But it hurts, bleeding hells, it hurts. The Nightbringer takes my hand. “Pour the pain into me, child,” he says. “Turn it away from yourself.”

His words unleash a flood. Even as the burden of my wound transfers to him, he does not flinch. He does not move at all, his cloaked form a statue as he accepts it. My skin stitches itself back together, burning with an ache that makes me cry out.

A blade hisses as it leaves its sheath. “What the bleeding hells did you do to her?”

The Nightbringer turns to Avitas and gestures. Immediately, Harper drops the scim as if burned.

“Look.” The jinn moves, nodding down to my wound, which is now nothing but a star-shaped scar. It weeps blood, but it will not kill me.

Harper’s low oath tells me that I will soon have a great deal of explaining to do. But I can worry about that later. My body is exhausted, but when the Nightbringer releases me, I make myself sit up.

“Wait,” I whisper. “Will you tell her of this?” He knows of whom I speak.

“Why would I tell her? So that she can attempt to kill you again? I am not her servant, Blood Shrike. She is mine. She attacked you against my orders. I have no patience for defiance, thus I have thwarted her.”

“I don’t understand. Why would you help me? What do you want from me?”

“I am not helping you, Blood Shrike.” He stands and gathers his robes. “I am helping myself.”

* * *

When I wake, night has fallen, and the rafters shudder with reverberations of catapult projectiles. The Barbarians must have recommenced their bombardment of Navium.

I am alone in my room, but my armor is hung neatly from the wall. A curse slips through my lips as I rise. My wound has gone from deadly to irritatingly painful. Stop whinging. Get your armor on. I limp to the wall, every joint as stiff as an old woman’s in deep winter. I hope a few minutes on my feet will warm up my body enough that I can at least ride.

“Off to get yourself killed again so soon?” The familiar rasp is so unexpected that I don’t believe I’m hearing it at first. “Your mother would be appalled.”

Cook perches in the window as usual, and even with the hood, even though I’ve seen her scars before, the violence of her mangled face is jarring enough that I look away. Her cloak is ripped, her shock of white hair a bird’s nest. The yellow stains on her fingers tell me immediately who has been leaving clay statues in the Commandant’s quarters.

“I heard you got stabbed.” The Cooks drops into the room. “Thought I’d come yell at you for allowing it to happen.” She shakes her head. “You’re a fool. You should know better than to walk alone at night within a hundred miles of the Bitch of Blackcliff.”

“And leave you to kill her?” I snort. “Hasn’t worked out well for you, has it? All you’ve done is left a few disturbing statues in her quarters.”

Cook grins, an eerie thing. “I’m not trying to kill her.” She does not elaborate. Her gaze drops to my stomach. “You haven’t thanked me for murdering the other assassins who were coming for you. Or for telling Harper to stop squinting at reports so he could drag your carcass to safety.”

“Thank you,” I say.

“I trust you know that sun-eyed bastard wants something from you?”

I don’t waste time asking how she knows the Nightbringer healed me. “I don’t trust him,” I tell her. “I’m not a fool.”

“Then why did you let him help you? He’s planning a war, did you know? And he’s likely got a part in it for you. You just don’t know what it is yet.”

“A war.” I sit up. “The war with the Karkauns?”

Cook hisses, snatches a candle off a table near the door, and throws it at my head. “Not that war, stupid! The war. The one that’s been brewing since the day my idiot people decided it would be wise to attack and destroy the jinn. That’s what this is all about, girl. That’s what the Commandant is up to. It’s not just the Karkauns she wants to defeat.”

“Explain yourself,” I say. “What are you—”

“Get out of here,” she says. “Get far away from the Commandant. She’s set on taking you down, and she’ll have her way. Go to your sister. Keep her safe. Keep that emperor of yours in check. And when the war does come, be ready for it.”

“I must take down the Commandant first,” I say. “This war you speak of—” A step sounds in the hallway beyond the door. Cook leaps into the window, one hand coiled around the frame. I notice something strange about that hand. The skin is smooth—not young like mine, but not the skin of a white-haired granny either.

Those dark blue eyes pin me. “You want to take down the Bitch of Blackcliff? You want to destroy her? You have to become her first. And you don’t have it in you, girl.”

XXVI: Laia

I am fuzzy-headed and confused when I pull on my boots. I’ve slept all day—such strange dreams I had. Wonderful, and yet— “Laia!” Musa’s voice is a low hiss at the door. “Bleeding hells, are you all right? Laia!”

The door bursts open before I can get a word out, and Musa takes two steps in and grabs my shoulders, as if to make sure I am real.