“Artemisia,” pled a girl’s fearful voice at my side, but I dismissed her as a mere annoyance. Once, I remembered, I had wanted to kill her. I wasn’t sure why I had changed my mind.
Then I felt a waver of uncertainty. A part of me had wanted to kill her—but there was another side of me that hadn’t. And that same side thought that I shouldn’t give in to the hunger. That I should restrain myself. But if I wanted to destroy Sarathiel…
The golden glimmers of the priest’s soul caught my attention. They were shining more brightly, spreading in patches, overtaking the silver. His body doubled over; he buried his head in his hands. Now he was more gold than silver, Sarathiel’s essence pulsing furiously at the intrusion. I realized what was happening. Against all odds, the priest was resisting.
I doubted he could keep it up for long, but at the very least, he might delay Sarathiel.
And then I remembered—the ritual. I had to finish the ritual.
The fire snuffed out. The howling inside my head vanished. The coppery tang of blood filled my mouth and nose, and my clothes were faintly steaming.
The sisters were staring at me with their mouths open. Without the Sight, the civilians hadn’t seen what had happened, but they were staring too. They had clearly sensed something, whether it was a shiver down their spines or the hairs rising on the backs of their necks—a force greater than life and death sweeping through them and sparing them all.
Marguerite’s hands caught at me. She and Charles and Enguerrand were speaking to me, but I couldn’t hear them. “Go,” the revenant snarled, its voice miserable with hunger, “hurry,” and then I was being bundled toward the chapel, helped along by more people than I could count.
The doors juddered open. A familiar smell of old wood, beeswax, and incense enfolded me, so unexpected that my eyes stung. It smelled exactly like the chapel in Naimes.
I blindly reached for the knife as we careened up the aisle, and found it in my hand. As soon as I had made the cut on my arm, already falling to the floor, the revenant seized control and tore the carpet before the altar aside to expose the flagstones.
The final rune began to take shape, scrawled clumsily in red. My fingers cramped. Frustrated, the revenant flexed my hand as though willing it to work. It could strengthen my body, but it couldn’t help my scars.
At the periphery of my vision, I saw the sisters fail to close the chapel’s door. Leander had appeared, holding it open, his arms braced wide, his white-streaked hair hanging disheveled, blood shining on his upper lip.
It wasn’t Leander—it was Sarathiel.
It understood what we were doing at once. Fury and terror twisted Leander’s face into a horrible mask. It moved to withdraw, but at the same time one of Leander’s hands seized the doorframe. For an instant, he had regained control, and that was all it took for him to wrench himself inside.
He dropped to his knees as though in supplication. “Artemisia,” he whispered, his green eyes burning into mine. “Do it.”
The rune was finished. I slammed my hand down, or the revenant did, or we both did it together.
The world exploded into pain.
At first, the pain came as a shock. Then it made terrible sense. Stupid. I had been so stupid. I remembered the revenant’s earlier hesitation in the stall—the moment it had realized that the ritual designed to destroy Sarathiel would also destroy itself, that there was no way to avoid this fate, that it had made the decision to sacrifice itself then and there. Not for humanity’s sake, but for mine. Sarathiel wouldn’t have let me live. This was the only way to save me.
Leander lay collapsed in the aisle, his features beautiful and still. He didn’t seem to be breathing. Fragments of silver were tearing upward from his body like shards of broken glass, a shattered cathedral window caught in a whirlwind, the fractured panes reflecting a skeletal ribcage, a serene half-closed eye, a graceful row of pinions. Sarathiel was breaking apart—and I could feel my revenant following.
Frantically, I imagined gathering up its pieces and gripping them in my hands, clutching them against my chest, refusing to let them escape.
“Let go,” said the revenant. Its voice was a horrible shriek, almost unrecognizable, like a gale tearing through my mind.
Instead, I gripped it tighter.
“You’ll die!” it howled.
Desperately, I held on.
And then the revenant was railing against me, too. The pain was so great that I could barely think. I briefly forgot my mission, only to remember again with an agony like being torn asunder. Furiously, I began to pray.
Lady, if I have served You, spare the revenant. If You are merciful, let it live. I have done what You have asked. I have suffered for You. This is the only thing I want in return.
Spare the revenant.
Please, spare the revenant…
My vision filled with silver light. No answer came. But She couldn’t ignore me forever. If She wouldn’t listen to me, I would make Her regret it.
I would die, and I would see Her soon.
EPILOGUE
I had strange dreams.
I was a child again, shoving my hands into the hearth. But this time the fire was silver and didn’t burn me. The flames were standing still.
A muttered croak drew my attention. A white raven was watching me from the window, its feathers ruffled in annoyance. Its eyes were black, but as I looked closer, I realized that they weren’t lightless—they glittered with thousands upon thousands of stars.
“Artemisia,” it cawed, scolding me. “Artemisia!”
I startled awake in a small, whitewashed chamber, the raven’s voice still ringing in my ears. At first I thought I was back in the tower where Sarathiel had imprisoned me, and had confused my dreams with waking reality. But I didn’t recognize the view out the window, its shutters thrown wide: a green mountain landscape, the shadows of clouds racing over fir-covered slopes. A bell rang out the first hour of the afternoon, and when it stopped, I heard prayers being sung in deep voices. Slowly, my memories began to reorient themselves. My breathing stilled.
“Revenant?” I asked, not daring to hope.
“I’m here, nun,” it said.
I shot up, the coverlet knotted in my hands, joy flooding my heart like a sunrise. I had never imagined its hideous voice would sound so welcome.
“Before you say something embarrassing, you should know that we aren’t alone.”
I turned to find Mother Dolours sitting in a chair in the corner of the room. My joy instantly gave way to cold, drenching terror. Marguerite had explained things to her. How much, exactly, had she explained?
By now, the abbess had to suspect my relationship with the revenant. She might even know I had used Old Magic.
Incongruously, she was darning a hole in a stocking. I got the impression that, like me, she was the kind of person who wasn’t used to sitting idle. She would start going mad without a task to keep herself occupied. As though sensing my thoughts, she looked up.
“We are in the monastery of Saint Barnabas, in the far east of Roischal,” she said calmly. “You could have recovered in Bonsaint, but I thought it wiser to bring you to a place where fewer casualties would result if Rathanael suddenly began to feel less cooperative. The sisters will survive without me in the meantime, I trust.”