Valerie had only gone a few feet into the dark tunnel when she was seized by a twisting vertigo that stole any sense of spatial awareness she had. Suddenly, there was no up or down, forward or back. Just a stomach churning sense that she was moving fast.

"You outsiders refuse to die easily," Agnizzar said as he drew an axe off his back. He let the weapon's head fall to the floor, dragging it along and leaving a groove in the earth behind him. "I am impressed. And annoyed."

Valerie collapsed the second after she set the elite on fire from the inside out, which left Xigbar in the sudden and unexpected position of being the only one standing.

“Hold still, I want to try something,” List said, and scooted closer to Kaleb. As an afterthought, she added, “Tell me if it hurts, though.”

"Are you okay?" Kaleb asked.

"Still breathing," List said.

List felt the ground fall out from beneath her even as the shockwave from Agnizzar's blow tossed her off her feet.

Exhausted, half of her remaining family lying half dead at her feet, the other half missing and possibly dead, Valerie finally ran out of patience for Xigbar.

The priest was flagging. List and Kaleb were gone. Xigbar had disappeared.

Arden took the first watch that evening, and Kaleb the second. List, who hated being woken up in the middle of the night, would be up last, which left Xigbar and Valerie to take the third watch together, because nobody trusted Xigbar to keep watch by himself

Even days into traveling with him, List was having a very difficult time figuring out how she felt about Kaleb.

Because he dressed in finery and spent most of his days sitting in important chairs, giving orders, and being entertained, people tended to forget that Emir Zaman was actually quite strong.

For reasons he wasn't fully prepared to unpack yet, Kaleb found himself smiling as they ran.

"Why are you so against being a hero?”

“Why are you so for it?”

This was where it had happened. This was where Zaman had killed her friends, and made a show of it.

Matilda Mayflower was not a particularly confident young woman. In fact, most people who met her got the impression that if they stared directly at her for too long, the girl would burst into tears.

“List, look out!”

The prison was disturbingly silent.

The next thing Valerie was aware of, her nose itched, and she couldn't scratch it.

In less than a minute, the street was swarming with the Chosen's forces.

In only a second, Valerie was the only one left standing against the bugbear.