Page 47 of The Princes of Stone and Steel

I nodded, thinking I understood.

“You do not understand.” He’d read my mind again. “There was a cost to their gifts. A great cost, to me and those who came before.”

Then another thought hit me, a terrible thought. “Those other soldiers—they were all once the flesh, weren’t they?”

As I looked on him, the fear that this could be my fate, would be my fate, made my body begin to tremble fiercely.

“No, Millicent Merchant.” His voice softened, as if he were trying to reassure me. “Nothing of you has been the experience of the flesh. Your individual magic far surpasses that of our collective.”

“But why? How?”

Tertius shook his head, then lowered it. “I know not,” he answered, and he sounded very sincere.

“What—?” I began to ask, though he cut me off.

“Make the connection. Protect the outliers.” That last part he spoke as he turned his back to me and slipped quietly, seamlessly, into the forest cover.

“Make the connection,” I whispered to no one.

“What, my love?” Steele asked, and I jumped, startled by his sudden appearance.

“He told me to make the connection and save the outliers.”

“He? He who?”

I pointed to the woods. “The flesh.”

“Millie, I don’t understand. You’re the flesh.”

“Yes, I know. He was my predecessor.”

“That’s not possible. You’re here because he died.”

“No. That’s what I’m trying to tell you.” My arms flung wildly out, as if the action could make him understand when my words didn’t. “The mud soldiers. They’re all mud soldiers. Except—”

“Except?” he asked, pulling me into his arms and hugging me from behind. I’d about had it with being cut off when I tried to speak, though being hugged by Steele sort of made up for it.

His little faux pas aside, I would’ve been very happy to continue our conversation if not for the vibrations that began to shake the ground underfoot.

“Do you feel that?” I asked.

“Feel what?”

Feel what? Was he kidding me? The vibrations became so powerful, I had to brace my hand against the nearest tree to keep us upright.

I thought I could hear Steele in the background calling out my name, but his voice seemed so far away, even though he had me tucked to his front. The message filtering through my hand from the bark itself filled my ears, my head, so much that it kept everything else pushed back or in Steele’s case, snuffed out. Not a voice, but like a telegraph.

Princess Congruis. Traitor to the crown.

Held at Castle Metallum.

The message kept repeating and repeating, stuck like a skipping record.

“Millie.” He shook me. I blinked several times to clear my head.

Finally able to pull my hand away from the tree, I turned in Steele’s arms to face him.

“You were in some sort of trance,” he said. I could hear the concern in his voice. “You kept repeating the same words over and over.”

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