Then she changed into an enormous bird, then a bear, then a sculpture again; it was terrifying, impossible, and Lovisa cried out, bent herself over her own heaving stomach. But she also kept looking, unable to stop herself.

“We’re going to leave now,” Giddon said calmly, as if the transformation weren’t taking place. “Would you be kind enough to let your parents and Quona Varana know we’ve gone?”

“Yes, all right,” Lovisa gasped.

“One thing before you go,” said Giddon. “Is that a real place?” He nudged his chin toward a painting on the wall across the room.

Lovisa, still fixated on Hava, didn’t even glance at the painting, which she knew showed a large house on a cliff above the sea. “Yes.”

“Where is it?”

“It’s the Cavenda estate in the north. My mother and my uncle Katu grew up there.”

“Thank you,” said Giddon. “Do a lot of people in Winterkeep have houses on cliffs?”

What a weird, stupid question. “Yes!” she said. “Why would you ask that?”

“No reason. I suggest you close your eyes and find your way out of the room.”

Closing her eyes as an experiment, Lovisa was instantly less disoriented. She bumbled and groped her way to the door, peeking back at them once before she went out. Hava wasn’t changing anymore. She’d frozen into a sculpture of an angry, rageful woman much older than herself, and though her mouth wasn’t moving, Lovisa could hear her directing low, furious, indistinguishable words at her captor.

Lovisa left the room.

—

In the corridor, no guard was in sight, so Lovisa filled her pockets and hands with pastries. Then she snuck up the stairs to the nursery wing.

She found the boys tucked together on Vikti’s bed, whispering to one another. Their eyes went wide with fright when she cracked the door open. Then, when they saw her, not to mention the treasures she carried, their faces transformed into the pure happiness that always made Lovisa feel that whenever she wasn’t with them, she was abandoning them.

They waved her in, making a space for her on the bed. Then, for a while, they all gorged themselves on pastries, the boys asking excited questions with full mouths and shushing one another repeatedly, for the nannies were in the rooms nearby, and each boy was supposed to be asleep in his own bed. Was it true there was a Graceling at dinner? Did Lovisa get to sit near her? What was she like?

It was a question with too many confusing answers, so Lovisa kept it simple, explaining what Hava could do. The boys went rigid with amazement and delight at her description, like little sculptures of their own.

“And how have you been?” she asked them.

“Mother and Papa are angry at each other,” Erita said.

“Really? What are they angry about?”