Iseult reached Corlant, her blade stretched and ready. She would end him quickly. Finish the nightmare that had entrapped her mother for so long. Except that when she reached Corlant, when her sword hit the place where his skin should have been …

It pierced right through.

Magic hissed over her, and with yawning horror, she realized she’d fought a glamour. He’d taken that power too, off a Nomatsi from the camp. Corlant’s laughter slid into her ear. Cold as he always was. “Find me, Iseult. If you want to kill me, you have to find me.”

She spun about, but there was no one in the tower. No Corlant—and no Caden either. Shit, shit, shit.

In moments, she was outside. Snow blasted, and storm winds hurled, but Iseult was ready. Six Hell-Bards immediately fell into position around her, exactly like her guards had at the Pragan palace. Their faces were veiled in snow, their Threads unfeeling thanks to Iseult’s control.

And as she’d hoped, the storm silenced as soon as the Hell-Bards moved around her. No winds, no snow, no threat—for Corlant’s storm was magical, and the Hell-Bards were immune.

It wasn’t a permanent solution against Corlant, but all she needed was time to find him.

She sent out her senses, reaching with the power and connection of a hundred Hell-Bards. Of fifty dark-givers finally freed from stone. But Corlants’s Threads swelled so far now; there was no telling where he ended and the rest of the world began. It was as if he’d sprouted roots, the Threads shooting out and down, digging into the soil.

Or as if the soil feeds him. When she’d seen his storm forming, she’d thought he had claimed his power from the very earth itself. Just as Portia had once done to build her Loom, where the Threads of Sirmaya were closest to the surface.

“Aren’t you coming?” Corlant whispered. “Or is your Hell-Bard friend not enough to entice? I can take the light-bringer too. She is so near—”

“Don’t touch her,” Iseult snarled, and immediately she sent out a new command: Protect Safi. Six Hell-Bards shot off toward the forest. Toward the brilliant colors of her Threadsister—now beside a fallen emperor. And as the Hell-Bards ran, Iseult ran too.

“Closer,” Corlant purred. “Closer, closer.”

She hopped roots and ducked under branches, her Hell-Bard guardians moving in perfect synchrony around her—and the rest of her army moving too. Corlant would not touch Safi. She would crush him with Hell-Bard bodies he could not maim. She would break and bend him as he had tried to do to her. And as he had succeeded with so many others.

Safi canted against the storm, crossing a small clearing where fallen trees had opened up the sky.

Wrong, wrong, her lens warned with each step. False, false.