When Neev has gone back to her room, I bathe and dress and explore the palace, this time alone.

I wander through echoing corridors and rooms of trees filled with chattering sylphan courtiers who nod and regard me curiously as I pass them before returning to their storytelling or singing or feasting. When I stray into a library piled floor to ceiling with precarious towers of leather and canvas bound books, scrolls, and maps, I’m surprised to find Gate there, visiting with Plover again. Gate’s seated sideways in a high-backed chair with his cloak draped over one armrest, looking up at Plover, who is perched on the high back.

They look so comfortable together that I’m slightly taken aback. Gate wears the same expression I’ve seen on his face when he flirts with servants and palace guards back home. I sigh and start to turn away, leaving him to it, but he stands up. “Wait, Highness! I need to talk to you.”

I put my hands behind my back as I approach. “Good morning. How do you feel, Plover? Gate said you had too much to drink last night.”

Plover grins, showing his sharp canines. “I’m well, thank you. Sylphs aren’t affected like humans when we imbibe, unless we’ve had gallons and gallons.”

“That’s lucky.”

He shrugs. “I should be going. My family will want me to spend second feast day with them. But I’ll see you both soon.”

He touches Gate’s arm with a familiar air before he leaves and I widen my eyes, but Gate says, “Don’t.”

“Why? I’ve teased you for flirting a hundred times back home. What’s different this time?”

“What’s different is he’s not human. I don’t know their customs. For all I know, if I kiss him, I’ll have entered a marriage contract for a thousand years.”

I laugh. “Sylph culture isn’t that different. And some clans have laws against intermarrying with humans, so there’s that.”

“But Empress Akina and King Cygnus...”

“I know. They took a risk for power. What did you want to talk to me about? Not sylph marriage customs, surely.”

He rolls his eyes. “No, definitely not that. There’s something I need to tell you about the night we came here. I assume you don’t remember.”

I shake my head. I can’t remember anything after I passed out in Thornewood and had the dream—vision?—of Thorne. It’s strange to have such a huge gap in my memory, and I don’t want to talk about it. It makes me feel weak. “What about it?”

“It’s about how Neev got us in. When we arrived, they’d already closed the gates for autumn.”

“But if they were closed, how’d we get in?”

“That’s just the thing. I don’t know. It was late and the guards couldn’t hear us calling. But Neev, she just...opened them. She walked through and I followed her, carrying you.”

“You must be mistaken. No human can open the sylphan gates.”

“Right. No human.”

I place my hands on my hips. “Gate, if you’re thinking something, why don’t you just say it?”

“I don’t know what I’m thinking. It was strange, that’s all. You should be wary of her.”

“Because you can’t tell the difference between a locked and unlocked gate?”

“It was lock—” He cuts off halfway through the word and puts his head back, growling in frustration.

“Don’t sow enmity just because you don’t understand something that happened after you drank from a cursed river in an enchanted forest.”

Gate throws his hands up, looking away from me. “Typical.”

“You already told me you were all in for this, so stop questioning my decisions. Neev is trustworthy.”

“Because you slept with her last night? Too bad that grace doesn’t extend to me.”

“Stop it.” I force myself to speak at a normal register, even though I want to scream at him. “Why are you always so rude and insubordinate?”

Gate shoots out of his chair and gets in my face. “Because I don’t care how nice you want me to be! I don’t need you, future queen. Have your father dismiss me, see if I care. I can make my own way, with my own power.”

I stand my ground, my lips trembling with fury. “Then why are you still here?”

“Because you promised to pay me double what your father offered. A princely sum, by the way.”

The urge to shove him is so unbearable I take a step back rather than give in to it. “Wonderful. I’m in love with my left hand and bound to my right by coin alone. Perfect.”

“You’re responsible for this, Thedra. Own it.”

“I am owning it. Get in line or go home, Agate. I don’t care anymore.”

He swipes his cloak from the chair he was sitting in and throws it around his shoulders with a flourish, dripping with attitude. “I’ll see you when we leave.”

