Nine Steps Into Nowhere

At the heart of the chamber waited the obsidian teleportation circle, its surface carved with glyphs so deep that the light itself seemed to vanish into them. Around the circle, the city’s elite had assembled; not just the fabled Team 7, but the remains of the Council, the highest of the Synod, and every Master Arcanist.

Io stood with his arms folded and his jaw set, as if daring the world to change his mind. Bolt, by contrast, was in perpetual motion: stretching, flexing, bouncing on the balls of her feet, her energy a live wire that threatened to arc into violence at any moment. Buggy fussed with his armor, shooting nervous glances at Dingus, who was still chewing on something even though food was forbidden in the circle. Brynne shifted her weight and gripped the hilt of her sword. Alavara and Nimueh stood close but did not touch, their eyes fixed on the glyphs at their feet, as though memorizing the pattern might be the difference between survival and oblivion.

Iliyria paced the circumference of the circle, staff tapping out a heartbeat against the stone. Every so often she paused to correct a mark, to whisper a counter-rune, to close her eyes and tune herself to the silent music of the leylines. Lavan watched her, knowing that each check was less about the circle and more about giving herself a moment to breathe.

Beyond the circle, the room was crowded with faces: Sanibalis and Cornelia and Orintha Runecoat from the council; Pembroke, Kerrowyn, Isemay, Ophelia, and Evanton from the Tower’s upper echelons; Deliah Beroe, Elmiyra, Dusk, Dawn and Jonah from the Synod; all of them standing in silent ranks, hands folded or clasped or, in the case of Kerrowyn, worrying at a loose thread on her robe.

At precisely the appointed hour, Iliyria stilled the room with a gesture. Team 7, Brynne and Lavan stepped into the circle, boots ringing sharp against the marble. Iliyria faced them, eyes fierce but clear. “Today we go into the heart of the beast. If we succeed, we save the city. If we fail—” She shrugged, the movement as elegant as a blade’s point. “Do not fail.”

She turned to Lavan, who stepped to the front of the group. His hands were steady, his face composed, but the tremor in his breath betrayed the truth. Iliyria looked him over, searching for any sign of fear or hesitation, and found none.

From the audience, Isemay broke protocol and crossed the boundary, holding out a small, folded cloth. “Carry this with you,” she said. Her voice was rough, threatening to break. “For luck. Or comfort. Or whatever you need.”

Lavan took it, pressing her hand in his for an extra beat before stowing the cloth in his robe. “Thank you,” he whispered.

Ophelia, never one for decorum, shouted from behind the line: “Use the symbol to tell us ‘I’m alive’ as soon as you land!” Her grin was all teeth, but her eyes shone wet in the dawn.

Lavan managed a real smile, nodded to both, then turned back to Iliyria.

She raised her staff, the air around the obsidian circle thickening until it shimmered like oil on water. Runes flared to life under the team’s feet, each symbol burning a different color. The colors twisted together, braiding up the legs and arms of the assembled, wreathing their bodies in living light.

Iliyria spoke, not in the old tongue, but in the blunt, mathematical language of the city’s own leylines. The syllables struck the air like hammers. The circle began to rotate, spinning faster and faster, until the nine were little more than streaks of color against the darkness.

Outside the circle, the assembled council and Arcanists watched, unmoving. No one spoke. Even Hallione was silent, their projection dimmed to a single, thoughtful spark just above the floor, only visible to their masters.

The runes reached critical brightness, then collapsed inward, dragging the team with them into a vortex of sound and color and the impossible sensation of falling sideways through the world.

In an instant, the circle was empty, its obsidian surface cold and blank as an unslept bed.

Then, slowly, the echo of the spell faded, and the survivors of the chamber let out a single, collective breath.

At the edge of the marble, Isemay pressed a trembling hand to her lips. Ophelia caught her, steadying her with an arm around the shoulders. Pembroke exhaled, sounding as though he’d held his breath for the entire duration of the spell. Elmiyra felt her knees nearly buckle, staring at the place Brynne had vanished from, and suddenly Deliah was beside her, hand pressing into hers with a gentle squeeze. Kerrowyn watched the empty circle, eyes narrow, already planning what would need to be done if they failed.

Isemay, after the group drifted back to the War Room, took it upon herself to be useful. She retrieved a thick-bound folio from the bag at her hip, flipped it open on the central table, and began arranging the ingredients of a group scrying ritual. The assemblage watched her, some with open skepticism, but most with the dull hope of those hungry for a distraction from their own impotence. The process was methodical; dusted circle of powdered glass, anointed silver mirror, a ring of seven focus stones. All the while, Isemay murmured softly, her lips shaping the familiar vowels of the city’s oldest tongue, the words settling over the room like a gentle snow.

When the circle flared to life, the world in the War Room froze. In a shimmer, a projection of the outside of Leviathan came into focus. The Leviathan, still making its way toward the city, its jagged carapace bristling with tethered bone and steel, moving like a cathedral bred with a siege engine. In its wake, the demonic host still flowed, a river of tooth and muscle and impossible color, trailed by the floating banners of the Graz’zian Empire, each stitched with the flayed skin of their enemies. The scene panned, a sweep of the magical lens, and at last found the strike team, a motley wedge of bodies, half-crouched outside the cathedral. An audible sigh of relief from the audience, they had arrived safely.

Sanibalis stared at the moving image with the frozen calm of a condemned man observing the last minutes of his reprieve. Nothing in his face moved except his eyes, which flicked between the armored silhouette of Leviathan and the tiny, flickering spectral shapes of the strike team, as if he could will them to succeed by the violence of his attention alone.

They all watched with batted breath as the group of nine made their way, stealthily, to a side entrance, before disappearing from view. Isemay frowned, hands outstretched over her circle, concentrating on following the image of the team, before letting out a huff of air. “It seems the inside is protected from divination. We can only watch from the outside,” she sighed, looking to the assembly.

Kerrowyn spoke next, “good. It would drive us all absolutely batty if we had to sit here and watch their every move. I’m as much a fan of suspense as anyone, but not when the stakes are this high.” Her voice quieted, “we just have to trust them.”

High Priest Jonah, from the Temple of Pelor, turned to Head Archivist Beroe. “Deliah, can you see anything? Do you have any idea of the outcome?” The Oracle of Ioun sighed before shrugging her shoulders, “It is as Master Lightfoot says, we simply must trust in our allies, and hope that they succeed.”

The image of Leviathan hung in the air above the war table, refracting the room’s lantern light into a spectrum of uneasy golds and sickly blues. For several minutes, no one spoke. The silence was not reverent but anticipatory, like the moment before a scalpel cut. Each member of the assembled council, each cleric, wizard, and dignitary, imagined themselves as a gear in some impossible mechanism, all of them wound tight, waiting for the first click to set the rest in motion.

Sanibalis’ eyes never left the projection of Leviathan, body rigid, hands gripping the bench underneath him and his stark expression belied a storm of grief and guilt. Then he rose from his seat with a grace that contradicted the iron tension in his neck and shoulders. He reached out, almost unconsciously, and placed a long, pale hand on the shoulder of Cornelia, who flinched, then, realizing the gesture was not meant as a reprimand, steadied. “We should not waste time,” Sanibalis said, his voice cool but clear. With that, they continued the work of planning for a protracted siege of the Capitol, preparing as if the strike team inside Leviathan was guaranteed success, as if the Capitol wasn’t in danger of being completely destroyed without even a chance to fight back.

