It came from the guards. Kestrel listened to them as she filled her baskets.

Someone was coming. There was to be an inspection.

Kestrel’s fast heart picked up even more speed. She discovered that she had not, in fact, lost hope that Arin had received her moth. She hadn’t stopped believing that he would come. Hope exploded inside her. It ran through her veins like liquid sunlight.

It wasn’t him.

If Kestrel had been herself, she would have known from the moment she’d heard about an inspection that it couldn’t be Arin, pretending to have come in some official imperial capacity to inspect the work camp.

What an idiotic, painful idea.

Arin was visibly Herrani—dark-haired, gray-eyed—and scarred in a way that announced his identity to anyone who cared to know it. If he’d received her message, and if he’d understood it, and if he came (she was beginning to despise herself for even contemplating such implausible ifs), every Valorian guard in the camp would arrest him, or worse.

The inspection was just an inspection. From the prison yard that evening, Kestrel saw the elderly man who wore a jacket with a senator’s knot tied at the shoulder. He chatted with the guards. Kestrel winnowed through the prisoners, who milled aimlessly in the yard after a full day’s work, the morning drug still jangling inside their veins as it did in hers. Kestrel tried to get close to the senator. Maybe she could get word to her father. If he knew how she suffered, how she was losing pieces of herself, he would change his mind. He would intervene.

The senator’s eyes snapped to Kestrel. She stood only a few feet away. “Guard,” he said to the woman who’d cut Kestrel’s skirts on the first day. “Keep your prisoners in line.”

The woman laid a heavy hand on Kestrel’s shoulder. The weight settled, gripping hard.

“Time for dinner,” the guard said.

Kestrel thought of the drug in the soup and longed for it. She let herself be led away.

Her father knew full well what the prison camp was like. He was General Trajan, the highest-ranking Valorian save the emperor and his son. He knew about his country’s assets and weaknesses—and the camp was a huge asset. Its sulfur was used to make black powder.

Even if the general didn’t know the details of how the camp was run, what did it matter? He’d given her letter to the emperor. She’d heard his heart thump calmly as she’d wept against his chest. It had beaten like a perfectly wound clock.

Someone was stabbing her. Kestrel opened her eyes. She saw nothing but the low black ceiling of her cell.

Another prod against her ribs, harder.

A stick?

Kestrel climbed out of gooey sleep. Slowly—it hurt to move, she was a tangle of bones and bruises and blue rags—she pulled herself up into a sitting position.

“Good,” came a voice from the hallway, clearly relieved. “We don’t have much time.”

Kestrel shifted toward the bars. There was no torchlight in the hallway, but it never got fully dark this far north, even in the dead of night. She could make out the senator, who pulled his cane back through the bars.

“My father sent you.” Joy rushed through her, popping and sparkling all over her skin. She could taste her tears. They ran freely down her face.

The senator gave her a nervous smile. “No, Prince Verex did.” He held out something small.

Kestrel kept crying, differently now.

“Shh. I can’t be caught helping you. You know what would happen to me if I were caught.” In his hand was a key. She took it. “This is for the gate.”

“Let me out, take me with you, please.”

“I can’t.” His whisper was anxious. “I don’t have the key to your cell. And you must wait until at least several days after I’ve left. Your escape can’t be tied to me. Do you understand? You’d ruin me.”

Kestrel nodded. She’d agree to anything he said, if only he wouldn’t leave her.

He was already backing away from her cell. “Promise.”

She wanted to scream at him to stop, she wanted to grab him through the bars and make him stay, make him get her out now. But she heard herself say, “I promise,” and then he was gone.

She sat for a long time looking at the key on her palm. She thought about Verex. Her fingers curled around the key. She dug a hole in the dirt and buried it.

Curling up with her hands beneath her cheek, she rested her head right above the buried key. She tucked her knees in close and toyed with the knots that bound her cut dress to her legs. Kestrel’s mind, though still sticky and slow, began to work. She didn’t sleep. She began to plan—a real plan, this time—and as she arranged the different possibilities there was a part of her that reached for Verex in her mind. She embraced her friend. She thanked him. She dropped her head to his shoulder, breathing deeply. She was strong now, she told him. She could do this. She could do it because she knew that she hadn’t been forgotten.