He departs with a thump of boots and a flash of blue and gold, and I collapse into the vacant chair, surrounded by ancient books and scrolls. I bury my face in my hands. One night. I had one happy night with the girl I like, and I’m plunged back into uncertainty and conflict. If I survive this journey, if I take the throne of Lazul, is this what the rest of my life will be? Questioning everything, trusting no one?

Gate has to be wrong. Never mind that I’m so sure of this because I can’t bear to have no one in my corner, no one in whom I can truly trust or confide. I can’t bear the thought of being all alone with my duties, like my mother, who had a treacherous lover, and only her plants for company.

The second of the two sylphan guards leading us to the pass behaves in a cross, wary manner, even though the corruption of Poison Forest doesn’t reach this far. His name is Ibis. He’s brawny for a sylph, and both he and Plover are armed with bows and arrows and daggers. He keeps eyeing my diamond vial until I tell him it has nothing to do with raising the dead.

Necromancy is purely mortal magic, the work of mages and corpse-wielders. They can be mortally wounded, but sylphs naturally live many lifetimes longer than we do. Although they use greenhealing for illness, it’s easier for them to accept their mortality. Besides that, they don’t worship a goddess of death.

Neev and I walk beside one another, holding hands. The clothes she stole from me back in Lazul were ruined by the time we left the forest, but she still has on my second pair of well-worn riding boots, and the sylphs outfitted her with new gloves of tanned hart hide, breeches, and a light summer cloak.

Plover doesn’t share his companion’s fear. He slogs on with cheerful purpose, fully recovered from his night of too much honeysuckle mead. When he launches into a walking song, Ibis cuffs him playfully. “No one wants to hear that. There’s a reason you’re an archer and not a bard.”

“May I ask you something?” I say.

“Of course.”

“Why are you named Plover, instead of...I don’t know, Bunting, or Grosbeak? Plovers are gray and white, but your wings are such a brilliant indigo.” I hope this isn’t a rude question. Suddenly I regret not paying better attention to my lessons in sylphan culture.

Thankfully, Plover doesn’t look offended. “My mother grew up near the sea. She says when I was a baby, my long legs and fuzzy feathers reminded her of a plover chick.” He brushes one of the tufts of his thick, soft wings. “Tell me,” he asks, nodding to Agate, who is striding ahead of us with the hem of his dark blue cape swirling about his ankles. “Does he always cut such an impressive figure?”

I roll my eyes. “Unfortunately for his ego and my patience, yes.”

Plover only smiles. He and Ibis walk together for a while, talking to one another in their tongue. It’s been four years since I had lessons, and my Zelenean is better, but I manage to decipher that Ibis is afraid and wishes he hadn’t volunteered. But he and Plover are flight partners, whatever that means.

The pass is less than two days’ journey from the palace, and we stop to camp in the canopy of a towering pine. When Agate sees the tree’s height, his face pales.

I can’t help taunting him a bit after our blow up back at the palace. “Don’t look so scared, Gate. It’s like the dream you gave me the first night I was so sick.”

“Yes, your dream, Highness. I’ll stay on the ground. Keep a lookout.”

Plover laughs. “You don’t have to climb it. We’ll fly you up there, secure you in a harnessed platform. We don’t expect you to sleep in trees the same way we do.”

Gate shakes his head. “I’m not ashamed to say I’m afraid. It’s madness to sleep so high. Mortals aren’t meant for it.”

Both guards laugh at him this time, twittering. Plover has been eyeing him when he’s not looking, and judging by the warmth in his eyes, he’s not put off by Gate’s fear. He only thinks it’s cute.

“What’s madness is staying on the ground,” says Ibis gruffly. “That’s where night things with sharp claws and tearing teeth hunt creatures like us. Come.”

Without further ado, they each take one of his arms and launch into the air, leaving the ground far behind in the space of a few wingbeats.

We sit next to one another on a sturdy branch as we watch the sylphs assemble the platforms and tents. I can see Neev foraging a short distance from camp. The branch we’re seated on is stout enough to serve as the central beam for a great hall, but Gate is still white as a sheet, and he puts his head between his knees with every breath of wind.