The clerics spoke in hushed tones about supplies, preparation for fighting disease, and keeping the masses calm. Sanibalis and Cornelia went over the plans for the rationing, while Orintha wrote out a list of temporary laws to put in place during the emergency. The Wizards, meanwhile, formed a tight circle around Pembroke, looking over the map of the anchor points for the great barrier they had erected, and desperately trying to avoid thinking of how three of their own were in serious peril.

It had only been a few hours, and the room had become, if not calm, then at least orderly, when it happened. The projection at the center of the room flickered like a candle caught in a draft, then guttered entirely, plunging the war table into shadow. Isemay's gasp cut through the sudden darkness as her fingers clawed at her left shoulder, nails digging crescents into her robes. Ophelia lunged forward, catching her friend's collapsing weight against her chest. In the renewed lantern light, she watched with widening eyes as obsidian veins—like hairline fractures in porcelain—began to branch beneath Isemay's translucent skin, pulsing with each ragged breath, climbing the column of her throat and spreading across her cheekbones like spilled ink on parchment. “Alistar, Kerrowyn, it’s happening again! What do we do?” Ophelia’s voice was an octave too high, panic clear on her face, an expression most in the room would have never expected the icy criminal mastermind capable of.

Pembroke moved to help Ophelia with Isemay, the two slowly lowering her to the floor. Kerrowyn paled, and turned to the clerics, recognizing that they were both their salvation, and possibly their doom. Jonah, an experienced healer before taking the role of High Priest, was there first. His hands a blur as he took Isemay’s pulse and began pumping a steady stream of golden sunlight into her shoulder. The veins of inky black paused in their steady progression for a moment, as if considering this new development, before pulsing and continuing their spread. Isemay let out a loud moan, and Ophelia cradled her head in her lap. Dusk and Dawn were there in the next moment, adding their own golden glow to the mix.

The room seemed to spin around Ophelia. Then she looked up and watched the approach of Head Archivist Beroe, and High Priestess Elmiyra. She turned towards Kerrowyn and Pembroke in a panic, they had warned her of the consequences should the Reaper ever find out. Was she about to lose them both, now after they had finally found their way back together?

Kerrowyn straightened, and turned towards Elmiyra, who was advancing quickly, expression unreadable, her white hair haloed with the fever-bright light of the war table’s lanterns. Her gaze flicked over the scene with the brutal efficiency of a surgeon: Kerrowyn’s pallor, Isemay writhing in Ophelia’s arms, Jonah’s hands blazing with futile gold, the pattern of ink-black veins. She spoke without looking at anyone in particular.

“Get her on the table. Now.”

The command was absolute, and even the most senior clerics leapt to comply. Jonah and Ophelia, sweating and straining, hauled Isemay up and over, her limbs jerking in spastic resistance as the necromantic infection advanced. Kerrowyn hovered nearby, frozen, her mouth working at words that would not come.

Elmiyra stood over Isemay, and all of her years of training threaded her voice with cutting calm. “Stop crowding,” she snapped, without raising her volume, and the wizards and priests fell back as if physically struck. Her pale hands hovered over Isemay’s neck and sternum, fingers twitching through a rapid succession of sigils and gestures.

“What is it?” asked Jonah, his own light already failing to stem the tide of the black veins.

Elmiyra did not answer at once. She leaned in, her breath fogging the air above Isemay’s face, and inhaled, just once, sharply. “A necromantic sigil, a life-draining curse, bound to the soul at the shoulder.” Without pause for the consideration of propriety, she reached for Isemay’s collar and ripped her dress open wide, revealing the nexus of the wound, a dark, pulsing, black handprint on her shoulder. The veins already spiraling across her torso and towards her heart.

“Explain,” Elmiyra said quietly, looking directly at the Master Arcanists. “Tell me who has done this.”

Kerrowyn and Pembroke locked eyes across Isemay’s convulsing form, an entire conversation passing between them in a second’s flicker. Their mouths opened in perfect unison.

“It was my spell,” said Kerrowyn Lightfoot, voice dry and brittle as old paper.

“I am responsible,” said Alistar Pembroke, voice sonorous and steady.

Kerrowyn stepped forward, her voice clipped and clear, “It was my doing. I bound her with a geas; old practice, high-precision, low-backlash. Should have contained the entropy. I underestimated the curse’s appetite.” The confession landed like a thrown stone, and she did not blink. Beside her, Pembroke drew a breath as if he might swallow the whole war room.

“It wasn’t her,” he said, stepping forward so abruptly that even the Reaper flinched. “The geas was mine. I was the one who crafted the binding. It was my sigil and my error that let it take root.” He looked down at Isemay, his dark eyes wet and furious. “If there is blame, it is mine alone.”

Elmiyra’s gaze moved from one to the other. Her lips compressed to a line so thin it all but erased her mouth. “Curious,” she said, “for two confessed authors and not a single trace of necromantic resonance on either. She pressed her thumbs together in a triangle, centering her next words. “But if either of you had keyed the geas that way, I would see the residue in your aura. The curse runs both directions; it feeds on its victims, but it is always hungry for the caster. You would be leaking necromantic energy like a punctured vein.”

Kerrowyn blinked, Pembroke stuttered, both at a loss. “If you are concerned with protecting the perpetrator, your confessions, while brave, are useless. They will not save this woman.” Elmiyra’s hands hovered over Isemay’s bone-pale clavicle. The black handprint seemed to throb with its own pulse, the skin around it sinking inward as if the curse were siphoning substance directly from her frame. The Reaper’s face, a mask of focus that betrayed nothing. She pressed two fingertips at the edge of the sigil, and or a moment the room’s light bent and stuttered, as if uncertain it should pass between Elmiyra and the wound.

Her voice, when it came, was cold and detached. “It is no longer a geas, if it ever was. The binding has entered an unstable phase, what we would call a sacrificial recursion.” She looked at Kerrowyn, eyes sharp with the promise of an unpleasant truth. “The curse will not break by force of will, nor by counterspell, nor by the usual acts of atonement. Only the destruction of its architect can stop its progression.” She turned her eyes on Pembroke now, “I can hold it off, but not indefinitely, if the one responsible does not die in the next few hours, she will.”

**

No one in the war room moved. No one crossed the breathless silence. It was a silence so complete that every other sound in the Tower became audible, somewhere down the corridor, a clock ticked; from the city outside, the muted clang of a bell drifted up; the breath of the room itself, shallow and collective. And then, as if the world itself had decided to break, a concussion tore through the tower.

The room lost all light in a single shuddering instant. The scrying table’s illusion flared back to life, then shattered, sending spectral fragments ricocheting through the air. Every rune in the walls and floor blazed with an angry, blood-orange glow. The air buckled, as though a giant had set his heel upon the city and pressed until the breath of it leaked out in a scream.

A shockwave rolled through the Tower; not the first, not the worst, but different in quality from the tremors that had rattled the city these last weeks. This one vibrated every molecule in the bones, a wave that resonated with the deep structure of things, not just their fragile surfaces. The walls of the chamber flexed, briefly, as if the Tower itself winced. The lanterns overhead guttered, their flames snuffed and then reignited by the sudden inrush of air, which tasted sharply of ozone and blood.

In the instant after, a thundercrack of magic echoed, condensed and refined and impossibly vast. The cry of a leyline torn open.

