“You did indeed.” Corlant’s Threads thrummed with pleasure. “And now I shall reward you. Follow.” He spun about, his movements pointed and long. Eager as a child going to claim dessert.

Iseult didn’t follow. Not right away. First, she gathered the noose with a bandaged hand and dropped it into a pocket on her new gown. Then she searched for her mother’s eyes across the tent. But Gretchya wouldn’t lift her head. Wouldn’t move at all. She was stone, stone, always made of stone.

Well, Iseult was made of stone now too.

She joined Corlant outside the tent, where the edge of night awaited. Fourth chimes, she guessed, though clouds blocked the sinking moon as Corlant led the way through slouching square tents.

Never in her life had she willingly followed Corlant anywhere. Now here she was, trailing behind him through this new Purist encampment. Daughter, my daughter.

Iseult saw no sign of the shadow wyrm’s silver Threads. Purists, however, were everywhere. Like flies to a corpse, they’d gathered in vast numbers. Dressed in brown and gray, their Threads muted and muffled by Cursewitchery, they all wore identical focus. Identical fervor. They followed orders from Corlant willingly, desperately, and at the sight of him, they dropped low, a bowing of bodies and chorus of “Blessed are the pure, blessed are the pure.”

They also recognized Iseult. Many smiled at her, a few bowed, and one elderly woman even grabbed her bandaged hands and kissed them.

It hurt.

“Bless you, daughter of Midne,” the woman said. “We have waited so long.”

Iseult observed her and everyone else without emotion, without interest. These people didn’t see Corlant for what he truly was, but their blindness was a willing one. Corlant had made no effort to hide his power. Anyone who’d seen him face off against Iseult must’ve realized what he could do.

“Why don’t these people care about your magic?” she asked. No inflection. No stammer. Stasis lived inside her, and if Corlant wouldn’t answer her questions about Threadstones, then she would attempt to leach out other information instead.

“What magic?” he countered, the lines on his forehead sinking inward with mock innocence. Then he laughed, a rose-tinted chuckle edged with gray pain. “Oh, naive child. People don’t want facts. They want feelings. And they don’t want truth. They want faith that someone is fighting for them. I”—he splayed his hand on his chest, the fingers chapped with cold—“am fighting for them.”

Iseult’s breath hiccuped ever so slightly. His words sounded like what Leopold had said only two weeks ago: How often do people make choices based on truth? Based on facts or what their logic tells them? Leopold had been right—the Purists alone were proof of that. But Iseult had no feeling; logic and facts had always been her guide.