The thunder is close to breaking when we cross the greensward to the shore where Fen is guarding Dette. I glimpse my diamond vial strung on the chain around its neck. The swirling green and purple contents sparkle even though the sky is thick with dark rain clouds.

The cat crouches when it sees us, fur bristling, and I call, “Fen, do you want to be free of that chain?”

Changing from alarm to nonchalance in an instant, it straightens, ambles, pauses with one front foot in midair, and regards me thoughtfully. As if deciding what to do with the half-raised paw, it brings it to furry lips and licks the thick pad.

“You can’t defeat him,” it says. “I’ve tried.”

“Well, perhaps you can try again.”

It looks away with a flick of its tail—the feline equivalent of a shrug.

“You don’t mind being his jailer and errand-runner?” I ask.

“The beds are soft and warm, the meat is rare, and I have free roam of the tower. Before, I could only go as far as the tree line.” Fen indicates the nearest copse of trees with a tilt of its head.

“You can have free roam of all three kingdoms if you’ll let me have my vial back and help me free Princess Dette. But if you don’t, we’ll kill you.”

Fen gives Plover a cagey look and whispers, “Flee, you fool. When the mage comes, he’ll put the chain on you, too.”

“What is the chain made of?” I ask. “Why does it keep you captive?”

“Iron and silver. It weakens me and burns if I try to break it.” Fen regards me with mild curiosity. “Who are you to promise me the run of the kingdoms?”

“King Thede of Lazul is my father.”

“So, no one, then.”

Tiny raindrops begin to fall. “I have the power to commune with the dead. I’m also a lightning-wielder, and there’s a storm coming. I met one of your kind before. A goblin in the form of a wolf. It saw fit to help me.”

“Well, Thedra of Lazul, a wolf sprite may come at your beck and call, but when unchained, I am loyal to only myself.”

“I respect that,” I reply. “I’m not one to stay confined inside walls myself, even when ordered.”

The goblin strolls to me and rubs its large, brindled body against my calves like a common house cat. “So far,” it purrs, “you’ve offered me no more than an empty promise.”

Neev goes down on her knees beside him and removes her gloves, taking hold of the chain around his neck. Her brow furrows with concentration and the silver sizzles in her palms. The chain jingles as it drops to the greensward.

“There,” she says. “The offer’s no longer empty. Take them to the lookout in the High Tower. But let me go first. He mustn’t know that I’ve betrayed him.”

The lookout is reached by way of a winding stair with a wooden door at the top. Gate and I follow Fen to the top. Plover and Dette stay behind in the hidden tunnel.

The door to the lookout is unlocked, and it swings open, revealing a round room with a conical roof supported by spiraling wooden rafters, like the inside of a nautilus.

Rothbart starts as the door hits the wall and turns toward us. I see a flash of fury cross his features at the sight of me freed of my chains, but he recovers quickly and makes a bow that manages to look both lazy and graceful. “Welcome, Highness.” He sweeps his arm to indicate the room. “It’s nothing like the lair Mora built for me in Lazul, but it serves its purpose.”

The way he uses my title is neither genuine nor obligatory. He makes it sound like mockery.

There’s a chair near one of the cluttered tables. It has chains on its arms and legs, and there’s a contraption attached to it that looks very similar to a siphon, the device used to drain off an elemental’s magic until they learn to control it. Ten thimble-shaped glass cups are attached to the chair’s arms for placing on fingertips. Coils lead to a long glass tube that ends in a diamond vial. I wince at the sight. Having my power drawn felt like having every hair in my body slowly removed through the nerve endings in my fingertips. I learned to wield it quickly as a result.

Neev is beside the window, looking at the chair with longing. Rothbart promised her this, after all. To help her control a power that scars her every time she loses control of it. She knows he’ll never keep his promise now. I wish I could squeeze her hand and comfort her, but I can’t.

“Fen, what have you done with my other prisoners?” asks Rothbart, fixing the goblin with his gaze. His tone is gentle, but his eyes are dark and glittering, like a shark gone mad with bloodlust. “I only see one.”

“Fen is subject to me now,” I say. “Temporarily, anyway.”

“Don’t you know goblins are temperamental and unpredictable?”

“Yes, but I don’t like putting things in chains.”

“And what of Dette?” he asks. “Don’t you know she can’t leave Lebed?”

“She can’t leave until you’re dead,” I say. “Rather different, isn’t it?”

He gives me a cold smile. “Thedra, if you think that’s all the defense I’ve created, you’re even less discerning than I thought.”

“I know about the curse on Neev,” I say. It’s difficult to admit, given that it’s all I’ve thought of since I left Lazul. “But unless you want to die, you’ll return with me to face the high court’s judgment.”

He sighs like a teacher disappointed by a wayward student. “I’ll only make this offer once more. Join me. You love both my captives. And surely a woman with your power doesn’t want to be queen of a freezing, dull land like Lazul.”

“No one who has seen the Glittering Caves or the cliffs on the coast of the Sapphire Sea would call Lazul dull,” I say, keeping my voice even. “You call me undiscerning. Why would I join you or trust you when you killed my mother?”

I nod to Neev, who swings the window open, letting in the rain and wind. My fingertips and palms crackle, and the ends of my hair float away from my body. I don’t need my vial in a storm like this, but I open it anyway, if only for the ritual of it. Gate has an arrow aimed at Rothbart, but he doesn’t release it, and I know he’s thinking of what happened to Plover and Ibis and the guard on the pass. Don’t shoot until his back is to you, I told him in the library. You’re no good to me dead.

