Shock, slowly settling like lead in oil, weighs down my bones as I walk. Kadranians could break in any minute. Illesiarr needs the straightboard. These thoughts keep me putting one heavy foot in front of another. There is no other concern. There can be no other action.

Get the straightboard. The Kadranians could be here any minute.

Vihnzeirre buzzes inside me, agitated as a hive of bees. Stop it. I don't need you teleporting me in front of any more soldiers. She only whirs harder, as if protesting that she also teleported me away from the soldiers.

My strides lengthen, and I try to think of home to calm her. Hotcakes and malt honeymilk on weekend mornings. Storybooks hidden beneath my pillow and schoolbooks on my desk. My dad, typing in his study and me, curled up in his armchair. A wave of homesickness sweeps over me, the strongest in a long time. In Erreliah, I knew death only as an organic concept. In Karsix, death surrounded me, but the plague was an impartial murderer. Here, death is foreign soldiers, and they kill with an aimed, malicious hate. I swipe hot tears from my face and lengthen my strides. I want my father, want wrapped in his arms one more time. I wonder how many little Morineause girls want the same thing and will never get it again.

Vihnzeirre flares silver on my skin and radiates down the hall. Where she touches, the torches and glow crystals die. Then she fades too, and I'm wrapped in the comfortable darkness of the corridor. Somehow, my steps are easier now than they were in the light. My hand skims the wall; I can make my way to the infirmary without my eyes, but I doubt the Kadranians can. I whisper Vihnzeirre a thick thank you and hurry down the hall.

The dying hearth throws long shadows over the infirmary as I enter.

"Elénna!" I call.

She pushes out of a sickbay, her brow knitted together. "What's going on? Is Illesiarr alright? The Queen?"

I hold up my hands. "He's tending her. I think he wants you to stay here, with the soldiers. But I need the straightboard."

She clips a nod and drags it out from behind a cabinet. The wood is heavy and awkward in my hands, and she helps me get it out the door.

I pause at the threshold. "Lock this. If it has a lock."

Her arms cross, eyes heavy with worry. "It does."

"Don't answer it for anyone you don't know. There's been a break-in."

Understanding and fear wash over her face, and she nods. The door closes and locks behind me. I half-carry, half-drag the board down the hall, stopping before every corner to listen ahead. Eventually, I make it to the base of the curving staircase and hoist the board over my head and back.

The soldier's body still lays tangled and bloody, but I force myself to block it out. It is nothing more than a clump of inanimate tissues, a heap of organic matter that will decompose—internal organs in the first seventy-two hours, the blood in the next ten days, the muscles and skin within the month. This life-giving fluid I'm tramping through is nothing but an expelled solution of cells, plasma, and water. There should be no more significance in the fact that it covers the bottom of my shoes than that dirt and dust does. I can't pick up the hem of my skirt, so it trails through the mess too. But it doesn't matter. The garment will need to be washed anyway.

I sound like Sean.

The thought stops me cold as I reach the top of the stairs. The eyes of corpses that tried to kill me stare glassy and accusing, and I swallow thickly. Do they have little girls waiting for their fathers to come home, wives that told them to be careful as they left? Did they choose to come here any more than I did, or were they pushed along by fate so that we landed on opposite sides of a fight?

The thought sickens me. In Erreliah, illegal animal fighters would toss snakes into a pit just to see which one would eat the other. Have we no more freedom than those starving, frightened animals?

The people before me are human first and everything else second. I set the board down to close their eyes with trembling fingers. Then I rise, grab the board again, and hurry to the Queen's room.

"Sorry I took so long," I murmur as I enter.

The doctor accepts my apology with a nod and tells me she's stable for now. We carefully slide the Queen atop the board, lifting it to place her on the bed. It still doesn't seem right leaving her in this place of death and violence. She should be somewhere with crisp sheets and white walls, somewhere safe and quiet and peaceful.

"Is there nowhere else she can go?" My voice tremors despite myself.

Illesiarr looks at me with concern, and I feel see-through under his gaze. "I suppose we could move her to the Queen's suite. In fact, that's a sound idea. Wait here with her while I get the key."

I stare at the woman's battered body, trying to ignore the corpse in the corner of my vision. Somehow, I can't bring myself to feel the same pity for him as the soldiers in the hall.

Suddenly tired of living in someone else's world, I tap my bracelet off and revel in words formed of my own expertise. "I miss home." I don't know who I'm talking to, and I don't care. Errelian tastes sweet on my tongue and falls like feathers on my ears. Idyne's charm allows me to communicate, but the more I wear it, the more I know how false it is, a thin facade that twists my lips as though that's what I meant to say. It never is. I speak just to have my own words.

"No one dies like this in Erreliah." My fingers clutch my charm. A sick feeling weaves into my gut. "But we write stories about it, glorify death and cry over make-belie—" My throat tightens, cutting off words that hover in the air, accusing.

They left my mouth unthought, but now they haunt the room, forcing me to remember the corpse at my feet, the forms that will never wake from the castle grounds, the Karsixians I abandoned to the Blistering Death. Vihnzeirre hums inside me, and I swallow a sob.

Pressing my lips together, I tap my bracelet back on. I gladly faced nightmares when I could close their pages. Now that I can't hide—maybe now I must face them, if for no other reason than the people who don't get to anymore.

But I still don't look at the corpse, and I still don't let go of my necklace, and I still don't want to be alone. After several long, empty minutes, footsteps finally shuffle my way, and I straighten. Illesiarr walks in. "The room is unlocked now. Come. I'll show you the way."

He and I pick the Queen up on the straightboard, and I twist my emotions into a steel ball. It's no use to wish I could talk to my father, or to Sean, or to Aster. Blazes, for all I know, he could be dea—

I encase that thought in steel, too.

We settle the Queen in her new room.

"There will be more soldiers coming to the infirmary." Illesiarr's hands bob over the young Queen, as if rechecking the work he's done. There's nothing more to do for her now than wait, though.

"How can I help?"

His hands still, and his heavy brow creases as he surveys me. I fear the wisdom in his blue eyes and wonder if it's sharp enough to pierce steel. Whatever he sees, he answers slowly, "Stay with the Queen. If you will. You did well with her before I arrived. Let me know if her condition changes."

"Of course."

He nods softly, cloudy hair bobbing a little. Something like regret or worry hovers on his face as he hands me a key. "Stay safe."

I swallow, throat tight. "You too." When he leaves, I lock the living room door.

Not that a lock stopped the Kadranians before.

There's a couple couches and a coffee table in the front room, so I push them in front of the entry. Disquieted by the speed that the man broke through the other door, I add the bureau and a footchest from the bedroom to the barricade as well. Arming myself with the fire poker, I pull an armchair by the Queen's bed and watch over her.

Person or not, if a Kadranian soldier bursts through, this time I will be ready for him. I refuse to let anyone else threaten either me or Aster's sister.

We might be snakes in a pit, but I'm going to be the snake that wins.