Nox’s soul left her body the moment she saw the filthy, gagged young woman in the jail cell before her. She couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t think. Couldn’t move. The world evaporated away into a dizziness that may have been a dream, melting her feet into the cream-cobbled floor. She wanted to sink into the ground, though she needed to stand. Every motion flashed through her in the span of the second it took for a muffled shout to come from the moonlit prisoner.

It was her.

It was her snowflake.

Nox broke free from whatever had glued her to the ground, pushing past the armored shoulders of the captain. A primal cry—the cry of years of anguish, of longing, of love—tore from her as she fell to the floor in front of the iron bars and Amaris’s name ripped its way from her throat. Amaris was pressed into the bars, the guttural screams of recognition and surprise and desperation and terror and helplessness scraping past her gag. Nox’s fingers clawed through the bars and their slits, pulling her close, stroking too quickly at her hair, holding her too tightly through the bars.

“Amaris,” she sobbed.

Nox didn’t recognize the sound of her own voice.

Tears flowed in hot, salty rivers down Amaris’s face, carving wet paths through the dirt that had smudged her milky features and running over the fabric that gagged her. As soon as she managed to look up from her embrace, Nox tore at the gag. The fabric that held the girl’s tongue still was too tight. Nox fumbled through her hair, forgetting how to put her fingers into motion.

Her hands froze as she found what she was looking for. She produced a razor-sharp hair pin, slipping it between the bars and working at the fabric that wrapped itself tightly around Amaris’s face. Nox sliced the gag free, and Amaris joined in the sobbing, their sounds rattling the very earth around them.

“Nox!” Amaris cried, throwing her shoulder against the bars. Her forehead clanged softly into the iron as she cried. “How are you here? Why? What—”