If this was how her mother had existed, it was no wonder she’d gone mad and joined the angels.

I don’t think humans are meant to possess this kind of power, she told Zahra. We’re too small for it.

You are hardly small, my queen, Zahra said after a moment, but she didn’t sound convinced. Then a feeling of someone wringing their hands crept into Eliana’s mind. I shouldn’t have brought you here, Zahra said softly. I should never have told you about it.

And thereby condemned Navi to an unspeakable death? Eliana shoved the rest of the meat into her pocket. You did exactly as you should have. And if you try to force me back, I’ll never forgive you for it.

Zahra fell into a miserable silence.

“Using your mind-speak again?” Harkan asked. “Whispering secrets you don’t want me to hear?”

“Yes,” Eliana said simply, moving past him and ignoring his mutinous look. “Let’s do the job and get home.”

Harkan’s voice was thin and quiet in the dark. “Just like old times.”

• • •

With Zahra’s guidance, they worked their way slowly through the strange streets of Annerkilak. To avoid detection by the wraiths who ruled the Nest, Zahra had shrunken her presence to a mere palm-sized shadow in Eliana’s pocket, her thoughts so faint that Eliana had to strain to understand them.

Stop here, Zahra instructed, and Eliana obeyed, gently touching Harkan’s arm as they passed the mouth of an alleyway where a sullen vendor had set up shop—a sagging cart laden with startlingly beautiful statues carved from various precious stones. Saint Marzana, in ruby. Saint Ghovan, in diamonds and pearls. A topaz idol of the Emperor, his eyes of glittering obsidian.

At Zahra’s bidding, Eliana purchased an idol of the Emperor while Harkan flirted with the vendor.

They moved on, the idol a sharp and unwelcome weight in her left hip pocket. Her tired mind imagined its tiny stone fingers poking the flesh of her thigh, insistent and grinning. She resolved to dispose of it as soon as possible.

Turn there, Zahra ordered, directing them toward an archway that led to a plaza gurgling with fountains—one in the center, an ivory-white angel with water trickling from her eyes as tears would. Others in each corner—weeping angels all. Some despairing, some furious. Some in prayer; others in combat, with writhing humans caught beneath their boots. The water from the fountains collected in a series of shallow, square pools, where bathers lounged and drank.

Why are we here? Harkan tapped against Eliana’s wrist—the old, wordless language they had devised while growing up in Orline.

Because, Zahra replied, two strangers appearing out of nowhere and swiftly heading straight for the wraith nest will attract suspicion. We must be cautious. The moment they detect me, we’re finished.

Eliana relayed her answer to Harkan, tapping her fingers against his own.

He subsided, his expression tense.

They traveled through the city in such a fashion for what felt like hours—wandering through shabby neighborhoods on the perimeter of the Nest, where the streets were narrow and hushed; and then in and out of buildings crammed with markets stuffed into parlors and kitchens, like eccentric houses opening up their rooms for perusal by prospective buyers. Vendors shouted prices from behind their carts. Shoppers whispered furtively in corners, counting through damp purses of coins. Eyes liquid and dilated from fresh drops of lachryma; breath sweet and stale, bodies teetering.

And then, at last, her own body so stiff and tense she felt brittle, bleached, a bald mountain stripped of all woodland, Eliana sensed Zahra’s thoughts directing her toward a grand building across the road—circular, dark, quilted with windows lit amber from within.

Zahra’s fear poured through Eliana’s mind, slow and viscous.

“Is that it?” she murmured for Harkan’s benefit.

Zahra sent the feeling of a nod. “The hive, they call it.”

Then her presence stiffened, a shock of surprise. She pressed herself into the rigid flat of Eliana’s palm.

“We must move quickly.” Her low voice held a new urgency. “Sarash is on her way.”

Eliana tensed. “Sarash?”

“A wraith?” Harkan asked.

Zahra’s affirmative came with sharp, cool pressure against the fleshy part of Eliana’s thumb. “If she arrives before we are safely away, there will be very little I can do to protect you from her. The other wraiths are lustful, easily distractible. Not Sarash.” She cursed then, softly, an angelic vulgarity. “Last I was here, it seemed she would not return to Annerkilak for some weeks.”

“How long do we have?” Eliana asked.

“An hour. Perhaps a little more.”

Now Harkan was the one to curse.

A wave of exhaustion moved swiftly through Eliana, but she did not allow it to fell her. Her vision danced, careening. She clenched her fists and teeth, willed her sight steady. “Take us inside.”

• • •

Nearly an hour later, having successfully infiltrated the hive’s lower levels thanks to Zahra’s whispered instructions, they raced through a dark, clean honeycomb of basement tunnels. The walls were damp with the same black cave water through which they had swum, and small galvanized lights flickered and buzzed, haphazardly illuminating their path.

As Eliana ran, Harkan silent and swift beside her, she recited the steps of their mission as if intoning the verses of a prayer—get to the stores where the wraiths hoard their drugs. Medicine to treat the wounds and illnesses of their slaves, recreational substances like anodynum and lachryma.

Poisons.

Antidotes.

Then she recited the Lissar words Zahra had taught them as they crept through the upper levels of the hive—backs pressed flat against the tapestried walls, boots treading carefully down corridors slick with polished mosaic tiles. Lissar: the most basic of the angelic languages. Far easier than Qaharis and Azradil, Zahra had said, before Eliana hissed at her to shut up. Lissar might have been easier, but Eliana still found the unfamiliar words difficult to remember. Remy was the one with the gift for languages, with the memory like a steel trap.

But she could not think of Remy in these tunnels.

She had to fly through them unfettered, cycling through the Lissar words over and over, in case Zahra had to unexpectedly leave, create a diversion upstairs, give them time to complete their mission alone. She had to keep her mind as clear and sharp as it had once been as the Dread.

Upstairs, the wraiths held court in a series of darkened lounges, lit by galvanized lights in multicolored glass casings. Wild footsteps and whirling dance reels, performed on wailing pipes and frantic fiddles, floated down through the hive’s many floors—a faint spectral refrain.