“I assume that you’re responsible for the destruction of my nightmare stones,” Genevieve Arundell said. Though she wore a mask to cover her face, she sounded just the same as when Liv had last seen her at Coral Bay.

“Indirectly. We found one, and then set other people to hunt down the rest.” There was no chair in front of the archmage’s desk, and when she looked down at herself, Liv saw that she was wearing the same white shift she’d gone to bed in. No matter; though she hadn’t had nearly as much time to practice with it as she would have hoped for, Liv had imprinted Cei, just like Genevieve had.

At the urging of her intent, the word of power stirred in the back of her mind. Liv’s shift flickered, replaced momentarily with her armor, but instead of the shared dream settling into place in accordance with her desire, the change slipped away. Liv frowned.

“Who taught you that word, I wonder?” Arundell mused. “Another crime to charge you with, I suppose. Not that we need anymore. Are you really so arrogant you thought you could directly contest my magic, and win?”

“Aren’t you the one telling everyone that I fought you and Jurian at the same time?” Liv prodded at the older woman.

“What we tell the commoners and what actually happened are as far apart as the two continents,” Genevieve said, with a chuckle. “You couldn’t lay a finger on either Jurian or I, unless we let you. Killing both Anson Fane and Jasper Cawley, however, you did all on your own. Those are both murder charges, to go with two instances of illegal words of power. And then treason, of course - going to Ashford and fighting the crown troops covers that. You see the irony of all of this, I hope?”

“That you claim to be head of the mage’s guild, while making us nothing more than Benedict’s tools?” Liv asked. She glanced to the window - the same one she’d leapt out of to escape from this office in the waking world. Arundell might be able to stop her from using Cei to change this dream directly, but what about natural consequences? Could she just break the glass and leave?

“Don’t bother,” Arundell said, and with the wave of her hand the glass panes of the window were replaced by plain, unassuming stonework, to match the rest of the office. “No, the irony is that you and Julianne gave Benedict precisely the excuse he needed. If you’d just followed the law in the first place, and kept your hands off a word that didn’t belong to you, I’d have had no reason to call you up here for questioning. Oh, I would have ejected you from the college and the guild, of course, and sent you back to Whitehill - but Julianne wouldn’t have been sheltering a criminal. And Jurian might still be alive.”

“You don’t get to say his name,” Liv hissed. “You’re the one who killed him.”

“Is that what you think happened?” Genevieve leaned forward across the desk, reached up, and removed her mask. Whatever Liv had been expecting to see - horrific scars, perhaps? - the woman’s unmarked, familiar face wasn’t it. “I didn’t kill Jurian of Carinthia, you stupid little girl. If you don’t believe a single other thing I say tonight, you should believe that. Whatever else came between us, I didn’t kill the only man I’ve ever loved.”

“That’s a load of dung,” Liv shot back. “I felt him go, in the spaces between.”

Arundell narrowed her eyes. “You really are talented. It’s a shame you’re so determined to throw it all away.”

“No, the shame is an archmage who can’t see herself as anything more than a bootlicker to a corrupt king,” Liv said, her voice rising. “You want to talk about talent? It’s clear you’ve got it, too. You’re undeniably an archmage, one of only three in my lifetime. If you’d actually had the best interests of the guild at heart, you could have led us anyway, when Caspian died. I can’t tell if it's lack of patience, or jealousy, or just your old grudge against Jurian, but you had to force your way in by bribing and threatening people.”

“Oh, you silly girl,” Genevieve said, with a laugh. She set her mask on the desk, face up. “I do have the best interests of the guild at heart. We have a royal charter, and that means we serve the crown, and the kingdom. You think I don’t know he’s corrupt? Of course he is. All kings are. Power corrupts. He might be a little worse than average, but it’s a matter of degrees. The trick isn’t to defy a king - it’s to sit at their right hand and whisper in their ear. Guide them. I’ll keep Benedict from making any mistakes that would ruin us, and I’ll outlive him. By the time his daughter sits the throne, she’ll rely on my counsel.

“That’s it?” Liv protested, incredulous. “Benedict’s a rusting horrible king, but rather than do anything about it you just shrug and help him out? Do you know how many people died at Ashford? How many froze to death in the snow, or bled out, even after we got them away?”

“Whatever the number is, they have no one but Isaac Grenfell to blame,” Genevieve said, shaking her head. “And you and Julianne, I suppose. Don’t line yourselves up against the crown and then act self-righteous and surprised when the consequences come home to roost. You should have known this was coming the moment you imprinted Luc. Take some responsibility for your own actions.”

Liv looked away, and bit her lip. Though she knew she was in a dream, she could feel the pain just as if she’d done it in the waking world. She was so angry that she could hardly think, and the worst part was that Genevieve Arundell hadn't told her anything that she hadn’t thought for herself in the dark of the night, when she couldn’t sleep. If she hadn’t asked Julianne to give her Luc, would any of this have happened?

