ten miles from execution.”
The weight of another sleepless night suddenly loomed, heavy and precarious as the collapsed roof.
Corayne ran a hand over her brow, trying to think. Everything felt soft-edged and slow, a sleepy warmth
battling against the odd, bracing cold.
She bit her lip. “That Spindle isn’t going to close itself.”
“Spindles,” the old woman said lightly, emphasizing the syllables. She toed a rabbit’s spine aside and
made a noise of triumph. Her smile leered. “So the bone tells.”
Even the wind in the fields dropped, going silent. Andry froze over his pack while Dom gripped the
collapsed wall, his knuckles white on stone. Slowly, he hung his head. Sorasa did not move, her body
too still, her face impassive and neutral. As if she was holding back, fighting to remain calm. Corayne
could hardly breathe, feeling like she’d just taken a hammer blow to the chest. The air in her lungs
hissed out slowly.
“There’s more than one?” she whispered, looking to Dom. He met her eyes with something like shame.
“Already,” he murmured. “Already.”
Incensed, Sorasa leapt forward, hands free and flexing. She glared into the old woman’s eyes, as if she
could find something in them. “Why does anyone believe this?” she spat.
The witch swept aside another bone, letting it skitter over Sorasa’s feet. Her smile turned brittle.
“Amhara Fallen, Amhara Forsaken, Amhara Broken,” the witch said, each word like a knife. Sorasa fell
back, flinching as the blow landed home.
“They call you Amhara.” The witch looked at each of them in turn, her brilliant eyes flashing. “But you are
Osara.”
Sorasa collided with the crumbled wall of farmhouse, broken stones coming up to her shoulders. Her
eyes flared open and her mouth moved but nothing came. Corayne had no idea what the witch’s words
meant, but they were enough to steal fire from Sorasa Sarn.
“Sorasa, what is she saying?” Corayne bit out. “What is Osara?”
But the Amhara assassin did not answer. Her nostrils flared and she dropped her gaze, her sunset eyes
burning at her feet.
Andry gritted his teeth, his words bringing them back. “There’s another Spindle. Another army.”
Dom dragged his eyes from Sorasa, now silent and far away. “This was his plan from the beginning.
The more Spindles he opens, the weaker the realm becomes, the thinner the boundary between Allward
and What Waits. Like destroying columns holding up a dome. Of course he’d tear another before we
could strike back.”
Corayne heard defeat in him, clear as day. She felt it too, but refused to let it eat her whole. She took the
Jydi witch by the arm instead. Her flesh was as cold as her fingers, even through her clothes.
“Do you know where, Gaeda?” Corayne asked. It was like grabbing for the chain of an anchor already
sinking. Useless. “Where the Spindle is or where it might lead? Is another army already here?”
The Jydi fixed her with a piercing stare, bones littered at her feet. She nudged one without looking. “No.
No. No.”
“All right,” Corayne said, latching on where she could. The chain snagged in her grasp. “Can we hope to
fight whatever comes through? Or at least hold it off long enough to do . . . whatever it is I have to do?”
My blood, the blade. Another Spindle. Her stomach flipped. Another chance.
“There’s only four of us, Corayne,” Dom muttered.
“Five,” she bit back, still holding on to the witch. “Can we do it?”
The Jydi stared into Corayne for a long moment, as she had stared at the bones.
Can she read the future in me too? Corayne wondered. Or is this all nonsense, a trick of a peddler?
Junk like the charms. But the twigs had burned cold in her pocket, scratched blue on Taristan’s face,
made a man who could not be harmed bleed and scream. Corayne wanted them back in her pocket,
though she couldn’t say why.
“We must be quick,” the Jydi finally answered. “Call me Valtik.”
Lifting her chin, she snapped her gnarled fingers.
Corayne braced herself for a burst of something extraordinary, but nothing happened, no spell to collect
the bones or pack up anything of use. If the witch was truly Spindletouched, her magic was not the kind
from any story Corayne had heard. Valtik kicked at the bones again, casting them aside on her way to
the crumbled door.
Sorasa stood at the wall, still silent, her lips pursed to nothing. Valtik looked to the assassin as she
passed, a finger pointed.
“And we must be seven,” she said. “You understand, Forsaken?”
Corayne did not. To her surprise,
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