Isana meant to stay awake all night, but found she couldn’t. The continuous, unchanging lighting of the hive had made it impossible for her body to be certain whether it was night or day. She had slept fitfully, here and there, for what she suspected had been two weeks. Here, at the end, when she most needed to be alert, she found sleep creeping up on her—and by the time she realized what it was up to, it was too late to do anything about it.

She started awake with a small jerk, and swept her gaze silently around the hive without moving her head, careful to do nothing else to draw attention to herself.

All was quiet. The vord Queen stood in the alcove in that awful old gown, staring steadily up into the green light, her long white hair spilling in a fine sheet down her back and over her breasts. She paid no attention to Isana, though that was hardly unusual.

Still…

Something was different. Something she could neither identify nor define pressed upon Isana’s senses. A shiver went down her spine.

There was death in the air.

Invidia entered the hive. The burned woman looked exhausted. She strode across the hive with a nod in the Queen’s direction and was ignored as thoroughly as Isana had been.

Invidia walked straight to Isana and crouched. A slight motion of one finger and a tightening of the pressure around Isana’s eardrums warned her that there was a very small, very subtle windcrafting in effect.

Invidia wanted this to be a private conversation.

“In moments,” Invidia whispered, her back to the Queen, “things will change.”

Isana’s eyes widened. She glanced past Invidia to the Queen and nodded very slightly.

“She’s hearing something different than I’m saying,” Invidia said. “So far as she is concerned, I am gloating over your predicament.”

Isana schooled her expression and made no motion, watching Invidia’s face.

“Tell me what and where this cure is,” Invidia said. “And I give you my word that I will do everything in my power to take you and Araris out alive.”

Isana studied her quietly, then asked, “And if I do not?”

One of her eyelids twitched. “Neither of you will get out of here alive, Isana. Not without my help.”

Isana took a slow breath. It had worked—at least, she had given Invidia enough hope that she had taken action of some kind, perhaps during her un-supervised scouting mission the day before. Isana felt her heart begin to pound. Had she truly gone to the High Lords?

“Once I give them to you,” Isana whispered, “what is to stop you from seeing to our deaths?”

“I told you. My word.”

Isana met her eyes and felt a swift, brief stab of pity for the woman as she slowly shook her head. “You don’t have that anymore, Invidia. You cannot give me what you do not have.”

Invida stared at Isana without expression. Then she said, “What would you have of me, then?”

“Your sword,” Isana said calmly.

Invidia’s head tilted slightly. “Why? You’re hardly a threat, Isana, even armed.”

“If I have it, you don’t,” Isana said.

The burned woman’s eyes narrowed suspiciously.

“Does it matter?” Isana asked. “You said there isn’t much time. After any sort of battle, your cure won’t be left whole. Do you really have time to debate with me? Do you have any choice?”

Invidia pressed her lips together. Then she started unbuckling her sword, and said, “A certain amount of drama will be required.”

“The means in question is a mushroomlike growth found in hives like this one,” Isana said. “The Marat call it the Blessing of Night. Unlike most fungus, it apparently has thorns. I would look for it concealed around the edges of the pool or within the Queen’s alcove.”

Invidia took her sword, in its scabbard, in hand, and asked, “How is it used?”

“Eaten, according to Octavian, or squeezed, and its juices applied to wounds.”

Invidia stared at her for a moment. Then she frowned, and said, slowly, “I cannot tell if you are lying to me.”

“Things are never true because we want them to be, Invidia,” Isana said. “Or because we don’t want them to be. They simply are.”

Her spine stiffened. “And what is that supposed to mean?”

“That it is not surprising someone who has so thoroughly deceived herself about the truth can’t recognize it when it is spoken to her.”

Invidia’s face turned cold. She drew back her hand and struck Isana’s face with her palm. Quick, sharp pain expanded and dissipated almost immediately, leaving a harsh tingling in Isana’s cheek. As the blow landed, the windcrafting concealing their speech vanished.

Invidia threw her sword at Isana’s chest. “So pleasant to be lectured by a self-righteous camp whore who has stumbled into power.” She sneered, and Isana felt the lash of Invidia’s hatred against her skin like an unseen riding crop. “If you’re so convinced of your cause, draw it. Challenge me to the juris macto. If you can take me, perhaps you will be allowed to rule a Realm of ashes and graves.”

Isana gathered in the slender sword and held it against her stomach without ever looking up at the burned woman. The fire of her emotions was no act—and Isana knew with a sudden chill that while Invidia may have been manipulated into action against the Queen, she had no intention of letting Isana leave alive. “I never wanted a struggle with you, Invidia. All I ever wanted was for my family to be left in peace.”

“Keep it,” Invidia spat. “In case you change your mind.”

Isana looked past the other woman to the vord Queen. Black, alien eyes had focused upon them both. They stayed there for a long moment, then, without comment, returned to the ceiling above.

Invidia literally spat upon Isana. Then she turned and began walking toward the exit. “There have been no troubles moving enough troops onto the bluffs, I trust?”

The vord Queen ignored her.

Isana felt a horrible suspicion begin to grow in her thoughts. The Queen had said nothing about Invidia’s giving her the weapon. At the very least, she would have expected some sort of comment along the lines of how irrational the act was.

But the Queen said nothing.

Evidently, Invidia had been struck by a similar impression, but she seemed to brush it aside. Her steps slowed for an instant, and she slowed in midstride, perhaps poised on the precipice of some decision. Then her eyes narrowed, and her steps quickened. She went to the hive’s entrance and, with a flick of her hand, sent a ball of stuttering red-and-blue light into the world outside.

The hive exploded into motion and violence.

Isana simply couldn’t believe how fast everything had suddenly become. It seemed that for an instant, she could focus on absolutely everything in her field of vision, all at once, no matter where it was.

The hive’s walls vomited forth a horde of wax spiders, the ones that were constantly in attendance, yet managed to remain all but invisible most of the time. She had expected that. It made their sudden appearance, all leathery, translucent bodies and legs and fangs and gently luminescent eyes no less hideous, no less terrifying—and it certainly made the venom on their fangs no less poisonous. But, at least she had expected them.

She had not expected the four creatures that came dropping neatly out of the ceiling—what looked at first like… she wasn’t sure what. Some kind of bizarre furylamp fixture, perhaps. They were spheres, essentially, with blades of gleaming steel standing out in ridges from the inner surface of each sphere, smoothly beautiful—until the bodies of the forms began to unfold with delicate grace into the long legs of creatures that resembled wax spiders—but which were ten times the size, and whose limbs were graced with blades of what was obviously furycrafted steel.

Vord. Made of steel. Isana felt fairly sure that didn’t bode well for whatever Invidia had planned.