Bastiaan searched the kleinschloss for another hour looking for Myrthe, but he didn’t find her. Most people seemed to be gathered in the courtroom . . . in battle. But he’d also yet to find Mattias or Sven. Where those two were, Myrthe would not be far.

Bastiaan exited the kleinschloss into a flooded garden of statues and drowning shrubbery. A few scattered militairen were outdoors, caught midflee or perhaps on an errand for the king. The glow of sunrise lit their skin in a gentle contrast to the madness implied from their expressions.

Then he saw a shock of sun-colored hair from behind a statue, a man kneeling over a pale form half submerged.

Sven.

He knelt next to Myrthe—no, on her. Pinning her in the water with a small glass vial in his hand. Staring at her with unveiled victory and greed.

A wish. Myrthe’s wish. He’d caught it. Stolen it. Was drowning her for it.

Bastiaan roared like a stabbed bull, the sound echoing eerily in the Stillness. He gripped the broken bust of the royal statue to keep himself from charging Sven. He would pummel him. He could do it easily—bury Sven in the water as a beaten mess before he even fully awakened in the Stillness.

Instead Bastiaan shoved through the water to Myrthe.

Her face alone remained above water, roughly propped against the marble plinth. To keep her wish accessible. Blood ran down her icy hair and pooled around her ear.

A rope burn from a bowstring wound in two rings around her throat.

Bastiaan’s anger burned. But the longer he gazed at Myrthe, the more his fury crumbled away into a desperate sorrow. Her wish had already been spent. She was likely dead.

He would not give up. He did not abandon a task, not even when it seemed hopeless.

Was this how she’d felt in the Summer Trial? When she believed the bear had dealt his death blow? And yet she dragged him across the scorching sand anyway. She never left him. She’d been willing to die with him.

He lifted his face away from the scene, careful not to disturb the water so much that it lapped into her mouth, though it was still rising. He had perhaps an hour before it reached her mouth, poured down her throat. If he adjusted her body, she’d enter the Stillness and die.

The only way to save Myrthe was to reverse time. No snap or wish could do that.

There was one person who might be able to pull it off.

Coralythe.

Before he searched for her, he turned back to Sven. On impulse, with the tips of his fingers, he worked the little bottle free of Sven’s fingers. He corked the wish and stuck it in his pocket.

*  *  *