Esmera and Lady Varali strode after Ruagu while he forced Lady Yandriya down the stairs in front of him, his two yaoguai flanking them. Esmera's mother stepped around the fresh, scarlet, unmistakable smudge at the edge of one of the beige tiles. Esmera followed her lead even though the blood has probably long dried in her timeline.

They all stopped where the final step met the ground floor. Servants wandered about the entrance hall with none of the purpose they had possessed when Esmera first entered. Of course they had lost that. They didn't even possess their own souls but those of the demons that had murdered them. The portraits lining the hallway seemed to observe the scene with eyes more mournful than Esmera remembered.

Ruagu tightened his grip on Lady Yandriya's mass of curls as he swung her to face him. "Where is it?"

"Where's what?" Even as Ruagu tilted Yandriya's face up to make her look at him, she kept her eyes down.

Without seeing the look within them, Esmera couldn't tell whether Yandriya was ignorant or just playing dumb.

Esmera didn't know her mother, the inflexions in her voice, her body language, or any of the mannerisms and quirks that would've become familiar to her if she had been raised by her.

"The Finnaaz weapon." Ruagu narrowed his eyes, possibly as uncertain as Esmera was about Yandriya's true motives but choosing suspicion.

At that, Lady Yandriya raised her eyes, but not to Ruagu.

She tracked the forms of her servants milling about the entrance hall. None of them met her gaze or even raised the alarm as she might've expected them to if they saw her with an intruder who steered her through her own house by her hair.

The hope in her eyes faded with every maid and messenger who pushed past her as if they hadn't even noticed her.

"Don't bother," said Ruagu, following her gaze. "These are all my servants now, not yours."

The colour leached from Lady Yandriya's perfectly oval, olive-toned face. "What did you do to them?"

"What had to be done."

She shook her head, but no denial could change what was fact. Esmera realised that when Yandriya turned her beseeching eyes to her staff, and they continued to ignore her.

Ruagu shook her by her hair, and she fixed her wide, fearful eyes on him. "Now, tell me, where is the weapon?"

Lady Yandriya looked down again, her lips sealing closed around the secret Ruagu sought. His eyes flashed as he looked between his guards. Esmera dreaded the order he was about to issue, but he only leaned into Yandriya, whispering into her ear at a lover's closeness but with none of the warmth.

"How long do you think it takes a yao to crush a baby with his bare hands?" Ruagu's voice was soft. It would've been comforting if his words weren't so sinister. It was a down pillow before it suffocated its victim. "Your precious daughter will be dead in the moment it takes you to refuse me again."

Now he had Yandriya's attention. Her mouth trembled as she met his unwavering gaze. She, like Esmera, must see that Ruagu meant his words. At his feet, his viper let out a violent hiss as if to confirm that.

He was a man who had ventured so deep into evil's territory that he would kill an innocent baby to punish a terrified mother's disobedience.

Yandriya looked at the baby the yao held. Esmera saw her resolve break as her shoulders sagged. Ruagu had the upper hand, and he knew how to use it.

Yandriya's eyes squeezed closed and her face contorted. "It's in the underground vault."

"Very good," Ruagu crooned like a teacher talking to a toddler. He swept one of Yandriya's loose curls away from her eyes with a finger that might've seemed gentle if Esmera hadn't seen how many people he had murdered with his bare hands. "Now, if you don't mind, please take us there."

He had framed his request as a choice, but Yandriya knew as well as Esmera did that it wasn't.

With a hollow nod, Yandriya took the lead, glancing back every few moments to check on Esmera where she had somehow fallen asleep within the yao's dangerous hold. Now there was only fear in Yandriya's eyes, in the fingers fidgeting at the hem of her long dress, but not an ounce of the defiance that was the only thing Esmera knew about her.

Ruagu and the yaoguai wearing the faces of men followed Yandriya down a passage illuminated by the early afternoon light flooding in through the windows. The corridor opened into a wider space, a greenhouse containing an indoor garden vibrant with life the rest of the manor had lost. Esmera stared around in awe as she passed by fountains spraying from stone water lilies and spouting from the trunks of carved elephants, bird twittering as they helped themselves to the nectar borne by bright, whispering blooms and butterflies dancing among them.

Then the passage narrowed, leading into a cold corridor made darker by the shadows' contrast with the sun's radiance that had just dominated Esmera's vision.

Yandriya stepped through a door set into the darkness at the side of the corridor. Esmera couldn't see it. She wouldn't have even known it was there if Yandriya hadn't shown it to her.

