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“I’m going to raid the Folke building. I know where all their supplies are. We’re going to starve out here if I don’t get these whiny priestesses something to eat. Don’t wait up for me; I’ll be a while. And take care of the girls.” She stepped outside and fitted the door back into place, sealing everything back into darkness.

Kai strode to the hangers and pulled off the other cloak. “Don’t leave,” he instructed the priestesses. He tugged the door free and stepped outside the dugout, then replaced the board and turned to find Heva already gone. He pulled the hood tighter around his face as he climbed a slope and peered over a rock wall toward the road. He spotted her already turning a corner into a narrow alley between white pillared shops with glittering navy banners.

Following Heva was like following a bird that kept disappearing behind the clouds. Kai was lucky he knew where the Folke building was, or he never would have found her ten minutes later. The market was out for the weekend, only half the merchants brave enough to be outside selling with what was going on just beyond the palace gates down the Navy Road. He stole a black scarf off a cart as he passed, and he fastened it over the lower half of his face as he ducked around a large glass carriage bringing in a small crowd of nobles for the market. When he rounded the corner to the Folke building, he leapt back in surprise at the sight of Heva knocking out a fully decorated Folke. The man slumped into a puddle, mud splashing up his Folke uniform, and Kai bolted after her when Heva staggered forward, clutching her side with one hand and pressing the other against the building to hold herself up. A boom of thunder hid the sounds of Kai’s approach. Heva didn’t see him as she reached for a doorknob, and she was inside the Folke building before Kai made it. He flung open the door and slipped in after her, looking both ways down a long hall, listening to Folke in training; many voices, taps of metal, drilled instructions. They were just on the other side of the wall before him that didn’t reach to the ceiling, permitting all sound to reverberate. He heard a squeaking door around the corner, and he moved that way.

A door was ajar, the room inside dark. Kai looked over his shoulder as he headed for it, stepping inside and expecting to open his arms for Heva to fill them with food supplies to carry. But a door hung open on the opposite side of the room, too, swinging slightly in the wind, giving Kai a view of an alleyway where rain now pattered over the city. He looked around in confusion and pushed the door behind him open wider to let light in from the hall. The light showed no shelves of food in the room, and no Heva. Kai did a full turn, taking in pegs on the walls holding up weapons; mostly swords with royal deep blue leather handles and silvery details. His gaze followed the pegs to a row of bows hanging by quivers of navy-feathered arrows. There was a gap on the wall where a bow was supposed to be. A quiver of arrows was gone, too.

Kai’s feet jerked forward as he realized what Heva took; he banged out the door into the rain and raced back the way he’d come. He didn’t know where she went, but he did know what she’d been staring at every day from the dugout. He leapt onto a retaining wall and sprang over a wagon in his way. People shouted things at him and called for the Folke as he bounded down the Navy Road.

It was the better part of an hour before he found her. The rain had stopped but Kai’s cloak was drenched, the hood sticking to his cheeks when he turned and saw the silver tip of an arrow emerging from behind the beam of a building, not far from the Tower Inn. She was three stories up.

Kai barged into the building, startling a ritzy group of Weylins sipping wine around decorated tables as he fled through to the staircase at the back. He sprinted up one flight, then came out onto a wraparound porch and climbed onto the rail. He gritted his teeth as he grabbed the rail above and pulled himself up. When his boots hit the third-level porch, he spun, and there she was.

Heva was facing the palace, an arrow nocked on her bowstring, one eye closed. Kai approached slowly, only the howling wind masking his heavy breaths as he came up behind her and peered down the end of the arrow to see what she was looking at.

The palace gates were open. Kai held his breath at the sight of the white-skinned creatures with strange eyes coming out. But that’s not what Heva aimed at.

An Intelligentsia walked gracefully before them with his hood up. When he turned, one eye showed, along with pale skin, purplish lips, and black hair. Kai didn’t know the identities of the surviving sages, but he knew that one. That was the Chancellor of Per-Siana.

Kai found himself drifting in front of Heva, raising his hands. Heva didn’t move, didn’t take her eye off her target, even though Kai stood in the way, the silver arrow tip brushing his chest. She stared as if she could still see the Chancellor through his body. Her pale lips quivered over a solid jaw, her hair dripping wet and stuck to her forehead and neck.

“Don’t make me cry in front of you, Priest.” It came out empty, but a warning nonetheless. “I’m not ashamed of much in this life, but I’m too proud to cry in front of you.” A tear slipped down her cheek, leaving a trail behind.

