It was amazing to me that after only a short time in Hull's presence, I felt more myself than I had in days, perhaps even weeks. A creeping numbness had consumed me, allowing only the darkest emotions to gestate, and yet now I felt a lightness seeping into my soul, like dappled sunlight breaking through heavy clouds. Not that I had returned to some form of normalcy or level-headedness – I didn't think I'd ever be that again – but I was a step closer to it, and I had my friend to thank for the reprieve.

The warm bead in my pocket further buoyed my mood, the fingers of my left hand roaming its smooth surface as I was marched down the hall by Felstrife's Souls. I may have had to leave the resurrection staff behind with Hull but I had taken a Fire crystal with me, that, when switched into my fabricator, would let me summon Esmi.

For now, her card was tucked in my wrist holder – flimsy protection to be sure – but if I was required to fight, I needed my deck at full strength, and as much as I cherished her, she didn't fit my current build. I had contemplated giving her into Hull's care for safekeeping, but in the end, I couldn't bear to part with her after having just been reunited.

I pressed the wrist holder against my chest. Soon, my love. Soon you'll be whole again.

Though my attention was split, my eyes never stopped roaming over their surroundings, noting the Undead guards we passed every so often, the number of wall-mounted crystals that provided light, and even a rat as it scurried past us. It was due to this outward vigilance that I realized my Master Shieldbearer was no longer wearing the Relic I had previously equipped her with. The piece of gear was only Common, so it needed resummoning fairly often, but the Soulforged Scalemail still hung across her shoulders, which was also Common.

"Where is your Helmet?" I asked, uncaring if the Undead Souls were privy to our conversation.

The Master Shieldbearer dipped her head. "The leonid attacked in a Flurry," she explained. "I Dodged the first of his swipes, but the second caught me hard. Shouldn't have been enough to put me down, not with the extra Armor you gave me, but there was strength behind it I didn't trust. So, I went ahead and used the Helmet."

That was interesting. I had commanded the Bodyguard to protect me, of course, and by extension itself, since the longer she was summoned, the longer I benefited from her ability to soak damage meant for my person. Normally, however, I was the one who decided when Relics and such would activate, but perhaps because the use of the Helmet fit the spirit of the command, the Twins had allowed the Soul to make such a choice. Interesting indeed. I would need to investigate that further when circumstances allowed.

I didn't bother to share my musings – not yet. Instead, I said, "How did you manage to stay summoned after he recovered then?"

We turned a sharp corner, and the Undead Souls bunching up around us pushed me closer to my Bodyguard, her metal armor pressing into my right shoulder while the ghostly form of the Ice Spectre chilled my left.

"Some of the vampires intervened before he could lash out a second time," the Master Shieldbearer said. "It took three of them, but they eventually managed to lead him away."

And I hadn't noticed any of it, caught up completely in bartering for Esmi's Soul.

I nodded absently, both to convey my understanding and appreciation for the succinct report. I had no doubt made an enemy where the leonid was concerned, but I doubted our paths would ever cross again. The necromancer lord though… who would have guessed that such a coward hid behind those garnet-flecked eyes? Not that I would be fool enough to discount him. He had done something to earn his Epic Soul, and if it didn't relate to combat it was sure to have other effects that could prove troublesome. My current working theory was that one of them let him steal any cards he destroyed, which would explain how he had come into possession of my Master Assassin. I'd have to check with my Soul to be sure, but that was another thing I could see too later – no reason to antagonize my guards by summoning more Souls. I was fortunate enough that Sliver hadn't already destroyed my Bodyguard.

Thinking of the Mythic, my gaze danced over the various summons that surrounded me, their cards flitting into my sight, one after the next.

My own Soul Atrea had told Hull that I treated her well, which at the time I hadn't thought much of. Now though, as a wider breadth of sensations were gradually rekindling in me, I couldn't help but note the shame that accompanied the memory of her words: the feeling that I should be able to do so much more for those under my care.

I looked again at Felstrife's cards. What did they want? The images on the first three gave little clue, but the Lich… Examining his picture more closely and rereading his quote, a strange idea presented itself. I too had lived for years hidden away in a library and knew what comfort such a space could be, a refuge and sanctuary with thoughts bound in leather to keep one company.

"Emerus," I said, looking up at the stork-like Legendary, "What is your favorite written work?"

The summoned Soul hadn't acknowledged any of my prior attempts at conversation, so when the lich creaked his neck down to regard me, it was enough for a trickle of excitement to dance across my skin.

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"All of them," he rasped. "And mine shall never fade, never fray," the lich wheezed happily.

Curious. Why would he say that? "Because of how Felstrife keeps you in her Mind Home?"

Air hissed from his skeletal mouth; it was not a happy sound. "I made them so," he grated. "Me, no other."

"I see…" I said, letting our brief exchange come to an end.

Some sort of preservation magic then, that's what it sounded like. Perhaps a specialty of liches? More and more, I was becoming convinced that the glittering shards I had glimpsed along Felstrife's spine were pieces of her Soul card. And when viewing her memories, there had been that preserved flower. If Hull was recalling things correctly about how a Soul card should behave when shattered, then it seemed to me that Felstrife might have found a way to trap her broken Soul in an unnatural state, which could very well be what had created her immortal lichdom.

But how? Soulsmithing and their mixtures had something to do with it – they must after the dozens of workshop memories I encountered while searching for answers – but that would only explain how she broke her card, not how she was sustaining it.

A key turned in my mind.

