“No,” the Herdwitch mumbled again, his legs buckling beneath him. But he could not stop Corlant any more than he could stop his fall. Corlant swiped his hand toward the well, and the dog obeyed. Six loping paces before it reached the stone rim. A single vertical leap and it dropped over. It dropped in.

Half a heartbeat later, its body hit dry ground with a yelp and snap of bones. An empty well, a pointless death. Owl’s wails filled the midmorning sky.

The Hell-Bard training “space” was a misleading term. It was, in fact, a vast complex beneath the newest wings of the palace. Three levels beneath the earth, the cold of the Stonewitch-carved caverns washed over Safi. The heat from the springs—and Leopold’s secret bath—did not reach here.

At dawn, Lev guided Safi into the long main room where Hell-Bards circled at a brisk jog. Several spread apart to allow Safi into their ranks. Her lungs seared within a single lap of two hundred steps. By four hundred steps, the burn had moved to her stomach. To her thighs. But she welcomed it—sank into the sensation of pushing through pain and running like she hadn’t run in days.

She wondered if Uncle Eron had ever trained here. She wondered what he had been like before he became a drunk. She had never known that person. For her, his very Aether was made of bitterness and alcohol.

Eight hundred steps, and Safi was sprinting.

One thousand steps, and the other Hell-Bards had stopped running and had paired off for other training. The sounds of clanging metal, thumping arrows, and flesh pounding into flesh soon echoed off stone walls. Sweat, steel, tallow—the smells blurred together in Safi’s nose, familiar and palliative.

She didn’t join them in their training. Instead, she kept running. Three weeks of being in Praga, but she was no closer to her uncle than she had been in Azmir. It had seemed such a simple plan: bring down an emperor, then hand over his crown to an heir better suited. But nothing had gone as expected, and now Safi was trapped and useless and alone.

With Iseult countless miles away.

And with a favored owed to a raider admiral. Safi wasn’t sure where that thought came from, but she didn’t like it. It was one more thing she’d done wrong, and she had the blister around her thumb to prove it.

Safi sprinted faster, faster, until nausea charged up from her stomach. Until black floated across her vision and her breaths were so shallow that they eventually stopped billowing at all.

Then and only then did she stagger to a stop and drop her hands to her knees. Wheezing, she stared at the sand-covered ground. Her golden noose dipped out from her shirt. Once it would have been her Threadstone dangling there.