“Eliana?” Zahra’s stricken voice made Eliana turn. “Something’s happening.”

“What?” Eliana squinted across the black water. The Empire fleet—thirty vessels, most of them massive warships—were moving into a long line along the thinning ice. “What are they doing?”

“Describe it to me,” Simon said.

“They’re gathering beside the ice in a line, one right after the other, their prows facing north.” Eliana couldn’t make sense of the maneuver. “It’s like they’re making a barrier between the ice and the open water. A blockade?”

“And they’ve stopped firing,” Zahra observed.

With a scraping thud, the lifeboat rammed into a low slab of ice. Eliana climbed out at once and held the boat fast, Zahra floating beside her.

“Climb out over here,” Eliana instructed.

Simon fumbled to find the stolen adatrox sword and obeyed, slowly feeling his way out of the boat. Eliana guided him across the ice, then over a narrow gap of dark water to another huge slab.

Simon looked out at the fleet with reddened eyes. “Why have they stopped firing?”

“I don’t know, but we should take advantage of it and hurry.”

But then, just as Zahra let out a sharp cry of despair, a low horn blasted across the water. As one, entire sections of the warships’ hulls fell open and slammed down onto the ice. A wave of darkness tumbled out and started galloping madly for shore. Discordant, shrill cries filled the air—howls, half-formed words, screams of fury.

Eliana’s blood ran colder than the ice now quaking under her feet. She knew those sounds, from her time in the Fidelia labs.

“What is that?” Simon tensed beside her. “Eliana, tell me what’s happening.”

“Crawlers!” Zahra shoved through Eliana’s shoulders. “We must go, my queen!”

But Eliana stood frozen. She watched the creatures barreling toward them across the ice. They moved so quickly, half running, half crawling, their limbs turning unnaturally with every stride.

“Fidelia,” Eliana whispered, taking two unsteady steps back. It was just as Zahra had said: Fidelia had turned the stolen women of Ventera into monsters.

Zahra stretched to her fullest, darkest height and roared, “Run!”

Eliana spun, slid and fell, hit her jaw on the ice. She scrambled back to her feet, found Simon, grabbed his hand.

“Can you see at all?” she cried over the approaching din. Alarm bells rang across the Astavari ships. Their cannon fire resumed, blasting a dozen new holes in the ice before the encroaching wave of crawlers.

“Just run,” Simon shouted at her. “And don’t look back!”

He tried to shake her off, but she held fast. “I’m not leaving you here!”

“I’ll keep up, now move!”

She turned and ran, Simon on her heels. Zahra flew ahead of them across the ice, seeking the safest path.

“Left!” she cried, directing them around a thin patch of ice. “Jump!”

Eliana threw herself off a ridge of ice and onto another slab a few feet away.

“Simon, here!” she cried over her shoulder. “Follow my voice!”

He jumped onto the ice beside her. It rocked violently, sent them both sliding. Eliana stabbed Arabeth into the ice and grabbed Simon’s shirt with her other hand. His weight yanked hard on her muscles. She cried out in pain, clung to her dagger with every ounce of strength she possessed.

Simon scrabbled up the ice beside her, tipping the ice level once more.

A dark shape flew over their heads, landing hard a few feet away.

Eliana looked up in horror as a stream of crawlers raced by. Their heads were human enough—but misshapen and approaching bestial—with sharpened teeth spilling out of broken jaws. Faded scraps of clothing clung to their bodies, and the patches of skin Eliana could see were spotted with scales, patches of scraggly dark fur. They sniffed the air like hounds. Thick, pointed fingernails stabbed the ice.

All those women, snatched while they slept, taken from their beds and their homes and their loved ones, and made into this.

It was an unthinkable fate—and the one awaiting her mother if she couldn’t find her in time.

Two crawlers slammed into the ice, then spun around and raced right for Eliana.

Zahra cried out, her form flickering out of sight. “This way!”

Eliana turned and ran. On all sides, a sea of howling crawlers raced for the shore. Cannon fire hit the ice. The impact blew the pursuing crawlers behind them into pieces.

Ears ringing, Eliana turned. Simon? Still there, his sword out and ready, his hair frosted with ice. Eliana followed Zahra’s shimmering path over a shifting, dark gap between icebergs, along a ridge of icy rocks, across a long, flat stretch of frozen white.

Then, Zahra’s form shuddered and disappeared.

Eliana stumbled, her ears ringing with panic.

“Keep running!” Simon shouted.

“Zahra?” Eliana cried. “Where are you?”

The wraith swooped alongside her, a faint distortion in the air. “I’m sorry, my queen. I can barely hold myself together!”

“Go to the fleet, tell them we’re out here!” Another blast exploded just ahead of them. Eliana skidded to a halt, shoved Simon to the ground. Shards of ice and bodies went flying. Fiery sparks rained down upon them. “And for God’s sake, tell them to stop firing at us!”

Zahra fled.

Eliana looked back over Simon’s head to see a group of four crawlers crouching on an icy ridge a few feet away.

One of them, hair a dark matted mess, pawed the ice with a bulbous hand.

“Simon,” Eliana muttered, “get to your feet, slowly.”

He obeyed. Together they took a few slow steps back.

Then the lead crawler let out a baying howl. The four of them leapt across the water, teeth bared. They moved like roaches—fast, erratic. Simon brought his sword down hard on the neck of one; its head flew off into the water. Another slammed into him, knocking him flat.

A third reared up, nails bared. Eliana ducked the blow, then stabbed it in the stomach. As it fell, she yanked Arabeth free and whirled, flung the dagger between the shoulder blades of the creature hissing on Simon’s chest. It roared in pain and fell to the ground.

Eliana turned, reached for Whistler. But the fourth crawler with the tangled dark hair was nowhere to be found.

Eliana raced over to Simon, yanked Arabeth from the crawler’s twitching body, and kept running.