Realization trickled in slowly.

Jean Luc had poisoned us. We’d been thrown in prison. We would burn at sunset.

My eyes snapped open at the last.

What time was it?

Staring at the ceiling overhead, I tried to move my fingers, to breathe around the suffocating nausea. I needed to find Reid and Beau. I needed to make sure they were all right—

Only then did I realize two things, like cards flipped over in a game of tarot: warm skin pressed against mine on the right, and wooden bars intersected the ceiling in a cross pattern overhead. Swallowing hard, I turned my head with enormous difficulty. Thank God. Reid lay beside me, his face pale but his chest rising and falling deeply.

Wooden bars.

A muffled cough sounded from nearby, and I slammed my eyes shut, listening intently. Footsteps shuffled closer, and what sounded like a door creaked open. After a few more seconds, it clicked shut once more. I opened my eyes carefully this time, peering out through my lashes. The same wooden bars across the ceiling and floor ran perpendicular as well. Smooth and hand planed, they bisected the room and formed a sort of cage around us.

A cage.

Oh god.

Once more, I forced myself to breathe. Though the room beyond remained dark, lit only by a single torch, it didn’t look like a dungeon. A colossal table dominated the center of the room—circular and covered in what looked like a map, scraps of parchment, and—and—

Realization didn’t trickle now. It rushed in a great flood, and I rolled to my left, away from Reid. We weren’t in the castle dungeon at all, but the council room of Chasseur Tower. I would’ve recognized that table anywhere, except now—instead of charcoal drawings of my mother—portraits of my own face stared back at me. Portraits of Reid. Clearing my throat of bile, I tentatively sat up on my elbows, glancing around the cage. No cots or even chamber pots filled the space. “Beau?” A hoarse whisper, my voice still reverberated too loud in the darkness. “Are you here?”

No one answered.

Cursing quietly, I crawled back to Reid, feeling steadier with each moment. I didn’t know why. By all accounts, I too should’ve been unconscious on the floor, not moving and thinking with relative ease. It made little sense, except . . . I took another deep breath, summoning my magic, both gold and white. Though the golden patterns curled sluggish and confused across the cage, the white ones burst into existence with a vengeance. Their presence soothed the sickness in my body like a balm. My vision cleared, and my stomach settled. The stabbing pain in my temples eased. Of course. Of course. These patterns had been gifted by a goddess. They were greater than me, eternal, stronger than my own human flesh and bone.

They’d saved me.

We were going to be fine.

With a triumphant smile, I checked Reid’s pupils, his heartbeat, and his breathing. I could sense the poison polluting his blood, could almost see it beneath his skin like a black, noxious cloud. Gently, a white pattern coiled around him, illuminating his wan features in a subtle glow. At the brush of my hand, it pulsed and began to sieve the hemlock from his body. The stone around him absorbed the sap like a sponge, returning it to the earth where it belonged. When the last of the poison had gone, the pattern dissolved into white dust, and Reid’s eyes fluttered open. I sat back on my heels as he oriented himself with the room. With me.

He reached up to touch a strand of my hair. “You’re glowing.”

I shrugged, grinning impishly now. “Goddess Divine, you know.”

“Such arrogance.”

“Such beauty and grace.”

He scoffed, sitting up and rubbing his neck. It might’ve been my imagination, but I thought a rueful grin played on his lips. “Why don’t I feel sick?”

I grinned wider. “I healed you.”

Groaning, he shook his head, and I didn’t imagine it now—he definitely smiled. “You really don’t know the meaning of humility, do you?”

“And you really don’t know the meaning of gratitude—”

Footsteps again, quicker this time. We flung ourselves down, feigning unconsciousness, just as the door burst open. “What is it?” a voice asked, unfamiliar and deep.

“I thought I heard someone.”

Discomfort seeped into the first’s voice. “Should we dose them again?”

The other cleared their throat. “They still look incapacitated.”

“Philippe will skin us if they die on our watch.”

“The hemlock is merely a precaution. The bars will keep them in here.” A pause. “Philippe said the wood is . . . special. They harvested it from La Fôret des Yeux.”

After another few seconds of anxious silence, they closed the door once more. “Keep your voice down next time,” I hissed, poking Reid in the ribs.

His face snapped toward mine in outrage. “I wasn’t—”

“I’m joking, Chass.”

“Oh.” He frowned when I snorted. “Is this really the time to joke?”

“It’s never the time to joke with us. If we waited until we were out of life-or-death situations, we could only laugh in our graves.” Hoisting myself to my feet, I inspected the bars closer. Though clearly wooden, they still felt . . . unnatural. Both made and unmade. The torchlight caught veins of silver in the wood. The hemlock is merely a precaution. The bars will keep them in here. I leaned in to sniff them as Reid rose behind.

“What are they?” he asked.

“I don’t know. The tree smells like alder, but the timber is . . . metallic? I can’t recall any metallic trees in La Fôret des Yeux. Can you?”

“A metallic tree,” he echoed slowly.

Our eyes snapped together in dawning horror. “It couldn’t be—?”

“It’s not—?”

“Oh my god,” I breathed, recoiling. The bars felt abruptly cold beneath my touch. Oppressive. “They cut it down. Your Balisarda.”

Beside me, Reid closed his eyes in acknowledgment, in defeat, pressing his forehead against the wood. Voice strained, he asked, “How did they even find it?”

“It was along the road. Bas and his cronies called for the Chasseurs when they found us.” On a hunch, I pressed a finger to one of the bars. The white patterns dimmed almost instantly in response. No. No, no, no. “They would’ve seen it straightaway—a great tree with silver bark and black fruit and lethal thorns.”