“Silence!” the king bellowed to the nobles. He turned back to me, speaking in the same strange language as before, studying my face closely for any sign of recognition.

“She does not understand the holy tongue,” the queen said shrewdly from her throne.

“Is that so?” The king seized me by the shoulders, giving me the slightest of shakes. He spoke again in the language I didn’t understand, his words punctuated with flying spit.

My entire body began to shake, and I tried to pull away. “Let me go!” I cried, but the king was still shouting at me in that horrible speech.

“If I may interrupt,” a voice called over the others. “I think you may need to give her a moment.”

Dorwan stood at the very back of the chamber in his pale coat, and for the first and only time, I was actually relieved to see him. The king released me immediately, and I stumbled back.

“Get that lying demon out of here!” the king bellowed, sounding nothing like the gentle man I had met in private. “Throw him into the ocean for all I care! Let this be a lesson to everyone never to trust a wizard!”

A small troop of guards rushed toward Dorwan, but the wizard merely held out his hands to stop them.

“I tried to warn you that not all of her powers would have awakened yet,” Dorwan said, coming closer to us. No one stepped in his way or tried to block his path, but many eyed him with a look of revulsion that had nothing to do with the scars on his face.

“You have brought me a false goddess.” The king sneered.

“I have brought you the goddess of destruction herself,” Dorwan said. “She is everything you need to crush Palmarta, just as your Book said.”

“Lies, lies, all lies,” said the king, pushing him away, down the steps. Dorwan reached into his pocket without thinking, to the talisman hidden there. If he revealed himself, there would be no chance for either of us.

I did what I had to do, what my heart, faith, and resolve told me. I left myself open to Astraea’s will.

“I’ll prove my power to you,” I said, proud of how strong my voice sounded. “I’ll prove myself.”

Dorwan’s eyes narrowed, searching for my motives. The king looked back and forth between the two of us. No one spoke. Even the priest remained silent.

Finally, the king said, “If she cannot level a mountain at the very least, I will have both your heads, but first I shall feed parts of your bodies to my dogs while you are still living.”

I nodded, pressing a hand to my heart. Dorwan was no longer the architect of this game. “Choose a mountain, and we will leave at once.”

Beatrice had time only to throw a fur cloak over my shoulders and give my arm a gentle squeeze before I was loaded into a carriage to begin our journey up the long road to the coastal mountains. I glanced back through the small back window, to the queen and noblewomen who had been left behind.

I shared the trip with Dorwan and two guards, whom the wizard had sent into slumber with a wave of his talisman; the driver sat on the outside of the enclosed carriage. I had hoped Dorwan would get into one of the other carriages with the king and the rest of the nobles, but he had stubbornly pushed himself into the carriage after me and shut the door firmly behind him. Now he watched me carefully.

“What spurred this plan?” he asked, his voice barely audible over the grinding of the carriage wheels. “What could you possibly be thinking?”

“I’m wondering how you’ll feel when your plan unravels, and there’s nothing you can do to stop it,” I said.

“Oh, please continue,” Dorwan said.

“All this time,” I said, “I’ve been wondering why you didn’t just twist us away from the king, but it’s because you need him to destroy Provincia first, isn’t it? So that you can sweep in later and take over, just when he thinks he’s won the kingdom for himself.”

“Very good,” he said quietly. “Though I hope you’re not laboring under the misguided impression that I no longer want to collect your blood. The amount I would need would call for your death, and that simply won’t do until Provincia is nothing but rubble and memories.”

I sucked in a deep, angry breath. “You don’t have a curse.”

“It has hundreds of uses beyond curses and poisons.” Dorwan leaned forward in his seat, passing his talisman back and forth between his hands. “Your blood is pure magic. Mixing it with my own would give me power you can’t even imagine. After you destroy Provincia, I’ll be the only wizard left—and with your blood running through my veins, no nation will be powerful enough to defeat me.”

“Spoken like the despicable hedge you are,” I said. “No, you were too repulsive for them, weren’t you? You disgusted even them.”

His face curled into a snarl, and he backhanded me across the mouth so hard I tasted the very blood that tempted him.

I struggled to pull away from his gaze.

“You talk of curses as if they’re some sort of rarity. They aren’t. Everyone is cursed, from the farmer with the pain in his back to the girl who can destroy worlds,” Dorwan said. “And do you know how you destroy a curse, Sydelle? You become one. You consume your fear and become it. You plague everyone and everything that dares to hurt you or stand in your way.”

He pushed me back against the seat. Perhaps from the noise, the guards had jolted back into awareness, looking between Dorwan’s flushed face and my bleeding lip.