“I am,” she admits. “We have been through too much together for us to be anything else. But friends are not Thread-family, Leopold. One is knowing someone well. Laughing together and sharing interests. The other is risking your life for them—and knowing they will risk theirs for you. You must know that when storm and wildfire come, they will stay beside you.”

“And here,” he repeats, “I believed that was you.” He reveals nothing on his face or in his posture. He is the epitome of stasis, and even Gretchya would have been impressed. His Threads, though, reveal everything. They bleed with blue. They drip and ooze as if tears fall—more tears than a single body could ever contain.

A thousand years’ worth of loneliness.

And Iseult realizes she has hurt him. Deeply. She also cannot lie to him. She sees no Threads of family on his soul; she sees only emptiness and solitude.

A new song begins below. Leopold watches the tapestry of dancers in silence, and Iseult watches too. Only when it ends does Leopold finally straighten and declare, “I am going down, if you wish to join.”

Iseult shakes her head. “No.”

“Hmmm,” he replies, and his green eyes meet hers for half a breath before he stalks away, off the balcony and out of sight. His Threads, however, linger in Iseult’s awareness long after. Confused, lonely, angry that someone in this world now knows the one thing he hides away.

The one truth at the heart of all his masks.

He is not gone long before another set of known Threads arrive, a shadowy core roiling inside pale urgency. Then Caden’s voice skates in from the hallway—overloud as if he wants Iseult to hear.

“There has been a change of plans,” he calls. “His Imperial Majesty will be going into the city once the dancing ends. Be ready.”

And just like that, all of Iseult’s and Safi’s preparations turn to ash.

TWENTY-SEVEN

“You did what?” A muscle feathered in Ryber’s jaw. She and Stix were back in their carriage, the usual orange tabby nestled at their feet, while outside a darkening swamp lugged by. Even with the carriage curtains swept wide, there was no finding a breeze. Only this thick, motionless humidity.

“I told Kahina where I found the—”

“I heard you.” Ryber pinched the bridge of her nose. “I meant, how could you do that? If Kahina really is this Paladin called Lovats—and honestly, is there any doubt at this point?—then she is the last person in the Witchlands who should know how to enter the Sightwitch mountain.”

“But the blade and glass aren’t there. You have them.”