“I heard of the engagement,” I said, intrigued despite myself. “I had always wondered what brought it about.” Kion rarely made arranged marriages. Possessions and titles were passed down through the matriarchal line, so their women often had a say in who they married.

The bone witch closed her eyes, as if done with the conversation. “I can feel him, Kalen,” she said after a moment. “He’s here in the palace.” She strode to the still-cowering emperor, and her voice rose. “Where do you keep him, maggot? If you have shorn so much as a strand of white hair from his head, you will regret it for days.”

The Daanorian noble cringed. The Dark asha’s hand whipped through the air, and he sank back, crying out in pain.

“The prisons,” he gasped. “The prisons!”

The asha’s eyes hardened. She stepped toward the fallen man and crouched. “You will stay here until I return,” she said. “You will not move or blink from the moment I step out of the throne room until the moment I step back in. If you so much as twitch, I shall twist your insides and roll out your entrails like a royal carpet, and you will die as you choke on your own liver, your heart in my fist.”

The emperor said nothing and remained stock-still, his eyes round with fear.

And then, inexplicably, the asha began to laugh. “You are powerless. You are powerless! You are nothing more than an illusion. Oh, the irony!” She pushed him, sending him sprawling back to his corner. “If I find him harmed in any way, Your Majesty, I shall make good on my promise to gut you.”

The aeshma plodded nearer, settled itself at the base of the throne, keeping a languid, lazy eye on the dethroned noble.

Kalen rose as well. “I will search for the princess, and I will ask the soldiers about the blight. There might have been more sightings.”

The asha nodded. “Follow me, Bard. There is someone I would like you to meet.”

I followed her down the hallway and into an unused wing of the palace. The asha knew the way; she drew a sword and a locked wooden door shattered under its blow. Darkness beckoned us in. She led me down to the dungeons, and I shuddered to think of what we might find there.

But only one of the cells was occupied. Its prisoner sat, unblinking, as the asha moved closer. Even in the gloom, his heartsglass shone a blinding silver that was a light all on its own.

“This is Khalad, Bard,” the asha said. “The first-born son of Odalia, the former crown prince of House Wyath, and Heartforger to the Eight Kingdoms.”

Khalad stared up at us from underneath a shock of white hair—though he was still a young man, no older than Lord Kalen—with eyes almost the same shade as his heartsglass.

“What took you so long?” he asked quietly.