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I listened to none of it and first touched Yrsa’s crimson thread.

A bite of pain, like the prick of a thorn, burned over my fingertips. The satin string fastened to me. A stitch waiting to be secured.

Fadey thrashed, new panic in his eyes.

“Melder.” Skul Drek used his chin to point at Yrsa’s soul.

I startled. Endless faces stood behind the Myrdan princess, haunts and spectrals of the mirror. These were folk long fallen into Salur. The bloodline of those who’d gone before the princess. Her kin.

Thin threads of connections webbed across Yrsa’s shoulders, her limbs. Connections she likely did not know were there.

Her folk. Her blood. Her power. They stood by her now.

But with the thread of her power bound to mine, they stood with me. I felt the strength of their souls.

I stood a little straighter, a little stronger.

“You need me, Lyra. You cannot shoulder this alone,” Fadey spat, but there was fear in his tone.

Fear that he’d failed.

“Ah, Fadey.” I chuckled with a vein of darkness of my own. “Who says I was ever alone?”

I reached for Thane’s ancient strand. Like with the princess, a biting thread from the bone craft of the Wanderer in his form coiled around my fingertips in a brilliant white. A new rush of power, of strength. I felt as though I could battle until the gods sank the realms.

Amid the murky shadows, misty faces surrounded the prince. Old kings, queens, warriors. I thought I even caught a glimpse of King Damir’s features among them, hopefully a little ashamed for what he’d done to his kingdom. The descendants of bone craft stood by their prince.

By now Jordis’s figure was wrapped around Sindri. She’d found her boy, and the wolves defended them both.

Fadey didn’t shout or fight when I curled Sindri’s blue thread around my fingers, drawing the end into the knot of the others. The melder watched me with hateful resignation.

“You waste such power by not taking it,” he said. “All it requires is the desire, the strength to pull it free, and the Wanderer’s craft would be yours.”

I paused my stitch of Sindri’s borrowed thread. “I’ll never understand why you desired the Wanderer’s power when it destroyed him. It was the tale the god-queen tried to teach her husband—the true power comes from uniting the gods’ crafts for all. Together we came against you, and together we’ll destroy you.”

With the final connection of Sindri’s craft, a roar I’d never experienced before broke through my chest, a ram into a crumbling stone wall. I wasn’t certain if I cried out; the sound was deadened. All I heard was a storm in my head, as though every sea raged through my blood, my bones, my soul.

I rose, gasping, but bolstered in such a way that I was certain no blade could strike me before I struck back, that fatigue would not reach me before I finished my task, that no craft would unravel mine before I crushed it first.

Skul Drek’s eyes deepened to a fiery copper. He flashed his sharp teeth. The obsession and desire deepened and pulsed through our bond.

“Well done, Melder.” From behind Sindri, Nivek beamed. The prince’s hand was on his boy’s shoulder, his other on his wife.

Behind him was a man, handsome and tall. His face was narrower than Roark’s, but too much of my husband lived in his features for me not to know this was King Vishon.

The king had his arm around another.

“Elisabet.” My heart sank.

“Live and be free,” the queen said, her voice an echo. “Love him. We’re never far.”

Her smile was one of peace, as though she was at last home.

I faced Fadey and pressed the veins of craft to my heart. From my soul I withdrew another line, thin and burning gold. The final connection to bind the three veins of craft together.

Every thread burned over my palms, growing fiercer, stronger. I could see the stitches needed to bind them together, to use the full strength of the gods’ gifts—for destruction. As though the threads knew what I desired, I could see the way to meld the strength I’d taken and use it to unravel the enemy of us all. Greed. Bloodlust. Hatred.

“The Wanderer was the first king,” I told Fadey. “But the true power of his kingdom could have been great had he not kept it for himself. It was never his craft; the power of all magics lived in his queen. Meet the hells, you bastard.”