In my periphery, I catch Eclipsa trying to muffle her devilish grin. I’m guessing this is a form of punishment for the prince after his behavior during the Wild Hunt.

“I thought we were going to discuss why the prince traveled to the Winter Court?” I mumble just as a bead of sweat slides down my forehead and into my eye.

Eclipsa twists into a spider pose, her face a picture of relaxation despite holding a pose that would break me in half. “We are. But no reason we shouldn’t get a session in while we do, right?”

I trade an exasperated look with Asher, who appears just as grumpy as I am right now, despite his flawless form. Ignoring Valerian, who’s stare keeps flicking my way like tiny slivers of sleet peppering my skin, I ask, “How, exactly, did you all learn yoga?”

Everyone looks away. Crap. What did I say wrong?

Valerian glares down at poor Patrick as he growls, “Let’s get this over with.”

His mood shift leaves me feeling dizzy. Pretend your hands and feet are roots, Summer. But Eclipsa’s trick for balance barely touches me, and it takes all my energy not to land on my face.

“The night before school started,” Eclipsa begins, “there was an attack at the old Lunar Court palace.”

“Darklings?” I roll into my Warrior II pose.

Eclipsa shakes her head, her silver ponytail whipping back and forth. “There were darklings used in the attack, but we think they acted under the influence of an Evermore. They . . .” Her gaze skips to Valerian and then back to me. “During the attack, someone stole the Darken’s soulstone.”

I give up on the extended side angle I was trying and sit on my ass. “I’m sorry, the what?”

Valerian’s face is emotionless as he explains. “Every Evermore is given one at birth for their first soulmancy rites. I showed you mine, remember?”

The owl pendant.

“My grandfather’s soulstone is made from black tourmaline, the only gemstone found in nature that can hold a soul as powerful as his.”

“I’m sorry,” I say. “Can you back up to the part where the soul of the Evermore responsible for nearly destroying our worlds is stored somewhere?” My voice has gone high and breathy. “You store bacon grease and jam, not souls of evil tyrants intent on mass destruction.”

“Remember when I told you all Evermore keep a tiny sliver of their soul in a soulstone they’re given at birth?” Eclipsa asks, her voice unusually patient. “And how that soulstone plays an integral part of the soulmancy process?”

My hand flutters to my own soulstone pendant, a ruby held inside a wolf’s mouth, and I nod.

“As long as your soulstone survives, your soul cannot be destroyed, only transferred, like energy. The second the wearer dies, their soul automatically returns to their soulstone to await transfer to a new body.”

“If a Fae’s not an Evermore, where does their soul go?” I ask, trying to remember her lesson on the complicated matter.

“All Fae spirits are tied to Everwilde,” Eclipsa says. “If a Fae dies without a soulstone, their spirit rejoins the land.”

That definitely rings a bell. I recall Professor Lambert explaining all souls from the lesser Fae not deemed Evermore eventually seep into the land of their ancestors. Their spirits manifest as nature—sometimes in the form of an animal, a tree, even a rock—and contributes to the magic others from their court can draw upon.

There are exceptions. For instance, Mack told me once, if an Evermore runs afoul of the council, they might find their soul imprisoned in the seven Fae hells, a magical Fae prison set in a pocket realm of the Everwilde.

“Why not just send the Darken to the seven Fae hells?”

Eclipsa scowls at my use of King Oberon’s other name. “Because the prison has suffered major breaches over the years, so the Evermore council chose to store his soulstone on Starfall Island.”

I raise an eyebrow, and Valerian adds, “Starfall Island used to belong to the Lunar Court, before the Lunar Court was banished for their part in the Darken’s war and the island was claimed by the council.” Eclipsa goes still at the mention of her banished court, and Valerian flicks his gaze to her before continuing. “Now, the Lunar palace acts as a vault to hold the most dangerous artifacts in Everwilde, including the Darken’s soulstone.”

I blow out a breath. I’m not even pretending to do yoga now. “I’m assuming the vault was guarded and warded?”

“Heavily.” Valerian’s brow furrows. “Whoever broke in and stole the stone had been planning the attack for months, possibly years.”

Eclipsa sits cross-legged facing me. “Since all the courts distrust each other, they each have their own guards and spells protecting the palace.”

“Crap.” I massage my temples. “So whoever took the stone has to be powerful.”

