I inhaled, made fists with my hands, before I remembered Sir Oreth wasn’t there. And I felt too weak to do anything if he had been.

He added, “Relos Var seemed confident she’d be Returned. I don’t know what happened to the others, though.”

Could I trust anything Relos Var said? But why would he lie? If Dorna had died, why not just admit it and blame me? On the other hand, if anyone could steal their way back from the Afterlife, my metal would be on Dorna. She knew more tricks than Taja herself.

If no one else had died, then it had all gone well.

Except for the part where my reputation lay in shambles. Except for the part where Duke Xun had almost certainly stripped away my title. Except for the part where I had meant to take this mission alone.

Get in, find the spear, get out. I’d thought this would be the easy part, eclipsed by using Khoreval to kill Relos Var’s ice dragon pet. Except, now it was anything but easy.

I walked over to him. “Oh, Qown, I’m so sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean to get you wrapped up in this. Var was just supposed to take me.”

“Just supposed to—” He blinked at me, then held up a hand. “Please don’t say another word. I can’t be trusted anymore. I said you proved immune to gaesh. I didn’t.”

My mouth dropped open. Horror stole over me even as the truth squeezed my heart.

I had never meant to put my friends at risk. Certainly not like this.

“Who has it? Who has your gaesh? I’ll make—” My body reminded me once more that I felt weak as a new foal. Gangly, not possessing even a tenth my normal strength.

I put my hands to my knees and breathed deeply. I hadn’t planned on it going like this at all. I had just assumed everything would go my way.

I always won, didn’t I?

Mithros would laugh at me, and not in a friendly fashion. Teraeth wouldn’t laugh, but his “I told you so” anger would be worse. They had both said the risk was too great and I had ignored them. Overconfident, arrogant, certain of my success.

And so very, very wrong.

“What did they do to me?” I asked.

“There’s a tattoo on your back,” he answered. “Similar in style to the sigil we saw in Mereina. I don’t know what it does, but Relos Var said it would ‘declaw’ you.”

I nodded, fighting down nausea and despair in equal measure. Taking my strength would indeed declaw me, but they were mistaken if they thought their sigil would turn me from a stallion to a mare.