She’d never removed it before. Never even considered how one might try. But it was as if the magic recognized what she wanted. As soon as her fingers touched the gold, the chain split in two.

And there was the cold again, clawing in fast.

“Come,” she said before frost stole her voice. “Take me to the Hell-Bard Loom.”

If Safi had felt drained and gray before, it was nothing compared to now. All color vanished, all sounds echoed and warped as if coming at her from a thousand leagues away. She lost any sense of touch.

There was darkness and there was light. There was cold and there was more cold. The healer had draped one of her robes over Safi’s tattered, battered training clothes. It was thick, it ought to be warm, yet all Safi felt was ice upon her skin.

Zander seemed to expect this and he kept a firm guiding hand the entire way. As they retraced steps out of the healer’s wing and into the main area with the statue, as they hurried down the stairs onto the first floor and then veered right down a new hallway. Each step away from the healer’s room made Safi’s heart thump faster. There was no pain—not yet—but an overwhelming sense of panic.

Several times, her feet slowed. She twisted as if to flee. Each time, though, Zander was ready. “The Loom,” he reminded her, hauling her onward. “We will be there soon.”

“Liar,” she ground out when he said it for the third time. “You and Caden are both … liars.”

This earned her a wincing, if genuine, smile.

Then they were to a new stairwell, this one spiraling off the hallway and descending into the depths of the earth. A draft billowed up; shadows too. Even if Safi hadn’t had Zander to lead her that way, she would have known instantly that the Loom waited at the bottom of those stairs.

On the first landing, Safi heard screams. Tortured screams like the ones she’d made only moments before when healing.

Like she’d made when she’d become a Hell-Bard.

A tight-lipped glance at Zander showed him nodding. “New Hell-Bards,” he said, and no further explanation was necessary.

On the next landing, the cries of pain were softer, subdued, tired.

“Heretics.”

On the third landing, the stairs stopped and hoarfrost lay thick across the granite. It laced over the flagstones and through a crooked door. The stone changed from light to dark, though what color precisely, Safi could not say. Shadows and pale flame were all she could discern.

Her teeth chattered; her muscles ached; but she did not slow as Zander hurried her through the slashing entrance. Beyond was a tunnel, not so different from what Safi had explored with Leopold only the night before. Even the ancient sconces looked the same.