The unsteadiness is all of me. By the time I notice the ache, I’m already standing. The wood sways at my vision’s edge, a lingering gift of Her control, born of my refusal to deny us. Izzy is a time traveler now, lost in the throes of vengeance past. The blood of our sisters swirls in a gaze long since emptied, trapping her in the first. Izzy is still caught in Her rampage at the Duke’s estate. The greatest of my failings.

  Or, perhaps she is trapped with me now.

  A silence rises between us, the kind that erodes, that knows too much.

  It happened again.

  She got out.

  Death.

  I wait for her to beg my forgiveness, to claim responsibility for destroying me. She doesn’t.

  “He let go,” she says, trying to close her broken hand fully around the memory. “I had him. He let go.”

  My body moves before my thoughts and I turn from her into the trees. The darkness parts for me because it knows my name. Years I spent with it, shaping each other, molding new, unkind things for those lost in us. Now, it may be the only thing that truly understands. I am venomous to the earth.

  The bone carver. Yes. The one truly responsible.

  If I find him, he can fix this, fix me.

  My body protests each step as I claw at the trunks to keep moving, eyes locked on the smoke rising through the black canopy ahead. Her memories keep surging into me, insisting they’re mine. Each one is a hot coal. I press them down with the rest of the howling dark, and keep to the shortest path.

  Brambles tear at my legs as I enter the clearing before Fornthveit. The town still burns through the soak. Smoke billows out like the souls of the damned, the ones I condemned to a slower death. Their echoes reach for me, coaxing me down to a lower hell, but there is no hell low enough for us.

  I walk into the wreckage like I belong to it.

  The screaming hasn’t stopped, only changed. Wails stretch thin over scorched timber, pulled taut and hammered into eternity, until all that’s left is the low-throated mourning of a place learning what it means to die. I stumble down the main street, the cobblestones digging into my arches, toward the last place I saw Luca.

  A guardsman turns toward me, eyes wide with uncertain recognition. His voice scrapes out from behind his helm.

  “Catherine? It’s not safe here. The river has forsaken us—

  I don’t know his name. I’ve forgotten it, or never knew it. Either is fine, because I have no words for a good man.

  Behind him, the pile grows. Men drag bodies, one after another, limbs slipping through flame-licked tunics. Villagers rush past with buckets drawn from the wells, their faces smeared with ash, unsure of what’s left to save. I don’t say anything. I don’t offer help. I would only taint it.

  The air fills my lungs, thick with charred birch and something I won’t name. I cough out the sick scent, and press forward, eyes fixed on the path to the inn.

  The baker’s girl kneels beside her mother’s body. The child’s fingers dig into the woman’s breast, desperate to rouse her from the long sleep, but she will never hear her lullabies again. I have seen to that.

  I cross the bridge without pausing. The river seethes beneath me, mouth full of blood, its silence heavier than before. It knows me now, but I am no friend.

  I have stolen from it.

  Beyond the far bank, a rotting corpse shambles into view. The fire behind it throws its shadow long, limbs dragging, head tilting to one side. I duck behind the remains of a crumbling half-wall and hold my breath. It gurgles, a wet sound, and drops to its knees beside what’s left of a man. No hunger for flesh. Only mindless consumption. It tears into a femur with deliberate gnashing, sinew stringing between its teeth.

  I take the chance to slip past, unseen.

  The Silver Scale looms ahead, condemned by the gods, by me. It stands like a shipwreck beached in the center of this ruin. I pass through the doorway, the wood hanging by a single hinge, and step into what remains of the inn. Orn greets me once more.

  He is sprawled across the counter, pierced through with his own spine, sucked clean. There are pieces of him missing. The moment of his death reaches for me and stitches the fragments together. I feel it all.

  She spoke in my voice.

  “Finally here to confess my love to you, Orn.”

  Then laughter. Unnatural, hollow, something I recognize only by its shape in my ears. Her intent wriggles inward. Not rage, but artistry, a rancid, festering feast crafted from what I value most. And I see it again, his eyes, wide with betrayal, the realization dawning just as I—no, She—split him open. I heave, but there’s nothing left in me. Just the spasm and the pain it brings.

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  A sob slips out, swallowed by the destruction around me. I can’t stay here. Not with him. Not with what’s left. I push it all behind me and climb the back stairs. At the top, the back wall is gone. Ripped clean open. Wind rushes through the emptiness, stirring the blood pools I left behind.

  There’s no sign of Luca. But I hadn’t expected to find him here. Below me, the village lies in shards. Half of it reduced to cinders and viscera. The rest has simply gone dark. The little vermin scurry some more—no, they—the people are struggling to save Fornthveit.

  What the hell was that?

  At my feet, something catches the light. Izzy’s pack, Luca’s scattered tools. I gather them without thought and climb down the broken stone, avoiding the stairs. I won’t go past him again. A voice rises somewhere off to the right, muffled under the mass of beams and slate. I hear the shift of rubble, the groan of wood dragging against stone.

  Luca.

  I follow the sounds, past blackened homes, until I see him pinned beneath the twisted remains of a rafter, his arms flailing as a river dead claws at his chest, its teeth snapping inches from his throat.

  I don’t think. I reach for the creature, my fingers sinking into its swollen flesh, and pull. Pallid skin tears away and the corpse’s head turns. Its eyes are pale and filmed over, but they fix on me with startling clarity. It sees me.

  And then it lunges.

