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I realize that I’m pouting. Of course I want him to stop me, but I’m not going to beg. I was never the kind of person to ask someone for something twice.

He laughs then. It starts low in his chest, and while he laughs, tears tumble down his marble-like face. I’ve never seen him laugh like this, and I’ve never seen him cry either. I raise an eyebrow at him, waiting for him to be done with this strange meltdown.

“What’s so funny?” I ask.

“You’re not enthralled.” He wipes his face with the back of his hand and laughs again, softer. “Look at them.”

He sweeps his arm at the House of Voices. The people look drunk on him.

“You’re not like them,” he says. “You heard my song, and it didn’t affect you.”

I open my mouth to argue with him but then close it. How didn’t I realize this?

I ask myself what I feel, and whether any of it comes from him and not from me. The anger is still there, and it belongs to me. I’m still furious at Callum for what he did, though I’m grateful too. I’m also annoyed that Mordred rejected me just a few minutes ago.

I still think he was wrong to sing, but I also think he had no other choice. I don’t feel that I have to go to him. I don’t feel a need to be near him at any cost, and if I walked into the wings right now, I could keep walking until I found my way out of the ruins. I try to want him to sing again, but the truth is that I don’t. Right now, I’d rather he didn’t.

My eyes go wide.

“How?” I say.

He shakes his head.

I walk back to him across the stage, and this time he doesn’t step away. We stand close enough that I have to tip my head back to hold his gaze. I look at the seams along his jaw, at his black eyes, and the tears drying on his face.

I know what I want. I throw myself at him and wrap my arms around his neck.

“Take me home,” I say into his shirt. “So we can figure this out.”

His arms close around me. He lifts me off my feet, holds me against his chest, turns and carries me to the platform. He steps onto it with me and doesn’t set me down. I feel him reach past me for the hauling line and pull. The platform drops a hand’s width and stops, then he pulls again.

We go down through the dark chasm. The people watch us but don’t make any move to stop us. They don’t say a word. Callum looks at us with a smile on his face that has nothing behind it but bliss. We drop again and again, until I can’t see him anymore, but that smile stays imprinted on my mind.

Chapter Twenty-One

Mordred

Aveline turns her head toward the oar on my third stroke away from the platform. I understand that she’s hearing it for the first time.

She doesn’t say so. She watches the blade go into the black water and come out again. She tips her face up toward the roof of the cavern where the lamplight doesn’t reach and listens to the water drip from the stone. Her hair is shorter on one side where Callum cut it.

She tells me what happened after we parted. Two men stepped out of the trees, tied her wrists, and walked her back through the gate. I row and listen. Her story confirms my suspicions. I thought I was the only one who knew about the tunnel, but it appears the people of Nivallia had figured it out a long time ago. I don’t tell her what I wanted to do to Callum when he threatened her life. She’s had enough of Callum for one day, and whatever I feel about him and about the whole kneeling city is mine to sort through on my own.

“And then Callum let me speak to the crowd,” she says. “Maybe he thought I’d beg. You didn’t hear that part.”

“I heard it.”

“From down here?”

“I hear everything that moves above. I heard you tell them I’d never sing for them again.”

“And then you did.”

“Yes.”

She leans forward and frowns at me.

“What did you think when the platform came down with nothing on it but my hair and a note?”