Qown realized Duke Kaen must have ordered Wyrga never to harm his wives, his family, himself.

But Kaen had also just told her to destroy anyone who tried to rescue the prisoners.

Wyrga couldn’t obey both commands. If she attacked Xivan, the gaesh loop started, and the moment Xivan left with a prisoner, it also triggered.

Xivan looked over at Senera. “Are we going to have a problem?”

Senera cocked her head. “Not unless you object to me leaving with you.”

“He’ll never forgive you,” Wyrga growled. “Your husband already feels betrayed. He already doesn’t trust his friends.”

“Your doing, I think,” Xivan said.

“Of course it was my doing!” Wyrga screamed. “He deserves nothing less!” She held out her hands, changing tack, her voice dropping to a more reasonable volume. “I’m helping him, defending him against all the things he’s too weak to understand are threats: trust and love and respect. Only when he understands his true enemies were his closest friends will he be ready for my truth.”

Ninavis edged over toward Brother Qown. “I’m guessing there’s some history here I don’t know.”

“Just a little,” Qown said. Then he blinked and put his hand to his chest.

Wyrga did the same.

Janel frowned.

“Are you all right?” Ninavis asked Qown.

“I can breathe,” he whispered. “By the sun, it feels like I can finally get enough air. What is happening? Why—”

Across the cave, next to the monolith, Wyrga’s eyes widened with surprise, joy, triumph. “My gaesh is gone!”

Xivan grabbed Janel by the arm. “Run.”

They all heard Wyrga cackling behind them. Then the sound of large stones breaking battled with her high-pitched screams. Xivan led Janel, whose hands remained bound. Everyone else—including the guards—followed in her wake. No one wanted to stay and see what the witch-queen Suless would do, freed from her gaesh.

They exited into cold air at the mountain’s base. The sky wouldn’t see the sun rise for several hours. Tya’s Veil spread out over the sky as a ribbon of red, green, and violet above them, just bright enough to reflect off the packed ice and snow. A snow incline led up and away from the palace.

When they had reached the slope’s top, Xivan stopped. “We can rest here,” Xivan said. “I’ll do a head count while you catch your breaths. We’ll figure out what happened—”

A deafening roar shook the ground under their feet. Qown felt like he stood right next to a lightning strike as thunder rolled over the land.

“Holy shit,” Senera said.

Everyone looked back.

A fire column a hundred feet across tore up through the pyramid, from the bottom to the top, burning up into the sky. It turned every snowbank and mountaintop for a hundred miles orange red. The inferno seemed to pause for a split second …

And then the column of fire exploded outward.