Kai leaned his head against the wall. How many days had they been in this human prison now? He couldn't remember. He’d attempted to keep track based on when meals were brought, but the timing was erratic at best. Or maybe it only seemed erratic. He wasn't sure anymore. His thoughts flitted around like butterflies, and every time Kai thought he’d captured one, he opened his hands to find them empty.

  There was one thing Kai knew for certain: the manacles the humans had left on him were slowly poisoning him. He hadn't known something like this was possible, but there was no other explanation for it.

  Kai cast a glance down at his wrists. The angry blisters beneath the metal had burst and refused to heal. The burning sensation was like nothing he’d ever felt before. He didn’t understand how simple metal could do this. The manacles must have been spelled somehow, but with the human king’s aversion to magic, Kai could not see him using something like it.

  And yet here Kai was. Suffering.

  The sound of keys jingling at the door broke through the fog of pain.

  Must be meal time again.

  Then his eyes wandered down to the tray already on the floor. By the time Kai’s brain registered that the tray had been delivered only minutes ago, the door opened.

  "Remove his chains," a female voice instructed.

  Kai tried to focus on the speaker, blinking several times to clear his vision. They hadn’t stepped into his cell but stood silhouetted in the light of the doorway.

  "Sister," Kai murmured. He ran his tongue over his dry, cracked lips, trying to think of her name.

  Why couldn't he remember her name?

  The man with the keys knelt in front of him and unlocked the manacles on his wrists. They dropped to the floor with a clatter, and the effect was almost instant.

  "Sterling."

  His sister smiled. "Come along. We have places to be. Our new friend here will show us the way out."

  Kai squinted up at her face. Maybe it was a trick of the light, but something didn't look right about her eyes. They appeared dark, not silver like his own. Before he could get a good look, she retreated from the doorway.

  Kai shook his head. He must have been seeing things. Another effect of manacles.

  He climbed to his feet and followed his sister and her new friend.

  "What is happening?" he asked her. "Has the human king decided to let us go?"

  "Something like that," Sterling said, avoiding eye contact.

  They emerged from the dark prison into bright sunlight. Kai squinted. The courtyard was alive with activity, but no one seemed to be paying them any mind.

  "Fetch us horses and supplies," Sterling instructed their companion. “I want anything taken to be returned.”

  The man scurried away to do as she had commanded.

  "What is going on? Why are they listening to you?"

  Sterling turned her face to him and smiled. There was no trace of the shadows he’d thought he had seen in his cell. “Why would they not listen to me? I am a queen.”

  Kai’s brow furrowed. “But you are not their queen.”

  "Perhaps I will be one day, but for now, let us return to my kingdom. We are going home."

  Sterling was trapped inside her own body. Her limbs moved. Her mouth moved.

  And yet she was not the one in control of her actions.

  The voices,—or whatever they were—used her like a puppet. When the guard came to deliver her meal, they were the ones to speak to him. Sterling heard the words come from her mouth in her voice, but she was not the one who came up with them. Magic flowed freely through her, and the guard was all too happy to do her bidding and release her from this prison.

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  Don’t forget about my brother, she reminded the voices. He must be freed, too.

  You don’t need him.

  But I do, Sterling told them. Who will serve me on the journey home?

  She did not want Kai to serve her, but it appeased the voices, and they agreed to set him free.

  The guard took them to Kai’s cell, only a few doors down from her own, and the voices gave him orders with Sterling’s voice.

  To her eyes, Kai looked worse for his time in prison. When the manacles fell away, they revealed open wounds that wept. Sterling wanted to ask him if he was all right and how he had gotten those wounds, but of course, she couldn’t. Instead, the voices spoke to Kai for her.

  The way Kai studied her made Sterling think he knew it wasn’t truly her, or at least that something wasn’t quite right. The voices turned her away before he could say anything about it.

  Warm sunlight washed over Sterling when they left the prison, and the feeling made her want to cry. It was so good to feel the warmth and see the light again. She hated the dark so much and never wanted to return to it.

  Sterling took a breath of fresh air, and for a moment, thought she was back in control again. Then the voices were ordering the guard to fetch them supplies and telling Kai they were returning home.