“You’re wrong,” Liv said. “I wasn’t the one who started this. The princess and the queen regent did. They tried to kill Julianne before Matthew was even born, and they tried to kill me twice at Freeport. And the moment he was crowned, Benedict brought that old hag back from whatever island they’d stashed her away on. He broke the agreement we made. Sooner or later, this fight was coming, no matter what I did.”

“Maybe.” Genevieve leaned back in her chair. “I argued against that, you know. Told him it was too much of a provocation, and we didn’t need the old woman. But she’s got some sort of hold over him.”

“What do you mean?” Liv couldn’t help but take a step forward.

“Oh no, I’m not giving you any more information,” Genevieve said, with a smile. “Nothing that you might be able to use against us, if you ever manage to wake up.”

If you ever manage to wake up. The words sent a shock of panic through Liv, turning her stomach queasy and setting her body to trembling.

“Is this the part where you try to kill me?” Liv asked.

Arundell shook her head. “No. I don’t have to - and I don’t think I could through a dream, anyway. Maybe if I’d managed to make Jurian’s archmage spell work. But no, Journeyman Brodbeck, I don’t need to kill you. All I need to do is delay you, and everyone at Whitehill. When we reach the south pass, there will be no final reinforcements from Whitehill, because you’ll all still be asleep. There will be no Julianne, no Liv Brodbeck, no - well, whoever else you have with you. I’ll just - hold you here. Dreaming away while the wall comes down at the pass. By the time I allow you to wake, it will be too late.”

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Liv sucked in a breath, and felt her eyes widen. Was Genevieve Arundell really capable of casting a spell that enchanted all of Whitehill? Through the wards that Sidonie had set to protect their dreams, from all the way south of the pass? It went against everything that Archmagus Loredan had taught her about Authority - that it became more and more difficult to cast magic, the further away from you it was.

“We broke your stones,” Liv muttered.

“You did. I should have known better than to trust Erskine and his idiot son to get something like that done,” Genevieve grumbled.

“But if you could just send nightmares at everyone in Whitehill by yourself, you wouldn’t have needed the stones in the first place,” Liv reasoned, turning away from the archmage behind the desk.

“It would have been easier, certainly,” Arundell grumbled.

“You’re in the dream with me, which means you won’t be fighting at the pass either,” Liv said, glancing back up. “The stones would have let you do both. But it’s still too far away, and I don’t see how you got past the wards.”

“Enchantments have no Authority of their own. You should never have trusted to wards to keep an archmage out.”

Liv shook her head. “My grandfather was a thousand years older than you, and the son of Celris. His authority was enough to encompass the entire Hall of Ancestors, and everyone in it, but - not at this kind of range.” She’d never actually been there to see the place, but she couldn’t imagine that it was the size of Whitehill, or that there had been as many Eld there as people in the city right now.

“And Ractia’s Authority is stronger than his was,” Liv continued, pacing back and forth. It was like a puzzle rattling around the back of her mind, and now that she’d started, she couldn’t let it go. It wasn’t like she had anything better to do while trapped in a dream, anyway. “But if she could do something like this, why hasn’t she? She could have just destroyed Kelthelis, or Al’Fenthia, or Mountain home, from miles away, hiding in the mountains somewhere.”

Something about the idea of Ractia caught in her mind. Something she hadn’t quite put together yet, something important.

“You wanted to know how Jurian died?” Genevieve said, rising from behind her desk. “Why don’t I show you.” She waved her hand, and the office shifted. The wall and ceiling were both blown out, and rubble was scattered all over the floor. Overhead, the ring shone bright in the sky, surrounded by scattered stars, and the sound of breaking waves drifted up from the bay far below.

Liv’s thoughts caught, like a wagon wheel stuck in the mud, at the sight of Jurian and Genevieve facing each other across the rubble. They were both torn, broken and burned, bleeding from half a dozen wounds each. Around Genevieve, a cyclone of mana-constructs spun at a dizzying speed: axes, chains, blades, all manner of shapes to cut and grind and tear.

But around her old teacher, Liv saw four young mages, just as they’d looked when they descended into Godsgrave, decades before. They flickered blue, veined with gold, and Liv gasped when she understood what Jurian had done.

“Those are your nightmares,” Liv breathed. “Your friends. You. Is that what frightens you so much - what they’d all think of what you’ve become now? Every justification you have for what you’ve done, all the suffering you’ve helped Benedict cause - what would that girl say to you, if she could see what you’ve become?” Liv thrust her finger at the image of a young Genevieve, standing between her older shadow and the man they’d both loved. “He used your own nightmares against you. Forced you face to face with the ugly, wicked, foul woman you’ve let yourself become.”

