Amu had been sleeping deeply for hours. So, after listening long enough to conclude that no one was nearing his bedroom, Eluvie moved. The tendril slipped through the peephole it had created. As gravity pulled it toward the ground, she transformed it into a simpler form - a burst of air. That had been her most exciting discovery of the day. She could transform herself into any form she could imagine - even something as free-flowing and invisible as air - as long as the tendril contained enough mass to produce the object.

  The gust of air sank easily to the ground. Once there, it transformed into Eluvie. She kept the wings off this form. Oddly, it took more effort to keep them away than to transform into any other form. She kept that curiosity aside for later rumination. For now, they were too noticeable. Were she discovered, she could turn into any human form, but she did not want an initial glimpse of her wings to doom her.

  Amu lay on his back, still fast asleep. He slept like an innocent man. All the worry that had lined his face during the day was gone, replaced by a mostly peaceful expression.

  Eluvie looked about the room, searching for a knife, then she recalled that she had already failed to find any during her wait. Instead, she made the fingernails on her right hand grow and toughen until they were as strong and sharp as any sword. Then, she went over to Amu’s bed and sat on its edge.

  He continued sleeping.

  She watched him for a while, anger burning inside her. Then she shook her head and told herself to get on with the task. It wouldn’t do to be interrupted.

  She pressed a nail to his neck. He continued sleeping. She shook him awake.

  It took several seconds for his eyes to clear. He yawned, stretched, and stared up blearily at her. Then, he frowned.

  “Eluvie?” He asked. He yawned again. “What are you doing here?”

  Eluvie suffered a moment of confusion. His expression was so unguarded that she wondered if she was not the villain.

  His expression changed from confusion to worry. He frowned, lifted a hand to his neck, stared at her, and frowned even more.

  “What are you doing?” He asked. He sounded wide awake now.

  “I’m going to ask you questions,” Eluvie said. “I don’t recommend moving.”

  Seconds ticked by as he watched her in stunned silence. Then he sighed, rubbed at his eyes with one hand, and sighed again.

  “This feels better,” he finally said. “Everything was going so smoothly, I couldn’t breathe.”

  Eluvie decided to ignore the strange comment.

  “How do I escape the barrier surrounding the palace?” She asked.

  Amu rolled onto his side, forcing Eluvie to adjust to keep from cutting his throat.

  “So, you don’t remember everything,” he said. “The barrier is a piece of constructed magic made by a long-dead sorcerer. Do you remember what constructed magic is?”

  Eluvie shook her head. She had the vague feeling that he was in control of the interrogation. It made her uneasy, but she had not yet decided what to do about it.

  Amu nodded as if he had expected her ignorance. “‘Constructed’ means that it was made, put into a box, and now works without any input from the original designer. Typically, these things are constructed to be used by people much stupider than the designing sorcerer, so they follow simple rules. You activate them using a series of steps and they run until they either run out of energy or they are deactivated.”

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  Amu met her eyes intently. “This particular one has no deactivation sequence,” he said. “Once you have activated it, it remains in place until it runs out of power. And I’ve been told that it has ten-thousand years worth of power.”

  “You’re lying,” Eluvie said. Her hopes were crumbling around her, threatening to drag her into depression. But she forced herself to hold on and pressed her makeshift blade harder onto Amu’s neck.

  “You are right in a sense,” Amu said. “Every constructed magic can be deactivated, even if it has no set sequence. You can drain it of power, destroy it with brutal force, find the flaw in its execution. But all of those will be difficult for you to do, since the controller for the spell is not here. It is about 800 miles away in the western region. So, to deactivate it, you need to escape first.”

  Eluvie’s breathing returned to normal. Her original plan would not work, but she had spent all day making backup plans.

  “I won’t tell Lady Mirab about this,” Amu said, “as long as you return to your room and keep quiet.”

  Eluvie shook her head. “That is not one of my plans,” she said. “Unfortunately, my backup plan is to kill you, go to Lady Mirab’s bedroom, kill her, and keep killing people until I either escape or there’s no one else to kill.”

  Amu looked disbelieving for a moment, but he saw the resolve on her face and his eyes filled with worry.

  “You wouldn’t do that, Eluvie,” he said.

  Eluvie scoffed. “Kill people who have tortured me for years?” She shook her head. “It’s strange. I don’t want to. Even after all of that, it still feels like it would be wrong.”

  “It would be, Eluvie. That sort of thing is not for you.”

  “But you lot have been doing wrong things for so long and there seems to be no consequences. So, I think it will work for me too. You have sixty seconds to give me a reason not to kill you.”

  Amu’s brow creased. For a long time, he seemed to really strain his brain. Finally, he sighed and gave up.

  “I honestly can’t give you a reason, Eluvie. I can only ask you to reconsider. You are not that person and you don’t want to be.”

  Eluvie felt disappointed. The planning had been easy but, now that the time had come, she felt uneasy.

  “I really hoped that I could just leave,” she said. “I guess this is goodbye.”

  “Wait,” Amu said.

  Eluvie didn’t want to, but she let herself pause. “Tomorrow, Mirab is going to take you out of the palace,” he said.

  I should just kill him, Eluvie thought. He was clearly stalling and probably trying to deceive her.

  Each moment she waited, it felt like her freedom might slip away.

  Still, despite herself, she waited.

  “Where is she taking me?” She asked. “And I thought you said that I couldn’t leave.”

  “They cannot take down the barrier, but they can move it,” Amu said. “She is taking you up,” he gestured with his head toward the ceiling, “to the sky, to the Illrum’s home.” Eluvie involuntarily followed his gaze to the ceiling, then returned her attention to him.

  “If you kill us now,” Amu said, “you can hurt me and Mirab, but the other rulers are outside the barrier. You won’t reach them. They’ll find a way to get you back under control.”

  Eluvie had a plan to handle them, but she let Amu go on.

  “However,” he said, “they will all be going with you tomorrow. You can find a moment to reach all of them.”“Why are they going to the sky?” Eluvie asked.

  Amu shook his head. “I can’t tell you that.”

  Eluvie seriously considered killing him again.

  “I know you don’t trust me,” he said. “And you shouldn’t. But clearly, you remember more than we intended. That means you remember me. And you know that I haven’t been cruel to you. I am not here by choice, anymore than you are. If you still decide to kill me, I won’t blame you. But it’s not the best plan. Wait till tomorrow. Let them take you out, then make your plan from there.”

  It was a trap. Eluvie knew that. He was more interested in saving himself than in helping her. But this was well within her plans. She had gained some information, and she had not needed to kill to get it. It was time to refine her plan.

  Amu refused to give her any more information, no matter how much she threatened him. He maintained that he couldn’t answer her questions but would not elaborate on why that was. Something about the exchange bothered Eluvie. She attributed it to her anxiety about how little she knew, but the explanation did not relax her.

  When she had exhausted her attempts to wring more information from him, she exited through his door, then turned into a gust of air and went back into the room. From her hiding spot in his wall, she watched him stare at a wall for hours before falling asleep. He did not attempt to warn Mirab, and he did not attempt to sabotage her. That convinced her to trust his information. But it also worried her. There was too much at stake and too much unknown. She didn’t like her chances of escape.