They all remained still, frozen in place. The Council members, still huddled together on one of the benches, watched uneasily, Jonah, Dusk and Dawn hovered over the table, using their divine magics to help hold back the curse. Ophelia shook at the head of the table, still holding Isemay’s face in her hands. Evanton had taken a step back from his fellow Master Arcanists, his expression unreadable. Kerrowyn and Pembroke stood, facing Elmiyra but unable to meet her gaze. Then, there was a distant resonant “pop” of magic from somewhere in the tower, and Halli’s voice entered their minds. They have returned.

The pair of arcanists turned at once towards the door as it opened, Team 7, Brynne and Lavan filing in, looking bloody and numb. Still focused on Isemay, Elmiyra spoke “Whatever was actively siphoning her lifeforce has stopped, but we still need to destroy the source to save her.” Bolt, hearing this, made a break towards the table. Alavara, eyes narrowing, moved to stand with the rest of the Master Arcanists, but abruptly stopped in her tracks, spinning towards Lavan.

Lavan, for his part, stood wide-eyed, taking in the scene. In his eyes only, he saw it, the Hound, more solid than it had been in years, straddling Isemay’s still body on the table. Its eyes met his in challenge, or maybe triumph. Blanching, he rolled up his sleeve and looked at his Friendship Symbol, registering for the first time that it had turned red and hot. How had he missed that?

Several things happened at once. Alavara struck at Lavan, punching him directly in the face. Bolt barked at Buggy, ordering him to grab Lavan. The corporal grabbed the wizard, who was too shocked to resist, and began to drag him towards the center of the room. Bolt, realizing she should have been more specific, motioned for Buggy to keep Lavan at a distance, but Buggy continued forward, pushing Lavan towards Isemay, simply saying “fix it.”

At this point, Elmiyra looked up, registered their arrival, and then her gaze flicked back and forth between Isemay and Lavan, once, then twice, tracing the link of necromantic energy.

Elmiyra’s eyes went from white to black in the space of a moment. “I have found the source.” She ran towards Lavan, outstretching her hand and summoning her scythe, black and foreboding, making a steady arc towards his neck. The blade swung, a hairs breadth from Lavan’s skin, before suddenly, scythe and reaper disappeared from view. The room fell silent for a brief moment, before chaos erupted.

The clerics turned on the Master Arcanists, voices loud with anger and rebuke, demanding an explanation. Lavan stood, stunned, as he, and the rest of the masters felt Halli brush up against their minds. There is no fighting allowed in my Tower. And NO ONE harms my masters.

Ophelia, trembling, felt Dingus reach out through the sigil of the Gentleman’s Circle. What the fuck is going on? What did we miss? He asked silently. She looked from him, to Lavan and then back to Isemay. Isemay’s scar, she had an attack. It’s worse than it’s ever been before. Something that you did- something that Lavan did must have triggered it. I don’t know. I don’t know.

Dingus, taken aback by her uncharacteristic lack of control, responded. Listen, I’ve never heard you like this before, I need you to get your shit together because you are starting to scare me. He couldn’t tell if his words registered.

Alavara took slow deliberate steps forward, looked across the gathered faces, eyes narrowing on the Clerics, and said “Nobody gets to kill Lavan. I don’t care what the whole deal is, we need to save both of them. Because otherwise, we’re going to run out of Master Arcanists, and I don’t want to lose more because that’s going to create problems.”

Evanton, Ophelia, Pembroke and Kerrowyn looked up at that, for the first time noticing Iliyria’s absence.

“Ideally, all we lose is one, and certainly not three. So, somebody, fix it.” Alavara’s eyes bored holes into the most powerful clerics in the city.

Bolt began attempting to explain what they had witnessed within Leviathan. How Lavan had been swallowed by a monster and when he emerged he was unharmed. “That probably has something to do with—” she motioned between Lavan and Isemay “—this stuff going on.” She continued, “it doesn’t seem like he did it on purpose, but something clearly happened.”

The clerics huddled together, voice rising in agitation, before turning back to face the arcanists in the room. Jonah spoke first, voice clear and intense. “We were very clear about what we are willing to accept from this tower.” Before the argument could resume, Bolt stood between the two groups, arms outstretched as if she was physically keeping them apart. “We don’t have time for this! Yes,” she motioned towards Lavan, “he did necromancy, we can’t change that now. So, what do we do?” Her eyes flicked over the clerics angrily, her intentions clear; any discussion moving forward should focus on finding a solution, not casting aspersions.

Deliah, who had thus far been silent, standing calmly with her hands folded over her cane, spoke up. “Generally, there is only one way to sever a curse like this now that it’s been activated, what’s done cannot be undone unless the curse is completely unraveled. The only person who has a chance of doing that without removing the source of the curse-” she gestured towards Lavan, finding him in the room in spite of her blindness, “-without killing Lavan, would be Elmiyra herself.”

Bolt looked to Alavara, “can you get her back?.” Alavara, in the back of her mind, heard Halli’s response. I will not release her while she still has deadly intentions towards Lavan. Alavara relayed the message, “the Tower won’t release her while she still intends to kill Lavan.” Bolt turned to Buggy, motioning him towards Lavan, “Buggy, can you get Lavan out of here, to somewhere in a secure location where he can’t get out and no one can get in? Then we can bring her back.”

Buggy dragged Lavan, limp and hollow-faced, towards the hallway. “Tower, get me a door,” he ordered. Halli, uncharacteristically, obeyed, opening the door to Lavan’s quarters. Buggy pushed him in, and slammed the door closed.

Bolt looked to the ceiling, asking, unsure if the Tower would understand, “can we have her back now please?” In a flash of light, Elmiyra reappeared in the room, kneeling, arms bound in thick cords of white arcane energy, her usually indecipherable expression replaced with a furious scowl.

Alavara, reckless with grief and fatigue, stalked towards the bound woman. She bent down, leaned in, looked the Reaper right in the eye and cast False Life on herself. The room was silent for a brief moment as the necromantic spell flared, except for a gasp that escaped Brynne’s lips, the paladin taking a step back in shock. Kerrowyn visibly flinched, eyes glued to her apprentice.

Maintaining eye contact, Alavara spoke directly to Elmiyra, “we have unbelievably higher priorities. We need you to get your shit fucking together and help fix this, or you are not welcome here. Pick a side. It’s us or the demons. I. Don’t. Care. What you select will be your side. And I will respond accordingly.”

Kerrowyn went to take a step forward, terrified at Alavara’s audacity, but Pembroke grabbed her wrist, shaking his head. Alavara had dropped a gauntlet, and Kerrowyn couldn’t help her now.

Elmiyra stared at Alavara for a moment, calculating, before responding. “I am bound by my oaths and my duty. Someone that far gone, who has committed that grave a sin, that I cannot abide.”

Alavara’s response was immediate, “please leave the tower.” Kerrowyn spoke up then, reminding Alavara that they needed Elmiyra. “Fine! Then someone else can fucking talk to her!” Alavara threw up her hands, stepping back. Brynne moved forward to meet her, walking her back at least ten feet away from the Reaper, eyes fixed on her adopted mother.

Bolt folded her arms. “Look I get it, you are bound by…whatever, but can we deal with that after? Can you just be bound to kill him later, and not right now? That would be great.” Kerrowyn approached next, softly, as though trying to calm a wild animal. “Elmiyra, he was only twelve, he was only a child when this happened. I promise we have not been, the Tower has not been meddling in Necromancy. We stopped him then, but we knew what the punishment would be, so we covered it up. I’m sorry, I didn’t think it would be right for him to be…punished…under those circumstances.”