  I am free now. When will you release me?

  When it is time, the voices said.

  Panic clawed at Sterling. She could not stay like this, watching from inside her own body. That is not an answer.

  Can you leave this city on your own? Look what happened the last time you tried.

  Sterling attempted to frown, but her physical body would not cooperate. The voices had a point. They seemed to know how to use her magic better than she did. It explained the way the guard had followed her directions without complaint, and how the others’ eyes seemed to slide over them as though they were not there. She hadn’t known something like this was even possible with her magic. Kai had told her she had much greater power than he did, but this was beyond her imagination.

  If the voices could do this, they could surely take back Nyrene. No army required.

  Of course we can, they whispered. And we will.

  The horses Sterling—no, the voices—had ordered were brought, and Kai’s sword was returned to him. All of their original belongings were still in the house on Jeb’s farm, and as they rode through the streets of Daralis to the gates, Sterling contemplated returning there to retrieve them. She hadn’t been wearing the twin blades she’d found in Baromund when they’d been taken, and she missed their weight at her side.

  No, the voices said, you will return to your throne. You will return to where you were meant to be. There is nothing you need there. Everything will be at your disposal in Nyrene once you are queen.

  They were right. What did a bunch of cast-offs matter to her? If there was something she absolutely must have back, she could order someone else to go fetch it for her.

  They left the gates of Daralis behind without anyone stopping them. Kai rode at her side and while when they’d first left the prison, he’d questioned why they were being let go, he was quiet now. The voices allowed her to look at him, and Sterling saw how pale he was and how beads of sweat dotted his brow even though it was not a hot day. The wounds on his wrists still leaked fluid. They needed tending to, or they would become infected if they were not already.

  Finally, when Daralis was lost from sight, and they were far from the main road, the voices gave back control. Sterling gasped at the sudden loss of magic and had to grab for her horse to keep from falling off as her muscles once again became hers to control. She yanked the beast to a stop and tentatively tested her limbs, curling her toes in her boots and clenching and unclenching her fists.

  It was all hers again, and it felt so good.

  “Everything all right?” Kai asked, circling his horse back to her.

  She was the one who should be asking him that.

  “We can rest now and take care of that.” Sterling pointed to his wounds. She knew from Kestrel that elves were supposed to heal quickly, but there was no sign of change since she’d first seen them.

  For once, her brother did not argue with her. They set up a makeshift camp, and Sterling found bandages among the supplies they’d been given.

  As Sterling cleaned the wounds, she asked Kai about their origin.

  “It was the manacles,” he said, wincing as she brushed over a particularly nasty spot. “From the moment they put them on, I was cut off from my magic.”

  She’d felt that feeling as well. She’d assumed it was because she’d exhausted herself practicing with Inesa.

  “By the time we reached the city, the skin had begun to blister,” Kai went on, “and then they burst and became what they are now. I suspect the metal was spelled with something. It may have killed me if left on long enough.”

  “Spelled? Is that why you aren’t healing now?”

  “Possibly. There is no poison that I know of that can do something like this, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. If not a spell, it must still be something magical in nature.”

  Sterling shook her head. “Berenger would do something like this,” she muttered as she dabbed at the wound again. “Trust him to despise magic, and yet still make use of it when it suits him.”

  “Did they not leave the manacles on you?”

  “They did.” Sterling wrapped a clean bandage around the wound she’d been working on and then showed Kai her wrists. “Mine must have been different from yours because all I had was some chaffing, which is gone now.”

  “Or you were able to resist it because your magic is stronger than mine. That’s how you got us out, isn’t it? The king didn’t let us go.”

  “I did what was necessary,” Sterling said as she started on his other wrist. She would not tell him about the voices. It was better if he thought it was all her.

  “And now you plan to take back Nyrene the same way. Are you sure about this?”

  Sterling looked up at him. “Are you going to stop me?” Magic flowed through her, and once again, she was not the one in control.

  He cannot. He will not.

  “No,” Kai choked out, as though something was strangling him—or someone.

  Sterling’s lips curled upward in an approximation of a smile. “Good.”