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Without the makeup and pretty dresses, her sickness was clear to see: in the deep purple hollows under her eyes, so dark they almost swallowed all of the freckles there, her bony shoulders, her delicate skin so sickly and thin the bones beneath looked seconds away from slicing through—even her every breath was labored, not a dry heave like she’d just walked away from a battlefield, but … that whisper of a rattle right there, as though even unfastening some chains around Malakai’s wrists was a massive task for her.

“I’m Ma’varea,” Emelda said, voice strained as she worked. “I’m the one who gathers the information, then Malakai meets the Vordellians and passes it on.”

Golla popped up out of the floor by Emelda’s robes. “Golla help sometimes too,” he announced, thrusting a hand into the air. “He transport Malakai to meetings above.”

“How?” Aeris asked, sounding a little out of breath. “You’re too small. You can’t transport anything bigger than a dining tray.”

“Golla learn.” He held his hands out and the rocks on the floor began to move. Stones the size of large dinner plates slid up and up, joining onto his body like pieces of armor until he was nearly nine feet tall. “When big like this, he create cocoon of rocks and put Malakai inside. Then Golla take Malakai through rocks to where he needs to go. Golla enjoy. Malakai does not. Neither did Vordellians in Astro Temple.”

Aeris’s lips parted, but no sound came out for several seconds. “You transported the humans out of that thing in Illieck?”

Finally, Malakai’s chains fell to the floor with a loud clang.

Emelda stood, tucking a piece of dark hair behind her ear. “After we learned that everything from the metal graveyard was being moved to the caves beneath Illieck, we started making plans, and when we figured out that the Astro Temple was directly above Illieck, we planted a memory that a piece of the Arch had been moved there.”

“And when it was back somewhere safe,” Malakai continued, groaning as he rubbed his wrists, “the human soldier who’d witnessed it being placed in the temple let himself be caught. Brave guy sacrificed himself, and while his memories were being searched, the Vordellians pumped a load of Light into the temple so it looked heavily protected, gathered their best hundred or so soldiers, and hid inside, ready for when Ramapheal sank it.”

“Taking them right next to where all those machines from the graveyard were being stored,” Aeris breathed slowly, putting the pieces together. “And then while we were so distracted trying to get into the temple, they could slip to the caves and take back all that Light.”

Emelda smiled grimly. “Yes. It wasn’t easy, mind you. The explosion was a distraction so you wouldn’t hear the floor in the main building being blown off, then Golla got to work transporting all of those people—”

“And machines,” Golla interrupted, shaking off the new rocks until he shrank back down to his old size. “Big bank things that store Light. He take those too.”

Emelda patted his head affectionately. “Yes, and we’re so proud that you did.”

Soraya looked at Golla. “That was why you were so tired leading up to the attack. Because of what you were doing.” Her heart ached anew at the memory of seeing him so exhausted, now knowing what he was doing—for her people.

Ikarus dragged a shaky hand through his hair. “This doesn’t make any sense. You’re not a general, Mel. Only the inner circle knows the things you’ve leaked. Where are you getting your information?”

There was no hesitation in Emelda’s answer. “All of you.”

Ikarus’s power flared through the room, dragging several pieces of furniture toward him. “What?”

Emelda shrugged, the jewels in her ears clinking. “There’s not just one source giving us the information; it’s all of you.”

Aeris rubbed his temples like he had a headache. “That would explain why we’ve never been able to trace the information being leaked back to one person. Because it was never one person to begin with. It was all of us.”

Ikarus’s answering scoff was sharp as steel. “Oh, really? And how did you get the others to talk without realizing it?”

“Why do you think I always insist on going to the Pitt?” Emelda asked. “Do you think I enjoy making idle conversation with the people who stood by and smiled when my sister was executed? No. I go because everyone there sees me as weak. Pathetic little Varena’s baby sister who’s been declining of the Bane since she was a child. I go to those parties, I get myself all prettied up in a low-cut dress and sip on wine and the men just flock to me—they can’t help it. They think that I’m pretty but stupid—so they don’t think to watch themselves around me.”

Soraya glanced at the floor, shame unfurling in her chest at the memory that, not so long ago, she’d thought the same thing about the fairy now standing before her.

Emelda laughed humorlessly, shaking her head. “They practically fall over themselves to impress me, to prove how big and strong and lethal they are. Secrets pour out of them like honey tapped from a tree, and they never suspect that I might’ve slipped them something to make it all a distant memory.”

Ikarus went rigid. “Is that why you’ve been growing—”

“Nightshade?” Emelda cut him off. “The herb that, when concentrated and ground into little itty-bitty pieces and sprinkled into tea or—oh, I don’t know, ash-sticks, causes slight amnesia.”

Ikarus closed his eyes, sighing. “That you then give out like little party favors whenever you go to the Pitt.”

Emelda dipped her chin in a nod. “Or any tavern, really. Or anyone I want to get information from. I wait until everyone gets nice and drunk, let the men paw over me like panting dogs, let them become desperate to tell me things and impress me, and when I’m done, I give them an ash-stick for being good little boys, and the next day, when their heads are fuzzy and they can’t quite remember what we talked about, they pass it off as nothing more than a hangover.”

The room was stunned into silence. Soraya stared at the fairy she’d foolishly thought was so stupid only a few nights ago, and now saw the elegant, poised woman standing there. She’d thought Emelda was a vain idiot desperate for attention, not realizing that the drunken fool was a mask she wore and removed when it suited her. That she’d fallen into the same trap as all the men she’d given those ash-sticks to.

Emelda met her gaze across the room, smiled as if she could see all of that written across Soraya’s face, as if that had been her intention all along.

Soraya couldn’t help but smile back. She’d grossly underestimated this fairy.