Elmiyra’s expressions softened a bit, “Unfortunately, the Raven Queen does not take circumstances into account, but as it is clear there is nothing I can do in this Tower at this moment, I may be able to fix it without exacting that particular punishment for today.” As her murderous intentions faded, so too did the cords of white magic binding her arms. She stood. “For this to work, I will need Lavan here.”

“You’re not going to kill him, right?” Dingus confirmed. Alavara looked to him, knowing Halli would not have released Elmiyra otherwise, “no, not at the moment.” Alavara gestured to Buggy, and the two went to retrieve Lavan.

Elmiyra, meanwhile, glided over to Brynne. The two women began speaking softly, their words hushed but tense. Lavan reentered the room, looking a complete mess. Acknowledging his presence, Elmiyra sighed, “It would probably be best if I did this in as much peace as possible. If we could have the room.”

The Council members wasted no time in leaving. Kerrowyn hesitated, about to protest, when Brynne spoke. “Elmiyra, can I stay?” When Elmiyra looked like she might deny the request, Brynne pushed, “Mom, please.” The Reaper relented, “yes, you can stay. I could use your help actually.”

The rest of the room filed out the door. Ophelia leaned over Isemay, softly traced the shape of her face and gently kissed her forehead, before walking over to Lavan and squeezing his shoulder, whispering a short consolation, before leaving.

The door closed, and Lavan was left with the Reaper, a paladin of the Raven Queen, the shuddering form of Isemay in the grip of the curse, and the Hound.

“You will tell me the entire story of how this came to be. You will leave out no detail, no part of your misdeeds, and just maybe I can figure out a way to unwork this evil.” Elmiyra stared at Lavan, eyes unblinking. Lavan shuddered, forcing himself to tear his eyes from the Hound, who was even now hunched menacingly over Isemay, as if guarding his prey, before turning to meet the Reaper’s white eyes.

Return of the Hound

Lavan’s hands would not stop shaking. Every time he tried to rest them on his knees, or lace his fingers together, the tremor announced itself with a new and creative violence: a percussion that sent his left thumb jabbing, a buzz in the ball of his hand, a cold shudder that migrated from the wrist up to the shoulder and then back again, as if the entire arm were a nervous, embarrassed animal seeking a burrow in his own skin. He could not look at Elmiyra, who had made herself a silhouette against the cold lantern glow at the center of the war table. He could not look at Isemay, stretched out on the marble, skin shock-pale except for the blackened handprint, his handprint, on her shoulder, the veins spidering out in a map of agony. He could not look at Brynne, who stood at parade rest behind the table with both hands curled tight around her sword, face a mask of blank devotion that fooled no one in this room.

The only thing Lavan could bear to look at, and even that was a torture, was the Hound. It skulked at the very edge of the room now, head low, shoulders hunched, teeth bright. Its eyes were twin coals, sunk deep in its face. Its paws made no noise, but he could hear the claws anyway; a scraping, arrhythmic drag, like chalk down the inside of his skull. It was not always so clear, the Hound. Sometimes it was a memory, or a shadow in the room, or a slippage in the line of the world just to the left of his vision. Now, though, with Isemay dying on the table, and the Reaper of the Raven Queen watching him with eyes that did not permit even the hope of mercy, the Hound was as real as any of them.

He started talking before he meant to, the words tumbling out as though someone had gripped the back of his neck and twisted.

“When I was young—” The first lie died on his lips. He tried again. “When I was a child, before the Tower, my parents worked the docks. We were—” he shrugged, as if that could deflect the memory “—not wealthy, but proud. Honest. I was the first in the family to have any sort of magic, and even that was barely noticed. I couldn’t even levitate a pebble until I was eight.” He huffed a laugh. “I remember the first time I got something right. My mother cried for hours, she was so happy. My father opened a bottle of something he’d been saving since his wedding day.”

He drifted, the memory hanging in the air, and then the next came with a rush.

“Then there was the accident at the docks. A collapse. Too much rain, and some of the timbers just—” he snapped his fingers, the crack echoing off the walls, “—went. They died instantly, everyone said. No pain. The Watch sent a letter, and the Tower officially became my guardian, because what else do you do with an orphan who can make things float but can’t stop the world from coming down on his head?”

He risked a glance at Elmiyra. Her face was pure calculus, every muscle set in neutral, eyes twin voids. She had not blinked since he started.

“At the Tower, I had friends. I—” he swallowed. “I had Isemay. And Fia. I had purpose, for the first time. But I had nightmares, too. After the funeral, the Hound started following me. At first, just in dreams, then in the waking hours, always just behind, just out of sight. One night, I saw it clearly for the first time. It was by my bed, staring at me, teeth bared. It didn’t speak, but I could feel what it wanted.” He nodded at the Hound now, and it seemed to bristle, as if flattered by the attention.

He drew a long, ragged breath.

“The Hound led me down into the Lower Archives one night. Told me what I needed was there.” His voice, which had been dry and reedy, cracked. “I knew it was against the rules, but I was desperate. I wanted my parents back. I thought maybe, if I just…” He trailed off.

“Say it,” Elmiyra commanded. Her voice was so soft it might have been imagined, but the effect was an order.

“I thought maybe if I brought them back, the dreams would stop. The Hound would go away.” He looked at the floor, at his own hands. They were blue-white under the lantern, knuckles bone-bright. “I found the book, it was called the Book of Unhallowed Echoes. I think it had been sealed, or hidden for a reason, but the Hound told me which shelves to check. There was a spell—a ritual. I didn’t understand half of it, but the Hound did. It told me what to do.”

He remembered the feel of the leather-bound tome, the way the words seemed to shimmer as he read them, the sick anticipation of doing something unspeakably forbidden and wanting only to be caught. “I cut my hand open. The blood, I remember, stung more than anything. The runes flared blue at first, then black. I started the incantation. And then… something else woke up in me.”

He squeezed his eyes shut, and saw the scene in perfect, merciless clarity. “It wasn’t me. I mean, it was, but also someone else. I could feel him. He was so old, so angry, so certain he was entitled to another chance. He told me he’d bring my parents back, but only if I let him ‘ride’ for a while. Just a little while. I was twelve, I believed him.”

He looked at Brynne, desperate for some sign of judgment, or even disgust. She was stone. Her jaw worked, but she said nothing.

“The night that I finally tried the ritual, Isemay and Ophelia found me. They always did. Isemay tried to stop the ritual. She said my name. That broke the connection, for a second, but then… I lunged. My body moved, I grabbed her and then she was just—” He motioned vaguely to his own shoulder, mirroring Isemay’s wound. “The handprint. The curse. The Hound marked her.”

A silence settled, the only noise a faint hissing from the rune circle under the table, the barest edge of leyline energy crackling as if the Tower itself was holding its breath.

“I tried to fight the Hound off,” he said. “I really tried. It hurt her, and then it tried to kill her, and then the Masters came. Lightfoot, Pembroke, Tullups. They stopped me, sealed the necromancer back in the book, and then they did what they thought they had to.” He tried for a smile, found only a ghost of one. “They covered it up. Pembroke took Isemay to the apothecary on Elani Street, Glyrenis, for treatment. Lightfoot and Tullups cleaned the blood, erased the runes, re-bound the book. Then they made me swear never to speak of it. To anyone.”

He looked up, at last, into Elmiyra’s eyes. “They were afraid of you, Reaper. They knew if you found out, you’d have no choice. You’d kill me. That’s what the Raven Queen asks, right? No second chances.”

Elmiyra did not move, did not flicker.

