Her mind ached. Her eyelids were too heavy to open. Each beat of her heart throbbed against her skull. Filling her lungs was like lifting a weight. She had to stop to rest her chest after a few breaths of air.

“Mama!” cried a very small voice. “She stopped breathing!”

She noticed the two tiny arms against her torso only after they had been pulled away. Then a larger hand was placed atop her sternum.

“She is breathing,” said a woman. “Be patient.”

Then Aletheia heard nothing but ringing in her ears. She was awake, but her body wasn’t her own, like her soul was trapped inside a corpse.

Then, suddenly, she groaned.

“I feel like I died,” she said slowly, almost involuntarily, finding her voice again in an instant. “Again.”

She managed to pull her eyes open. Eris and Corvo stood over her.

Eris broke into a sad smile. “You will have to tell me if you did,” she said as she sat beside her on the bed. “But I do not think quite, this time.”

Corvo leaped onto her. He buried his head at the crook of her neck and hit her with enough force to make her gasp. Pain jolted through her stomach. She kissed him, yet her eyes drifted toward the ceiling. She tried hard to think.

“What happened?” she whispered.

“Do you not recall?” Eris said.

“I remember….” She blinked. “Melitas. I gave him frostbite.”

“After he sneaked into your chambers, yes. He tried to kill you. And me next, no doubt, at the behest of the Shadow Man. Or so we think.”

Aletheia tried to move, but the pain was too severe. She tugged at her blankets to get a look at her wounds.

Her torso was imprisoned in linen. A large red splotch seeped through near her belly button.

“Ow,” she said. “Is this White Fire?”

“It was,” Eris said. “Fortunately his incompetence is paralleled only by his impotence. He did not cast the spell as deadly as he might have, or I would not have been able to save you.”

“What did you do?”

“The acorns. It—was more than I anticipated at first. It took five in total.”

Aletheia cringed at the notion. Five golden acorns. That equaled five lives that could no longer be saved, in exchange just for hers.

She tried to relax in the bed.

“Was it worth it?” she said.

“Yes,” Eris said immediately. “Of course it was. Do not say otherwise. You will heal quickly now and be well again soon.”

Eris was right. Aletheia shouldn’t say otherwise. It was cruel for her friends to hear, especially Corvo. But she thought it.

She closed her eyes and let herself sink into the mattress. The dream of Rook and Astera in the river came back to her, and for a moment she wondered if it had truly happened. Of course it hadn’t, yet she remembered it as clearly as though it had, and she considered it.

Rook. Astera. They had invited her into the cold with them. They had wanted her to join in. And once she was over her trepidation, she had wanted to go with them, too. Then it would have been over, and she would no longer have to be an adventurer, and she could be with Rook again. Her life wasn’t worth that of five strangers. What did she have worth living for?

One thing. He wrapped his arms around her chest tightly.

“I read the Cat Book to you when you were asleep,” Corvo said. “And we played with the Glass Man on the bed, only you didn’t see, and we ate dinner with you every day, and mama fed you with a spoon. And! We still have to do swords!”

He jumped from the bed and ran to a nearby table, where their wooden swords had been left. He put them down gently at Aletheia’s side, then crawled forward, beaming at her.

She took a deep breath. “You’re right.”

“Not quite yet, my little crow,” Eris said. “Aunt Aletheia still needs rest. I have been keeping you out of pain with Sleep, but I think it is time you ate and drank on your own. There is only so much nursing I have a stomach for.”

“You should’ve enlisted Rada Aleksandrovna,” Aletheia said. She winced as she sat upright another inch.

“I could have, yet if she had failed to resuscitate you as I have, I would have felt very foolish indeed.”

Aletheia shrugged. “Probably not as bad as you would have if you were the one who failed.” She brushed a cascade of hair from her eyes. “What happened to Melitas?”

Eris told her, and added, “He is in the dungeons, being interrogated. But he has achieved the extent of his usefulness. Ilya is determined to throw him from the castle’s towers. I would expect him to face judgment before the end of today.”

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“I want to talk to him first,” she said.

“Why?”

“I don’t know. I just want to.” She stirred from the bed and righted herself. Her abdomen hurt badly for a moment, and white clouded her eyes as the pain receded. But she managed to straighten. “I’m okay.”

“You cannot possibly have the mind to spare him.”

“What if I do?”

“Then—you are insane. After what he has done, you would even consider—”

“I don’t know yet,” Aletheia said. “Okay? I just want to talk.”

That was when she looked down at her chest, really, for the first time.

Her burn scars were gone. Some remained, the chequered pattern still marking the skin above her breasts, but along her stomach, at her waist, and down her chest, all were gone. She peeked beneath the bandage to confirm, and while she saw a terrible wound still healing in her gut, the scars had vanished.

“An accident,” Eris said quickly. “I spilled part of an acorn across your chest. But the consequences are welcome, I think.”

She smiled. “An accident. Yeah, I think that’s welcome.” She stood up, almost falling over, but Corvo caught her. “So really, I should thank Melitas, huh?”

“If you dare,” Eris said, “I will put you in another coma.”

But Eris did not seem to realize that this prospect no longer scared Aletheia. In fact, thinking back to her pleasant dream, she might have preferred it that way.

“I’m going to the dungeon,” Aletheia said. She slipped on a nearby shirt that hung down to her thighs. “Whether you like it or not.” But she hesitated when she had reached the door to the room. “Except—where is it?”