Sustain it… Just as Mort had described to me, just as I had seen firsthand when watching necromancers use Death Source to sustain their brethren. Preservation wasn't a domain of liches but a domain of Death itself. I hadn't considered the possibility since liches were said to be so rare, but their scarcity could be explained by the mixture needed to break one's Soul being unknown, not a restriction on the ability to preserve.

My discovery stopped me in my tracks, and it was Sliver behind me who got me moving again. I barely felt the shove, my mind racing along this new track of thought.

Assuming I was right, how were my circumstances improved? Even if I slipped away from Felstrife a second time and told Rathamon what I deduced, the information was useless without knowledge of how to create the alchemical draft I was hypothesizing existed, and none of my viewings had revealed such information.

Cut to the quick of things, a hardened part of me thought. Eliminate her and worry about the rest when you're free. I'd said as much to Hull, about how I'd kill them all, but claims were a far cry from accomplishments. Overcoming Felstrife's deck would be no simple task, and supposing I did, I had a feeling that her body might refuse to die. And yet… if her Soul card was already in the process of breaking, perhaps I could hurry it along, as regular cardsmiths did, with a dissolving solution. But would that be enough? If she could be destroyed so easily, surely someone would have managed it long before now. Not to mention there was the trouble of getting her ribcage open to expose the shards.

Another set of skeletons waited by the upcoming hallway entrance. At first glance they were mere scenery, but then it came to me that they were exactly what I required. As we passed, I crouched down, putting my face next to one of their yellowed legs.

My guards made noises of discontent at the delay, and I spoke over them, "Turned my ankle wrong. One moment."

"Help him," Sliver snapped to my Bodyguard.

"What does it look like I'm doing?" she answered back, but when she crouched at my side, arm looping through mine, a mental command stopped her from pulling us up.

In that brief moment, as surreptitiously as I could, I put my hand beside the leg bone and channeled Source through it, feeling a jittery energy flow out of my palm. Thank the Twins I had never dismissed my Sources.

The hissing above me intensified, though none of it sounded like it was coming from the skeleton I was experimenting on.

I gave it another three seconds, until I felt Sliver looming over me, at which point I stood. "Fine now," I told them, "we may proceed."

My chaperones resumed their tireless march, and as I moved with them, my eyes flicked down for the barest moment. The amber crystal light in this hallway wasn't as bright as some others, but it was enough for me to see a small, forking crack where my hand had been. The fissure was hairline thin and would probably have no effect on the skeleton's ability to move or fight, but it was something.

They hurried me the rest of the way, and I didn't fight them, too caught up in what I had just learned. Only a few turns now from the ballroom, I felt the Palace floor shake beneath my boots, the sound of a mirror shattering filling my ears, followed by a rumbling bellow.

The two Ice Spectres shot forward, followed by the summoned Skeletons. Emerus grabbed my arm in hand and Sliver's pressure on my back became a constant force.

"Move, move," the Mythic said.

The ballroom we reached was not the one I remembered – and I remembered it well after all the tortuous hours I had been forced to spend in it. It was a broken mess of its former self, with two summoned Ice Wyrms crashing into the walls and ceiling, their great size, made larger by their long tails and expansive wings, much too big for the space.

And then there were all the bodies. As the two Wyrms stomped about searching for prey, they not only crushed all the glass they had knocked from the wall but they squelched corpses – Fortune take me, I hoped that's what they were – into the wooden floor, the robes the people wore catching some of the blood that gushed out of them, but hardly all of it. There had to be a dozen such individuals scattered around, maybe more, as well as bones and pieces of rotting flesh that must have been the remains of the usual skeleton and zombie guards.

How many Hands do you have? I wondered, thinking of Azure. It was clear that the Secret Keeper had decided to make some grand assault while I was away, which could only mean…

My eyes darted around the room, finding Justine not too far off, her armored body standing out among the cloth wrapped ones but just as still as all the rest. Then, when the Wyrm in back shifted round, I saw Bessamun, his fortress of books knocked over and the young noble pressed up against the far wall, unmoving, like he had been trying to claw his way out of the room.

While my mind processed this, I used the fact that all of Felstrife's Souls were now in the ballroom, searching for threats, to my advantage, pulling some cards into my hand and then summoning my Master Assassin.

"I know where your woman's body is," he whispered the moment he misted into being, his voice as gravelly as a quarry.

"Excellent, but no time for that now. Procure me some of the solution being used to break the King's card down in the Throne Room." Fortune, please, don't let Azure have been lying to me about that. "Quickly now, go!" I hissed.

I didn't watch him depart, my attention fixed on Felstrife instead. She was floating in the middle of the room, her head thrown back, and a high keen emanating from her non-existent lungs. I hadn't noticed it at first due to all the noise her Wrym summons were making but now that I caught the sound of it, the wail pierced my ears, making me think that they might begin to bleed.

Emerus reached his master, laying a hand on her, and for a flicker, I wondered if they shared anything beyond both being liches. That snapped her out of it. She looked at him, and then she spun in the air, her baleful gaze finding mine.

"This… is your fault."

In her presence, the numbness creeped back over me, the feelings I had been reconnecting with sloughing away. "You didn't need to leave your forces so unbalanced to collect me," I told her. "I would have returned."

She drifted closer, gnashing her teeth, and I had no doubt that if she still had muscle and flesh layered over her bones, it would have been a snarl.

"No more risks, no more waiting," she hissed, grabbing my throat in her bony fingers. "Your Soul will be mine, now."

Her vice-like grip made my words hoarse, but still, I forced them out, never looking away, "We'll see about that." Pulling on my Source and flicking my wrist, I summoned another of the cards I'd recently drawn.

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