  We fall together, my back striking the earth as its weight crushes down. Its mouth finds the curve of my shoulder and bites deep. Heat floods my arm. My thoughts shatter in all directions. I struggle beneath it. Forget how to kill. Luca watches from where he lies, his body frozen. He can do nothing.

  In an instant the creature lurches backward, a dagger buried deep in its skull. It collapses in the dirt beside me with a thud, the blade still quivering from the force of the throw.

  Izzy steps into view, her hand clamped tight over the gash in her neck, blood seeping through her fingers in dark, steady pulses.

  “There are more,” she says, ripping her blade free. “They should be able to handle it. We need to go. Now.”

  She doesn’t wait for agreement. She grips my arm and pulls me to my feet, then turns on Luca, who hasn’t moved since the fight began. We use the cast iron fireplace frame to free his knee. Izzy is already on him.

  “Can you walk?” She asks, draping his arm over her shoulder. “It doesn’t matter, you’re coming either way.”

  He says nothing. Neither do I. We gather what we can and move, slipping through the haze and ruin until the outline of my shack rises up out of the dust. The door hangs crooked in its frame. Its quiet is almost mocking.

  We cross the threshold and the moment the door closes behind us, Izzy rounds on Luca.

  “What the fuck happened?”

  “I—I don’t know,” Luca stammers. “I don’t know why She got out. I thought this time—it felt different, I thought maybe—”

  He doesn’t finish. Izzy moves before he can.

  She pins him to the wall with a hand at his throat, the shack groans. I don’t stop her.

  “This time?” she asks, and her voice is colder now. “The hell is that supposed to mean, ‘this time’?”

  “I—”

  “Spit it the fuck out.”

  She draws her dagger again, presses the point against the soft flesh just beneath his eye, not enough to cut, but to warn of emptying patience.

  I look up, eager for his excuses. But Izzy will die if she doesn’t stop the bleeding. My hand dips into her pack, and I pull out the small clear vial—the draught. Its weight is strangely comforting in my palm.

  “Izzy,” I say, and offer it to her.

  She tears it from my grip, uncorks it with her teeth, and douses it onto her wound. The blood slows almost immediately. She tosses the bottle back toward me without breaking her gaze.

  “Those bodies out there? That’s on you. What. Happened?”

  “I’m not an artisan,” he blurts, and the words fall heavy in the room.

  Izzy doesn’t move. She blinks once, slow.

  She wants to kill him. She’d better not kill him.

  “Speak.” Malice drips off her tongue so thick I could bottle it.

  “I’ve never succeeded,” Luca says at last, “I could bind the spirit, but never reach it. I couldn’t hear it, couldn’t touch it. I thought maybe…I could fix her in place like the others.”

  “She’ll be gone for a while,” I murmur. “But after that… I don’t know.”

  “Then what about before?” Izzy grits her teeth.

  “A half-functional ombresha, yes. Bovine. Simple.” He lowers his eyes and takes a breath. “My people exiled me. An Omtulkan unable to fulfill his role is no use to the people of our village.”

  The quiet that follows is not peace, but resignation.

  “Fucking perfect. So, you’re saying you can’t fix it, then?”

  “I need you both to go. Wait outside.” Part of me wanted to hear him say it, that I am lost completely, but another still makes a fist.

  Izzy watches me for a long moment before she nods once and takes Luca by the arm. He flinches but doesn’t resist as she pulls him through the doorway. The sound of it closing is softer than I expect.

  I stand for a while and think of nothing. When I move next, it is with care. I peel my blooded second skin away and leave it shed on the floor. I pull on fresh linens and wipe away the grime. An old board cracks apart as I dig into the shack’s foundation, searching for what I had buried long ago. The garb of obsession. And a blade to cut it.

  The leathers are stiff with age, not much to look at. They are cut through in places, gouged along the edges—but they hold. They still hold. I dress in silence, buckling each strap with the precision of memory, fingers moving through motions long-practiced. The cloak is heavier than I remember. I pull it over my shoulders and let it settle, the fabric clinging faintly with remnants of soot and blood.

  The sword is a narrow, nameless blade, shorter than most, its hilt worn smooth from years of grip. When the light touches it, the heartsteel thrums into my palm. Thief. Murderer. It accuses.

  I grin, slinging it across my back. It’s right.

  My dress lies in a heap by the door, soaked through and torn from the shoulder. I leave it there as I will this city. Never the same.

  What little I have l fits easily into my old satchel. Izzy finds me as I tighten the final straps, her steps slow, the fight in her eyes is gone. She doesn’t speak at first, just studies me the way someone does when they aren’t sure which version of you they’re going to get. At least she has a right to be concerned.

  When she does speak, her voice is that of a child come to confess.

  “Luca says he needs a place of power. Somewhere the veil’s already thin. He has an idea.”

  She waits for me to ask, but I don’t. I just keep my hands moving, folding what little remains into the pack as if it matters.

  “He wants us to go back,” she says. “To Stoneheart.”

  My hands still and I bury my rage.

  “He thinks the connection will be stronger there. Says that place—where she came through—still holds part of her. It makes the reach easier. He thinks he can finish it.”

  She glances toward the door, as if expecting him to appear, or perhaps hoping he won’t.

  “And with everything that happened there,” she adds, softer now, “with how many died… the ground’s already soaked in it. In grief. In blood. That kind of power doesn’t wash out. I don’t fucking know, Cat…but we—”

  “No matter where we go next. She’s coming. Remember that the next time I ask you to end it.” I slam my shoulder into her as I leave the fragile remains of my peace behind.

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