The door closes behind me, and though I can’t see Heron or Blaise, I still feel their presence.

For a moment, Cress and I only stare at one another across the room, silent.

Then, slowly, she pushes herself up to stand and steps down from the dais, lifting the skirt of her gown gingerly to avoid tripping. She snaps her fingers, the sharp sound echoing in the quiet space, and in an instant the girl is on her feet, hurrying to keep up with Cress even as tears stream down her face.

“I knew you’d come, Thora,” Cress says to me, her gaze unwavering and unsettling as she steps toward me, the heels of her slippers tapping against the tile floor, followed by the scuffle of the girl’s. “It’s good to see you, you know. Here. In the flesh. I thought you were dead for so long—I don’t know that I really believed you weren’t until this moment.”

The way she’s looking at me, gray eyes glassy and faraway, seeing everything and nothing, is disconcerting. I’m suddenly not entirely sure I’m not a ghost, haunting her into madness.

Before I can speak, she continues, her voice even and conversational. “You said once that I would go as mad as the Kaiserin. Do you remember?” she asks, stopping a few feet from me.

“Yes,” I say, finding my voice. “But Kaiserin Anke had no choice in her fate. The Kaiser forced it on her at every turn. Maybe I could have found pity for you before, when you first became Kaiserin, but after the Fire Mine, after everything you’ve done since…you chose this, Cress. If you’re looking for pity from me, you won’t find it.”

She laughs, but the sound is weak. “I don’t want pity, Thora.” She pauses, tilting her head to one side. “You haven’t come here for a truce, no matter what we pretend. No. You’ve come here to kill me, haven’t you?”

I don’t deny it.

She laughs, a sound that I think will haunt my nightmares.

“You’re wasting your time,” she says.

I square my shoulders and draw fire to my palms, but she only watches, curious yet unbothered. She grabs the girl’s arm and pulls her in front of herself, eliciting a cry of pain.

“Yes, yes,” Cress says, waving a dismissive hand. “Very impressive, I assure you. And, of course, I felt what you did to Dagm?r and my other girls.”

“You wanted to finish this like ladies, you said,” I tell her. “I don’t imagine you mean to offer a truce.”

She smiles. “No, of course not,” she says. “You should know better than anyone that Kalovaxians don’t deal in truces.”

“Then why bring me here at all?” I ask her.

Her smile fades at that. “I told you,” she says. “Because you’re wasting your time. Now put those fires out.”

“Why? So you can attack me?” I ask her. “That’s why you brought me here, isn’t it?”

She rolls her eyes but doesn’t deny it. “Because there’s no point in killing me,” she says. “This…gift or whatever you’d like to call it—it’s already doing that.”

My hands droop to my sides without me meaning to, and the flames stutter out, but she makes no move against me. I feel a whisper of movement at my back—though whether it’s Blaise or Heron I can’t be sure. I struggle to make sense of Cress’s words.

“Are you saying you’re mine-mad?” I ask her. It shouldn’t be possible. Cress has never set foot in a mine. But I remember Mina’s explanation, how full pots boil over. And Cress’s power has always been strong—stronger than mine, maybe even stronger than Blaise’s. And unlike the two of us, she has never exercised caution in using it.

Yet those who are mine-mad don’t sleep, and Cress does—I’ve seen her in dreams. You can’t dream if you’re awake. Except…except those dreams always took place in or near the palace, always somewhere she could have really been. Only different, twisted. But if Cress is mine-mad, her mind may be fractured enough to distort her reality.

“How long have you been hallucinating?” I ask her quietly.

She holds my gaze, blinking languidly. “Since you gave me the poison,” she says. “Sometimes I think it’s a dream. Or a nightmare. But it can’t be.”

“Because you don’t sleep,” I surmise.

“No,” she says. “Ironic, isn’t it? You’ve come here, prepared to kill me, but the truth is you killed me a long time ago. It’s just taking its time, eating away at me slowly. Painfully. I didn’t know you had that kind of cruelty in you, Thora.”

