—the sunlight flashes over something new: distant black specks flying over the mountain peaks.


    Valerie squints at them. What are they? They don’t look like birds.


    Curiosity wins over fear, and she trudges on with a renewed sense of purpose. Step after step after step in this bleak and foreign land, the peaks coming ever closer, and then the most extraordinary sensation floods her body—


    *


    Avon spoke in a deceptively calm tone. “What is that?”


    “I can explain—”


    “Please do.”


    Valerie swallowed. She was glad of the barrier separating them; he looked like he wanted to snatch the locket straight from her hands.


    “Anwen gave it to me,” she said. “Look…” Hands trembling, she opened the locket and showed it to him. “It’s a silvertree seed. I’ve been wearing it so I can still use magic.”


    “That locket belongs to the queen.” His voice lowered to almost a growl. He placed the black claw down on the wooden floorboard by the door, then straightened up and advanced on her, hand straying to the hilt of his sword. “Who am I speaking to?”


    “It’s me!” She closed the locket and raised her hands. Her chest felt tight. “Avon, I swear, it’s me. She isn’t controlling me. She controlled Anwen, not me. If I was possessed, why would I tell you to destroy the Book of Shadows? Why would I save the Emperor? Wouldn’t you know if I wasn’t myself?”


    Doubt flickered across his face. “Then why hide it? You promised to tell me everything.”


    “And I did! I told you about the queen and the goldentree. I told you about Titus. That was everything I knew at the time. Anwen gave me the locket after that.”


    She stared at him. It hurt to breathe. She couldn’t end up in this situation again, she couldn’t. She had fallen on that sword once already, and the bright blade that he’d half-drawn was blinding to her eyes. He was a coiled spring, shoulders tense, eyes dark, a predator poised to strike—


    He controlled himself; she saw him visibly hold himself back. “Give it to me.”


    For a moment she gaped at him, uncomprehending. Then she nodded. “Okay.”


    Slowly, she held out the locket. The room seemed to press in on her like the bars of a cage as Avon approached. But his face hadn’t twisted like that because of her. It was because of the queen, this phantom between them, ruining them both with suspicion and fear.


    Well, that, and she hadn’t told him about the locket.


    His hair fell in front of his eyes as he stopped and frowned at her. She felt sure that she could hear their hearts, a drumbeat of tension, before he reached out and grasped the locket.


    “Don’t move.”


    She stood frozen, staring after him as Avon turned to stride across the room. He was testing the boundaries of the magical barrier. He found it again between the foot of the four poster bed and the door. Then he sidestepped, moving around the black claw in a rough half circle, the floorboards creaking beneath his boots. Six or seven feet, she guessed, and the shape was consistent with Anwen’s theory that the silvertrees emitted a spherical field of magic…


    Which meant the claw did too.


    Avon found the edge of the boundary next to the oak wardrobe by the far wall. He placed the locket on a shelf, then turned around.


    “Do you sense it still? Or are you out of range?”


    “Out of range,” she answered, which was true. Between the dresser and the bed, she was standing outside both magical fields. If she headed towards the door, she’d find the claw’s power. And if she moved to the opposite corner, where Avon stood by the wardrobe, she’d reenter the field of the silvertree seed.


    “Prove it,” he said. “Lie to me.”


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    She suppressed a sigh. “We’re in Maskamere right now.”


    Obviously, nothing happened. The curse didn’t trigger. She might have hoped for some gratitude from Avon or at least relief. Her magic was gone, and the queen wasn’t possessing her. They were in no immediate danger.


    But he didn’t relax. Instead, his expression hardened. “Let’s try this again.” He leaned against the wardrobe. “Why did you hide the locket?”


    Her robe had come loose. She wrapped it more tightly around herself, considering her answer. That look in his eyes… She felt he might swallow her up.


    Once, she might have cowered under that unrelenting gaze. Now she was tired of proving herself. Her jaw set.


    “Why?” she mocked him. “I don’t know, Avon, why didn’t you tell me anything about those six names you gave me? Why did you take me to the lodge without any warning? Why did you tell me to trust no one?”


    Avon crossed his arms. The tension in his body hadn’t disappeared, but he was listening. He wasn’t going to hurt her. That realisation came to her in a thrill, and her fear dissipated with it. She strode forward, pausing right where she guessed the boundary of the locket’s magical field should be, and curled her hand around the bedpost.