The platforms are made from mats of lightweight wood that interlock and unroll into a solid base. Canvas sides are attached and the whole apparatus is secured with a series of intricately woven knots and ropes. There are even windows that can be rolled up, if one fancies looking out over the edge of a precipice or a towering tree. It’s a far cry from our cold and hungry nights in Thornewood.

“Finished.” Plover clutches the tree trunk, wedging his foot into the notch of a narrow branch. “Don’t worry. We’ve done this a thousand times.”

“But...they move,” says Gate.

“Better they sway with the tree’s dance than catch the wind and break or blow away.”

Gate moans into his knees, his voice muffled. “Ohhhh, Zori, dark goddess, spare me.”

Neev and I sleep on one platform, and Gate stays in the other, lower one. Ibis and Plover perch comfortably on two sturdy branches between us, wings fluffed for warmth and balance. They are playing a game that looks similar to one we call Wolf and Sheep in Lazul, but their white figures are chicks and the black piece is a kestrel.

Gate whimpers every time the wind gusts, and Neev and I can barely stifle our giggles at him. She rolls up our window and peers out of it.

“Give yourself a sleepy spell,” she calls down to him.

“Yes,” I say brightly, “one with cake and pretty boys.”

“Useless,” he returns. It sounds like he’s going to be sick.

Plover flies down to him, and I hear him speaking gently. “Eat this. It will calm you. Do you want me to stay with you?”

Neev’s warm hand slips into mine, and I nestle my face against her shoulder. “The sylphs where I grew up don’t sleep in trees,” she says. “They live in caves and burrows.”

“Tell me more about where you grew up.”

“There were cows and workers threshing grain in autumn. My mother fed me sweet cream and strawberries in summer. And I swam in the springs and millponds.”

“Was the water warm?”

“Yes.” There’s a smile in her voice.

“What was your mother like?”

“Kind. And clever. She deserved better.”

“Did she have power, like you?”

“No.” She rolls onto her side to look at me. “Enough questions about me. What about you? Everyone knows your mother was Queen Mora, powerful shapeshifter, corpse-waker. But what was she like?”

“She was...” Tragic. Principled. Impossible to live up to. “Formidable. Her critics called her a haughty shrew, but she protected Lazul in the frost giant uprising. When I was six, my father’s cousin Gentian tried to have me killed because I hadn’t shown signs of being powered, and she thought I was a liability. And because she wanted the throne for her son.

“My mother uncovered the plot and had her stripped of her title and thrown in an oubliette until her execution. She was executed before all the court.” I grow quiet, dwelling on how someone like my mother could have been taken in by a man as deceitful and traitorous as Rothbart. But they all were, not just her.

“Did you know your father at all?” I ask, changing the subject.

“No. He left before I was born.”

Her voice has changed now. I prop myself up on my elbow to look at her, but she turns her face to the tent wall and grows quiet. Soon she’s asleep, but I lie awake looking at the stars through the window flap, thinking of the song the bard sung at the autumn feast. The one that made my throat ache.

I sleep in Neev’s arms with her head on my shoulder, and wake to her fingers stroking my hair. I blink at her sleepily, surprised when she kisses me on the lips.

“Good morning,” I say, wishing I could stay cozy beneath the blankets with her. We could wake like this every morning if...

“Sleep well?” she asks.

“Yes, when I finally dropped off. You?”

Her brow furrows. “Not really. The wind. I could hear things howling.”

“I heard nothing except Gate and Plover blathering and cackling like blue jays. Seems they hit it off.”

A covey of quail flies overhead as we’re washing in the stream. I’d love a roast quail for breakfast after eating sylphan food for a week, but the sylphs worship birds and some of their deities are avian, so when I see Agate reach for his crossbow, I stop him. Instead, we breakfast on boiled porridge, bread thick with seeds and dried fruit, and a coffee made of ground nutshells. Despite my cozy morning, I’m grateful to have my feet back on solid ground. Like Gate, I’d almost rather take my chances on the ground than sleep in a tree.

Gate passes me as we begin to ascend Frostmead to the pass. I whisper, “The tent wasn’t so bad after all, eh?”

