Ludivine reclined in her chair, awaiting his arrival.

“What a fascinating tableau you’ve painted, Lady Ludivine.” Obritsa leaned back against her desk. “Please, do go on.”

“I know what you saw the other night in the courtyard of that school,” Ludivine continued. “You saw a child kill his teacher and then climb inside a carriage that bore him away into the night. You tried to follow, but couldn’t. Shadows confused your vision and blocked your passage, making it seem as though the carriage was traveling much more swiftly than it should have been able to. You thought perhaps this was shadowcaster magic. It wasn’t. It was the work of angels, fogging your mind, misaligning your senses.”

Ludivine paused, watching Obritsa’s face. The girl’s control was magnificent; she gave nothing away, though her mind was roaring as Ludivine’s words helped her recover memory after horrible memory.

“I know Grand Magister Yeravet grabbed you, drugged you with widow’s tears, and returned you to your rooms,” Ludivine went on. “You woke up remembering nothing but echoes. The Grand Magister told your guard that he had found you drunk on the street, that you had been sneaking out to taverns. I know you’ve been enduring terrible nightmares. They are the product of your mind screaming at you to remember the events of that night.”

At last, Obritsa’s control cracked. She clutched her stomach, her eyes glittering.

She managed one word. “How?”

Then the door to her rooms flew open. The air crackled with dirt-smelling, wood-smelling earthshaker magic. Obritsa’s guard, Artem, raised his staff, his eyes blazing. He was an earthshaker, an elemental who sympathized with the revolution and had been recruited by its leaders to guard and protect Obritsa. His devotion to his duty, to Obritsa herself, was pure and clean as fire.

Ludivine sighed, suddenly weary.

Calm yourself, she told him, and watched as he froze, all the aggression draining from his body.

Walk toward the terrace, she continued, and proceed outside.

He lowered his staff to the floor and obeyed. When he opened the terrace doors, a blast of snow and freezing wind gusted a stack of papers off Obritsa’s desk.

Climb over the railing, Ludivine instructed tiredly, appreciating the usefulness of her angelic blood even as she despised its brutality. Throw yourself over it.

Artem walked across the terrace and began to climb over the railing.

“Stop!” Obritsa cried, rushing forward, and Ludivine felt the love rise swiftly inside the girl’s body, ferocious and desperate.

“Leave him,” ordered Ludivine. “One more step, and I’ll tell him to keep going.”

Obritsa shivered in the cold, looking childlike at last. “What are you?”

“I’m an angel,” Ludivine said, “and I believe others of my kind are building something in the far north, in the Villmark. I need you to go see what it is and report back to me.”

So many questions arose in Obritsa’s mind that Ludivine felt weighed down by them.

At last the girl managed to speak. “Why can’t you do that?”

“I can’t leave Rielle. I can’t endanger myself and therefore risk her safety. And because whenever I try to look north, something stops me. An obstruction. A taunt. I believe angels are involved in this, and if I try to get too close to them, they’ll sense me and stop me. They’ll be on the lookout for me. But not for you, if you move quickly and carefully.”

Ludivine rose because she could no longer sit still. Giving voice to these things left her feeling frayed, restless, and every moment she spent away from Rielle was a torment she could hardly endure.

“I know this is overwhelming,” she told Obritsa. “I also know you are more than capable of not only understanding what I’m saying, but also carrying out this task I’m giving you.”

Obritsa glanced over her shoulder to see Artem standing near the railing, motionless.

“Why should I do anything to help you?” she asked.

“Because one of your own magisters drugged you in order to keep his secret,” Ludivine replied. “He, and the others, are allowing children to be abducted and taken for reasons they don’t understand. All they know is that they have been promised power. They have no loyalty to you, to their kingdom, to the people they serve. They are loyal only to their own desires. You may very well be safer in the Villmark than you are in your own palace.”

“You can’t possibly be engineering this simply to protect me,” Obritsa said scathingly. “Or are angels as stupid as you are cruel?”

Ludivine smiled, glad to hear the girl’s fire. She would need it.

“Of course it isn’t the only reason, or even the primary one. If you die after helping me, it will cause me no grief. I’m asking you because I can’t do it myself, and because your marque power will carry you faster than I could travel. And because whatever’s happening in the north could and will affect all of us, if it is allowed to continue.”

She hesitated, then decided Obritsa deserved to know. “The Gate is falling, Obritsa. There are many angels in the world, and more will come, if Rielle cannot repair it. They are hiding something in the north, and I need you to find out what that is. Not for my sake, nor for Rielle’s, and certainly not for the horrible man who raised you or for his revolution. But for the world. For the entirety of your race.”

Ludivine felt Obritsa trying to wrap her mind around these words. “And if I refuse to help you?”

“Then I will slip into your mind as well as Artem’s,” Ludivine replied, “and send you both plummeting over that railing. I will forge a note, a confessional, in which you betray all your revolutionary friends. And I will smooth over any ripples of doubt, until everyone is convinced of your cowardice.”

After a moment, during which Ludivine could feel Obritsa’s fury swelling quietly—like Rielle’s tidal wave, an immense force barely restrained—Obritsa nodded briskly. “I will help you,” she said, “because you have forced me into it. Every day I will resent and hate you for it. Every day I will pray that you do not die, but instead are forced to live forever in misery for what you’ve done.”

Forever in misery. Ludivine nearly burst out laughing. If only the girl knew. “I don’t blame you. And for my part, I will pray that you come to see the cruelty of those who have raised you and are able to break free of their chains. You deserve better than they have given you.”

She glanced at the terrace. Come inside.

Artem obeyed, shivering, his shaggy brown hair white with snow. He sank onto the carpet, bracing his body on hands and knees.

Obritsa ran to him, pulled off her dressing gown, and threw it around his body.