dust filled my nostrils and it was a struggle to keep from coughing and choking.

“There’s a barrier to keep the dust and sound from getting out,” Zoé said into my ear.