“Very,” Valerian says, and something about his soft tone worries me. “But all the power in the Everwilde couldn’t break those defenses unless someone betrayed them from the inside.”

“And,” I finish proudly, “because every court had a hand in defending the vault, it’s near impossible to determine a suspect, and they’re all blaming each other.”

Asher winks proudly at me, impressed.

“So the prince went home,” I continue, working out the angles as I speak, “because someone suspects the Winter Court?”

“Not just suspects,” Eclipsa says quietly, her focus shifting to Valerian.

Valerian stretches to a stand, his face near unreadable. “The Summer Queen publicly accused me of the crime. I went home to face the council.”

My stomach sinks. “What’s the punishment for stealing the stone?” The look Eclipsa gives Asher turns my unease to full on panic. “But why would the Winter Prince steal the Darken’s soulstone when he despises his grandfather?”

Silence.

Valerian’s mouth hardens as he stares at some invisible spot on the wall. “I didn’t always disagree with him. After your death, I had a lot of anger against the Seelie Court. He used that anger to make me an ally, for a time. A part of me thought as long as I stayed close to him, I would know if he ever found you.”

He allied with the man who cruelly and methodically tormented him in an effort to protect me? I swallow, my throat bone-dry as I remember the dream I had about the Darken whipping Valerian. The stories I heard about his grandfather torturing him in horrendous ways . . .

Still. Still.

The Darken is the reason our world turned upside down. He’s the reason we lost almost half our population and land. The reason my aunts both have learned to cry soundlessly in the middle of the night because they don’t want to wake us.

“How could you align with someone like him?” I whisper.

A flicker of emotion ripples over his countenance, too quick to make out. “Because I’m not always the good guy, Summer. I’m Fae. In our world, there’s not always a good or bad side, only the weak and the powerful.”

“But you didn’t steal his soulstone, right?”

I don’t mean it to come out as an accusation, but it does. His lips twist, my body recoiling from the hurt I see in his eyes before he closes off his emotions behind a hard mask.

“He didn’t do it,” Asher says, and I can tell by his clipped voice that any points I won with him have been docked severely. “The Winter Prince was the one who turned the tide in the war. He spied against his grandfather, and when it came time, rallied half the Winter Court to the other side. If not for the prince, the Darken would still rule.”

“Then why would my—the Summer Queen claim he stole it?”

Eclipsa twists her ponytail around her fingers. “The Summer Queen has had it out for the Winter Prince ever since . . . well, she blames him for your death. Any chance she gets, she tries to turn the council against him. Tries to undermine his court. Anything to hurt him.”

I pluck at my soulstone pendant. Over the summer, Eclipsa and I determined that my mother must have taken my soulstone after I died, before my father could find it and destroy it. That’s the only way she could have performed the spells necessary to make me jump into another body, rudimentary as they were.

Then, somehow, she got it to me when I visited the half-Fae who erased my memory.

“Wait.” I drop the necklace back down into my tank top. “Why not destroy the Darken’s soulstone? I know it’s possible because Eclipsa said my father almost destroyed mine.”

Valerian’s eyes harden. “When he created the forbidden weapon that eventually caused both our worlds to collide, he needed something powerful enough to contain that many souls inside the weapon.”

I shiver, remembering the dark presence of the forbidden weapons in the vault beneath the academy.

“Most forbidden weapons harness no more than fifty souls,” Valerian continues, his jaw clenched. I wonder just how much trauma this whole thing is making him relive—and how much of that I’ll take on in my dreams. “A rare few perhaps contain one hundred. But he was desperate to create something so powerful that it could destroy the entire Seelie race. Desperate enough that he melted a fragment of his soulstone into the iron the axe was forged from. That sacrifice allowed thousands of souls into the axe—but also bound his own soul in the process.”

“So, what? This weapon protects his soulstone somehow?”

“Sort of.” Eclipsa stands, arching her back. “A soul cannot be destroyed in parts.”

“And since a piece of King Oberon’s soul was infused in the axe,” I finish, head spinning from all the twists, “you need the weapon before you can shatter the soulstone.”

“Very good,” Eclipsa purrs. “Except, during the final battle that ended the war, the axe was damaged, and a piece went missing.” She looks to Valerian, her mouth pressed into a concerned line. “Until we retrieve the missing fragment, and have the axe in its entirety, his soul cannot be extinguished.”