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He pulls me down the narrow pathway. We have to prop our arms against the walls to keep ourselves from sliding as the ship is tossed by the waves. This isn’t what I would expect of some exploratory or cargo vessel—the walls papered and the floor lined with rain-spotted carpet.

“If anyone sees us, won’t we be thrown in the brig or something?” I ask.

“I don’t think so,” he says quietly. “I don’t think we’re actually . . . here. Look closely.” He taps one of the walls. I run my fingers along the brocade wallpaper, and instead of feeling fabric and fine thread, my fingertips recognize the rough texture of dried paint.

“I think this is another part of the obfuscation trial,” he says. He fiddles with a sconce. “I know this place.” He looks at me with something fearful and broken in his eyes. “The Ridding isn’t revealing things to us to be helpful, Fontaine. This is all meant to break us. It’s torture.”

I glance around the hall. “What’s so torturous about this ship?”

He closes his eyes.

“You just admitted you . . .” I can’t say the words. “What else could there be?” What else is he hiding? What could be worse than what he just told me?

“The reason this is a trial,” he says, voice low and grave, “is because we are tempted toward obfuscation, the hiding of things, the keeping of secrets.” He lets his shadows snake around his fingers, studying them with a dim, cold expression. The laugh that leaves his lips chills my bones. “But hiding is all I do, Vesper.”

“Please, be more cryptic.” It’s my vain attempt to wipe that look from his face, the one that’s stoking the languid fear in my veins, making me want to wish he would keep his secrets. It doesn’t work.

Lightning breaks overhead, illuminating the walls through the opening onto the upper deck, and with it, the scream of a woman resounds through the hall. Lonan glances back at me before quickening his pace, feeling his way along the doors, pressing his ear against them. But the woman screams again, this time accompanied by the shouts of several men, coming from the room nearest the stairs. Lonan pushes through the door.

“Lonan,” I try to whisper, but he ignores me.

Given no choice, I follow. Inside there are more than half a dozen people surrounding a bed. None of them register our presence. There’s a hazy quality to the light around us—the lamps and the fireplace all have a dreamy, jagged quality—the imprecision of brushstrokes.

The people surrounding the bed are all men, all are livid, all are shouting. There is one small woman, clearly a nurse. She alone is silent and focused, kneeling on the mattress beside a half-hidden figure.

I move around, holding on to the walls in the still-churning waves, and my stomach jolts when I see more blood on the sheets than I’ve seen all night.

Lonan stands beside me, his face pale, his breath shaking.

“Lonan,” I whisper.

He doesn’t hear me. His eyes are glued to the woman on the bed.

And when I turn to her, my breath catches. I recognize her instantly—the Queen of Gault. She appears younger here, but her long twists of dark hair and sharp cheekbones are unmistakable, despite the flush in her face. She lies on her back, covered in bloodstained sheets. Her skin is flushed red, and her dark hair is plastered to her skin with sweat. Beneath the sheets, her midsection bulges with pregnancy, larger than any pregnant belly I’ve seen.

Lonan steps closer. None of the men take notice, but it’s then that I notice them.

There are two on the edge of the bed, and they are screaming in each other’s faces, both of them backed by others. One of them is King Marcel. His face is younger, and his beard shaved shorter, but that broad brow and angular chin are distinct.

The man opposite has had his face turned away since we entered the room. His hair is dark and pulled back into a long ponytail.

Forgetting Lonan, forgetting the rocking seas, I charge around the bed to look at the man. He does not see me—by now I’m sure Lonan and I exist as phantoms wherever we are. But I would know this face anywhere. The high forehead with the widow’s peak. The piercing dark eyes. The sallow skin that even on a younger face clings to the bones of his skull like wax. Lord Van Asten.

And in his arms is a small, screaming infant.

“If you refuse to hand over the creature,” shouts the king, his ruddy face brightening by the moment, “I will toss you into the sea with it!”

“He’s done nothing wrong,” says my godfather. “He’s your rightful heir, Marcel.”

“That,” the king whispers, pointing at the infant, “is neither my heir nor anything deserving of life.”

I turn my eye down to the bundle wrapped in my godfather’s arms. The newborn babe is small—smaller than any I’ve ever seen. When I look back to the queen on the bed, still straining with the pangs of labor, ignored by the two men arguing, I realize he must be the first of twins.

Saints. I know what night we’ve stepped into.

I step closer, foot nearly slipping because the ground is slick even here, to get a better look at the bundle in my godfather’s arms. The infant wails, his arms outstretched, fingers sprawled wide in panic, and across his small chest is a mark—black lightning that stretches up to the nape of his neck.

“That is Dark magic,” growls the king. “That is anathema.”