Instantly, Vaness was moving. Out of the collar, which fell to the ground in a plank-trembling thunk, she grabbed Safi and shot for the door. “Pull down the wards,” she ordered Zander. “We cannot exit while they still stand.”

Zander looked at Caden. The commander nodded. “Do it.”

The giant’s arms rose, and he muttered softly. The room flickered and hummed, and power unwound strand by strand in a way that made no sense to Safi—Hell-Bards doing magic?

Then silver and darkness erupted, blurring streaks as Vaness called every piece of iron in the room to her. Two chunks reshaped themselves into blades, effortlessly slicing through Vaness’s and Safi’s ropes, before spiraling up into thin rapiers to be plucked from the air. One for the empress, one for Safi.

The ward fell. Safi felt it in a great eruption of noise and a violent battering of crossbow bolts against the outside walls.

“Get us out of here!” Caden barked at Vaness.

“No,” she replied. Her hands rose. The Hell-Bards’ blades turned on them and drove straight for their skulls.

Like minnows through a stream, the iron simply sizzled through and flipped out the backs of each Hell-Bard’s head—and the chains at the Hell-Bards’ throats glowed red.

Vaness seemed to know this would happen, though. She seemed to want it for the brief distraction it gave while she turned her magic to the door.

A groan of metal sent Safi spiraling away from the Hell-Bards. The door’s hinges were peeling back. The latch was releasing, reshaping. Then, before any of the Hell-Bards could stop her, Vaness’s arms flew straight up.

The door swung past Safi and Vaness. A blast of air and smoke and heat. It spun sideways before crashing into all three Hell-Bards. It flung them back against the wall, as easy as a flyswatter to three flies.

“We were only following orders,” Caden shouted. With smoke rushing over him, he looked ghostly. Skeletal. “We were only doing our jobs.”

“And I,” Vaness growled, her face striped with blood, “am only doing mine.” She spun for the empty doorway.

Safi didn’t chase after, though. She was staring at Caden on the left. At Lev in the middle. At Zander on the right. She didn’t trust the Hell-Bards, she didn’t like the Hell-Bards, yet that did not mean she could leave them to die.

“Wait!” she hollered at Vaness, and the empress paused at the door. Behind her, a wall of iron scuttled upward, plucked from hinges and nails and anything her Ironwitchery could grasp. “Let them go.”

“They will try to capture us again.”

“No!” Lev cried. The scars on her face flickered and glowed. “We will help you!”

“We cannot trust them,” Vaness insisted. She reached for Safi’s arm. Blood dripped from her chin. “We have to go, Safi. Now.”

“You can trust us.” This came from Zander, his face drawn tight as the door squashed him harder, harder to the wall. “We can prove it. Just let me remove my noose—”

“I already did.”

All eyes snapped to Caden, whose fingers poked above the door, a gold chain woven between his knuckles. It was the necklace all Hell-Bards all wore, including Safi’s uncle. And it was, Safi realized, what they’d all meant when they referred to the noose.

“On our honor,” Caden croaked, the words seeming to take great effort—and to cause great pain—“we won’t hurt you.”

It was the first assertion from a Hell-Bard that rang against Safi’s magic, and it was true.

“We won’t capture you again,” he went on, his face screwed tighter. “We’ll all escape together.”

Still true, true, true—there was no denying it. Safi’s magic was alight with the honesty in his words, and though it made no sense to her, she couldn’t deny what she saw. What she felt.

“Free them!” she shrieked at Vaness. “He speaks the truth—we can trust them. They’ll help us.”

A pause took hold of the world. Smoke, heat, sparks. It all melted back while the empress considered.

“Hurry!” Safi tried to scream, but at that precise moment, the entire inn cracked! Then sagged sharply down.

Time was up, and the empress knew it. With a snarl, she let the door fall. Caden fell into Lev, who instantly helped him refasten the noose. Meanwhile, Vaness claimed all iron from the door, strips of black to fill the air. To expand her shield before they all tromped off into the corridor with a wall of iron to press back the smoke, the flames.

It protected them step-by-step, Safi and Vaness at the fore, three Hell-Bards staggering behind.

* * *

It was right as Aeduan and Iseult were gathering their things from the ruins that a boom split the air. A distant sound, like a cannon fired off leagues away.

Iseult met Aeduan’s eyes. “People,” she said.

He nodded.

“We should check,” she said.

He nodded again. “Stay here.”

She didn’t. And he sighed—something he found himself doing more and more often around her. He didn’t stop her, though, and in minutes they’d threaded their way back to the same steppe they’d sparred upon.

The grass remained trampled where he’d pinned her again and again. Aeduan had never hurt her—he’d been careful to always stop, to always watch her face for pain—but he also never let her win. Just as Monk Evrane had never let him win.

From the steppe, they ascended, zigzagging up the forested cliff until they reached an opening in the oaks and pines.