“You know as well as I that there is a way to save Fox. The juice of the First Harvest, wasn’t it? Failing that, well, perhaps shadowglass can be used to shape the world according to how we want it to be. As a god, you would have no limits. We could remake the world, make it a kinder place.”

“Are you insane?” Kalen shouted. “You cannot build a kinder world on the blood of innocents!”

“Can Tea tell me, with yourself as the exception, if there is no other heartsglass Tea would value more than Fox’s? Is the price too great to see him alive in the truest sense? Ask her if I lie, Kalen. Her heartsglass tells me all I need to know.”

“I can’t do that,” I choked out. “So many lives already—Yarrod, the Drychta, Aadil’s madness, Knightscross, Kance and Telemaine…Daisy…”

“Daisy was an unfortunate accident. The Dark was stronger in you than I thought.”

“I escaped the blight, but your medicine made me weaker, more complicit to accept the Dark. You plagued me with fevered dreams, made me doubt myself, made me think I was falling into darkrot. You did it so that Kion would turn against me, to make me more susceptible to join your cause. You offered your services to Kance under the guise of healing, but instead you gave him nightmares and headaches. And you gave him Blight for a time, in case I needed further persuasion.”

She offered no defense, and my rage grew. “And Daisy—why did you make me kill her?”

Altaecia gazed serenely back at me. “I did nothing of the sort, Tea. My herbs may have given you greater cause to take in the Darkness, that is true, but your actions have always been your own.”

“And what of this Faceless?” Likh demanded, staring at the figure. “Druj committed countless atrocities. How could you stoop so low as to ally yourself with him?”

Laughter, nearly hysterical, bubbled at the back of my throat. “Because we trusted Druj ourselves. Didn’t we, Althy? How many times had we gone to her, asking for advice? I should know—I went to the temple more than anyone else.”

“Tea.” Likh quaked. “What do you mean?”

“Nobody knows what Druj looks like, because Druj had always lived inside Ankyo. What better sanctuary than in the Willows itself? Hadn’t Aenah taught us that even Ankyo can be compromised? And yet, we made the same mistakes we should have learned from when she posed as a young servant of the Valerian. How would Druj know to carve out a moon-and-crescents symbol in a Seeking Stone for me to find—a symbol that resembled a crescent pin I own? A pin that I had tried to sacrifice to her sacred fires not long ago and was refused?