Talon still sat slumped, but Gio saluted and Dabry nodded. Atlanta swallowed down the warm lump in her throat. She might have had this choice forced on her, and it might not be what she would have chosen—carnivorous butterflies were at least a highly melodramatic way to go, worthy of some lurid viddie, she thought—at least she was dying in good company, with people who were heroes in the real sense of the word. She wished she’d had longer to learn from Larsen.

She wished a lot of things. None of them to any avail at all.

Milly was returned, and looked as shaken as Gio, but also refused to talk about what Tubal Last had shown her about her fate.

And then Tubal Last sent for Niko.

Turo led her down the hallway. From what the others had said—they had compared details of the layout as much as possible, all the dry and mathematical and observational details they could use to wall off the emotional ones—it was a different hallway from the one that had led to the garden.

She wondered if perhaps they had been mistaken, because the final doorway did lead her into a garden after all.

But only for a second. This was a different space than the one the others had described. Underfoot, pea gravel crunched, interspersed with shaggy clumps of green fern. The ceiling shimmered in shades of pale green and blue, and the light was cool and muted, filtered by the long vines that hung from it, lined in curtains that created a maze.

Turo didn’t accompany her into the room, simply shoved her in and closed the door with a click that sounded final, decisive, and very locked.

Niko took a deep breath of the humid air. It smelled of moss and flowers. Bitter green notes and buttery ones, water that had been sitting swamp deep in a pool. A dragonfly flitted past and she followed it along a corridor of vines.

Tiny lizards ran up and down the vertical green, skittering away at her approach. When they were a safe distance, they paused and watched her, and did push-ups on their bright green forelimbs, staring without blinking. Something hooted somewhere, a simian rather than avian sound. She could hear no birds, but there was insect shrill and chirp as she moved along, and once something large slithered away, showing only as a slide of scarlet scales.

She had expected to find Tubal Last at the labyrinth’s heart. The sight of Petalia hit her like a blow to the chest, so hard she stopped her forward motion.