She angled away from him. Her hands hurt. She wanted to sit, wanted to stop straining her neck. And above all, she wanted Corlant to see she wasn’t afraid of him. At her cot, she sank down. Corlant followed, but did not sit—this man who had so easily defeated her magic. So easily frozen her alive from the inside out and who was somehow related to her by blood.

She supposed she did have his nose.

“Why do you want the Threadstones?” she asked, staring at the bandages on her hands. She had taken his sight; he had taken her touch.

“You stole the diary but did not read it?” His Threads shimmered with incredulity. Iseult knew if she glanced up, the trenches on his forehead would be deep.

“I didn’t have time. Not with your monster hunting me.”

“Ah. Then just think of what the Nubrevnans say: Why do you hold a razor in one hand? So men know that I am sharp as any edge. And why do you hold broken glass in the other? So men remember that I am always watching.” Another chuckle, but this time his Threads glinted with amusement turned inward. As if he’d made a joke only he could understand. “The Fury spent so long searching for the old tools, Iseult, but he had no idea what the Rook King had done. And the Rook King has no idea what I have done.”

“And what is that?”

“We take power as we need it, and no one can resist.” He directed those words toward Gretchya’s corner. Iseult did not look back. “It is the power of Midne.”

“It sounds more like the power of Portia.”

Now full-throated surprise flashed over Corlant’s Threads, and before Iseult could pull away, he had dropped to a seat beside her. He smelled of old blood and pine trees. “So you did read the diary. Where is it now?”

“Lost in the Solfatarra,” she lied. He was so close. Cloying in his closeness, overwhelming in his Threads. The yellow stain where his eye had been now stank. Fetid, rotting—it was not healing well.

“Luckily for you,” he said, “I recall most of it. There is much you can learn from me.”

“From you,” Iseult countered, using the moment to launch back to her feet. “Or from Eridysi, who actually wrote it?” She stared down at him, briefly taller.

And he smiled, though it did not reach his eye. “Your mother used to have a sharp tongue too, Iseult. It did not last.”

“And I am not my mother.”

“A good thing, for she was too weak to serve my purpose in the end.” Still sitting, he waved to Evrane. While the monk approached, Iseult finally glanced at her mother’s shadow.

Gretchya did not lift her head. She was made of stone. A stasis statue, as she’d always been.