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Kaladin runs up the broad stairs into the upper palace behind Elhokar with about fifty men following. The Fused gave up on the Sunwalk after Shallan's ruse, and the city assault seems to be consuming the enemy's attention — so for the moment he is going to risk using his Stormlight in the open. Syl zips ahead and reports a Palace Guard platoon on the third floor that backs away from the stair rather than fighting. Kaladin slows the king with a hand and rearranges his men: a squad of King's Guard to flank Elhokar and prevent him from being surrounded; Noro's whole Wall Guard squad — Beard, Ved, Alaward, Vaceslv — staying with Kaladin himself, after Noro explains they no longer have a platoon leader without their captain. *Don't crowd me, and don't let anyone else crowd me either,* Kaladin tells them.

They emerge into a long, stone, bunker-plain hallway. A Palace Guard platoon waits with halberds and crossbows but doesn't move. Elhokar bellows at them — *do you not know your monarch* — and after one of them looks over his shoulder at some distant voice they all simply turn and retreat. The party follows up the corridor past a row of nine Herald statues; Kaladin notes that one is missing. He posts pairs at every cross corridor with orders to shout at anything coming from a side passage. They reach an open set of doors into the royal chambers themselves. Syl reports a smaller hallway off to the left holds a knot of soldiers; the chamber ahead holds none — only the queen, singing. Elhokar recognises her voice and presses forward; Kaladin follows.

Outside the Oathgate control building Shallan walks up to the dark, pulsing heart and decides it cannot be a human heart — perhaps a parshman heart, or simply a giant violet spren wearing the shape. The city's sounds fold in on her: skirmishing one street over, drums going silent post by post on the wall, smoke, and a low roar of thousands of voices going under at once. She tries Pattern as a Blade in the heart's flesh; it parts around him and seals up behind. So she does what she did at Urithiru — presses a trembling hand against the warm wall of the thing — and it sweeps her away.

In the royal chambers Aesudan sits at a vanity combing her long dark hair, her song trailed off to a hum. She glides to Elhokar when he speaks her name and asks if he has come back victorious, his father avenged. She frowns at his new bodyguard — *far too scruffy.* He asks for his son. *Playing with friends,* she says. Elhokar sends Kaladin to look for the boy. Kaladin picks past lavish meals only half-eaten — fruits with a single bite taken, candied meats on sticks, decayspren on food that has somehow not rotted, a heap of fine instruments — and follows Syl to a dressing screen pushed back into a small cubby behind which Gavinor — two or three, clutching a stuffed soldier in blue armour — huddles while soft red-glowing spren pick at him like cremlings: tugging his head up when he tries to look away, hovering in front of him taking horse-headed melting shapes. Kaladin kills one of them — drives Syl as a small dagger through it and into the wall paneling, where it screams in a hundred soft voices and shreds itself into nothing. The others bolt. Syl falls to his shoulder shaking. *That was… that was terrible. Did we just kill a spren?* *The thing deserved it.*

Beyond the screen Elhokar and Aesudan have devolved into a hissing argument. *You were ever so oblivious. Your father had grand plans, but you just sat in his shadow.* *So you could stay and do this?* *I continued your father's work,* she tells him. *Spren — ancient spren. You can bond with them.* *Have you seen my Radiants? My Queen's Guard? I have done what your father could not.* Her eyes start to glow red. Kaladin tries to gather up Gavinor; the boy screams and scrambles away — which finally pulls the king out of the conversation. Elhokar kneels to him, whispers something only the child hears, and at last lifts him gently into his arms. Kaladin turns back to the queen and asks how long *the thing past her* has been planning this. She laughs. *Yelig-nar serves me. Or do you speak of the Heart of the Revel? Ashertmarn has no will; he is merely a force of consumption, mindless, to be harnessed.* *Out,* Kaladin says to the king. Elhokar hesitates — *be a hero to the one you can save,* Kaladin tells him — and then leads them back into the corridor with Gavinor in his arm. Aesudan follows them to the doorway, sighs as if disappointed, and tells Elhokar that she has *outgrown* him — that she has taken the gemstone into herself and harnessed Yelig-nar's power. Black smoke twists around her on an unfelt wind. *Double time,* Kaladin tells his men, drawing Stormlight in. The queen orders her soldiers to attack.

*Give it all to me,* the voices in Shallan's mind whisper. *Give me your passion, your hunger, your longing, your loss. Surrender. You are what you feel.* She swims in them as if at the bottom of the sea, snapping eels in the dark. Each voice tells her what she is and she becomes it: a weeping girl tightening a chain around a thick neck, an urchin in rags. *Passion. Fear. Enthusiasm. Boredom. Hatred. Lust.* A new person every heartbeat. *But which one was her?* *All of them*, another voice says. *Wit's?* *Wit,* she screams, *please.* *You're all of them, Shallan. Why must you be only one emotion? One sensation? One role? One life?* *They rule me, Wit — Veil and Radiant and all the others. They're consuming me.* *Then be ruled as a king is ruled by his subjects. Make Shallan so strong, the others must bow.* *I don't know if I can.* The darkness rises — and then withdraws. She kneels on the cold stones outside the control building. The enormous heart melts into dark sludge and crawls away ahead of itself. *You did it,* Adolin says. *I did?* She does not feel she changed anything. Azure orders the building secured, Drehy and Skar glow nearby with fresh blood on them, and Shallan stands up on shaky feet and steps inside.

