“I’m fine,” Iseult says, but it’s a lie. She is anything but fine. Her Threadsister has been broken and carried away, she has killed two people, and now another ghost of the Cleaved is awakening in her mind.

She glances at Zander and in Cartorran adds, “Thank you for keeping her safe.”

“Yes,” Leopold inserts. His Threads blaze with a hunter’s green of focus. “But now you must leave.”

The Hell-Bard bows. “Of course, Your Imperial Highness.” He steps softly to the exit, graceful and silent despite his enormity. Leopold trails after, and once the dark wooden door shuts behind him, he taps several lock-spells into place.

“What if he tells someone we’re here?” Iseult asks.

Leopold shakes his head. “He won’t be able to.” Before Iseult can ask what that means, he rushes past her and scoops up Owl. Exactly as Zander had held her, letting her stretch long and brace on his hips.

“Follow me,” he orders. “We must be quick.” Then he strides right up to the wall and knocks three times.

Iseult briefly sways against the armchair. Because she has been here before, she has seen this glamour magic before. At the Monastery, with Leopold at her side. Except that then, she was the one to solve the mystery of the Rook King’s secret wall—and then she was the one to do the tapping.

Leopold does not wait to see if she follows. He simply strides into the darkness, Owl held tight, and Iseult has no choice but to scurry after. It is a stone stairwell, and she traces quickly down until all light vanishes and she is moving solely by the feel of her hand against the wall.

Cold creeps higher with each step; Iseult still wears her flimsy silk gown, though it is torn at the hem and one sleeve is half ripped away. She has no memory of when that might have happened. One moment she was on the balcony, the next she was swarmed by Hell-Bards and carried across the palace.

Now she is here, reaching the end of a secret stairwell cloaked in the magic of the Rook King—and she has no doubt this was the Rook King’s work. At least partially, for as light filters onto the final steps and a cave opens up before her, Iseult glimpses a worn carving in the stone: two birds, side by side.

But are they owls, Esme had once asked, referring to ancient statues in the Contested Lands, or are they rooks? Iseult hadn’t understood the significance of those animals then, and she doesn’t understand it now.

All she knows is that the Rook King had been a Paladin—a real flesh-and-blood man. And somehow he must be bound to these stones just as he is bound to the Monastery. Except Iseult doesn’t think it is merely a ghost that haunts here.