Glowing green croach spread out from the barn and had already begun to creep outward. There was a crowd of mantis warriors sitting around the far side of the barn, a hundred or more. Further sentries crouched around the exterior of the barn, one every ten feet or so. Wax spiders rolled in and out, vomiting out fresh patches of croach, then trundling back inside to pick up more.

“Remind you of anything?” Tavi asked Kitai quietly.

She nodded. “The Queen’s hive under Alera Imperia.”

The high-pitched howl of windstreams bearing Aleran fliers screamed far overhead. Tavi looked up and saw a flier glide smoothly down to the barn entrance—a slender woman clad all in black, whose head had been badly scarred with burns. She passed through the crowd of mantises, shoving them out of the way like unruly lambs, then glanced over her shoulder and up before vanishing into the barn.

“She’s there,” he heard himself whisper. “Bloody crows, the Queen is right there in that barn.”

Kitai’s hand went to her sword. “Should we attack?”

He shook his head. Together they turned their horses and began moving slowly and stealthily back to the host.

Kitai stared at him, visibly furious, as they reentered the mists, and stopped her horse. “That was an opportunity. Perhaps the best one we are going to have. It was foolish of you to cast it aside out of some harebrained need to protect me.”

“That wasn’t what I was doing, Kitai.”

“The crows it was not,” Kitai said. “And if you think for a moment that you are going to hunt this Queen by yourself, Aleran, you are mistaken. I will not permit you to face her alone.”

“Kitai—”

“I don’t know who is on this strike team you mentioned, but I am hereby assigning myself to it.”

“You’re not on the team. You are the team. I’ve already decided that the safest place for you is next to me.”

Her eyes narrowed suspiciously. “You have?”

He nodded. Then he stopped his horse and turned to her. “I wish you to become my mate,” he said, duplicating her own accented Aleran flawlessly. “Set the challenge of your choice.”

She tilted her head. “What?”

“You heard me,” he said.

Kitai stared at him for a moment more, then said, “Let the winner of the trial be the one who slays the vord Queen.”

Tavi huffed out a laugh. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you didn’t want me to marry you.”

She smiled at him. “No, fool,” she said. “I most certainly do. Kill this creature, my Aleran, and make our world a place where we might live again, where our child might grow up in safety. Kill her, and I will be yours until death parts us.”

Tavi stared at Kitai and thought that he’d never seen a creature so beautiful. He leaned over to her and kissed her hard on the mouth. When it was through, they rested their foreheads together, until Kitai’s horse sidestepped, and they both nearly plummeted off.

They shared another smile, righted themselves, and returned to the host.

Tavi rode up to Fidelias, who stood talking with Varg. “All right,” he said. “It’s just ahead. Give the order to get us under way and prepare to sound the attack.”

Invidia stared at the vord Queen, transfixed.

“Do not make a fatal mistake, Invidia,” the vord Queen said, her voice calm. “One more dead Aleran means nothing to me. Nor should a few more matter to you, at this point. Kill them. I will keep my word to you.”

Invidia bit her lip. Then she bent forward, slowly, her fingers outstretched for the sword’s hilt. Once she touched it, something in her seemed to solidify, some resolution that made her expression as smooth and as cold as glass in winter. Her hand seemed to gain strength as she touched the blade. Then she lifted it and turned toward the two Alerans, her eyes hard, the mad, bitter rage pouring off her like smoke from the scorched carcasses around them. “You brought this upon yourselves.”

It happened so swiftly. One instant, Invidia was beginning to take a step forward, a dead man’s sword in her hand.

The next, there was a hiss of rushing air, the sound of a whip crack, and the jagged point of what looked like a spear tip carved from bone erupted from Invidia’s chest, just below her breast, to the left of her sternum. The spear transfixed the burned woman and the creature clutching her body in a single blow, and she arched her back in agony, her eyes flying open wide, her mouth stretching into a breathless scream.

A hand gripping a stone knife emerged from a fraying windcrafted veil, swept around Invidia’s body, and with a swift, sure motion, cut her throat from ear to ear.

Invidia Aquitaine fell to the croach, her blood pouring out like a fountain, her eyes wide with shock and terror and rage and pain. She turned her head to stare, bewildered, at the woman who had killed her.

Countess Calderonus Amara stood over her with the bloodied stone knife in hand, and whispered, “Thus are you served in Alera, traitor.”

Invidia’s eyes rolled back into her head, and her breath rattled in her throat. She sank very slowly to the ground, the legs of the beast upon her breast quivering madly, uselessly. Her own legs twitched and kicked several times, as if she believed herself to be running away from something.

Then her bloodless face fell to one side, staring sightlessly, and she went still.

Isana stared at Amara in shock. The Cursor had been in the hive all along. She must have entered when Antillus and Phrygia did, concealing her presence with a veil—doubtless intending to strike down the vord Queen. But the Queen was surrounded by a wall of blade-beasts, and Invidia had been a perfect target, fully focused upon her own self-conflict and pain.

Amara bent and wrenched the bone spear from the body, bracing one boot against the dead woman’s shoulder blades. It was a short weapon, no more than three or three and a half feet long, and thicker than her wrist, decorated with Marat-style carvings. A bone spear, Isana thought, and a stone knife—neither of which would have been sensed by Invidia’s metalcrafting. Amara took the primitive weapons in hand and turned to face the Queen, her stance casually arrogant.

The Queen narrowed her black, glittering eyes, and Isana felt a surge of deep, hot anger pulse from her in a single wave, then vanish again. As it happened, the blade-beasts parted, rippling smoothly out of the space between the Queen and Countess Amara.

“That,” said the Queen, her diction precise, “was inconvenient.”

“In what way?” Amara asked, her tone flippant.

The vord Queen answered, but Isana had realized what Amara was doing. She bit her lip and placed her hand on Aria’s calf, her fingers clutching hard. Without the waters of a healing pool to work with, she couldn’t tell precisely what shape Aria was in. It was like trying to read a book underwater, with her vision blurred and the ink running—but she could feel it well enough to know that Aria knew precisely what was injured, and that she was, in fact, making an effort to heal it. Silently, Isana threw her support behind Lady Placida’s efforts, and she could feel it as the other woman’s pains began to recede, as her wounds began to close.

“She was… uniquely useful to me,” the Queen said.

Amara flicked some of the blood off the tip of the spear with one finger, and said, “She’s still useful. You can eat her.”

“Her,” said the Queen, her eyes narrowing. “And you.”

Amara lifted her spear in silent invitation and gave the Queen a mocking bow.

Isana clutched Aria’s leg even harder, pouring all her energy into assisting her.

The Queen and the Cursor both called upon windcrafting to give them speed and abruptly rushed toward one another, streaks of motion. At the last instant, Amara flung the stone knife, and the vord Queen had to intercept it with her blade. Amara dropped into a slide and went by her, barely avoiding the sword’s backswing. The Cursor came up onto her feet, rolled beneath another blow as the Queen pursued her, then reversed her facing in midleap and flung the bone spear at the Queen with unearthly speed.