Eris sighed. “I would start by going down.”

“Oh. Good idea.”

She made it four feet into the hallway before falling over. Luckily Eris was there to catch her. Then the two of them went together, with Corvo trailing behind, into the dungeons of the Boyar.

A guard led the three down a winding staircase, through a narrow corridor, and to a huge wrought iron door. It had no lock but a latch from the outside, which the guard threw aside. The hinges screeched and echoed as it was pulled open. Then darkness was revealed.

He gestured inward with a spear.

Eris glared at him. “Do you keep it dark for our sake, or for the prisoners?”

The man said something in Veshod. Eris rolled her eyes. Three new lights rose from the orb atop her staff. Corvo already had one following him—he always did, wherever he went, and most often more. The new lights streaked out into the darkness, illuminating the dungeon clearly.

They proceeded inward. Aletheia went last.

A dungeon was meant to have a certain atmosphere that mere jails or prisons lacked. Being belowground, definitionally, the subtle, echoing drip of the watertables through the masonry overhead was the most characteristic, at least alongside distant shouts of agony. Also darkness tended to be common. The several dungeons Aletheia had known had always adhered to these conventions.

The Boyar’s dungeons were quite different. Not in construction, for in that respect they were the same as any other in Esenia, but for the state Aletheia found them in.

There were no distant screams. Aside from footsteps, this place was quite silent. The rows of cells to the left and right down the corridor remained empty. It was not dark. Eris would not let shadows come near her, and so the whole of what should have been dank and depressing, shadowy and underlit, was instead bright. Every corner was illuminated. That alone made the dungeon seem more like a normal dull prison, hardly special at all.

But where it exceeded expectations was in its dampness.

This dungeon was not underground. It was under an island. Out at sea. In an ocean. And it showed. Water did not drip from between cracks in brick so much as it oozed and swelled and seeped in torrents from every wall. Aletheia felt like she was walking through a lake, and splashing came from every direction as Eris and Corvo kicked up water with their feet.

When they turned a corner, down toward a dead-end at a fork, Corvo looked out at a skittering splashing sound from the dimness. Aletheia spotted a rat swimming swiftly between one crack in the wall and another, gliding like a fish across a puddle, and quickly scrambling up to dry safety.

“Look, mama!” he said. “Rats!”

Eris stopped instantly at the sound of his voice, but she shook her head at this third word.

“Rats and dungeons are often found together,” she said. “I am glad to now know that we are wading through pestilent water.”

“He was swimming,” Corvo said. “Rats can swim?”

“Yes,” Aletheia said from behind them, her feet splashing through a particularly deep and eroded section of the hallway. “They’re good swimmers. And climbers.”

Mother ushered Corvo down the corridor. “That is enough discussion on rats, I think.”

“But he was cute. Like Moss! Can I have a new Moss?”

“Rats are not cute. They are revolting creatures who will make you very sick. Mice are—less pestilent. You may have another when you are older.”

“I miss Moss,” he said sadly.

“Who’s Moss?” Aletheia said.

“A brief and failed attempt to teach my son responsibility. Moss the Mouse did not last long. I shan’t soon forget Corvo’s tears after—he departed us. I am not keen to repeat it.”

“What happened?”

“The owl!” Corvo said. “It took him to be with the other mouses. But he was my friend first.”

He jumped into a puddle. Eris yanked him to the side and kept him moving forward.

“To be with the other mouses, huh?” Aletheia said.

“To an entire nest of them, at the owl’s roost,” Eris said. “Perhaps we shall one day see him again.”

“Maybe you should just get a dog,” Aletheia said.

“I do not like animals,” Mother said simply.

“We had a dog.”

“Our dog was different.”

They came to a sudden stop. Eris grabbed Corvo’s shirt again and halted him, and presently Dorian’s voice came echoing down to them:

“You’re going to burn my damn eyes out! Can’t you dim those things?”

A light had gone ahead of them, and following it, Aletheia soon saw a cell with its door open.

Melitas was chained to the wall within. He looked sickly and injured, and he wore nothing but torn trousers. The conversation had been mirthful, but things changed in an instant.

“No,” Eris replied simply. She gestured for Aletheia to press past them and led Corvo to the opened door of the cell. She went no closer after that.

Aletheia hesitated. She had no idea why she had come. She didn’t know what to say. Melitas looked like any magician would after being Mana Burned: spellsick, on the verge of death. It was even worse than she had anticipated—and she did not like it. Even after all he had done. She didn’t want this for anyone. Not even her murderer.

Dorian had been sitting on a stool. Now he stood up.

Aletheia stopped when he did. She looked back at Corvo.

“He shouldn’t see this,” she said. “I don’t want him to hear.”

“He must learn eventually,” Eris said. Her features were very serious. “I see no reason to withhold the truth.”

“He’s too young. He won’t understand,” Aletheia said. “He’s five years old.”

“He is almost six.” Her grip tightened on Corvo tightened. She nodded toward Melitas. “Proceed.”

Aletheia sighed. But she turned to face the prisoner.

Melitas opened his eyes. He cringed and squinted for a long while. But finally, when he looked upon Aletheia, he gasped.

“No,” he whispered. “No. It can’t be. You can’t—no. No!”

She took a seat. “Am I that ugly?” she said.

“You’re alive,” he said. “I didn’t—how are you alive? How can you be alive?”

He shook his head. And he fell silent, and he closed his eyes.