Kai didn’t have to ask if Chancellor Damon was responsible for sending the Folke to burn the First Temple. He didn’t have to wonder if the same man was responsible for killing Seeda. Heva’s face told stories that her mouth never would.

“You know what will happen if you release that arrow,” Kai said. “You know they’ll be up here in seconds, you’ll be dragged into that palace, marked a traitor, and sent right to the Execution Hall.” He wrapped a hand around the end of the arrow, and her bowstring loosened. “You can’t run, Heva. Not while you’re bleeding.” He nodded down to her side where blood seeped through the white dress. Kai could only imagine how many stitches she’d torn.

Heva dropped the arrow; it clattered to the floorboards of the porch as she pushed Kai out of the way and stared again, the bow at her side. She didn’t pick up the arrow or reach for another one, she just watched him—Chancellor Damon.

The Chancellor turned to go back inside the gate, the Vafat swishing in behind him in red and black coats, long swords swaying at their sides, gaping hoods tugging in the stormy wind. The click of the gate closing filled the street, and past the white walls, Kai could see the top of the King’s lush garden. Somewhere in there, High Priestess Geovani was locked away.

“I want to go be with Ryn.” Heva swiped at her tear with the back of her hand.

“Me too.” Kai took the bow from her hands and scooped up the quiver of arrows she’d left leaning against the wall. “But the priestesses won’t make it without us. You know that.” He leaned to peer over the edge of the porch. “Also—I know you’re bleeding, but we’re going to have to climb down from here, and fast. I made a mess of things when I went through this building so we can’t go back inside, and I imagine the Folke will be here any second.”

They’d barely made it back to their storage hideout beneath the Tower Inn when a soft knock sounded against their makeshift door. It was almost too quiet to hear over the rain pounding on the roads again. Kai’s gaze soared up to Heva’s across the room where Kristin was patting her dress dry with a towel. Kai grabbed the bow and loaded it as Heva limped across the space, pulling her sword from around a broken cabinet and leaning to peer through a crack in the door. Kai jumped when she shouted, “Faro?!”

Heva ripped the whole door off and grabbed someone on the other side. Kai lowered the arrow as a tall slender man stumbled in over his own feet, a set of crooked teeth showing when he smiled at Heva. She threw her arms around him, and he hugged her back with a strained noise that sounded like a sob. Kai tore his attention away, putting it on something else. He wasn’t the type to be jealous, but Heva took her greeting too far as she clung to the man’s drenched dark leathers, guiding him inside the hideout and reaching through the door again. Someone else was pulled inside, and Kai studied a small woman, middle aged, with pale eyes and streaks of white in her wet brown hair.

“Who are these people?” Kai asked as Heva set the door back in place. The priestesses stayed quiet, keeping to the back of the dugout. The man, Faro, flashed them a toothy smile, and Kristin made a horrified face.

“These are soldiers from Burn Division Twelve,” Heva told him. And to the soldiers, she said, “This is Ryn’s cousin.”

The gangly man blinked at Kai. “You’re the cousin Commander Adassah always talks about?”

Heva didn’t give Kai a chance to answer. “What are you doing here?” She guided the woman to a chair as if she wasn’t bleeding out herself, and Kai sighed.

“We took leave to go to the ninety-ninth province,” Faro said, and Kai noticed an old, fraying ribbon tied around his neck. “But my neighbours had moved already, so…” His voice trailed off and he flicked a rock off the cabinet beside him. “Anyway, we got word the border divisions were demobilized until General Reza returns from a mission, so we came back here to check on you, Heva. But the First Temple was burned down.”

“It’s by the grace of the God Original we saw you passing by just now though. We followed you here,” the small woman said in a quiet voice. Her light eyes fell to the blood on Heva’s dress.

“I would have yelled to get your attention, but Dolem told me not to.” Faro shrugged. “There were Folke everywhere. We had to be sneaky to get in here.”

Heva took the blanket off her bed of crates in the corner and wrapped the small woman in it.

“What do we do now, Heva?” Faro asked. “Adassah is gone and Burn Division Twelve had to officially disband when the Chancellor issued a decree that anyone who still supports the Gold Maiden is to be arrested.”

Heva fell back to sit against the table Kristin was using for a bed. “I don’t know. How can we support Ryn and the King from the other side of the desert?”