The large hall was constructed from the palace’s normal black stone, but here a dark musk scent mixed with blood, offal, and ice filled the air. Hyena laughter and bear growls mixed with creaking leather and the sharp retort of snapping jaws.

I motioned to a handler. “Harness a wagon with bears.”

“You’re supposed to kill the prisoners,” the same soldier reminded me.

I turned to him. “Yorans may tolerate cold, but you have your limits. I’m going to leave them outside to freeze. Or won’t that be dead enough for you?”

The soldier gave concerned glances to the large entrance. They didn’t want to go outside either—exactly as I’d planned.

The prisoners heard our exchange, so panic set in. They were tied, but several began openly begging for their lives. Others started crying.

“Just kill them here,” someone snapped.

I stared at the man. “Are you questioning me?”

“No, just—” He gave Captain Hedrogha a pleading look. “We’ll need to change into our winter furs.”

I was about to tell them to go get them (which would give me time to take the prisoners out myself) when Wyrga stepped in.

“Or you can let her go alone,” Wyrga suggested as she walked over. “What’s she going to do, hmm? Help them escape into the mountains? Travel somewhere warm? I’d like to see her try.” The old woman had tied a cloth over one side of her head to hide her missing eye. I didn’t know what she’d done with the eye itself, which I felt was for the best.

Captain Hedrogha started to protest, but Wyrga locked her eye with him. That eye’s color flashed, just briefly, to ice blue.

Hedrogha paused. “You make a good point.”

Wyrga smiled sharp teeth and malice. “I always do, dearie.”

I suppressed a chill. I’d seen the ice eye flash before: Wyrga had just used magic on the guard. Duke Kaen had forbidden his captive goddess from doing a great many things—harming his family, for example—but she was useless to him if he forbid her from ever using magic at all.

But what could I say? What she had done worked in my favor.

“I’ll be back soon,” I reassured Captain Hedrogha. “This won’t take long.”

He didn’t even look at me. Wyrga’s ice-blue stare still trapped his gaze. His men didn’t seem to notice.

The animal handlers readied two of the great bears for me, who I preferred to the hyenas. The bears were terrifying in their own way—they were more than capable of killing someone accidentally—but they liked that I was warm and good at scratching behind their ears. It wasn’t at all the same as riding a horse, but since I secretly went riding with Arasgon almost every night in the Afterlife, I didn’t resent the difference.