“I asked who Kahina is, and I was expecting to draw at least one Paladin card. Not … these.”

“Why not? What do these mean?”

Ryber’s hand fell. The usual braid sprang free. “I don’t know,” she admitted, and Stix fought off a frown. It wasn’t Ryber’s fault the cards were confusing. It wasn’t Ryber’s fault they didn’t spell out a clear way to avoid Kahina or unlock the answers of the Ring. Stix and Stix alone had to figure it out if she wanted to get home—and that was all she wanted. Silence and home.

And maybe freedom for others too.

“Maybe,” Ryber said with a furtive glance toward the hall, “I can pull out the blade and glass once we’re back at the inn. We could use the glass on Kahina to see if she really is—”

“No.” The word rang out, louder than Stix intended. Colder and harder too. But she couldn’t help it. Even hearing those words, blade and glass, made her insides shrivel. Worse than when Kahina had gripped her. Worse than during her vision from the Ring.

“You don’t have to use the glass, Stix. I’ll be the one to look through.”

“No,” Stix repeated. Then again: “No, no, no. No blade, no glass, Ryber. We’re here to deal with my memories, and that’s it. Whatever Kahina wants, it doesn’t matter. She isn’t my problem. She isn’t yours.” Stix spun away and limped into the hallway, moving too fast for Ryber to argue. Too fast for the voices, always lurking behind her eye sockets, to awaken and lay claim.

No blade. No glass. Not her problem.

Stix had found the items inside the Sightwitch mountain. They had called to her, much like the voices did. Death, death, the final end. That was what the blade had seemed to sing, while the glass had crooned at her with promises. Just look through me, and you will get all the answers you need.

A lie. All Stix had seen when she’d peered through was her own death, borne on rook wings and gleaming beneath a silver crown. It had felt real because it had been real. That death had happened to one of these screaming voices inside Stix’s head, and now, whenever she closed her eyes too long, whenever she let her mind drift, whenever she slept, the memory was all that she could see.

She had wanted to leave the blighted items behind; Ryber had insisted otherwise. “They are too dangerous,” she’d said, and then she had explained to Stix what they were.

The glass allowed a person to find Paladins, to see which humans carried more than a single soul inside them.

And the blade could kill a Paladin, ending their reincarnation—silencing their multiple souls—forever.