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Because these months as Erik’s prisoner had dampened the light in her eyes.

As he crouched beside her, Marge’s shackled hands came up around her head, shielding instinctively.

I panicked, tugging against chains I knew I wouldn’t escape. “What are you doing?”

He drew the crescent blade toward her, and I tugged again, until the force left me winded. Until my specter raged inside me, frantic, desperate.

“Don’t,” I growled.

But Erik just scraped the blade lightly across Marge’s shoulder until the saggy sleeve of her dress drooped down her arm.

My next breath hitched. Because Marge’s skin was lined with white, shining scars.

“You think you’re saving Wielders by denying me an answer?” Though Erik’s voice was soft, Marge cringed at the sound. “This is what will happen if I can’t operate the compass. More rigorous trials. More needless suffering. Every drop of Wielder blood I draw from this moment forward will be on your hands.”

I was shaking now, tears running hot and free down my neck. I’d been right. Erik had been experimenting with the compass. And now, as I met his grim, resolute gaze, I understood what he’d meant before.

I know how to break you, he’d said. But not through my own pain. Every time he’d broken my restraint in the past—at the Opal, in the ballroom when I’d struck him—it had been through the pain of others.

“Alissa?” Marge whispered, recognition blooming in her eyes. “Aliss—”

She choked on the word, rocking back as though from a strike to the throat. I gasped, realizing Erik’s specter must have lashed against her, breaking my name off her tongue.

“Insolent creature.” He stood, his lip curled in disgust. “You dare to speak her name as your equal? She is your future queen. You will address her with respect.”

As Marge huddled in on herself, I saw on her shoulder the only scar I recognized: the bite mark from when she’d coaxed a stray cat down from a penny blossom tree. Despite her bleeding shoulder, Marge had tended to the trembling cat with more care than I’d seen anybody grant a creature that had harmed them. She was the kindest person I’d ever met.

And Erik had scored lines into her skin as though she were nothing.

“Does that make you feel big?” I growled, my fury rising. “Striking a person in chains?”

“You may rule as you choose when the time comes,” Erik said mildly. “I will respect your methods. In the meantime, you must respect mine.” He drew closer, his boots treading on the splayed locks of Marge’s hair. “You should respect, too, all that Lord Heron accomplished.”

I recoiled, not wanting to hear my father’s name spoken here, where I was strung up at the king’s mercy.

“Don’t you dare talk about him,” I breathed.

Erik only smiled, satisfied. “Your father’s research was a gift I’d never anticipated. He’d filled those journals with years’ worth of studies. And then, in one last entry, he detailed his discovery of sibling objects. His work guided us both to the answer. Don’t dishonor him by fighting against it.”

I swallowed past the burning in my throat, aching from the fact that Father’s quest to destroy the compass had led me here. “My father didn’t want this. And neither do I.”

“You will. With that first taste of power will come desire.” His voice deepened. “And then I won’t have to convince you.” He turned toward Marge again, his expression void of sympathy. “But this one is my gift to you. Tell me what I wish to know, and I promise to show her mercy.”

I met Marge’s eyes and found her watching me. Seeing me here—a piece of her past—must have given her more clarity than she’d had in months, because a sudden calm settled into her expression. It was the same acceptance I’d seen in her whenever she’d been preparing to fold in a Double Decks game.

“Alissa, please.” Her voice was gravel-rough, and I winced, afraid Erik would strike my name from her mouth again, just as his personal Hunters had once struck out her tooth. I began trembling more violently as she repeated, “Please.”

Erik cocked his head in anticipation, probably hoping that her begging would sway me into surrender.

But I had nothing to surrender. I couldn’t save her all those months ago. And I didn’t know how to save her now.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered, my voice breaking from an agonizing guilt. “I’m so sorry.”

She didn’t react at my apology—didn’t lose the strength she’d somehow gathered. “The youngest among us was fourteen,” she rasped, her gaze wide and lucid. Then the kindest woman I’d ever met looked the king dead in the eyes and said, “So, please, Alissa. Make him suffer.”

A second later, her shriek pierced the air.

She writhed as an invisible power arched her spine, and I writhed in my own helplessness, my screams ricocheting off the walls.