Genevieve Arundell’s face was utterly motionless. “He might have beat me,” she admitted. “But the simple truth is, Liv, he got old.”

The dream of Jurian winced, and clutched at his left arm, gasping for air. He collapsed, and the nightmare constructs of his archmage spell dissipated into glittering motes of essence. Liv had just enough time to watch Genevieve dash forward to keel at his side, and then the memory froze. Curiously, Genevieve Arundell’s memory of her own face was blurred, so that Liv couldn’t make out her features - only the blood running down her neck.

“Professor Annora told me, later, that it was his heart,” Arundell said. “I told you the truth, Journeyman. I didn’t kill him.”

Liv walked over to the frozen image of her teacher and knelt down. She reached out a hand, as if to touch him, and then hesitated. “Stop trying to distract me,” she said. “You wouldn’t be showing me this if there wasn’t something I could do -”

“I can make it a comfortable dream, if you like,” Genevieve said. “How about the one you threw away?”

The scene shifted, and instead of the broken ruins of Blackstone Hall, they stood upon the north beach of Freeport. There was Cade Talbot, not the boy who’d been at the duel on the sands, but the grown man she’d reunited with - and rejected - at Coral Bay. He walked toward Liv with a smile on his face and an outstretched hand.

“You really don’t know me at all, do you?” Liv said, shaking her head and rising from where she’d knelt. “Ractia. If she can’t do something like this, you couldn’t, either. Even Costia had a limit to how far her curse spread in the Well of Bones - and you aren’t better than a god, Genevieve. I can think of one way that you might have slipped past those wards, though - without coming physically.”

“Oh?” Genevieve watched her evenly, giving nothing away.

“When the Eld become adults,” Liv said, the thoughts assembling as she spoke them into being, like a spell, “our spirit, our mind, whatever you want to call it, is carried out on the mana of the world. That’s when I saw Ractia for the first time, all the way across the sea. Sidonie warded against dreams, but she didn’t ward against anything like that. I’m not even certain how she could. I didn’t even try to cast when I did that, but if I could feel Ractia’s Authority, I’d bet that it’s possible.”

“Clever girl.” Genevieve shrugged. “But it changes nothing.”

“Doesn’t it?” Liv asked. “I could feel Ractia’s Authority, which means you can feel mine.”

In an instant, the sky filled with clouds, and a blizzard of blinding white erupted across the beach. The breakers froze above the sand, curled into glittering arcs of ice. Even the sea-spray became delicate traceries, suspended in the air, impossibly solid.

Save for a bubble around Genevieve, filled with a vibrating, golden haze of magic, the entire dream tore away a moment later, obliterated. The archmage raised her arms, as if to shield her face, and then a great wind rose at Liv’s command, cold as the furthest north, and blew her away, as well.

☙

Liv gasped and sat up, pulling the bedsheets askew.

Sunlight poured in through the windows of her bed chamber in Castle Whitehill. Next to her, Rosamund lay, her breathing slow and even. Liv put a hand on her lover’s bare arm, and shook her. “Rose,” she said, but the other woman didn’t move.

Liv turned about and swung her legs out of the bed, shivering at the feeling of her bare feet on the cold stone floor. When she was sleeping with Rose, who was like a stoked hearth, she didn’t need to wear wool stockings at night. She pulled a pair on now, and a robe, and snatched her wand up.

“Thora?” she called, on her way through her sitting room, but there was no answer.

In the corridor, the castle was utterly quiet and still. Liv went from door to door, shouting for Matthew, for Triss, for Julianne or Master Grenfell, for her mother - for anyone. Where doors weren’t barred, she found only the occupants of the castle sleeping. The horologe in Master Grenfell’s sitting room, where he taught classes, was past the eleventh bell. They should have been marching the army south hours ago.

Liv rushed out into the courtyard, to the base of the curtain walls. Not a single guard hailed her from atop the ramparts, and the horses broke into a chorus of whinnies, begging her for their morning oats. She ignored them, and rushed to the dream wards that Sidonie and Rose had set into the stone.

There, Liv slapped her bare palm up against one of the sigils. If enchantments had no Authority of their own, perhaps she could lend it a bit of hers. She closed her eyes, and forced her mana out through her hand into the ward.

At first, it didn’t want to go - but Liv had breathed in time with the enchantments at the Tomb of Celris, had felt them as a part of herself, with the crown of Celris on her brow. She felt for that feeling now, and folded the enchantment into herself, made it her own, part of a complete whole.

She was aware, with a sense beyond sight, of the glyphs circling the curtain walls blazing into bright blue light, one after the other, until the circle was complete. The air snapped with cold, and Liv’s breath frosted, as she expanded her Authority to encompass the entire grounds.

Atop the wall, a guard gave a cry, and jerked awake. A moment later, the castle began to stir.