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“Well said.” Ollie gave Tenny a gentle smile as the sparrow took flight, lifting into the air on its shadowy wings, then disappearing into the ether with a poof.

Then the reality of what she’d just heard crashed down on her shoulders at once, and if she hadn’t already been seated on Fjaethe’s back, Tenny thought her knees might have buckled.

Elderglade had fallen. The sanctuary that the sylvan people had long protected, the one place of safety for mixedborn children, had been eliminated.

“The Sanctus Salutum,” Tenny said, voice hushed.

“I know,” replied Ollie.

“He must be stopped. If they have the crown, do you think they can do it?”

Ollie’s throat bobbed. “I hope so. Elle told me after the Crucible that her plan had been to use it to seal the Chasms. And based on what Kit informed us about Malakar’s suspected master plan, I expect that is still the case. As long as they can prevent him from accessing the Line, it is only a matter of time, right? Until we find him. Until we can stop him for good.”

They sat in silence for a few moments after that, the road stretching on ahead of them, wholly unchanged by this news. Eventually, with the prod of a boot, Tenny urged Fjaethe forward again.

“We still haven’t heard from Tristan,” Ollie said after a few minutes.

Tenny gave a grim nod. She’d been trying not to think about that. “No word from him or Zephyr since right before they reached the village. Since before we left.”

“It’s not like them.”

“No,” she agreed. “It isn’t.”

That had been what decided it, after all. Had been the final factor cementing Tenny’s choice to finally leave. Even though King Callum hadn’t quite fully returned to his former self, even though there was still work to do in Kingshelm, even though Tenny didn’t trust Tobin Barcroff as far as she could throw him to actually get things done, she simply couldn’t stand sitting around and waiting any longer.

And so, she did not.

They reached the village before dusk.

From a distance, everything looked fine. Perfectly normal. A few rows of modest-looking houses. A small chapel sitting at the top of the sloped main road. Some well-kept flowerbeds, filled with early snowdrop blooms. A grain field penned off with a crooked wooden fence, separating it from the Chasm beyond.

But it was . . . quiet.

Too quiet.

There were no barking dogs, no children’s squeals, no hums of conversation coming through the open windows as Tenny and Ollie walked through the village. Tenny glanced back to the top of the main road, where they’d left Fjaethe and Paisley hitched to a low post.

“Is this strange?” Tenny asked quietly. “I haven’t visited many villages, so I’m hardly an expert, but this seems odd. The sun’s still out. It isn’t a mealtime. Where is everybody?”

“It’s strange,” confirmed Ollie, his eyes darting to and from the houses lining either side of the street. Some of the doors were slightly ajar, like its residents had left in a hurry.

Tenny swallowed hard as she and Ollie made for the chapel at the top of the street. At least there seemed to be some movement happening there—smoke curling lazily from the chimney, flashes of light beyond the frosted windows.

“Careful, Ten,” said Ollie. “Don’t forget that this place has ties to the Cult.”

“Does it feel the same as Dawnspire?”

He shook his head, taking the steps up to the chapel doors two at a time. “No, not exactly. That had been an entirely different type of strange. This doesn’t feel quite like the same sort of trap, at least.”

“How reassuring,” Tenny replied, breathing quickly as she aimed to catch up with the fae, then hurrying ahead of him when he stopped to take another look at the village. “There are definitely people inside. Perhaps they’ve gathered for pre-evening prayers?” She reached for the handle of one of the large wooden doors. “And maybe someone inside can tell us if they’ve seen Tristan and Zephyr come through, at least?”

Ollie didn’t answer.

She turned her head, looking for confirmation, and found the space he had just been occupying entirely empty. There was no time to panic about where he had gone, though. No, all of Portentia Church’s panic had been instantaneously allocated to herself and the hand that was currently clamped over her mouth.

Another hand gripped her upper arm, and suddenly she was being yanked backward. Vaguely, she registered the scratch of a beard against her temple, thick forearms covered with dark hair. All of it unfamiliar, all of it terrifying. But Tenny was so shocked, she didn’t even fight against her kidnapper. She simply went sort of limp, her boots dragging against the frost-covered ground until the man threw her over his shoulder. He hauled her along the side of the chapel, then down the low-sloping hill at its rear—directly toward the gaping Chasm.

A stacked stone wall ran perpendicular to the abyss, a few feet back from the edge. It was leaning, the pattern of the stones uneven, as though the entire thing was slowly being pulled toward the great abyss. Perhaps it would eventually be pulled right in. And as the broad, burly man carted her through a small gap in the wall, alarm speared through Tenny at the thought that she was about to meet the same fate. The hill and chapel—the entire village of Kinsgaith, really—disappeared from view, and she threw a quiet prayer up to the Five that Ollie had somehow escaped.