“For years after, I never touched necromancy again. I refused to even look at it. Every time the Hound appeared, I turned away, did my best to outlast it. The only time it ever got close was when Isemay had a relapse—sometimes the curse would flare, and I’d feel it in my own bones. But I never, ever tried to use that magic.”

He hesitated, the next part sticking in his throat.

“I never used necromancy again, until recently. When Alavara asked me to teach her False Life. It was just a spell, I thought. Harmless, compared to what I’d done before. I told myself it was just teaching. But then, inside Leviathan—” His face twisted. “I was scared. I thought I was going to die. And the Hound said, ‘I can help you, just let me in again.’ And I did. I reached for it.”

He bowed his head. “That’s why the curse came back, isn’t it? It was never gone. I just… I just stopped feeding it. Until now.”

His voice was hollow now, an empty casket.

“I’m sorry, Isemay,” he said, so quietly it was almost nothing. “I’m so sorry.”

No one moved for a long time. The Hound smiled, or maybe it was just his imagination.

Elmiyra finally broke the silence, her words a surgeon’s scalpel, precise and cold. “Do you see it now?”

He nodded.

“Describe it to me.”

He licked dry lips, never taking his eyes from the beast. “It’s huge. Bigger than a mastiff. Black all over, except for the eyes and the teeth.”

Elmiyra considered this. “You said the Hound is not just yours, but also the necromancer’s.”

He nodded, not trusting himself to speak.

“Can you sense who, or what, it was?”

He shuddered. “I never learned his name. He died in the Tower centuries ago. His familiar, the Hound, never left. It’s been hunting for a new master ever since.”

Elmiyra sat back, exhaling in a long, slow hiss. “We will need to sever the Hound’s link, not just to you, but to the Tower.” Her eyes flicked to Brynne. “Prepare Isemay for healing. The moment I draw the Hound out, you will need to repair what’s left of her life force.”

Brynne nodded once, stepping forward and placing both hands around Isemay’s neck. A golden-white glow began to gather in her palms.

Elmiyra stood, towering over Lavan now, her shadow swallowing him whole.

“Do you know what this will cost you?” she asked.

He tried to answer, but the truth stuck in his throat. She let the silence answer for him.

Elmiyra turned to Brynne. “If I fail, or if the Hound kills me, you must finish the job. The curse cannot be allowed to linger, or it will find a new host. Understood?”

Brynne’s face tightened, but her nod was firm.

Elmiyra turned back to Lavan, her next words a benediction and a threat.

“Once this is done, if you ever perform necromancy again, I will end your life myself. On that you have my word.”

Lavan nodded, every nerve in his body already numb to the future.

The Hound flexed its claws and grinned, teeth the color of frost.

Elmiyra held out her hand, the skin blighted and cold. “Come,” she said, and Lavan followed her to the center of the circle, his step unsteady, his eyes locked on the specter of his own damnation.

Make it Hurt

The war room felt wrong, as if the air had turned to ash. Elmiyra moved with a purpose that brooked no delay; the train of her robe swept the floor, black-on-black, an extinction of color. She stopped at Isemay’s side, and for the first time since Lavan had started talking, she touched the fallen arcanist. Her hand—white as candle fat, crisscrossed by the map of her Blight—settled on Isemay’s forehead, then her shoulder. Brynne looked on, wordless, watching as Elmiyra traced the outline of the black handprint, then pressed her thumb hard into its center.

A ripple of cold shot across the table. Lavan almost flinched, but stopped himself. He would need more than self-control before this was done.

Elmiyra withdrew, and produced from the sleeve of her robe a small knife, not quite ceremonial, but so old it radiated its own gravity. The handle was carved bone, bleached and etched with the motif of a thousand raven’s wings. The blade itself was a wedge of hammered iron, dark as the ink in the curse that spread across Isemay’s chest. Elmiyra did not raise the blade for effect, did not telegraph its meaning. She simply turned it in her hand once, to judge its weight, and then turned to Brynne.

“Stay here,” she said, voice like ice. “If she thrashes, pin her. If her heart slows, revive her. If the curse spreads, and you cannot stop it, kill her. That should be my duty, but I will be occupied.” She glanced at the paladin’s face, and saw only the set jaw, the vow behind the stare. “Do you understand?”

Brynne’s answer was immediate. “Yes, Mother.” Today was first time she had ever spoken the word aloud in a room full of strangers, and it landed like a stone in a shallow pond.

Elmiyra nodded once. “Begin healing. Do not stop until I say so.”

Brynne placed both hands over Isemay’s heart, fingertips splayed wide. There was a moment’s hesitation, and then a halo of golden light bled into the skin, fighting to counter the web of black. Brynne’s lips moved in silent prayer, but her eyes never left her charge.

Elmiyra turned to Lavan. “Come.”

He stepped forward, legs numb. Elmiyra guided him, gently but inexorably, to a patch of the floor where the Tower’s lines converged in a subtle whorl of gray and silver. It was not a proper circle, but the pattern had been worn down by the passage of a thousand feet, the ghost of ritual still embedded in the stone.

“Give me your hand,” she said, and when he offered it, she took it in one of hers. Her touch was shockingly cold, and Lavan nearly yanked free.

“This will hurt,” she said, as if reciting a weather report. Then, in a single motion, she drew the dagger across his palm, the blade was so sharp he did not feel it at first, but when the warmth hit the air, the pain arrived; a clean, clarifying burn. She repeated the process with her own hand; deep enough to well blood but not enough to sever.

She pressed their hands together, palm to palm, blood mixing. There was a weight in the gesture, a psychic pressure that flooded him with every memory of the curse: the Hound, the dream, the taste of iron, the dark voice that sang to him when he was most alone.

Elmiyra’s face remained impassive, but her eyes had clouded. Not metaphorically: they had gone milk-white, the pupils obliterated by a creeping haze, like someone who had looked too long into the sun. She squeezed Lavan’s hand until their bones ground together, and then she spoke in a voice that seemed to come from both inside and outside his head.

“I need to see what you see,” she said. “I need you to recognize it. If you break contact, the Hound will win. There will be nothing left of either of you. Do you understand?”

Lavan nodded, or thought he did. He was not sure where his own nerves ended and the Reaper’s began.

“Good,” said Elmiyra. She inhaled sharply, and the world tilted.

For a heartbeat, the war room disappeared. Lavan stood on a blasted field, under a sky so black it swallowed all light. The Hound was there, not a memory but a beast of legend, swollen to the size of a draft horse, teeth like icicles, eyes burning with the distilled hatred of a thousand years.

The Hound lunged, and the field erupted in a chaos of claws and blood and memory. Lavan reeled, felt the bite of fangs at his throat, the rip of claws at his chest. He tried to scream, but his lungs would not cooperate; the only sound was a low, persistent growl, vibrating through every bone.

“Hold,” came Elmiyra’s voice, somewhere above the storm. “You must hold.”

He focused on her hand, the clamp of her grip, the line of pain from their shared wound. The blood ran hot and slick, and as it did, the world of the vision began to change. The Hound slowed, its charge blunting, its breath coming in ragged gasps. The shadows rolling off its back shrieked and clawed, but Lavan felt the pressure receding, as if the Reaper’s hand was drawing poison from an infected wound.

In the real world, the war room was in pandemonium. The air had gone frigid, frost crawling up the walls, the single lantern guttering in a hurricane of unseen wind. The rune circle beneath them pulsed with a blue light, now nearly incandescent. Brynne’s healing magic, golden and radiant, flickered under the assault of the curse, the two energies locked in a battle that looked less like magic and more like the inside of a sun in revolt.

