She ran straight for Rielle, but Audric darted between them and stopped her, hands tight on her arms. Illumenor snapped white-gold at his hip.

“Lu, say something to me,” he said firmly. “With your mouth and your voice. No mind-speak. Tell me who you are.”

Merovec shoved his way forward, out of the crowd. “What’s the meaning of this? Ludivine?”

Then a slow smile unfurled across Ludivine’s face, and Rielle’s blood turned cold.

Corien? Wild, she searched the room for him. What are you doing? Release her at once!

“You found me,” said Ludivine. “Well done.”

Her voice came split into three parts, a distorted chorus—her own voice, and Corien’s, and a third. Unfamiliar and thin. Inhuman. Not even angelic. Something vast and cold.

Audric released her and stepped slowly away.

Merovec stared. “What is this?”

“Manipulating my father’s mind,” Ludivine continued, “is not the way to win my heart.”

With that sentence, the voices changed. Ludivine’s voice and the third, unnamed voice remained.

But Corien’s voice changed to Rielle’s own.

A chill broke out across her skin. She remembered those very words. She had spoken them several months earlier, on the day of her fire trial, in the cave under the hill.

So it continued, the conversation unfurling quickly.

“Shall I release him, then?” Corien’s voice.

“Release all of them.” Her own voice.

“As you wish.” Corien said again—as did Ludivine and the third, unknown voice, all of them accompanying each sentence, as if they were three actors in a play, reading the same lines in unison.

Audric glanced back at Rielle, his happiness from mere moments before replaced with a cold, hard anger. “Tell me what’s happening. Now.”

She shook her head. “I don’t know.”

But she did know. She was beginning to know.

“What is the meaning of this?” Ludivine continued—and this time, horribly, the new voice was that of King Bastien. Small cries erupted across the room. Their late king’s voice was coming to them somehow from beyond the moment of his death. “Why are we all here? Armand?”

Audric looked as though the floor had fallen out from under his feet. “Father?” he whispered.

From her chair near the doors, Genoveve called out Bastien’s name, her voice awful and desperate.

“I don’t know, my king,” the chorus continued, now joined by the voice of Rielle’s father.

Ludivine sank to her knees, pressing her hands flat to the floor. She was breathing fast and hard.

Tal pushed forward out of the crowd. He hurried at once to Rielle, his scarlet-and-gold coat gleaming in the candlelight.

“Do I need to alert the city guard?” His hand was steady at her elbow. “Rielle, tell me what to do.”

“He’s doing this,” she whispered. She looked bleakly up at Tal. “He’s going to ruin everything. I don’t know how to stop him.”

“Corien?”

Merovec’s voice exploded. “Who’s Corien? Someone fetch the royal healers, for God’s sake!”

“Don’t leave me.” Rielle grabbed Tal’s arms. “Whatever happens, don’t leave me.”

Tal’s expression softened. “No one’s leaving you, Rielle.”

“Are you hurt?” Rielle’s father again, his voice drifting up from Ludivine’s trembling form. “What’s happening here?”

“Rielle is leaving you, I’m afraid.” And that was Corien.

Audric turned to her. “Rielle, what is this? Why is she saying these things?”

But Rielle couldn’t answer him, the words wedged in her throat. Corien, don’t do this. She would not look at Audric. She clung to Tal’s sleeve. I’m begging you.

I’m sorry, my darling, Corien replied at last, and the sound of his voice was both a relief and a torment, for it held no joy or satisfaction. Only a quiet sort of pity. I do this for the sake of your own happiness.

It is not up to you to determine my happiness for me!

You’re doing a terrible job of it yourself, he replied. I’ve waited long enough for you to see the truth. They will reject you, once they see what you really are. And he will too. He will most of all.

And then, Lord Dervin’s voice, thick with despair: “I never meant for this to happen.”

“Tell me what’s happening this instant,” said Merovec. He stared at Ludivine as if she were in the process of growing a second head. “Is it an angel, speaking through her?”

Rielle’s voice, pathetic and small, slid out of Ludivine’s throat: “I thought you…”

“That I loved you?” Corien’s voice, tender and soothing. “Child, I love you more than I can say. I’m doing this for you. If you don’t leave them, they will stifle, shame, and punish you for daring to breach the walls they are building around you.” Then a pause, and Ludivine looked up at Audric, tears streaming down her face. “Yes,” she whispered, her neck straining as if she were fighting against her own voice. “Even him.”

And then, a vision passed before Rielle’s eyes, and as it unfolded, she sensed the strength of it like an earthquake vibrating through her body. Instinctively she knew that everyone in the room was seeing the same thing she was, unfurling before their eyes like shapes drawn through clouds: Herself, standing in that cave, flinging out her arms, an expression of wild ecstasy on her face. A blaze of power erupted from her fingertips to race across the cave, knocking three men to the ground—Lord Dervin. King Bastien.

Her father.

The images came faster and faster. Ludivine, huddled on the ground, continued her horrible narration.

Rielle’s shimmering ghost stared at Lord Dervin, King Bastien, her father. All of them dead.

From across the ballroom came cries of alarm, fear, anger. Beside her, Tal whispered, “God save us. Rielle, tell me this isn’t true.”

But she couldn’t. She was helpless in the face of this, her lies spreading across the room like a flood that would end the world.

The vision shifted, and then showed Audric, arriving at the cave. “Rielle?”

Herself, huddled beside her father’s body: “Here.”

And Audric, standing over the corpse of his own father.

Tal turned away, hand over his mouth.