Grace put her toes to the ground and pushed herself upright, overwhelmingly relieved – and ashamed of it. This wasn't the over-protective, paranoid Ma that she had sometimes laughed about with Dad. In front of her was the Ma she hadn't quite believed in: the blazingly powerful riezehn who could destroy the fragile tower in an instant. It was awe-inspiring.

She shielded her eyes from the dazzling white light and walked shakily towards her, the relief making her unsteady. But she heard a tight laugh from the Queen, and Ma said, "Go, Grace."

She looked behind her instead, at where the Queen was rising to her feet, the beautiful drapery of her dress stained with mud and grass.

"You came!" she said, and Grace felt her relief wane. The Queen was supposed to be afraid of Ma, but she sounded delighted. More than that: she sounded as though she finally had what she wanted.

"Grace, go! Go and get Benjamin!"

She looked back at Ma and gritted her teeth. She wasn't going to leave her to fight the Queen on her own. She had all the power of the boys to wield as she wanted. Ma only had her own magic. She planted her feet more firmly and held the wand out towards the Queen.

There was a rush, and a feeling a little like falling upwards, and Grace found herself travelling backwards through the air. She saw the Queen and Ma dropping away beneath and in front of her, and she thought that the Queen must have cast some kind of magic on her until she saw the surprise on that lovely face.

Ma, she thought, with a bitter sense of defeat. She had shoved her out of the way, to safety. And to Benjamin, a small part of her mind added.

She dropped towards the floor with a sickening sensation, but instead of meeting the ground, she dropped below it, down the path of the intention wind. By the looks of it, Ma was sending her all the way to Benjamin herself.

But what could she do to free him? If she broke the bond, it would make the tower vulnerable. But if she didn't, the Queen would hurl as much power as she could at Ma, and she might die. And if Afi hadn't been freed along with Grace, there would be nobody to help her.

You should have told me what to do! she thought, frantically, as the tunnel opened out into a corridor she recognised.

Then the answer bloomed in her mind like a flower that was rotting even as it opened, and she wondered why it hadn't occurred to her earlier.

Take the bond yourself, and use it.

She was certain that it was what she needed to do, even though the idea made her feel ill. Draining those boys further of power and keeping them under the trance would make her no better than the Queen.

But she remembered the Captain, and how he had looked to her to save them all; she remembered Ruidic, and Aniela. She only hoped that Afi would forgive her for it.

The corridor grew dark around her, and she realised that she was nearly where Benjamin was. It made her flesh crawl to be flying through darkness, and it occurred to her only then that she could summon light with the wand. It was a simple enough symbol, wasn't it? An oval with two flaring lines.

She drew them onto the wand with her forefinger, and blinked as it became a glowing stick of light. It reminded her of the old neon bulbs her elementary school had had, and the lesson where her science teacher had made a light-sabre using a Van der Graaf generator and an unpowered bulb. But it also banished the darkness, and she travelled in a little sphere of light, thankful that there were no Nightmares to fight off.

She landed gently on the travelling disc, and then walked onwards with only a vague memory of where she was going. She thought about the bond as she went, and how it was formed.

One dominant riezehn... with absolute control over the one in the trance...

Could she take her own control just by creating a new link with the boys? Or was there something else she needed to do?

A familiar rush of doubt hit her. She didn't even know if taking control of the bond was possible. It hadn't mentioned it in the book.

But anything's possible, she said to herself, and smiled as she realised that Dad's favourite mantra was actually true here.

She saw the open door of the Empty Room to her left, and glimpsed the couches through it. They were half-lit by the window, though even a glance showed her that the boiling storm still raged out there. But there was no rush of unease as she approached and passed it now. The room no longer held any threat to her, now that she knew how to destroy the stones.

There was a booming roar from somewhere above. Grace drew in a sharp breath, and thought immediately of Ma. She needed to see.

That mantra was still in her mind, and she remembered the silver dust Mr. Fredrickson had given her, in order to help her see visions at a distance.

There are other ways, but they are less portable. A mirror, for instance, or any other surface that will reflect light.

There had been mirrors in the Empty Room. She remembered that. And she stopped in her tracks, and paced quickly back down the corridor until she reached the door.

She braced herself for the awful feeling of being shut off from possibility once she crossed the threshold, but this time, it never came, and she stopped just inside the door in surprise. It was definitely the right room – there couldn't be any doubt. The couches and cushions were still there, and even Grace's solitary bed. But as she walked onwards, carefully, past the first of the patterns in the wall that had held a fane stone, she saw that there was nothing but an empty dent there.

It made her stop again, and an uneasy feeling began in the pit of her stomach. Someone had removed the stones. Why? Had it been Merrily, in an act of defiance? Or had Dedora ordered it done? But with the battle raging, she didn't believe it.

What if it was one of the Cold? What if they're going to use them against the Queen? Or against Grace? Or against Ma?

