The king, shivering, uncertain, looked at Governor-Advisor.

Governor-Advisor laughed—a strange, forced sound. His worm tail grew pinker and hotter. “You’re no oracle-apprentice,” he said. “Not out of your chamber, out of your robes, away from the priests. You’re not to be believed.” He paused, wide brow widening, then added slowly, “And I would think the priests would be intrigued to learn their apprentice has arrived at the palace. Shall I send word?” he asked, gazing at her.

The king looked, too. The girl now appeared more like the servants who crouched before him. She did not seem so large.

“I think I will send word,” Governor-Advisor went on. “They will come fetch you, will they not? Or…” Again he studied the girl. “Perhaps they will not. Perhaps they’ll leave you here for as long as our hospitality lasts.”

“No harm must come to the heirs!” the apprentice cried. She was still loud, but she did not sound as much like mountains. She seemed to be searching for words. “Torments will follow… the one who… marks a scratch on their skin; agonies… agonies will swarm the one who pulls a hair from their heads. The man who, by his own hand… or, or.… the hands that he orders, presses a single bruise… on the flesh of the heirs will find himself racked with suffering, cursed with grief, plagued… with miseries untold!”

Though the girl sounded now more like the supplicants desperate to get what they wanted, the king still felt her words crawling over him. “What of my prophecy?” he hissed. “What of the words you first spoke to me?”

The girl appeared to wince. Governor-Advisor did not let her answer. “Enough!” he cried. “We have no need of you, Apprentice. No chamber, no priests, your words are worthless. Guard!” Sweeping across the room, he opened the door. “Bring her below.”

As the guard led her away, Alba heard the king pleading behind her, his words echoing out of the chamber.

“But what if she’s right, Governor-Advisor? What if she knows—”

Was that enough? A seed of uncertainty? Would her lie persuade him to stop searching? To let the children he’d taken go back to their homes?

The guard took her through one corridor; he turned her down another. Alba had never seen rooms so vast or marble so white. Everything gleamed, and what did not gleam was gilded so it, too, shone. But then, turning again, they began descending, and the gold and glinting marble turned to dirt and darkness.

Below, Alba realized as her eyes adjusted, was a maze of cells dug into the earth beneath the palace, each fitted with a heavy wood door. It smelled wrong. Not like soil, not even like the thick wet air of the oracle’s chamber. More like ash—something so lifeless and gray, she could taste it. Were there prisoners behind these doors? Listening, she thought she heard weeping that could only come from a child.