A snap of my fingers sets my lightning free, and it rolls about the circular tower in the shape of a fiery purple ball, then leaps from floor to ceiling, spreading like a tree’s branches. I move my hands in a serpentine motion and it twists and spirals at my command. I’m careful to keep it from hitting any of my companions, but I let it strike and shatter the glass phials and beakers, bottles, and books.

I sweep both hands at Rothbart, but he has a spell of his own ready, the same one he used against me in the forest. He forces the lightning back to me, and I absorb it, controlling the channel easily. But now we’re at an impasse in the small room. We circle with the crackling electricity between us. My clothing hisses with static, and the arm where I was wounded in Thornewood begins to ache.

Thunder crashes as the rain breaks in earnest, and a lightning flash brightens the room. I stretch my right arm toward the window and hook two fingers in a beckoning U-shape, snaring it. I throw it at Rothbart before he can react, and it knocks him backward into one wall and breaks the connection between us. Quickly, I summon my lightning back into its vial.

Rothbart drops to his knees and collapses to the floor. His eyes are closed, but I know he’s not dead because his chest is rising and falling. I walk around his inert body, giving it a wide berth. I have the chain of silver thread I took from Fen in my cloak’s pocket and I take it out, moving closer. The chain is alive in my hands, moving like liquid silver. It seems to know what I want—to restrain Rothbart. Perhaps it always wants to bind and restrain, regardless of who or what is being bound.

Neev is still at the window, and I motion for her to stay where she is. One of Rothbart’s hands is on his chest, and it seems to be where he took the brunt of the strike because I can see a spidery burn. As I kneel to loop the chain around his wrist, he lunges and grabs me.

I snap my fingers as he pins me to the floor and we roll over and over in a web of electric shocks. We land with him on top, and he grapples with me for the vial, trying to pry it out of my grasp.

“Gate, shoot him!”

“I might hit you!”

“It doesn’t matter!”

Gate releases the arrow, and it hits Rothbart in the back. He arches upward, screaming, and I try to scramble out from beneath him, but he’s too heavy. He reaches back and grasps the arrow with both hands, pulling it out with a sickening sound of tearing flesh. This would mean death for most mortals. Everyone knows not to remove an arrow that way, but Rothbart has been draining Dette’s healing power for himself, and he merely flexes his shoulder, wincing.

“I’m going to drain you to a husk,” he says, stepping toward me.

In the same instant, Fen changes into his goblin form and wraps around Rothbart’s legs, tripping him. I hear a light step, and Neev crosses the room in a few seconds. I’d forgotten how fast she is. In a blur of motion, she stoops and twists the vial from my hand, uncorking it.

“No,” I whisper. No. You headstrong, foolhardy girl. That’s not what I meant when I said to run.

Once again, I am back in Thornewood, with its dying trees and sickly rot. I can smell decayed leaves. And once again, there is nothing I can do.

I crawl toward her, but she throws herself at Rothbart before I can reach her, grabbing him around the neck. It resembles an embrace, a daughter thanking her father, and for a terrible moment I’m afraid she has betrayed me again, but then I hear him exclaim with rage and pain.

I hear and smell the sizzle of burning flesh, and Rothbart puts his hands around Neev’s wrists, trying to pry them away from his throat. He’s making a horrible sound, something between a gurgle and a scream. Neev’s wrists are tiny, barely larger than a little girl’s, and I’m afraid he’s going to break them, but they burn his hands so badly that he lets go. The air around Neev is shimmering, building to a terrible fission.

Rothbart’s skin and eyes are melting too quickly for the greenhealing he stole from Dette to repair them, and he rasps something I can’t make out.

At the last second, before the room goes white hot with her rage and power, Neev forces his mouth open, her fingertips leaving livid burns on what’s left of his lips and face. She tips the vial into his mouth and places both hands on his chest, infusing him with one last dose of her power. He staggers backwards as another bolt from Gate’s crossbow lodges in his chest.

Rothbart doesn’t implode the way the sylph in Thornewood did. My power combines with Neev’s and he ignites, little bursts of blue flame kindling all over him until he bursts into flame. His body shatters like the bombs of glass and phosphorous created by our palace elementals. Neev spins away from him with the grace of a dancer and I tuck my knees and roll out of the way. 

Long before I can hear or see, I begin to crawl toward where I saw Neev fall. She is reclined on her side almost peacefully, like a girl who has fallen asleep while reading in a spring glade. I turn her over and take her hands, kissing her poor, ruined palms. I stroke her face and for the first time I’m not struck by her otherworldly heat. Her body is cooling, and she is fading, out of existence, out of time.

She blinks at me, slowly. “Mortal troth. I hoped it wasn’t real.”

I stare at her desperately, wanting to beg her to stay with me. “Why did you do that?” I demand instead. “You did it wrong. You were supposed to run if things went sideways!”

“I always knew what I’d do. I may not be a sovereign, but I...”

She doesn’t finish the sentence, but I know what she means, and I’m wrenched with the indignity of our parting after all of this.

“No,” I grit out. “Not you. Stay with me.”

She gives me a small, sad smile.

I know I’m running out of time, and talking quickly, I say, “I’ve died before. It sounds mad but the night of my death ceremony, Zori killed me. That’s how I got the scar. You’ll wake on the shore beyond this world. But I’ll find you. I’ll cross the Endless Sea. I love you, Neev. I—"

I don’t finish my sentence because her head has fallen backward, her mouth gone slack. Her gray eyes stare past me at nothing, and now she fades in earnest. First her extremities, then her limbs, and finally her entire body.

In a matter of seconds, I am sitting beside her empty clothing, in a tower ravaged by fire, rain, and lightning.