Alize covered Sosje’s little kestrel with his hood before they reached the Parousia gates. He chirped as he sat in her sac on her lap, shifting from one foot to the other. Alize had tried to pet him, as Sosje had done, but he kept twisting away from her, respectful but adamant. Her hands clutched her reins as they passed under the outer gate.

She dreaded looking up at the ramparts. The number of Hrumi bodies had doubled in her absence, and her cursory glance revealed Menah among the dead. Alize could not help but wonder if the woman had accomplished her intended task. The names of the others burned in Alize’s consciousness and their dead faces seemed to judge her.

Fergana would say she had not returned soon enough. Alize could not helping thinking she would be right.

Next to her, Greer clasped her hand, her face shrouded beneath her hood. “This ends tonight,” she whispered.

The princess had used black dye to paint a disfiguring birthmark across her right cheekbone. She told Alize the guards could not be troubled to look at her ugliness long enough to recognize her.

Kell and Davram greeted them without ceremony, as if their appearance were completely expected, not a sign that the impossible had been accomplished. That they had convinced a Hrumi clan to come to Prince Tamer’s aid.

But even in their curt greetings, Alize could sense the sustained distance between her and Kell. His eyes skirted over her timorous gaze, jumping pointedly between Greer and Davram. The smile he wore seemed false, contrived, but even that faded whenever he glanced at Alize.

And though Alize tried to tell herself Kell’s opinion of her did not matter, his scorn was yet another weight on her conscience, lodged snuggly with her cursed heritage and her dead sisters.

“Where’s Youni?” Greer asked as they moved through the covered market.

“Already installed in the palace,” Davram replied.

“I have all the herbs you requested,” Kell said, nodding to Alize, though he still faced forward as he walked, “everything is prepared.”

In Kell’s residence, Alize walked directly to the kitchen. First she released Sosje’s little kestrel, setting him on a chair back. His talons scratched the wood as he shuffled across, twisting his tail over one side and then the other. He whistled softly and tilted his head to observe his new surroundings.

Kell had laid out all the herbs in little piles, an act of patience and care. Alize wanted to call out to him, to thank him, but she could hear his voice rumbling against the stones from the sitting room, intertwining with Davram’s and Greer’s. They laughed together, and Alize could not think of the last time she had truly heard the Sargons laugh. Certainly before the Temple battle. Since then, if they laughed, it was no longer in front of her. Alize stood on the outside, mindful, but unable to participate.

And that was as it must be. For all her misplaced nostalgia for the Sargons’ friendship, the world had already separated her from them, by blood, by heritage, and her own misgivings. If she understood love at all, she knew it dictated she perform her duty, save her sisters, and leave all these discordant experiences behind her.

And in the silence, the near peacefulness of the low light, the thought of her sisters’ suffering make her weaker, tearing her heart open. Alize ground the dried nettle flower, remembering how the camp mentor Aida had taught her to heat the grinds carefully to unlock their full potency. Aida had been amongst the dead hanging the first time Alize returned to Parousia. For what?

Alize whispered their names of her Hrumi teachers in soft benediction as she prepared the poison. Umkar, the potter, who had showed her to hold the bowl. Pamir the fire mistress, who knew the kindlings better than anyone. Qolma, who had taught Alize how to chew the myrtle thistles before roasting them. How many of them still survived?

The entire process of concocting the poison was like visiting old friends, old memories, women who had probably never imagined that their lessons would one day fell a province prince. As a child, Alize might have guessed they would be proud, but that certainty evaded her now. It seemed, as she sifted through her memories, that as much as the Hrumi had cursed the princes’ crimes against them, they had never advocated violence beyond the forest. Perhaps the clans’ modest numbers framed their prudence. Or perhaps they understood that a balance was maintained in the steppes, and disrupting it could risk tilting everything into a fire of unknown proportions

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If that were true, Alize wondered, what would they think of me now?

A soft rapping interrupted her thoughts. Kell stood at the doorway, his reticence embodied even in his stillness. And Alize remembered him in Julfa, poised outside Josoun’s stall. That night he had brought an apple, trying to win Alize’s trust.

Tonight he held nothing.

“I’m checking in,” he spoke with raised eyebrows, as if anticipating Alize to disagree, somehow. “Have you found all the ingredients you need?”

Alize tugged at her sleeves, finding few words to offer up. “Thanks to your organization, yes,” she replied. Kell made no acknowledgement and Alize rushed forward, “It’s a bit tedious to make, but, well, you know what they say, ‘a botched poison brew brings misery anew.’”