An equally shadowy staircase followed. Yandriya descended it, leading her gruesome company in spirals behind her towards some unseen destination.

The discordance of the intruders' clattering footsteps on the stairs ended abruptly as they arrived at another door. Light shone down on it from a distant skylight above, etching out the bird wings and leaves carved into the edges of the double doors.

"Open yourself to me." Yandriya's resigned voice echoed through the darkness, unable to disguise the quiver at the end.

An unseen lock clicked open. An invisible bolt slid out of place with a sound like a gunshot, and then the door creaked open like the arms of an elderly man as he welcomed his guests, too warm a welcome for two captives and three murderers.

In perfect synchrony, the two yaoguai hung back at the entrance, shaking their heads and growling.

Ruagu's face hardened, his mouth quivering in annoyance. He didn't look back at his allies as he said, "I still don't understand what makes the Finnaaz weapon the only object in existence that can defeat you, but I suppose you have no choice but to remain behind for the sake of your lives."

With that, Ruagu took baby Esmera from the yao who held her. Her skin crawled to think of him touching her all those years ago, too long ago for her to remember.

As Esmera expected, his rough manner jostled her baby self awake. She let out a shrill cry. Yandriya flinched and held out her arms for her child, but Ruagu waved her away and popped the baby's hand into her mouth to silence her. Once her cries had softened, Ruagu gestured for Lady Yandriya to walk ahead of him.

The lady's reluctant feet led them into the vault. Once they were inside, and the doors had closed behind them, Ruagu spoke.

"Now, if you would be so kind as to put the lights on."

Even after everything Ghallia had done, Esmera pitied her for being married to Ruagu. How awful was it living with a man who never seemed to say anything other than taunts or commands? How could she live with a man who spoke such pretty threats, who had no concept of right or wrong?

Yandriya had learnt that disobedience was futile. With shaky footsteps, she crossed the dark room. The overhead bulbs clicked on, showering light on countless rows of soldiers.

Esmera started, expecting them to swarm Ruagu, but they remained still. Their faces stayed frozen in warlike ferocity even though their swords were ready to strike, their arrows prepared to fire.

Their hair was the same colour as their skin, their armour, and their weapons. They were made of earth, not flesh and bone.

An image popped into Esmera's mind of a grave containing thousands of lifelike statues of men. She had seen the documentary many years ago, but she would never forget that sight. "Are these terracotta soldiers?"

"It appears so." Lady Varali whispered even though the people from the past couldn't hear them. "The Finnaaz family didn't have a secret weapon." She brought her eyes, which Esmera never thought she'd see so wide with surprise, to Esmera's. "They had a secret army."

Ruagu looked around, not with the same awe as Esmera and Lady Varali but with a sickening smugness curving his mouth.

Esmera saw it then, how the years he had spent searching for this weapon deepened his hunger for it, how finally finding it would only satisfy a small part of his appetite. It was the only threat to his soldiers, so powerful that they couldn't even be in the same room as it, but not powerful enough to save the Finnaaz family from their dreadful fates.

Esmera clenched her fists. For how many years had Ruagu been planning this attack on the Finnaaz estate? For how many decades had he been targeting the Morghis royals? The two attacks had to be connected, but why?

She took a breath. She and Tauram would figure this out together with Belaren and Anjarah's help. She just had to endure these memories until she arrived at the answers she sought, no matter how painful and terrible and unjust they were.

Ruagu tilted his head, nodding to himself as a grin slunk across his face. His smile was wide when he turned it on Yandriya, that of the wolf as it lured Red Riding Hood into his trap. "How do you feel about a family reunion, my lady?"

Yandriya just stared at him, too afraid to reply, but the trembling hands she clasped in front of her were enough of an answer.

Ruagu's grin widened. "My yaoguai just informed me that your husband and your sons have returned home, just in time."

"In time for what?" The words burst from Yandriya.

Just then, the doors to the vault creaked and opened slowly. Ruagu's eyes snapped to them, as quickly as the viper at his feet could strike if he felt like it.

"You'll see." Ruagu gave Yandriya that smile that promised death, destruction, and every other wicked thing he would do on his quest to become a wrongful, unchallenged ruler.

If Tauram had been here to see that look, Ruagu's betrayal would've never come as a surprise to him.

Footsteps thudded at the front of the vault. To anyone, they would've just sounded like they belonged to multiple people. To Esmera, they were exactly four pairs of feet. Even worse, they faltered as they drew closer.