“Theodosia,” I say, the name forcing its way from my lips even though I can’t make sense of anything else she’s saying. This much, at least, I know. “My name is Theodosia.”

She must know that by now; she must have heard it, in whispers and shouts in the streets. Hearing it from me, though, she smiles.

“It’s pretty,” she says. “But it doesn’t suit you. You’ll always be Thora to me.”

I can’t bring myself to be surprised by her words, but they hurt all the same. I think I would have liked to hear her call me by my name just once.

With a heavy heart, I draw flames to my hands once more, and Cress stares at them, lips pursed. Finally, she turns her attention back to my face, a wry smile on her lips.

“Come now,” Cress says, bringing both hands onto the girl’s shoulders and holding her tightly. “You’ll do what you feel you must, but surely you don’t want the girl to see that. She reminds me of you, you know. Her name is Adilia.”

I let my gaze drop and meet the girl’s frightened eyes. I know my own strength, know my precision. I remember how, in the middle of the fire at the Air Mine, I could control the flames as easily as I could move my fingers. If I tried, I’m fairly sure I could kill Cress without hurting Adilia. But fairly sure doesn’t seem sure enough.

“Why don’t we send her off to her family first?” Cress suggests. “They’re not far. And I’m certain they would love to see their Queen, too—they spoke of you often enough, you know. Sowing rebellion here in my city, making nasty little plots.”

Her voice takes on a dangerous edge that prickles over my skin. I feel Blaise and Heron move closer, preparing for something, but none of us seems to understand what it is.

A chill creeps down my spine. “Where are they?” I ask.

Instead of answering, she holds out a hand, beckoning me. “Come,” she says, before turning around and walking toward one of the doorways out of the throne room, dragging a crying Adilia with her. I know that pathway—it’s the one that leads to a balcony overlooking the gray garden.

When she senses I’m not following, she turns to look at me over her shoulder, a disconcerting smile on her lips.

“Come,” she says again, a demand and not a request. “You and I are going to play a little game.”

“And if I don’t want to play?” I ask, barely trusting my voice.

She lifts a shoulder in a shrug. “Then I’ll kill them all,” she says, pushing open the door.

I feel like my feet are made of iron as I follow her toward the door, fearful of what awaits me on the other side, but I force myself forward. It’s a comfort to know that Heron and Blaise are behind me, a comfort to know I’m not in this alone, but when I reach the doorway, I realize that, alone or not, it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter at all.

Because when I step out onto the balcony and follow her to the railing, I see below that the garden is so full of Astrean palace slaves that I can’t begin to count them. Many are weeping, their cries filling the air. Some are barely old enough to walk, held aloft in their parents’ arms.

And standing around us, at each window that overlooks the garden, is one of Cress’s wraiths, ten in all, dressed in black, each with a glass ball in hands held out over the crowd, the inside of the balls glittering with the unmistakable opalescent shimmer of velastra.

ALL I CAN DO IS stare at the thousands of people gathered below, at the threat hanging over their heads. Directly below each window, a single Astrean stands alone, a gleaming dagger in their hands. Each of their ten faces is terrified and confused—they have no idea what they’ve been chosen for. Maybe they even thought that being given a weapon was a lucky thing, but I see them for what Cress has truly made them: human weapons, puppets awaiting strings.

How delicate those balls of glass are, held above their heads—once they are dropped and they break, the gas will disperse and the velastra will take hold. It’s more poison than she gave Laius, more than I thought she could make, but here it is. Cress said that the poison couldn’t spread the way she wanted it to yet, but even if each ball only has enough velastra to take hold of the one person with the dagger, I can’t let myself find out what kind of havoc those ten people can wreak. All of those thousands of others trapped in the garden, unarmed and untrained. They are lambs awaiting slaughter, and they haven’t the slightest idea.