Inside the small control building, tile mosaics of fanciful beasts on the floor, lanterns set in gemstones on the walls between full-length mirrors. Shallan summons Pattern as a Blade for the keyhole and catches sight of herself in a mirror. The reflection is not Shallan — it is a woman with black hair to her waist in an archaic sleeveless gown. The reflection presses its hands against the glass; the painted room behind it warps; the figure becomes a jet-black shadow with white-hole eyes. *Radiant,* it mouths, *my name is Sja-anat. And I am not your enemy.* Shallan knows the name. *One of the Unmade. Our enemies.* *We were made, then unmade. But no, not an enemy.* She becomes humanlike again. *Ask my son. Please.* *You're of him. Odium.* *No. I am of me. Now, only of me.* Shallan turns to the keyhole. *Don't do it,* Sja-anat pleads. *Listen, Radiant. Ashertmarn fled on purpose. It is a trap. I was compelled to touch the spren of this device — it will not function as you wish.*

Back in the palace, Kaladin's force bottlenecks down the stairwell. The Queen's Guard at the top sets crossbows; Kaladin steps between them and his men and pools Stormlight into the floor to drag the bolts down, but he is unpracticed — bolts still slam into shields and a few into heads. He breathes deep, bursts alight, and Lashes himself a few feet off the floor; the Queen's Guard shies back from the glow as if it were physical. The rear guard withdraws. Only Noro's squad lingers. From below comes the worse sound: clashing on the ground floor and singing in Parshendi rhythms. The enemy has broken in through the gardens too. *Rearguard! Form on the steps, orient up!* Kaladin Lashes himself up to the ceiling, runs feet-first across it over the heads of his bottlenecked men, drops into the eastern gallery in a tempest of light right in front of the parshman line — and finds himself looking into the face of Sah. Card player. Father. Friend.

His rage dies. Sah sees him, gasps, grabs Khen, points, and the parshmen scramble away — leaving the dead humans on the steps. Kaladin's men spill into the gallery behind him. So does everyone else. Azure's soldiers pour in from the Sunwalk, the parshmen press from the back of the palace, the king stands amid a ring of soldiers in the centre with Gavinor in his arms, Kaladin's men come down off the stair and the Queen's Guard behind them. The hall becomes a melee with no lines and no platoons — a commander's nightmare. Kaladin sees all of it at once. Sah and Khen fighting for their freedom; the palace guards who were rescued fighting for their king; the Wall Guard dying for a city that has already fallen; the Queen's Guard convinced they are loyal. *None of them deserved death.* He loses the us-against-them trick that has carried him since Amaram's army. His Sylspear puffs to mist in his fingers. *Stop. Stop it. Stop killing each other.* Behind him, Sah rams Beard through with a spear. *STOP. PLEASE.* Noro runs another parshman through. Ahead, Elhokar's ring of King's Guards collapses; a halberd point goes through the king's arm; he drops his Blade from numb fingers but holds his son tighter. The Queen's Guardsman who struck him pulls back wide-eyed as if seeing him for the first time, and is cut down. Kaladin screams and they cannot hear him. Gentle Sah dies on Noro's sword; Noro's head is split by Khen's axe; the three of them fall beside Beard, whose dead eyes stare past his outstretched arm and the *Fortune* glyphward soaking up his blood.

Kaladin slumps to his knees. His Stormlight makes a space the enemies will not cross. Syl spins around him pleading; he cannot hear her either. *The king,* he thinks, numb. *Get to Elhokar.* Elhokar has fallen to his knees. In one arm he holds his terrified son; in the other hand he holds a sheet of paper — a sketch. He starts to stutter the words. *Life. Life before death. Strength before weakness.* The hair on Kaladin's neck rises. Elhokar begins to glow softly. *Journey. Journey before…* A figure walks out of the parshman side of the battle in a brown uniform. Gloom seems to cling to him. So familiar. *Moash, no…* Kaladin cannot move; his Stormlight is gone. Moash lowers his spear and runs the king through the chest. He pins him to the ground, kicks the weeping prince aside, sets his boot on the king's throat, pulls the spear out and drives it through the king's eye, and holds it there until the fledgling glow flickers out. The Shardblade appears from mist and clangs to the floor beside the body. Moash kicks it aside. He looks at Kaladin and quietly taps his wrists together — the Bridge Four salute — with the still-bloody spear in his hand.

The battle breaks. The remnants of Kaladin's men stagger out along the Sunwalk. A Queen's Guard scoops up Gavinor and carries him off. Azure's soldiers limp back. Aesudan descends the stair wreathed in black smoke, eyes glowing red, crystal carapace breaking out through her skin and a gemstone burning bright in the middle of her chest where her heart should be. Kaladin crawls toward Elhokar's body; one of the Queen's Guard grabs him by the arm. And then Drehy and Skar explode out of the Sunwalk in twin Lashings, drive the enemy back with sweeping spears, and Adolin grabs Kaladin under the arms and hauls him backward. *Time to go, bridgeboy.*