Kell was silent for a beat. “I never heard that.”

Alize wondered if she imagined the flatness in Kell’s voice.

He ran his hand through his hair and glanced away before clearing his throat. Such simple movements, yet Alize could feel her heart melting. “I also thought I should ask if you need to have your dagger aga-”

“No!” Alize said quickly, reprimanding herself almost immediately for the vehemence of her reaction. She didn’t want Kell to read into it. “I’ll be fine, for a few more days.”

Kell’s expression changed for an instant, but his expression had faded to neutral, to disinterested. “Take the box at least, so you have the choice.”

“I don’t want the choice. Not now. Keep it. Please.”

“It’s your soul, Alize.”

“I know. But,” she swallowed, letting the words bubble up from somewhere deep inside of her. “I trust you with it.”

Kell’s face softened, first into surprise and then muted wonder. “Oh.”

Alize sat back on her heels next to the fire, absorbing Kell in the fire light. Everything about him invited her in, so much it almost physically hurt her. She wanted to bask in his smile, to make him laugh out loud, to curl up close to him in the darkness and shut the rest of the world out.

But that world rustled impatient already, spewing forth the dead and promising more.

“Besides,” Alize stammered, “next time I reconnect with my soul, I should do it far from any population center, far from anyone, just in case.”

Part of her wanted Kell to contradict her, to speak the words she had said to the Hrumi, in her love, The time has come to fight, but not alone. We must gather every force in the wind against our enemies.

But even as Alize imagined how such assertions would comfort her, hearten her, she knew Kell would be wrong to make them. And Alize would at least spare him that explanation. It was better this way. She would never have to win that fight by revealing her true inheritance. A small mercy. “Anyway, I am all set.”

“Of course,” Kell murmured instead. His fleeting smile disappeared once more, the lines on his face settling to neutral once more.

Alize saw it for the mask it was, and she dared not guess what lay underneath.

Instead, she gestured to the pot boiling before her. “I’ll be done before sunset. You’ll have plenty of time to take your audience with Icar.”

“Good.” Still Kell lingered in the doorway. “Alize,” he waited for her to look up.

She had hoped to see something in his gaze beside the resolute vacancy he held firmly in place.

Kell seemed to force his words out. “Just, let me know if you’re missing anything.”

Alize blinked, pleased and pained at the same time. “You’ve already given me everything I need.”

If Alize were honest with herself, she would admit that was not quite true.

Her sadness worsened with the fading daylight, seeping into Alize’s bones with the cold. After she relayed her instructions to Kell and Davram, she watched them both shrug into their Sargon armor. What had appeared as a fully formed nightmare her whole life now seemed painfully fragile, the hems frayed, the joints worn. If Kell and Davram were discovered, the evening’s golden light would be their last memory of the sun, of the day.

If they were discovered, they would be burned before dawn.

“It’s a gentle poison,” Alize explained, watching Kell lace his gloves. “Sometimes our sisters are injured, in so much pain. They request the poison, to help them sleep. It is not a cruelty.” Her words were meant as much for Greer as for the Sargons, “Icar will fall asleep tonight and never wake.”

Alize found herself standing beside Kell. She wondered if it had been her own subconscious maneuvering until she realized that Davram had gravitated to Greer like a moon, leaving her and Kell cast adrift, far beyond their tight orbit.

“A kiss for luck, milady?” Davram asked the princess.

Greer smiled but her expression was bittersweet, “Not that you’ll need it.” And she rose up on her toes, her hands circling Davram’s head to bring his forehead down to her lips. They stayed there a moment, breathing with the same breath.

Alize pressed her own lips together. She turned to Kell, finding his gaze searing hers. But though she could not look away, he said nothing, made no requests. And Alize offered him nothing in return.

It was a perfect exchange, yet it left her reeling with remorse. None of the paths before her could reconcile all the places she had already been. “Be careful,” she managed to whisper.

Kell gave no sign that he had heard her.

While Davram and Greer engaged in low murmurings, Kell picked up his helmet. “It’s time.”

Davram nodded, pulling himself from Greer.

“Well,” Kell nodded to Alize, “Bye.”

She watched him disappear through the threshold. Davram followed, casting one last look at Greer.

The iron door creaked shut behind them.

Alize frowned, facing the lattice work. “I don’t like this at all.” She turned to regard Greer, expecting a mirror of her own anxiety, her strangling powerlessness.

But the princess had fire in her eyes. “Me neither. But it was never my intention to stay behind. Get your cloak.”