“The Raven Crown.” Giles’s voice bounced across every edge of the field, powered once again by his own sorcery, as he scooped up one of the pieces. It shimmered with mystical green light as he held it high, turning it back and forth for all to see. “Gifted to my sister on Mount Corve by the spirits of the land, who had held it for her, waiting, all these years.”

There was a moment of awestruck silence … except in Cordelia’s head, where Connall’s voice shouted frantically, Cordelia, what have you done?

Shh, she thought back at him. Find some faith!

“Look! It’s still broken!” The duchess of Solenne strode forward across the field, her helmet bristling with angry iron spikes. “So what if these ragtag children have stolen its pieces for their own ends?” she roared. “Soldiers, attack these pretenders to the throne!”

A cloud of arrows shot across the field, aimed at the three children on the hill.

It was an impossible array for anyone to defeat. They didn’t even have a shield to hide behind. Connall’s shout of despair rang out across the battlefield and inside Cordelia’s head, endless and echoing—

But Rosalind had come to grips with her own sorcery, too, when she had claimed her sword at the gates of Mount Corve, and she had been practicing ever since. Now she flung out her free hand, and half of those attacking arrows whirled around immediately in midflight, flying back over the heads of the soldiers who had shot them. Her long sword cut through the air with incredible speed, slashing all the remaining arrows into splintering pieces that rained harmlessly across the grass.

“Halt. Halt! Halt!” The four dukes and the duchess were all bellowing the same word now through the chaos—but as the cloud of arrows finally trickled to a stop, leaving the field in even more disarray than before, their own argument only grew louder and fiercer.

“How dare—!”

“Be silent—!”

“The outrage—!”

“Just sorcery—!”

They all gathered together in the center of the field, screaming and waving their heavily armored arms in one another’s faces, but Cordelia ignored them all to shake her head at Giles. He had made one mistake in his earlier announcement. “They weren’t just holding this crown for me,” she said quietly. “We have to do this together to make it work. Remember?”

In her hands, the three pieces had lain perfectly quiet and still.

Now, she passed the final piece to Rosalind, who lowered her sword … and a low, vibrating hum shivered through each of the broken pieces.

Giles gulped visibly as he turned away from the battlefield, his gaze fixed on the vibrating silver in his palm. “This … is new. Why didn’t it do this any of the other times we tried to mend it?”

“Because I didn’t understand then what I had to do to seal our part of the bargain,” said Cordelia.