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King Malar returned my smile. His was equally false. “You understand why you’re here?”

“For spectacle.”

A ripple moved through the balcony, but the King’s expression did not change. “You killed a Master. So, you’ve made this easy for me. You shall burn for it. The Elite Trackers have the proof.” He tilted his head slightly. “And you’re hiding the surviving Annatalian heir.”

Every word echoed through the courtyard. Thorn. Of course he was going to ask about her.

“Is she in the Ruckus? Is that where you all went? How did you get there?”

That was my best option—for them to believe she went there with me. But giving that up too soon would mean they wouldn’t believe me. My pulse remained steady only through force.

“The two princesses died when the castle fell. I was the only one who escaped.”

The King smiled and raised his chin to address the crowd. “We are hunting the other heirs. There’s a large bounty on their heads.” He touched a circular tattoo on the back of his hand, and it glowed green. A blood oath. “Find me the Annatalian heir,” he ordered the Riders in front of everyone.

“Truth is such a difficult thing these days.” His gaze drifted upward briefly toward the phoenixes perched above us. “Everyone thinks they possess it. I wonder what you have been reading in those old books?”

He knew which books I had taken, and what was written inside them. A strange tension had settled between us. The Blaze birds shifted restlessly on their perches, scraping talons against stone. Smoke gave a low growl from the western tower.

King Malar heard it too, and his gaze lifted slowly toward Torran’s phoenix. “The creatures are more unsettled tonight.”

Because they watched their own die.

The fire inside my shoulder throbbed beneath the pain and poison. Sharp and all-consuming. Heat flickered beneath my skin as a warning. A strange sort of power ebbed through me, one I had only experienced a few times in the last ten years. The King noticed my flinch.

“Bring her forward and get my Rider.”

Hands gripped my arms and yanked me towards the stone upon which so many Annatalians had died. Death’s Door was a central platform built into the floor. It was an execution stone. It was where my aunt and uncle had died. I clasped my hands together. Would this be my end? Where was Aster? He was meant to have been here.

The crowd pressed closer along the balconies overhead. Nobles leaned forward with wild, searching eyes, while servants avoided looking at the platform at all.

The guard forced me onto my knees, and I stared at the blackened stone beneath me. Ash was embedded in the cracks even after all this time.

“Tonight,” King Malar announced, his voice carrying across the courtyard, “Aliwen of Annatalia will be burned for the murder of Master Frickel, stealing from the Grand Library, and inciting rebellion.”

A sharp wind tore through the courtyard, and we were all cast into shadow as Torran, under his Smoke Phoenix, descended onto the cobbles in front of the King.

His head dipped ever so slightly at the King, but he didn’t acknowledge me. “She’s to come to the Northlands prison for interrogation. I’ve learned that all three of the heirs have lived in this city for the last ten years.”

The King pursed his lips in rage, but otherwise didn’t react.

Torran took one more step and lifted his right hand, and with one finger he ever-so-slightly touched his wrist, where there was a glimmer of green. He was telling Malar that the King’s Oath—the one he had made to the Northlands King—had been activated.

That was all it took for Malar’s face to redden and his teeth to grind.

“When she has broken, when she’s given us the information we need. She’ll be returned to you for justice,” agreed Torran.

I opened my mouth to scream at him that he had made an oath to Lex to keep us safe. But the codex had told me differently, hadn’t it? I had read in the codex that Riders cannot be bound to an oath they made before being bonded to a phoenix. The four teenagers made their oath to each other before they walked into the mountains. Kit and Torran had never been oath-bound to protect us—only Aster had.

Sweat trickled down my back, and my head pounded.

King Malar and Torran exchanged a look. It was as if they were waging a silent war.

“Then you’ve until the last night. Three nights from now. We’ll honour the coming of the new light by her death. I’ll, of course, send my Riders with you. My men are well-versed in the pleasures of fire.”

Torran gave a sharp nod. “A perfect solution. And perhaps we’ll have the other two to join her by then.”

He turned towards me then, and his eyes narrowed into such hatred that I shivered. There was no way out of this now.