Pavetta isn’t her mother. She’s quiet where Calanthe is forceful, preferring books and music to swords and battle. But when it comes to her home, to her people, she can be every inch as commanding. “What do you mean, what my people have endured? What happened to Cintra?”

What has Duny done? It’s instinctual, a thought borne of all that she’d learned, all that had happened. What would he have done, with Cirilla having been left behind with Calanthe and Pavetta herself gone. Dead and sinking beneath the waves.