Stix sighs. Why the Sleeper chooses to speak through an eight-year-old, she’ll never know—and why the goddess can’t speak more plainly is an old frustration, rounded at the edges.

“We need to go,” Rhian says, her fingers moving to Stix’s shoulder. A gentle gesture, for she knows how much Stix despises returning to Lovats’s court. The jade ring she always wears rubs against Stix’s silken sleeve. “The Exalted Ones will wonder where we are if we do not return soon. Lovats will wonder.”

Stix nods and lays the prophecy atop the others. Before she can exit Dysi’s workshop, however, the Sightwitch calls, “Wait. There’s one more. For you, Baile.” She gathers up Stix’s hand and curls a large page into her palm. “Like most of Lisbet’s declarations, I don’t know what it means. But perhaps you will. Perhaps one day it will save you.”

Stix bows her head. She will read it later, in privacy. Later when there is time.

It is several days before such a moment comes and she can tuck herself away in her quarters at Paladin’s Keep on the edge of Lovats’s lush granite city. On the top floor with the door locked and no one but her tabby to see, she unfurls the page—wrinkled from several days tucked within her bodice. Then she reads:

Three rules has she, our Lady of the Seas.

No whistling when a storm’s in sight.

Six-fingered cats will ward off mice,

And always, always stay the night for Baile’s slaughtering.

Stix came out of the memory gasping for air. Unlike the violence of other memories, this one had felt so calm. So simple, so real with Rhian beside her. One of the Six, Rhian had been a mothering type who had died the same day Baile had, when the Rook King had killed them all. Six turned on six and made themselves kings. One turned on five and stole everything.

“I understand,” Stix said. Then she pressed her head against the stone and thanked the past lives for finally answering her call. “I understand.”

“What happened?” Ryber asked beside her. “Did you see something?”

“Hye,” Stix murmured, and taking Ryber’s hand into hers, she glanced down at the tabby. “Are you ready?” The cat purred, and Stix smiled. Then she raised her foot and stomped once. Twice. Thrice.

The floor beneath them vanished. They dropped once more into the Ring—into a clashing of sound and humidity and rumbling rodent feet.

The flames of the Ring burst against Stix. So hot her heart compressed beneath them, her ears and skull felt pummeled in two. Or perhaps that was the rats, now surging toward her, climbing over her toes, up her body. But the night’s clouds had dispersed, revealing moonlight.

Revealing midnight.