Elma stayed where she was.

  She watched the space where Silk had been. Her mind was a chaotic map of conflicting directives.

  I need to tell her.

  The thought was dangerous. Silk might kill her. And if Silk didn’t, Sable would.

  She was Elma Altheris now. That role had requirements.

  D—66 was dead. Why exhume her? Why drag that corpse into her life?

  Elma forced herself to inhale. To count. To slow the spiral.

  Why do I want to tell her anyway? What am I hoping it would change?

  She wiped her face, gripped the heavy Kresnik Treatise, and continued the walk back to the nursery. She needed to consult Sable first but the urge for honesty refused to quiet.

  As Elma reached the nursery, a voice echoed behind her.

  "You were soo cool!"

  Jorm was a blur of motion before Elma could even set a foot inside. The girl lunged forward, catching Elma in a hug that lifted her straight off the marble floor. For someone so short, Jorm was surprisingly strong.

  The heaviness in her chest didn't vanish, but it was forced aside by the sheer force of Jorm's enthusiasm.

  "The moment you held him in the water things... it felt like the stuff I only read about!" Jorm was practically vibrating, her feet barely touching the ground as she bounced.

  "I have to return this book," Elma said, her voice sounding old even to her own ears.

  She walked to the corner and shoved the Kresnik Treatise under a pile of wooden blocks and stuffed animals in her toy box. It was the safest place for it.

  Elma turned around to find Jorm standing perfectly still, her hands clasped tightly behind her back. She was tracing a circle on the rug with her toe.

  "What do you want?" Elma asked, leaning against the bedpost.

  "Well..." Jorm hesitated, her eyes bright with a hunger that Elma recognized all too well. "When is my next lesson?"

  Elma blinked. In the chaos of the banquet and the encounter with D—67, she had almost forgotten she had a student.

  Elma looked at her small, enthusiastic apprentice and felt a flicker of something that wasn't rage or fear.

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  “You want to know how to make things?” Elma asked.

  The change in Jorm was instantaneous. The bouncy, fan-girl energy evaporated, replaced by a sudden, sharp intensity. “Yes,” she said, her voice dropping an octave.

  Elma didn't hesitate. She reached into the toy box to pull out the Treatise.

  “What do you want to make?” Elma asked, laying the book flat on the rug.

  Jorm went back to tracing circles on the floor with her toe. The bravado flickered. “Actually, I have something,” she whispered. “My father’s sword. I… I want it to be my schema.”

  Good. She wasn’t completely ignorant.

  “Where is it?”

  “Well, it’s out of the manor,” Jorm said, her eyes darting to the door. “It’s not far. My home is… it’s just beyond the outer walls. In the city.”

  Elma went still. The silence in the room suddenly felt heavy. “What are you suggesting, Jorm?”

  “Can you come with me?”

  The question was so casual it bordered on suicidal. Jorm was asking for something that could get her head mounted on a spike above the manor gates, and the worst part was, she didn't even seem to realize it.

  “I thought you were only allowed to leave once a month,” Elma said.

  Jorm leaned in, her voice a conspiratorial breath. “There’s a secret way. We sneak out through it all the time.”

  Elma stared at her. The girl had just implicated half the manor with a smile. How had she survived this long?

  Outside.

  Does it really exist?

  The thought struck with a sudden, aching longing Elma hadn’t realized was there.

  The manor had never felt this narrow. She didn’t want to see Christa’s careful, avoiding gaze. She didn’t want to see the pale line of Silk’s scar. She wanted to feel the outside.

  Just for an hour.

  Just to breathe.

  Elma looked back at Jorm, who was watching her with open expectation.

  Elma took a measured breath.

  “Fine,” Elma said. She grabbed a heavy wool hood from the wardrobe and stuffed her golden hair deep inside it.

  Jorm slipped out with a grin and returned moments later, hauling a bag stuffed to bursting.

  They moved along the inner wall, keeping to the darkest seams of shadow.

  “Are there guards?” Elma whispered.

  Jorm didn’t slow. “Not this side. Not at this hour.”

  Elma didn’t trust that answer.

  A flicker of orange light spilled across the stone ahead of them.

  Torchlight.

  Jorm grabbed her sleeve and yanked her sideways. They pressed themselves behind the thick curtain of the willow’s hanging branches just as boots scraped against gravel.

  A guard passed along the perimeter, flame swaying with each step. The light stretched long, skeletal shadows across the grass.

  Elma held her breath.

  The torchlight drifted past.

  The footsteps faded.

  Jorm slowly turned her head toward Elma. "Uh—strange."

  Elma gave her a flat look.

  “Unreliable,” she repeated.

  They reached the high outer wall, the stones looming like a mountain range against the night sky. Jorm knelt by a jagged section of the masonry near the base.

  She reached out, and to Elma’s shock, her hand didn't hit stone. It passed right through the lower part of the wall as if the granite were made of smoke.

  “See?” Jorm said, grinning.

  Elma looked around. They were right behind the willow tree—the same spot where Nagin had tried to kill her.

  “Who told you about this?” Elma asked.

  “Lea,” Jorm said. “She told me not to tell anyone. So don't tell anyone."

  Lea. The maid who had chased Jorm away seconds before Nagin struck.

  “I see,” Elma murmured.

  “Alright, let’s go!” Jorm dropped to her hands and knees and crawled through the illusion.

  Elma took one last look at the dark, imposing silhouette of the manor, then lowered her head and followed her student into the unknown.

  Beneath the coil of worry in her chest, something lighter uncurled.

  A thin, treacherous thread of excitement.