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Nesta reached a hand to the sword at her hip. “I have Ataraxia—”

“Gwydion found its way into your hand. Don’t turn your back on its blessing.”

Nesta swallowed, but nodded. A wish, and the legendary sword appeared, sheathed down her spine. Its power tingled along her back like a lover’s breath over her skin. Rhys had shown her how to retrieve the blade and put it away earlier—and though it would likely take her a damn long time to figure out more complicated things, at least this had proved easy enough to master.

Amren’s silver eyes gleamed with approval.

So Nesta turned toward the horizon, the vast, still sea sparkling between her and that island.

“Will it, girl. Focus that will into your power,” Amren ordered, “and it shall be done.”

Nesta closed her eyes. Rallied her power in the back of her mind. The Prison. I will go to the Prison.

In her mind, a blazing hand of power reached for her over that horizon. Nesta did not hesitate. She grabbed the hand. Wind and darkness and pressure, and—

Green. Mist. Quiet.

As easily as walking from one room to the next, Nesta stepped onto the mossy, chilled earth of the Prison’s lowlands.

Its sole mountain rose like a tidal wave. There was nothing but mossy rocks and grass between her and her goal, near its summit.

The gates of bone.

Mist and wind wrapped around her, but her focus remained fixed on those distant gates now groaning open, as if pushed by phantom hands.

As if to welcome her in.

She was shaking by the time she reached the top of the slope, and not just from exhaustion. Had the bone gates always towered so high? Had the darkness within always been so thick?

It took a moment to get her numb, trembling fingers to properly latch onto Gwydion’s black hilt. To draw the sword, as Amren had bade her, its black metal now glistening with starlight. Even that seemed to get sucked into the looming darkness of the Prison. But the radiance warmed her, somehow. Her grip steadied on the hilt. Strength flowed down her arm. Whether it was her own courage or the blade, she didn’t care.

Exhaling a steadying breath, Nesta stepped through the gates. Into the dark.

Gwydion shone like a dark star in the obsidian silence. A few feet in, its illumination silvered the stone walls, the rocky path plunging downward. No faelights needed.

“All right,” she said into the stillness. “Let’s see what—”

Gwydion’s light went out.

Darkness slammed in around her. Nesta yelped, instinct igniting a kernel of faelight as she dropped the sword like a novice—

But no clang of metal on stone rang out. She spun in a circle, fingers still wrapped around a hilt that was no longer there. The ground at her feet was empty. Only rock and dust.

It took her a heartbeat to understand.

Gwydion’s light hadn’t been extinguished—Gwydion had disappeared, right out of her hand.

The Prison had stolen it.

Mor

Despite Cassian’s teasing, five trunks of clothing wasn’t nearly enough. Mor had squeezed her things into every last crevice—not just the clothing, but also the jewelry, the hair accessories, the shoes . . .

For Cassian, it was easy. He walked into a place in all that armor and looked terrifying, and he usually got his way.

Her outfits—her armor—required more calculation, depending on who she was meeting, and what she wanted, what they wanted, and the location where they met.

She’d bidden her farewells at breakfast, not that it had been a particularly cheerful one. But she’d smothered Nyx with kisses all over his face—which had been covered in most of the mashed-up goop Rhys had been feeding him—and then deliberately kissed Cassian on the cheek, smearing said goop on him, and headed for the door.