He gives me a startled look, and I wish we had the easy camaraderie he and Neev have. “I was afraid,” he admits, “and it was a welcome distraction. He’s a better talker than some people I’ve been stuck traveling with the past weeks. You’re the ones who spent half the night talking about your parents, of all things. How romantic.”

“Plover’s nice,” I say, ignoring his meaningless jibes. “And a soldier, like you. Plus, he likes you.”

“He’s friendly. With all due respect, Your Highness, it’s madness for someone as frightened of heights as I am to fall in love with a sylph.”

“Don’t put yourself down, Gate,” says Neev, linking her arm through mine. “Lots of people hate heights. Anyone would be lucky to have you.”

“Ugh, don’t encourage him.”

“Did I or did I not save your life in Poison Forest?”

“I don’t remember,” I say honestly.

Gate throws his head back, groaning.

Frostmead rises around us slowly as we hike, an avenue of snow-capped peaks leading toward the basin that holds the Lake of Tears and Lebed, its lone isle. We reach the pass at midday. It’s high and narrow, and we carefully survey the rock face and the edge of the cliff, looking for signs of struggle, but wind and rain have washed away any trace of blood.

“I know this is where it happened,” says Ibis. “They burned the more mangled corpses here and took the rest back to Zelen for burial.”

“Here!” Neev comes out from behind a stack of rocks. “There’s a pile of ashes, and I think this is a cairn.”

Using a stick, I draw a large circle that encompasses both the ash and the cairn. Lighting a lantern, I speak the secret word beneath my breath. “By Zori’s power, I summon one of those who lies buried here. Awaken and speak.”

Nothing happens. Ibis is giving me a doubtful look, but Plover looks amused.

“I thought you passed the test, Your Highness,” says Gate, miffed.

“Believe me, I passed.” I think of the scar across my left breast, and how cold seeped through me as my blood flowed out onto the stone floor of the crypt. I can see the otherworldly brilliance of the shore beyond the world, on the other side of the Endless Sea.

Frigid cold falls within the circle, and the lantern’s flame snuffs out. My breath curls in little white wisps. Of course. That’s the key. Not just knowing the secret word, or the rituals. Anyone can do that. The true secret is having been dead one’s self.

Something begins to take shape at the far end of the circle, near the cairn. I hardly know what to expect. When I woke Zori in her tomb, it was too dark to see. I clasp my diamond vial, more from habit than for protection. Lightning is no weapon against a shade.

The body of a sylphan guard takes shape. His form is foggy and immaterial, like a miasma hanging over a body of water on an early morning. The shade blinks, looking around in confusion. The wind blows my hair and my cloak, but his don’t stir. He takes a few steps toward me, and I hear Ibis hiss. Behind me, I sense Plover has nocked an arrow—I can hear the stretch of the hart’s sinew as Plover pulls it taut and anchors the string. I put my hand up, motioning for him to stand down.

The shade’s gaze is on mine now. “Why did you call me? What do you want?”

“I am Thedramora, High Priestess of the Dead. Tell me how you died and what you saw.”

“The sorcerer—the mage. He came in the shape of a great bird, like an owl, but far larger and more fearsome. He set upon us with hooked beak and talons, then changed into a man. The horses were wild with terror, and they killed two of us. The mage transfigured them into monstrosities, and they died writhing.”

“Was there a young woman with him?”

“Yes. Half-sylphan. Brown-skinned.”

“Was she hurt?”

“I don’t know. I was one of the last he killed, but I was distracted. I stood raining arrows down on him from the rock, but he sent them back at me. I saw him go before I died. He changed into the bird again and took the woman, like an owl takes a vole. There.” He points beyond the pass, to the basin between the peaks that holds the Isle of Lebed. 

“Thank you.” I put my hand out, palm up. “Return to your rest.”

When the guard’s shade is gone, I look toward the crater lake where Lebed lies and give a cry of frustration. It’s another two days away, and we’ve lost so much time. My power seethes through me, making my hair crackle, my skin tingle. It feels useless. What I need is swiftness. Instant transport. 

Disconsolate, I give the lantern to Neev and smudge the circle I drew with the toe of my boot, making sure nothing can follow us from the realm of the dead.