Isemay’s body arched off the table, spine bent in a perfect, unnatural bow. The black veins writhed, the handprint on her shoulder flashing between shadow and gold. Brynne whispered prayers between clenched teeth, sweat breaking on her brow.

Elmiyra’s grip shifted, twisting Lavan’s hand until their blood ran together in a single thread. She leaned close, her lips brushing his ear.

“Now,” she hissed. “Force it out. Make it hurt. Do not let go.”

Lavan felt the Hound’s bite again, deeper this time, its jaws locked around his neck. He remembered every humiliation, every loss, every failure he had ever suffered. He remembered the night he found the Hound in his room, the night he broke Isemay, the moment he decided he was too weak to die for what he’d done. All of it poured into the beast, even as Elmiyra’s will poured in from the other side, a cold, absolute command to be still.

He screamed, then, a sound that split the room and the vision alike. The Hound howled in answer, its head thrown back, eyes blazing with a final, impossible hatred.

In the vision, the sky split. A conspiracy of ravens, black as the void, swept down in a tornado, tearing at the Hound’s flesh, ripping it away in ribbons. The shadow on its back was flayed, peeled away layer by layer, until nothing remained but a skeleton of bone and hate. Lavan felt his own blood draining, the life of him siphoning into the maelstrom, but still he held, even as the darkness pressed his vision to a pinhole.

In the war room, Isemay collapsed, all color leaving her face, but the veins on her shoulder began to fade, the black receding under the golden light. Brynne gasped, her own hands shaking, but did not relent.

Elmiyra leaned harder, the strength of her grip now unbearable. Lavan could not feel his fingers; he could not feel anything but the cold. His vision tunneled, the world going white at the edges, and then, with a soundless pop, the Hound was gone. The field was empty. The sky was whole again.

He fell, knees buckling. Elmiyra caught him, one hand on his chest, holding him upright. She released his hand, and the wound closed with a hiss of cold.

“Breathe,” she said. He tried. The air in the war room was sharp and bitter, but he drew it anyway.

Elmiyra turned to Brynne. “Now.”

Brynne redoubled her magic, the golden light wrapping Isemay’s body like a blanket. The wound on her shoulder, once black and angry, dulled to a gray scar. Her breathing steadied, the spasms quieting until she lay, still and exhausted, but alive.

Lavan slumped to the floor, chest heaving. The pain was receding, replaced by a numbness that was almost welcome.

Elmiyra looked down at him, eyes clearing. “It is done,” she said. “The Hound is gone. The curse will not return.”

He nodded, unable to speak. She offered her hand. This time, when he took it, her skin was warm.

Brynne hovered over Isemay, brushing a strand of hair from her face. Isemay’s eyes flickered open, found Brynne, and then Elmiyra, and then Lavan.

“Lavan?” she croaked, reaching towards him.

Elmiyra smiled, a flicker of pride in her face. “It worked.”

Brynne’s shoulders slumped, her own tears finally breaking through. She squeezed Isemay’s hand, knuckles white.

Lavan closed his eyes, and for the first time in years, the darkness behind them was empty. No Hound. No shadow. Just the memory of pain, and the slow, uncertain promise of peace.

Elmiyra knelt, brushing blood from Lavan’s cheek. “You did well,” she said. “Rest now.”

And as the lantern’s light steadied, and the room warmed, and the old curses faded, Lavan did.

Halli had formed a sort of waiting room. Team 7, the Master Arcanists and the Clerics spread throughout the room, either stewing silently or pacing rapidly. The Councilors had left, recognizing they could not be of any help.

Finally, after hours, Elmiyra and Brynne emerged. Elmiyra cleared her throat, drawing everyone’s attention. “It was difficult. It is going to take them both some time to heal, but they are both alive and the curse is gone.”

She then fixed her gaze on Kerrowyn. “When he wakes, pass along this message. There is not much I can do while he remains behind these walls. And while I may be sympathetic to his circumstances, I cannot be negligent with my duties. Please, warn him against leaving these walls.” Kerrowyn nodded.

Elmiyra’s stare moved to Alavara, “the spell you used is not a powerful one, it does not pass beyond the pale of what the Raven Queen does not forgive. But I will caution you, all life comes from somewhere, it cannot be created. When you use that spell, that life force comes from somewhere. Consider that when you choose to use it.” She nodded to Brynne, and the two of them left the room, making their way back to the Temple of the Raven Queen.

Feeling the dismissal, the rest of the room dispersed. Clerics heading back to their temples, Evanton going to attend his garden. Kerrowyn and Pembroke both visibly sagged with relief. Kerrowyn turned to Alavara, looked in her apprentice’s eyes and saw raw pain. “I’m so sorry.” She murmured. An acknowledgement, after all the chaos, that there was a loss to mourn. She wrapped her arms around the woman, drawing her into a hug that was made awkward by their difference in height and the stillness with which Alavara held herself.

Pembroke appraised Team 7, taking in their collective exhaustion and wounds. “You are more than welcome to stay for the night. I am sure that the Tower would be willing to provide accommodations for all of you. Including a meal, a hot bath, and supplies for treating any of your wounds.” Dingus responded, nodding his head. “We would appreciate that.”

Bolt was the first to move. She walked determinedly toward the hall, and, echoing Buggy’s earlier tone, commanded, “Tower, give me a room.” Everyone stared blankly as nothing happened. Dingus joins her, “Tower, give me a room, please,” he enunciated the please, drawing it out into a question, not a command. Still nothing.

Wordless, Alavara began walking towards her own chambers. The rest of Team 7 exchanged glances, before following after her. Halli extended their walk, giving them time to breath, before the door to Alavara’s room appeared. When they stepped inside they found a hexagonal antechamber filled with doors. Hallione had provided accommodations for all. Alavara gestured to the doors, and stalked towards her own room.

She entered it, and looked around. She noticed the tray of light refreshments Hallione had set out, recognizing Alavara probably lacked an appetite, but still wanting to have options available. And then she noticed the door. One that had not existed in her room before today. “Not tonight,” she thought to herself, before forcing her mind to empty and herself to trance.

**

Ophelia hovered over the bed. Her gaze never left the sleeping forms of her friends. Lavan’s hair had changed, gone from dark brown to stark white, and his complexion was pallid. The handprint on Isemay’s shoulder had faded, no longer grey or black, but the pinkish brown of any mundane scar. Her skin tone had shifted, almost imperceptivity, but Ophelia noticed that she was less pale, that her cheeks had more color. Halli had floated the two into Lavan’s room, and laid them on the bed, covering them with the blankets using telepathic force. Even while unconscious, the two of them had instinctively nestled close together, cuddling into each other. Ophelia rolled her eyes, typical of the romantic saps, and then climbed into the bed, curling up against Isemay, her tail resting protectively across both of them. She closed her eyes and let the feeling of relief flood through her body, and felt, finally, the tears roll down her cheeks. Here, with them, she could allow herself to be vulnerable. Here, with them, she was home.

**

Kerrowyn and Pembroke walked together in an uneasy silence. At Kerroywn’s door, they paused, exchanged a long, heavy glance, and parted ways. Kerrowyn opened her door, and stepped past the threshold. Lynx, sensing her distress, flew down from one of her perches, going to land in her usual spot, around Kerrowyn’s neck. But Kerrowyn waved off the familiar, making her way quickly to the bathroom that adjoined her bedroom.

