“Please don’t,” he replied. His face swam over her. She tried to hold on to his neck, but for some reason, her arms weren’t in the mood to cooperate.

Distantly, she heard horse hooves and stamping feet. Bellowed orders and Hell-Bard chain mail. And distantly, she noticed the Keep spanning before her. Safi had seen it from afar as a child. It was not a tall fortress, with its cross-shaped alignment and wide battlements, but it didn’t need to be tall to dominate. Made from a dark granite unlike anything else in the city, it absorbed all light, all warmth.

One of her greatest fears as a child had been that she would be caught for a Truthwitch and brought here. Now, she had not only come here willingly, but she’d gotten stabbed on purpose just so she could get in.

That thought made her laugh.

Or maybe it wasn’t a laugh, but a sob. Bat tits, make it stop hurting.

“We’re almost there,” Caden said.

“Liar,” Safi mumbled against his shoulder. Even in her half-delirious state, she could see they were only just entering a shadowy hall. Archways into new halls sliced off in different directions, but Caden’s course aimed onward, ever onward down a seemingly endless stretch of exposed stone.

It reminded her of Leopold’s tower.

The farther Caden stepped through the Keep, Hell-Bards marching severely around them, the more cold crept into Safi’s body. It made no sense to her knife-addled brain—how she could be ablaze, yet frozen to her bones. And what little color remained in this world was being sucked dry. Soon, there would be no color left at all. Just shadows and light and frost inside the flames.

Eventually they reached an open area framed by balconies and stairs. It was strangely beautiful: a graceful circle with three curving stairwells that rose to different floors and branching hallways. At the center of the high-ceilinged room stood a statue of a shrouded woman staring down at her chained hands.

“Who is that?” Safi tried to ask as Caden and her escorts marched for the nearest set of stairs, but either he didn’t hear her or he couldn’t understand the jumble leaving her mouth. He simply said, “We’re almost there. Hang on.”

Lev heard, though, and Lev replied: “Midne. The first of us.”

That name meant nothing to Safi, and the cold was spindling more deeply inside her. The world turning grayer and shallower and more alone.

More alone? What an odd thought. She was surrounded by people and held by a man who’d saved her many times before.

Caden carried her to the third floor, and if he was flagging—Safi was hardly a small person—he did not show it. His stride stayed as true as that of the other Hell-Bards around them until at last, they entered a new area of the Keep and his stride finally halted.