After ensuring Caden would be properly tended and after ordering a search for Leopold, Zander, and Lev, still somewhere out there, Safi followed a guard to a corner tower where stairs descended into the frozen earth. Each step into candlelit darkness tingled against her skin. So mild at first, she thought she imagined it. Then hotter, itchier, until it burned in her eyes and scratched in her throat.

This was the acid of the Solfatarra. Poison on the skin, poison in the lungs. Safi coughed. Her magic frizzed inside her, and the Truth-lens frizzed against her chest too, as if this whole place was wrong, wrong, wrong.

Slivers of panic set in as she walked. No one should have to come here, no prisoner should have to endure. She passed several doors with haggard eyes behind rusted slots. Most of these people, she suspected, were innocents she could free. Anyone else would be moved and healed.

When at last her guard reached a door so narrow, so dark that she saw nothing through the slot, she snatched a weak lantern off the wall and ventured in. Orange light filtered over a long, rectangular space, like two coffins lined toe to head—and over a mound of rags at the back of the room.

The mound coughed, a vicious, solid sound from a throat that had coughed so long, it now had nothing but blood and phlegm to give. She slung the lantern onto a hook and darted forward.

“Uncle.” She grabbed hold of the rags. Here was a hand. Here was an arm. Here was a head, covered in matted hair. If not for the sulfur, his unwashed stench would be unbearable. “Uncle.” She dug her arms beneath his frail shoulders and tugged him upright.

He groaned, but did not resist. Could not resist, actually, and now fresh coughs laid claim to his broken lungs. Something warm hit Safi’s cheek. Spit, she hoped. Blood, she feared.

Eron’s face was hidden behind a beard; his eyes were crusted and fathomless. His clothes shimmered ever so slightly, as if they had once been clean velvet—finery worn at court before Henrick had turned on him.

“Laia,” he croaked.

Safi’s muscles locked. Paused in midlift at her mother’s name. Not once—not once—in Safi’s life had she heard her uncle say his sister’s name.

“Laia,” he repeated, and his fingers clawed into Safi’s forearms. “Why are you here?”

“I’m not…” Safi braced him into a seated position on damp stone. “It’s me, Safi. Your niece.”

He coughed, and more heat splattered Safi’s skin. Then he squinted and leaned in. Three inches he moved before he seemed to see. “No,” he exhaled. “You cannot be here.” With shocking strength, he tore free from Safi’s grip and scuttled backward against the wall. “Go away.” His voice was a splintered snarl. “Go away.”

“I’m here to free you.” Safi reached for him again.