She barely made it to the porcelain before the first retch. It was not the polite, handkerchief-muffled variety; it came on like a seizure, a full-body spasm that sent her to her knees. The noise that escaped her would have startled a wild animal; a wet, scraping yelp, followed by the sick percussion of her lunch and whatever else she could not bear to hold. The second wave burned worse, and the third almost choked her. She clung to the rim, nails scraping against the glaze, vomiting until there was nothing left but a clear, stringy mucus mixed with the blood from where she had bitten through her own tongue.

When it was finally done, she slumped back, body wracked in tremors, eyes blind with tears she refused to acknowledge. Lynx hovered nearby, chirping anxiously. She pressed her forehead to the cool edge of the sink and waited for the world to still itself. It did not. Instead, each inhale brought new nausea, a rolling tide that insisted on re-examining every word, every omission, every action that had led her here.

She sat there for a long while, each ragged breath a penance, the acid in her throat a lesser agony than the one in her chest. Once, twice, she reached up blindly, searching for the familiar presence of Lynx, and twice she stopped herself before she could draw comfort. She did not deserve it. Her mind circled the event horizon of the past hours, not as a spiral but as an endless orbit—always approaching, never escaping.

It was over. In the most technical sense, the lie had been survived. The truth was out, or enough of it to count, and the damage was not as total as she had predicted. Lavan lived. Isemay, by some extraordinary force of will or luck, also lived. The Reaper had not taken a head, nor had she called down censure on the Tower. There would be no trial, no public reckoning, no Reaper’s blade at her neck. It was over.

She counted the tiles on the floor to keep from thinking, but her mind found its way around the distraction and landed, inevitably, on the one thing she could not parse.

Iliyria was gone. She didn’t know the details yet, but she was gone. That much was certain. Kerrowyn had not let herself think about this in the swirl of crisis, but now, alone, with every other burden spent, the thought opened inside her like a riptide.

There had been so many chances to make it right. To say the things that stayed behind the barricades of pride and protocol. Kerrowyn had imagined, more than once, that there would be time to make amends: to say I’m sorry, or at least I miss you, or even just to admit that the years of rivalry and pettiness did not diminish their care for each other. She had let that chance rot, like every other soft thing in her life.

A hot, angry wave rolled through her, and she smashed her fist against the ceramic rim with a force that sent a hairline fracture crawling outward. “Stupid,” she muttered. “Stupid, stubborn idiot.” The words were aimed at Iliyria, but the ricochet was obvious, she was angry at herself. At both of them. At Iliyria, for the curse of being right and never backing down, for never letting the world see even the hairline crack in her certainty. For herself, for mistaking that facade for cruelty, for not seeing the ache beneath the ice, for never once, never even once, reaching out past her own glass ego to say: I forgive you. Or: I wish you’d forgive me.

She imagined Iliyria as she saw her last: the rigid posture, the little flicks of hair behind the ear, the careful attention to every motion and word, all of it a mask for the storm inside. Kerrowyn had always recognized the storm, had always, secretly, admired it. She wondered now, with a sick twist of the gut, if Iliyria had died thinking Kerrowyn wanted her gone, or worse, indifferent.

It was such a stupid, ancient gnome’s trick, to have so much to say and keep it locked behind the teeth. She had not said goodbye. She had not even said thank you, not for the years of competition, or the quiet mutual rescue in the darkest nights, or the way even their worst arguments ended in a grudging alliance against some greater idiocy. She wished she believed in anything enough to pray Iliyria had known. Kerrowyn gripped the edge of the sink, knuckles white, and forced herself upright.

Lynx edged closer, emboldened by the absence of protest, and pressed her soft, lavender head into the crook of Kerrowyn’s elbow. The familiar knew when to offer comfort and when to demand nothing; she simply waited, purring with the low, oscillating frequency that always made Kerrowyn’s bones ache in a good way. Kerrowyn allowed herself to lean into it, just for a moment, and then, with an effort, forced herself upright. The room swam, the walls dipping and tilting like the inside of a glass set spinning.

She caught her reflection in the mirror, a horror: eyes bloodshot, cheeks streaked and sallow, her hair a limp mat over her brow. Nothing like the bright, clever witch who used to hold court on the Tower’s steps, laughing dirtily with the apprentices, or parading an endless succession of eccentric hats just to make Iliyria wince. She bared her teeth at herself, trying on a smile. It failed. The only thing that emerged was a snarl.

“Get over it,” she said aloud, voice low and hoarse. “You’re not the first one to lose a friend.” She turned and stumbled back into the bedroom.

What it Means to Go Against the Queen

The city had not yet decided if it was night or morning, the streets drawn thin and blue in the hour that only insomniacs and the dying could claim as their own. Brynne and Elmiyra walked side by side, silent, heads bowed as though the wind itself might overhear their thoughts. The stone underfoot was slick with dew, and each step rang a note of exhaustion from boots worn thin at the toe. Brynne kept her arms folded, hands jammed tight under her cloak, her golden hair dulled to a halo of shadow by the lanterns’ uneven light. Elmiyra walked with her shoulders set, each stride deliberate, the train of her high priestess’s robe whispering across the ground in a rhythm that, tonight, seemed less like a proclamation and more like a penance.

Neither of them spoke. The silence was not the comfortable, lived-in quiet of old companions, but something dense and suffocating, as though they were both choking on words that could not, or should not, be said. They reached the river’s edge, the water black and sluggish under a skin of ice. Elmiyra paused there, letting the night air settle on her face, her gaze fixed on a distant lamplight that flickered on the other bank.

Brynne was the first to break, her voice soft and splintered by fatigue. “Are you mad at me?” It was not so much a question as a breath exhaled into the dark, meant as much for herself as for the woman beside her.

Elmiyra did not look over. Her face, pale as cut stone, remained directed at the horizon. “Why would I be angry, Brynne?”

The paladin hesitated, the muscles in her jaw working. “Back at the Tower. I called you mom.” She forced the word out as though it were foreign. “In front of everyone.”

Elmiyra’s lips twitched, the faintest suggestion of a smile, though it was gone almost before it appeared. “I noticed.” She let the silence regroup around them for a moment, then said, “It did not upset me.”

Brynne glanced sidelong, searching the priestess’s face for any sign of falsehood. “You’re sure?”

“Quite.” Elmiyra’s voice was measured, her accent even sharper tonight, slicing each syllable apart as though she might dissect the feelings within them. “If there is one thing the world cannot take from me, it is my attachments.”

They stood for a while longer, letting the cold sink into their bones. Brynne tried to formulate a reply, but her mind was numb, every thought snagged on the memory of the war room: the look in Elmiyra’s eyes as she condemned, then spared, then saved a man she was duty-bound to kill. She wanted to ask what it cost, wanted to know if the Reaper’s blade could be dulled by kindness, or if the wound it left merely festered.

Instead, she said, “Thank you for saving them. Both of them.” Her voice threatened to fracture, but she pressed on. “I know what it means to go against the Queen.”

Elmiyra finally looked at her, the moonlight limning her face in the high, harsh contrast of a funerary mask. “You do not know what it means. Neither do I, if I am honest.” Her gaze flicked back to the river. “I have followed her voice since I was a child. Tonight was the first time I could not.”

They resumed walking, though slower now, their feet dragging through the damp grit that accumulated along the edges of the cobbles. The city watched them with a thousand shuttered windows, each dark square a silent witness to the trespass they had just committed.

