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“What do you think I was trying to fucking do, Kylian?”

His hands fist at my words. Thank the gods he isn’t a dragon because, if he were, his glare would scorch me.

“There are sick children in your ballroom. Your fields are dead, your water is poisonous, and your people are eating whatever they can scrounge up.” My voice strengthens as my fury takes over. “I am not going to lie in this bed and wait for my magic to behave while people die of things I might be able to fix.”

He mutters something too low for me to hear.

“Isn’t this what you want? Isn’t this why I’m here? I’m a mage! This is supposed to be natural to me, so let me fix it.”

Kylian growls and leans forward. “I have watched children die on this island for a decade.” His voice drops to a deadly tone. “Hundreds of them. From exposure, from hunger, from sickness I couldn’t treat because the land yields nothing and Purgatory couldn’t supply enough to treat five kingdoms. I know exactly what is in that ballroom. I carried some of them there myself.” He pauses. “You are no good to any of them dead.”

I look away, shame seeping in slowly. His words are reasonable, but not when time is already against us.

“I need to help them.” I need something to focus on. That’s what keeps me sane, because I am not used to idle time. I have always worked, always kept busy. Doing nothing feels like the world has stopped turning, and the only reason it kept turning in the first place was because of Sable. Now I don’t have her, and I don’t have a reason to keep going. All my life, my purpose was to keep her hidden, keep her safe, but now what? What purpose do I have without her, what purpose is having power if not to use it when I’m allowed to?

Kylian sighs heavily. “I’m not saying you can’t.” His chair creaks as he stands. “But if you want to help my people, you do it on my terms. And you work under my direct supervision, which means if I tell you to stop, you stop.”

“Supervision,” I repeat. “You mean under your control.”

“I mean keeping you alive long enough to accomplish what you’re trying to do. Dying doesn’t feed a single child or grow a single crop.” His gaze doesn’t waver as he approaches me. “You can resent the terms or accept them.”

Every cell in my body wants to argue, to throw his conditions back in his face and tell him I don’t need his permission or concern. My thoughts swirl between the sick children and the dead field with blackened stalks and poisoned furrows. If I push too hard tomorrow and the magic eats through me, I become another body counted, another failure added to the list that is already crushing this island into the sea.

“Fine,” I say, and the word costs me more than the magic did. “But you need to show me what you have. Seeds, tools, anything preserved. If I’m going to do this your way, I need to know what I’m working with.”

A glimpse of hope breaks the surface of his steely expression, but he locks it away. I know how much it hurts to have hope crushed by reality. He glances at the dark windows, the gloomy, overcast day now gone, and for a moment, I worry he will say to wait until tomorrow.

“Come on then,” he says, moving toward the door as I follow on trembling legs.

CHAPTER 41

• Alessia •

THE PATH BEYOND the dead fields isn’t a path at all; it’s a memory of one.

Stone slabs peek through the earth at uneven intervals, their edges swallowed by red-tinged soil. The grass that once grew between them is nothing more than brittle brown stems that snap underfoot.

Kylian leads the way, and I hate that I’m grateful for the slower pace he’s set. My wobbly legs appreciate his consideration. We round a bend in the hillside, where a structure is built directly into the rock face, its entrance framed by stone blocks that are darker than the castle exterior. Dead vines crawl across the stone, their stems stiff and gray. Kylian pushes the door, and as it swings open, the darkness smells entirely different from everything outside.

The air inside the vault carries none of the sourness that saturates the rest of the island. Instead, I breathe in the smells of old paper, dried herbs, and the faint sweetness of beeswax. The absence of the stench outside this place is so startling that I pause on the threshold just to fill my lungs with air that doesn’t reek of death.

Kylian moves inside and lights a lantern mounted on the wall before taking it off and holding it up. The flame spreads warm light across the interior, and my breath leaves me.

Floor-to-ceiling shelves, wall-to-wall, running the entire length of a room that extends deeper into the hillside than the outside suggested. And on those shelves, packed in rows so close they nearly touch, are hundreds of glass jars. Tin containers with fitted lids. Wax-sealed envelopes in neat stacks. Small wooden boxes with brass handles and clasps. Each one labeled—the ink fading but still legible—in languages I know and some I don’t.

“There is so much,” I murmur in awe at what they were able to preserve. My thoughts go to Sable and what I would have given to have this vault at my fingertips only a couple of weeks ago when she first got sick.

“When the kingdoms evacuated,” Kylian says, his voice low, “the first ships carried humans. And two other ships carried books, maps, and all this.” He gestures at the shelves, and the lantern light catches the glass jars, filling them with an amber glow. “Every seed, every preserved cutting that could be gathered before the water took our kingdom. We understood that surviving meant more than saving bodies. It meant saving the ability to feed what you’d saved. Not that we had any clue where we would plant anything, but we knew we weren’t prepared to live our existence on the ships, so we were grateful when we found land.”

I move along the shelves, my fingers tracing labels, pulling jars forward to read them, setting them back, moving to the next.

I find onion bulbs and pull the jar from the shelf. Garlic beside it. Potatoes in a larger tin with the wax seal still intact. Tomatoes in a small glass bottle, the seeds tiny and pale, and the sight of them sends a jolt through me because I know what I can do with tomato seeds.

Farther along the shelves I find the medicinal herbs, and my hands pause as my mother’s voice runs through my mind.

“Is something wrong?” Kylian holds the lantern higher to get a better look at the shelf I’m paused in front of.

I shake my head and laugh. “My mother used to tell me all the time. Never plant medicine where the sickness lives. It’s almost like she knew . . . I thought it was just . . . Never mind.”