“No, I heard it,” said Ryn slowly. “How couldn’t I? He said it loud and clear. I just hadn’t had a moment to talk about it until now. What did he mean?”

Nuthea looked at the ground.

Ryn’s guts went suddenly cold, the heat vanishing as quickly as it had come. Slowly, a chill crept up from the base of his feet to the top of his head, gripping his heart tight on the way. Mother. Father. Hometown. Find Vorr. Get Vorr. Kill Vorr. Stay with Nuthea?

He heard himself asking another question. “How did Vorr find out about the Jewels in the first place? It wasn’t just a coincidence that he attacked my town, was it?”

“No,” said Nuthea very quietly, still looking down. “He knew about the Fire Ruby before he attacked Cleasor.”

“How?”

The cold was freezing fear in the pit of his stomach.

“He knows because I told him.”

Shock tore through Ryn. His mouth fell open.

“Wh… what?”

Still Nuthea refused to meet his gaze. “He knows because I told him,” she said quietly through the tears that started to stream down her cheeks.

“Why? When? Where?”

The others stared at her from where they stood, stunned to silence. Even Sagar didn’t offer any comment, but seemed keen to hear whatever Nuthea had to say next.

Nuthea took a deep breath and brushed the water from her cheeks. It took her a little while, but eventually she started to tell them the tale. “There… there never was an undercover mission to Imfis… What happened was that I ran away from my homeland because I was due to be wed in an arranged marriage, and I didn’t want to be; I wanted to see the world and go on adventures. So I ran away, and disguised myself, and made my own way traveling. I got as far as Sirra, but one night I was staying at an inn there, and I met this man...”

A horrible premonition came into Ryn’s imagination.

“...he bought me some drinks,” Nuthea went on, “and somehow I let slip that I was a Manolian princess...”

“Why would you do that?” Ryn said.

“I don’t know!” Nuthea nearly started to sob again, then choked it back. “He was very charming, and he had a very flattering way of talking and I… I suppose I wanted to impress him… When I told him I was a princess he was very interested--”

“Course he was,” said Sagar.

“--he was very interested, and he started asking me things about my homeland and my people. And then… then he started asking me about the Primeval Jewels. Somehow he had heard of them, and he started to ask me what I knew, and I told him… I told him…”

Nuthea petered out as she looked back down at the ground. She didn’t seem able to bring herself to say whatever she had been going to say next.

“What did you tell him?” said Ryn. But he realised he already knew.

Nuthea raised her gaze to Ryn’s. Her lip quivered.

“I told him what I knew about the Jewels. I told him that the Lightning Crystal was in Manolian capital and that the Fire Ruby was hidden in a small town in Efstan called Cleasor.”

Ryn reeled, and had to put his arms out to stop himself from falling over. The world had begun to spin. He felt himself sit down on the ground with a bump.

“I…” said Nuthea. “I’m sorry I lied to you. To you all.”

Nobody else spoke. They just watched Ryn.

“Say something, Ryn,” Nuthea implored him.

Ryn’s mind caught up with his body.

“Do you mean to tell me…” he said slowly, quietly. “Do you mean to tell me that the person responsible for the Morekemian Emperor finding out about the Jewels, for Vorr coming to my hometown to find the Fire Ruby, for the death of my mother, for the death of my father, for the destruction of my hometown and the death of everyone I’ve ever known is...you?”

“I’m sorry!” Nuthea burst out again. “I don’t know what came over me! I had been drinking wine, and Vorr is...Vorr is actually quite attractive when he’s not in his armour and you don’t know he’s an Imperial soldier… He must have been in there off duty, or on shore leave, or something, in his regular clothes. And he...he noticed me, and he was trying to...ingratiate himself with me... ”

The world was still spinning, and it span faster. Ryn’s stomach turned over; he worried he might be sick. “You mean you…?”

“No!” said Nuthea quickly. “No. But I did get to talking with him. After I told him who I was, and then about the Jewels, he overpowered me straight away and took me back to his airship, where he threw me in that cell. I’m sure he would have tortured me, but by that point he had already gotten out of me everything I knew. I’m...I’m so sorry, Ryn.”

The nausea receded a little, but left only...cold.

“Ryn, I--”

“No, stop,” said Ryn. He stood up shakily. “Don’t waste your breath.” This was all too much. “I need to be by myself for a little while.”

He stumbled away from the group, down and round the side of the hill they were on. The whole time he walked he felt numb. And yet, underneath the numbness, somewhere in the pit of his stomach, Ryn was vaguely aware that something else was stirring in him, fighting to make itself known.

When he knew he had walked down and round enough of the hill and out of sight of his companions, he sat down and wept.

The ocean of grief that had been sealed up inside of him burst forth all of a sudden, and flooded him. He had had to keep it pressed down in order to escape the Empire, find a healer for Nuthea, sneak onto the train with the others, fight Vorr. He had not allowed himself to feel it fully. But now it had grown too much, and the grief broke its dam. He buried his face in the grass so that nobody would hear him, however far away they were, as it came out through his eyes in hot tears, through his chest in big, heaving sobs, through his mouth in shouts of pain and anger at Vorr, at the Empire, at the world, at the fact that everyone he had ever known had been killed, but he alone had been left alive.

At Nuthea.

Mother. Father. Hometown. Find Vorr. Get Vorr. Kill Vorr.

Get away from Nuthea.