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Lysander looked at her. "How do you know?"

"It's the same colour. The same, it's the same as what was beside her body. The sigil. Whoever drew the sigil drew it in this."

Lysander didn't answer.

"He went there," he said at last. "After. He went and gathered it."

"Why?"

"I don't know. To carry as evidence. To compare." He stopped. "To take a piece of where she died. I don't know."

Idonea remembered Kitsa in the chamber below the larder. He is doing something else. With his grief. Building something out of it. She had not, until now, understood what Kitsa had meant.

She closed her eyes briefly. The cottage spun and steadied.

They wrapped Edik in linens, clean ones. He didn’t let her touch the body, not out of distaste, but protection.

“I’ll take him,” Lysander said. “Open the hatch.”

They descended into the basement. She walked ahead, leading him to the furnace in the far corner. A massive cast-iron maw used for scrap metal and repairs.

She paused before it.

Lysander set the body down, and she rested a hand on the linen-covered chest.

“Lament him, Current. Let his spirit free from the confines of a bodily prison. Let the winds mourn and carry the tears to rain. He is unburdened. Let him be swept free.”

Lysander touched her shoulder. “Ready?”

She nodded. He lifted Edik one last time, laid him into the furnace, and pulled the heavy lever that fed it air.

The flames roared to life, white-hot, consuming the linens first, then flesh, then bone. The smell thickened in the air.

Idonea covered her mouth.

They stayed until there was nothing left but fine grey ash.

Lysander shut the furnace door. “We’ll scatter what remains in the fjord tonight,” he said. “Before anyone notices he’s gone.”

Idonea looked up at him. “And the cottage? The sigil?”

“I’ll clean it,” he said. “You shouldn’t have to.”

They climbed the basement steps in silence, sealing the hatch behind them. They took opposite seats by the hearth.

“How many daemons?” she asked, staring into the flames. “How many have you fought?”

He leaned back, gaze fixed on the firelight, tracing shadows along the beams overhead. “Daemons of rank? The one.” His gaze drifted up to the beams overhead. “Lesser entities … at least a dozen.”

Another silence, heavier this time.

“An archduke?”

Lysander’s expression didn’t shift. His left hand flexed. “A duke.”

Daemons of rank were rare occurrences.

Her gaze dropped to his mechanical arm. “They claimed your arm.”