“I do not intend to go alive into Arden’s hands. If all goes wrong, and I am captured, I will take my own life.” She rested her hand on her belt dagger. “If I am for any reason unable to do it, I am asking you to help me.”

Amon swallowed hard. “Raisa. Don’t ask me to do this.” His voice shook slightly. Tears pooled in his eyes. “You know I’d do anything for you. But not this.”

“I am asking you because I know you keep your promises,” Raisa said. “It’s a terrible, terrible responsibility to hand to you, but you are my very best friend, and I have always demanded too much of my friends.”

“But…I am bound to protect the line,” Amon said, his voice catching. “I don’t know if I—”

“If I fall into Arden’s hands, it does not serve the line or the Fells to keep me alive,” Raisa said, closing her hands over his. “All I can ask is that you do your best. And I will do my best to avoid putting you in that position.”

She stood on tiptoes and kissed him on the cheek. “For luck,” she said, smiling through her tears.

His arms went around her, and tightened. Letting go, he took a step away, his eyes fixed desperately on Raisa’s face, as if saving up for a future without her.

“We’d better go,” Raisa said, loudly enough for the others to hear.

She stood in the darkness just inside the massive wooden door, wondering what lay on the other side. Her mind ran back over the series of events that had led her to this place. She wondered what she could have done differently.

No. She’d made the best decisions she could; she had taken the chances she needed to take. And now she was taking another one.

Sending up a prayer to the Maker, she lifted the bar from across the door, pushed it open, and stepped through, the others close on her heels.

They walked through the damp, deserted streets toward the temple.

Once in Ragmarket, the oppressive mist was so thick that Raisa could scarcely see the flag of truce fluttering overhead. The fog coalesced into lupine shapes—her ancestor queens traveling with her on this difficult journey. How will it all come out? she wanted to ask, but knew she’d receive no clear answer.

She recalled the first time she’d walked through Ragmarket, a grim and disapproving Amon at her side, on her way to Southbridge to meet with Speaker Jemson about the Briar Rose Ministry.

Though she hadn’t known it at the time, she’d been on her way to meet Han Alister.

Reflexively, she touched the moonstone-and-pearl ring he’d given her. Hanalea’s ring. The symbol of another doomed relationship.