Then she had to hurry. She trod over the soft carpet until she reached one of the girls' dressers and snatched up a little hand-held mirror framed in silver. This symbol she knew that she couldn't remember, and so she pulled the book out of the sewing bag and flicked through it.

The Symbol of Divining, she read, and stopped. It was a complicated symbol, and she knew it was going to take her a great deal longer than a few days to learn. But by watching the page of the book carefully, she was able to sketch it on the surface of the mirror. In her mind, she held an image of Ma and the Queen as they had been when she flew away from them, and after a moment it was there on the mirror in front of her. It remained there for a few seconds, a frozen image like a picture, and then it burst into moving, confusing action and she realised that she was watching a battle between mages of vast power.

She knew that she had to keep moving, so she jogged out into the corridor while she watched, but it was difficult to keep half an eye on where she was going. The Queen's writhing, changing mass of colours was lashing out at Ma's searing white power, and between one heartbeat and the next it would change shape and form and effect.

She flinched as a storm of ice shards flew at Ma, but Ma had been ready, and created a shield of warm amber fire that melted them in the air. Grace wondered whether Ma was really as calm as she looked, and the view lurched and changed, showing her Ma's face in absolute deatil. It was creased with concentration, and there was a little film of sweat over her cheeks, but there was also the most incredible determination set in lines round her mouth, and Grace knew that she wasn't going to panic or to give up.

She let the view swing back outwards again so that she could see the whole fight, and then she flinched and dodged sideways as a corner loomed up at her out of the darkness.

Eyes on the road, Grace, she thought, and let the mirror hang by her side until she reached the door of the room where the boys were held, though it was like an itch she couldn't scratch, having it there in her hand and willing herself not to look.

The doors were standing open, and within was a dim yellow light. Ruidic's light, she hoped.

She slowed, and peered inside carefully, sagging a little in relief as she saw him standing there, juggling globes of light with a lazy motion. She was pretty sure that wasn't the illusion of a nightmare, anyway. Juggling had never featured all that strongly in her worst fears.

He smiled as he saw her, the lip-curling grin that had infuriated her about him and which now she saw with a rush of affection. The lights merged together and became a large globe once again, illuminating the room.

"Still standing?" he asked.

She gave him a half-smile. "Yes. Though I needed a little help."

He caught something in her expression, and his smile slipped.

"Lena's here," he said, quietly.

"She stopped the Queen from blowing me apart." Grace ducked her head slightly, both embarrassed that she'd needed saving and impossibly proud that Ma had done it.

"And she's there now?" he asked, stepping towards her. She saw the way he lifted his feet over the nearest sleeping boy, unconsciously, and wondered how much time he spent in this room.

"Here," Grace said, and handed him the mirror. He gave a little laugh, even while his eyes devoured what he saw.

"How did you do this? A riezehn three days old?"

"Stubbornness," Grace told him, and then realised with a rush of hope that he might know the answers to what she needed to do. "She told me to go to Benjamin. I think she wants me to take control of the link."

He looked up at her, briefly, troubled. "But you can't."

"I need to," she said, firmly. "I must be able to."

He breathed out, his eyes gazing and gazing at Ma and the Queen. "I've thought about it for years. And I think... I thought I could only do it if I could interrupt it somehow."

He looked up at her, and she saw that there was a little too much water in his stormy eyes. It was a little embarrassing to see, but she couldn't help liking him more when she remembered that he loved Ma. Though it made her remember who he was to her, too, and that was a confusing and embarrassing thought too.

"Like how?"

But his eyes went back to the mirror, and then he thrust it at her and said, "I need to help her."

Grace turned it towards herself with a shaking hand as he ran from the room. It was an inhumanly fast flight that must have had possibility behind it, but it couldn't be fast enough. Ma was curled on the grass, unmoving, and above her the Queen's writhing, multi-coloured power was building to strike.

"No!" Grace shouted at it, as uselessly as shouting at the TV at home.

And then, as if she'd heard her, the Queen's magic died. Grace wondered, with her heart thumping somewhere in her throat, whether she had had a change of heart. But the view in the mirror swooped inwards and she saw a hollow shock on the woman's face.

Something had cut her off, and that meant that the link was broken.

Grace lifted her head to look at the boys, her eyes strobing across the room and searching for Benjamin.

He'll wake up! she thought, and every determination she'd had to take control of the link herself vanished with the happiness that thought brought her.

She saw him, lying on his mattress with his eyes slowly blinking open, and she started to cross to him. But then there was a flash of light, which burned a web of lines into her vision, and when she turned to find its source she saw the boy from her dream standing over the others, his blue eyes wild with power.

She could see it pouring into him, those threads of power that had now become rivers of it, rushing and driving their way towards him and out of the boys who created them.

"It's mine now," he said, become the centre of a sea of light, and he threw his head back with a shout as if he stood out in the blazing sun.