    “You’re just like me,” she went on, “and I’m just like you. You don’t tell me things because it doesn’t serve you. Because you need to stay in control. Well, you’ve got me. I’m here with you. But don’t get mad when I act the same way you do.” She moved forward again, crossing into that magical bubble where she stopped inches from Avon’s face. “Yes, I kept the locket to myself. That’s not a betrayal. It’s me doing what I do best. Doing exactly what you told me to do. You enjoy it, don’t you?”


    She reached for his belt and he started, jerking back.


    “You do enjoy it.”


    He looked askance at her. “Don’t touch me, Valerie.”


    She’d rattled him. He’d been stiff as a board watching her as if she were a scorpion that might sting at any moment.


    “Look,” she said, softening her voice, “let me tell you about the locket. The claw didn’t react to me. It reacted to the silvertree seed. It’s like they’re pushing against each other. Do you know what this means?”


    His brow furrowed. “What?”


    “The claw has a magical field just like the silvertrees. I felt it. It means the silvertrees aren’t the only source of magic!”


    “It’s no ordinary claw,” he said. “That’s a wyvern’s talon.”


    At that, they both fell silent. Valerie looked over at the black claw still lying on the floorboard, shiny and innocuous. A wyvern’s talon! Then the legends about the wyverns… The stories of them as holy guardians… There was some truth to it, after all.


    The wyverns live in the mountains. A great mountain range separated Maskamere from Severhine to the northwest and Carthal to the northeast. It ran from east to west, but there were more mountains further north too between Severhine, Carthal and Drakon… She had crossed that contested territory once, in a previous life, and she had seen the wyverns swooping above the peaks…


    But they never crossed into Maskamere.


    Her heart leapt in excitement. “That’s it, then. The wyverns and the silvertrees. They can’t touch.”


    Avon frowned. “What do you mean?”


    “They’re two different sources of magic. I think they repel each other. We can test it when we go to the monastery! We can look for the wyverns!”


    Another kind of excitement fuelled her now. Because if the wyvern claw was like the silvertree seed, and if the wyverns were like the silvertrees, that meant…


    “You mean look for another blessing?”


    Avon had anticipated her. She nodded slowly, biting her lip. “I don’t know. Maybe.”


    “No wonder you were so enthusiastic about coming here,” he muttered drily.


    “Silvertrees take decades to grow. Did you ever think about that in your grand vision for the Empire? But if we had an alternative source…”


    “We wouldn’t need to wait that long,” he surmised. “I see.”


    She was pointing that out for his benefit, not hers. Valerie still intended to reverse the timeline when they returned to Maskamere, with or without Avon’s consent. But it didn’t hurt to give him an incentive to seek out another source of magic, and she would grab at any chance to expand her power.


    All the more reason to find that monastery.


    “You’ve forgotten something else,” she added.


    He looked at her sharply. “What’s that?”


    She sidestepped around him to the wardrobe, where she picked up the locket. He watched her, frowning, but didn’t stop her from clasping it around her neck. Then she turned back to face him, her eyes falling on the scabbard hooked to his belt.


    “The sword. I can examine it. Let me find out what the Emperor was talking about.”


    She reached for his waist, but he caught her wrist first. “You could have done it all along.”


    Valerie nodded. Yes, and she’d been dying to ever since that night in the lodge, but she hadn’t found an excuse to grab hold of the sword. Now the secret of the locket was out, there was no reason to pretend.


    “Can I do it now?”


    There was a moment’s pause before he shifted, moving his left arm back so that she could easily reach the sword. He didn’t draw it. She leaned in and curled her hand around the hilt.


    Power.


    Shining, blinding, reflecting—a blade that could cut through any magical entity and snuff out any malevolent spell. This much she had sensed the first time she’d touched the sword, all the way back on that first night with Avon when he’d used it as a test of her magical abilities. It felt like a lifetime ago.


    But a lot had happened since then. She was now thrice blessed, her magical senses amplified, and much like the Forbidden Chamber beneath the palace temple, she discovered that the blade had more secrets to offer.


    It told her who could wield the blade. It told her that it belonged to a champion, a protector. It told her—


    Valerie gasped and withdrew her hand.


    Avon blinked at her. “What?”


    She couldn’t speak. Because she understood exactly why the Emperor had so feared the secret behind Maska’s sword. She understood why the Patriarch had used it against him.


    And she understood that it put Avon in the most danger of all.