Nyx tipped the flask and drained the contents. Alarm spiked through Tal’s veins as he registered what she’d done, what she’d drank. With the strength of his emotion, the vision distorted, going milky and grainy.
I know, whispered Nyx from somewhere in the murk.
She’d drank poison. Why would she do that? He tried to swim forward through the gloom, strained to pick out clues that might ascertain whether it was the past or the future that he saw, but his emotion strangled the vision until he could barely make out the shape of his sister. He struggled to calm himself.
The dream wavered for a moment and then crystallized into a new scene. The Destroyer, wearing a diaphanous cloak woven from sparks and smoke. At her back: iron bars and a sheet-metal floor. At her feet: Nyx.
Clothing charred in spots. Long hair burnt to nearly shoulder length. Spots of melted, steaming brass clinging to her tunic here and there: the beads that had once decorated her braids.
Something formless and horrible roared through Tal. Hate, he named it, and turned on the Destroyer. His phantom hands reached for nonexistent blades, only to grip the nothingness that he was here. He was as helpless to stop her as he had ever been.
He tried to tear himself from the fabric of the dream, thinking only of running to the prison car before this vision came true, if it hadn’t already—but a great stillness suddenly wrapped around him and held him in place.
Wait, came a whisper.
Tal froze. The voice rippled through him with unbearable gentleness, tugging at his blood like a lodestone. He had never heard it before, but every ounce of metal in him was singing with it, basking in it. He trembled before it—no, he trembled before himself. Before the wild, desperate hope that had instantly awoken, though he’d sworn it was long dead and buried deeper than he could ever reach again. He trembled before the knowledge of just how much power his god still held over him.
Before him, in the vision, the Destroyer knelt in front of Nyx. Her expression was alight with a mad sort of fury that Tal had only seen a handful of times. So you are his sister, then, she said in a tone that spoke death. She reached out a hand. In it was a white-hot flame. This was it; she had unmasked Nyx, and now she would kill her.
Stop, he tried to shout. The words echoed only inside his own skull. But still, despite himself, he clung to hope. His god had spoken. After two years, after a lifetime, he’d made himself known. Maybe it meant something. Maybe Tal hadn’t been abandoned, not forever.
The Destroyer paused then. Her head tilted as she gazed at the flame in her hand. Tal followed her line of vision. The fire was flickering in and out of existence, one moment miniscule and the next leaping so high it nearly burned the Destroyer’s own face. Her cloak of sparks was flickering too. She looked down at herself and back at Nyx, her forehead wrinkling, and then in a swift movement pushed herself away and stood. What have you done to me? she demanded. She staggered then, falling sideways into the cell door. It swung open under her touch.
It was then that, beneath the acrid scent of burnt flesh and charred hair, Tal smelled the faintest trace of hemlock and copper.
The stillness surrounding him lifted. Dizziness lurched into him like a train slamming through a snowbank, and he sat up in bed and was immediately sick over the side of his cot.
He gasped for air. Disoriented once again, he shoved himself off the other side of his bed, falling to one knee in the process. He grabbed for the bedpost to steady himself and with the other hand covered his eyes. He was shaking.
Nyx had poisoned the Destroyer. That was why she’d drunk the flask, which had smelled of hemlock and copper—a poison which could apparently be transmitted from Nyx to the Destroyer in the course of her torture. That was why she’d come here. To kill the Lady of Mercury, and to free Tal.
He covered his mouth. A sob wrenched out anyway. His sister was assassinating the Destroyer, probably right this very moment, for his sake—and because he had seen this vision, he would have to stop her. Again.
He scooped up the clay mug and hurled it against the window. It shattered, spraying tea dregs across the pristine landscape of snow and mountains. It was all he had time to do before his oath ghosted through his veins, wound like roots around his bones, and yanked him upright. It reached out with his hands and buckled on his sword belt. It forced him toward the door.
His god. His god had done this. If Tal had left the vision when he’d tried to, he wouldn’t have been compelled to save the Destroyer now, because he wouldn’t have known she was in danger. He wanted to cry, wanted to rail—at both the Unforged God and at himself, because for that one moment, he had nearly allowed himself to believe again. Having his hope crushed a second time was even more agonizing than the first, because it was his fault. He had known better, and still, he had hoped.
He yanked the door open. In the hallway, he tried again to fight the oath, but it propelled him forward mercilessly, taking over his muscles, jerking him down the corridor. A servant was in his way. He shoved them aside, and a tray of cranberry tarts splattered against the carpet like blood. He wrenched open the door to the dining car. The empress was there. She stopped midsentence, a bite of truffle omelet lifted halfway to her mouth as she took him in. The glass walls beyond her framed the serrated peaks of the Skyteeth looming on every side:
