And I thought of what my mother had done with me.

So I was a hypocrite. Aren’t we all?

But then I had a different thought. “Wait, are you with Dorna? I mean, in the Living World?”

Arasgon nodded. “And with Talaras, Sir Baramon, and Ninavis. We’re in hiding now, because we have prices on our heads.” He drew back his lips. “Foolish two-legs.”

“Foolish two-legs indeed,” I murmured. “Do you think you’ll be able to come back here again? Since Tya has shown you the trick?”

“It isn’t a trick. She has told me I will know when you’re sleeping and will have the choice to join you. That may not be possible every night, depending on the timing.”

My eyes widened. I had a way to communicate with Ninavis and Dorna. I had a way to pass messages, to pass along the information I’d gleaned from the duke’s invasion map plans on his parlor wall. Even if I didn’t help the duke, I could move forward with his plans myself. And if they thought I was helping him …

Well. I had to find a way to examine his plans and maps, didn’t I?

Wasn’t I Janel Danorak? Time to make that work to my favor.

I grinned. “Perfect. Then we have a lot of work ahead of us. We’re going to steal a rebellion.”

I didn’t stay in the Afterlife for as long as I normally do, because I had been rendered unconscious rather than sleeping. I felt relief when I woke; I wasn’t dead.

That relief lasted five seconds, at which point I realized white surrounded me.

Snow. Snow swirling around me and ice underneath me. I tried to stand, a fact made more difficult because I lay in a puddle, making the ice below slippery.

Veixizhau had dumped me outside the castle, straight into the arctic weather surrounding the Ice Demesne. Ice water soaked through my wool dress, worse than no protection at all.

No sooner did I realize this than I noticed an additional fact:

I didn’t feel cold. Senera had stolen my strength, but not my magic.

I started laughing, the sound caught and tangled in the storm winds surrounding me. I’d realized that with my Khorveshan father and my immortal mother, I was as Blood of Joras as they came. So not a witch to my own people.

Only to the rest of Quur, who only cared that I was female.

The snow made it difficult to see any distance, but a series of loud whoops echoed from nearby. I recognized the sound from the plains of my home: hyenas. I’d seen white hyenas in the duke’s hall too, thicker-furred and larger than their southern counterparts.