Elmiyra’s thoughts were a torn curtain of old memory and new regret, the seams too frayed to tell where one wound ended and another began. When she was younger, so much younger, it seemed a separate life, she had believed the Raven Queen’s law was absolute. Death had a shape and a purpose, a moral clarity that made all other truths irrelevant. The Reaper’s will was to sever, clean and swift, and to do so without hesitation. Mercy was not her domain. Exceptions only made for greater pain.

Yet the world, stubbornly, produced exceptions with the same frequency as it did rain or rot.

Elmiyra remembered one such moment, years past, when she had first arrived in the human capital as the Queen’s Reaper. A woman, human, young, but aged by grief, had come to the temple with a child’s corpse in her arms. She begged for a miracle, a reversal, the kind of favor the Raven Queen had never granted and never would. When no priestess could help, the woman took the body and buried it herself, but returned every night to the grave, leaving offerings of blood and bone until, at last, the boundary between the living and the dead relented.

It was Elmiyra who found her on the seventh night, cradling her child, the child’s eyes glazed with an intelligence that belonged to neither the living nor the departed. The woman pleaded, said it was only for a little while, only until she could say goodbye. Elmiyra was Reaper then, unsoftened by time or empathy. She killed the child a second time, and the mother with it, because that was the law. She remembered the look on the woman’s face—not hatred, nor even despair, but a kind of exhaustion, as if she had already buried herself alongside her daughter. Elmiyra had gone home that night and scrubbed her hands until her blighted skin bled, certain she could wash away the stain if only she tried hard enough.

Tonight, for the first time, she had chosen not to obey. Not to kill. She had spared Lavan, had fought the curse instead of severing it. She had saved Isemay. The Queen’s will was clear, but her own was clearer.

Was that not, in itself, a kind of sin?

As they neared the temple district, the night thickened, the air taking on the flavor of incense and wet stone. The Temple of the Raven Queen reared up from its low hill, a construction of black marble and obsidian that seemed to absorb every stray glimmer of light. The eaves and fences and even the gutters were crowded with ravens, hunched and watchful, their feathers ruffled against the cold. More gathered than Elmiyra had ever seen in one place, as if summoned by some unspoken summons.

Brynne stopped at the base of the steps, letting her gaze drift upward to the tiers of silent birds. “They’re waiting for you,” she said.

Elmiyra allowed herself a bitter smile. “They always are.”

She put a hand on Brynne’s shoulder, the gesture equal parts comfort and dismissal. “You need to rest. Go to the Boarding House. Eat something, if you can. You look half-dead, and that is my professional opinion.”

Brynne snorted, but her eyes were glassy with exhaustion. “I should come in with you.”

“You should not,” said Elmiyra, her tone brooking no debate. “I will be fine. The worst that will happen is that I will be pecked to death by an angry flock.” She glanced up at the ravens, who seemed to bristle in anticipation. “That would at least be an appropriate end.”

Brynne hesitated, her hands flexing at her sides. “I can come by tomorrow, if you want. I mean—” She blushed, cheeks coloring the blue of old bruises. “If you need someone.”

Elmiyra nodded, warmth, real, if hesitant, bleeding through her reserve. “You may visit as often as you like. Before you leave for the east, come and see me.”

Brynne looked down, scuffing a boot against the step. “I’ll be here.”

The two women stood there for a moment, each waiting for the other to find a suitable ending. Brynne looked up, her eyes fierce and uncertain. “You’re not going to die, are you?”

Elmiyra shook her head. “Not yet. The Queen and I have more to discuss.”

Brynne nodded, then stepped forward, hugging the smaller woman with a quick, fierce awkwardness. Elmiyra stiffened, surprised, but did not pull away. After a beat, she let her hand settle on Brynne’s back, just for a second, and then released her.

“Good night, mother,” said Brynne, barely louder than the whisper of the wind.

“Good night, daughter,” replied Elmiyra.

Brynne lingered at the foot of the steps as Elmiyra ascended, her figure shrinking to a slash of shadow in the temple’s black mouth. The ravens shifted, their gaze following the priestess as she vanished into the dark.

Brynne watched until the door closed behind her, then turned and made her slow way down the street, the city empty and vast around her.

She felt the weight of her limbs, the ache behind her eyes. The cold, she realized, had finally seeped all the way in.

**

The nave of the temple was empty, the silence so complete it seemed to consume even the memory of sound. In the hour before dawn, the torch sconces were unlit, the cold black of the stone unbroken by any suggestion of warmth. Elmiyra’s heels struck the tiles in an unaccompanied rhythm, echoing into the wings and vanishing there, as though even acoustics knew better than to linger too long.

There were no sisters in the vestibule, no acolytes bent over their ledgers in the alcoves, not even the usual scullery child asleep on a bench. Elmiyra found herself alone, and though she had long cultivated the comfort of solitude, tonight it felt like a warning.

She hesitated at the crossing, out of habit more than faith, and dipped her chin toward the altar at the nave’s head. The empty bowl of the font caught the faintest sliver of streetlight through the clerestory, and for a moment she saw her own reflection; white hair, hollow eyes, a face collapsed into its scaffolding. She wondered, briefly, what the Queen saw when she looked at her. If she looked at her at all.

She took the south transept, avoiding the refectory and its likelihood of accidental witnesses. Her rooms were at the end of a long, straight corridor, flanked by windows of unornamented glass. On the walls, paintings of prior Reapers, all rendered in the same cold pigment: always black-on-white, always the cowl, always the eyes. She could not remember the names of most of them, though she had lived their stories, had judged herself by their standards.

Her hand trembled as she fit the key to her cell’s lock. She thought of stopping in the antechamber, lighting a candle, performing the rituals she had so often prescribed to her subordinates. But she was tired, and the trappings of faith felt less like obligation tonight and more like costume.

Her cell was as she had left it: bed perfectly made, a chest of drawers, a single shelf bearing a black candle, and a simple desk. She sat on the edge of the bed, resting her hands in her lap, and exhaled, slow and deliberate.

She did not want to trance, but her body demanded it, her mind blurring at the edges in that peculiar way it always had before the visions came. She lay back, folding her hands over her stomach, and let herself fall.

The trance was not restful. She tried to order her memories, to revisit the logic of her decision, to justify her disobedience, but every path forked and blurred, refusing to settle.

She remembered the child and the mother, their second burial, the snow falling on the mound before the ground had fully settled. She remembered the day she was promoted, the pride on her mentor’s face, the knowledge that she was the youngest Reaper in a generation. She remembered Brynne’s voice calling her mother, the way the word seemed to fill a hollow that had been there longer than she’d known.

Mostly, she remembered the sound of her own voice, tonight, telling Lavan to hold on, telling Brynne to kill if she could not save, telling herself that this was not the end, that the Queen could forgive if only the reason was sufficient.

But what reason was ever enough?

She surfaced from trance with the sick certainty that she had changed, not by an act of will, but as if something had been excised. She was lighter, but also hollowed. She blinked at the ceiling, saw the cracks in the stone, and wondered if she had simply transferred her doubt to the building itself.

She wondered if the Queen would ever speak to her again.

Elmiyra sat up, wiped the sweat from her brow, and looked at her hands. They were steady now, but she doubted they would remain so for long.

She had never known what to do with mercy. Now that she had chosen it, she doubted she would know what to do with the consequences.

The bells sounded outside, the hour at last conceding to the day. Elmiyra stood, straightened her robe, and prepared to face whatever new lesson awaited her.

She would go on, as she always had. The Queen was silent, and so she would be silent too.

But for the first time in years, Elmiyra feared what that silence might contain.