Then louder, the accusation bubbled up, her hand nearly raising to point an index finger, though her fingers crumpled inward. She was too horrified to find the strength, and she didn’t have the time to do what was right and proper. She wasn’t afforded the luxury of discussing things with the reevers. She locked eyes with the queen and fully lifted her finger. “You have the gift of illusion,” Amaris said. “You—Your Majesty…the perception at the border…it’s your curse.”

The reevers at her side had gone rigid. They felt the court’s tide turn against them.

Her heart thundered in her ears with the high, drowning sound of the ocean’s tide.

Moirai blinked rapidly, gripping the handles of her throne before she barked out a single word: “Guards!”

Amaris had found her voice fully now. She was not timid. She was not anxious. She sounded demented to all looking on, but she knew. She knew the truth and demanded that all hear her as she screamed at Moirai. “It’s your curse! The border is your curse! You have the gift of illusion!”

She tried to gulp air by the bucketful. It suddenly seemed impossible to breathe.

The guards advanced as Amaris seemed to remember her only task, one she had failed. She’d been sent to persuade, not to reveal. She stared at Queen Moirai, the world around her melting into a tunnel, but she saw only one woman’s face and summoned her power. “You will let us go!” Amaris shouted past the bodies that closed in around her, ignoring the world and rallying her persuasion for the Queen of Farehold alone.

“Guards, seize them!”

She leapt to her feet as she pointed at her accusers. Moirai’s intensity and hysteria should have betrayed her guilt before her court. She had been discovered. She had been foiled. The woman’s voice was too loud, too frenzied.

Bewildered anger coursed through Amaris as she gaped at Moirai. Her heart thundered in her ears as the centurions closed in within seconds.

Her companions were helpless, knowing they could not fight. They were unarmed and outnumbered. They were in couriers’ clothes, weaponless and powerless. Even if they initiated hand-to-hand combat, how many trained centurions could Ash and Malik truly fight before they were overpowered? They’d counted on Amaris to persuade the queen, and in a single moment, their hopes had been dashed. The struggle beside her was little more than the sounds of grunted protest.

Her voice was shriller than they’d surely ever heard. She was little more than a girl being plunged underwater, sputtering her desperate screams against the lapping surface of the waves, but she tore her gift of persuasion from its resting place in her belly and flung it at the monarch.

“Queen Moirai, you will let us go! You will set us free from this castle!”