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It seemed to have hit them both equally hard.

Atticus’ face was a shuttered mask when he sunk the needle into Orpheus’ arm and filled the vial with a fresh batch of blood. It still glimmered with magic, smoldering like Sanctuary’s rooftops.

“If you think this is what I wanted you are sorely misinformed.”

Orpheus took the bait. “You made me fix that power cell for a reason. You expected this, yet you still bothered to protect me.”

“A failsafe, that is all. And it worked, too.”

“So why throw me in chains?”

“Because I don’t trust you.” A glance up. “And you’re not going to like what I have to show you.”

That wasn’t the answer he expected. Desperation stabbed, hot and slick.

“Is it him?” Orpheus breathed. “Do you have him? Fenrir? Is he alive?”

Atticus withdrew the needle and capped the vial, tucking it safely into his bag without answering. Orpheus caught the stronger glow of Gwen’s vial, stomach turning without his permission.

I have to, and it’s not like she deserved his mercy now, either.

Atticus turned Gwen’s cane over, then shoved it into Orpheus’ hands. “Come now. Let’s get this over with.”

Under the golden light of a morning sun, Sanctuary smoldered.

Dew wet the ash, a cast of grays that muted the blackened obsidian, rubble piling into the valleys of its rooftops, the scrape scrape scrape of a shovel echoing up from some distance below, the cleanup starting early, before graves could be dug.

There won’t be any graves.

The scent of cooking meat rose alongside the sun, a thick, savory stench that meant one thing. Sanctuary had sustained at least some casualties, and the dead would not go to waste. Orpheus shoved down his nausea and looked back to the horizon, past the smoking wreckage of the fleet to where clouds gathered low in the distance, thick like the dust rising from the Rim.

He never should have helped Atticus. Never should have trusted him in any capacity. When a person showed you their true colors, only a fool tried to paint them in shades of gray. Maybe Atticus had suffered from the loss of his wife—Orpheus could admit that, understand it, even—but that didn’t excuse the lies he had told him. The manipulation he’d resorted to make Orpheus cooperate.

Was it manipulation? He’d lied, yes. But he’d also told the truth, in the end. Not like Gwen. Atticus hadn’t dragged him close and found his heart just to brutally tear it out when he least expected it.

They crossed a bridge that looked out over the city. Nothing besides the embers and the rubble gave Sanctuary’s suffering away. Where rooftops had burned, people now climbed ladders so they could be patched, working carefully atop the dew-wet shingles, laying planks where the biggest holes gaped, spraying water over the places that still smoldered.

But it was the sight down in the square that drew Orpheus’ attention. In the place where their ill-fated spell should be, pyres burned, the wind carrying an acrid savory scent. Bodies lined the pyres in careful rows, fires stoked low as to not burn the flesh Sanctuary had opted to preserve. Saliva filled his mouth at the smell—torn between horror and a hunger he was beginning to understand, and far worse than anything the hermits had subjected him to.

They’re desperate. But did that excuse them? Orpheus didn’t think so. Not when history placed them under a very different light.

“We’re here,” Atticus snapped. “Follow the plan. Optics matter more than anything.”

Optics? Why would optics matter unless—

Shit. Atticus was trying to impress—no, intimidate someone. And that someone could only be—

Fenrir. With a stab to his heart that had nothing to do with pain, Orpheus thought of Fenrir.

He’s here. He’s taking you to him.

He would have laughed if he could. Instead, he whimpered when Duluth shoved him forward and Serval surreptitiously placed a knife to his spine.

“Excited?” he hissed, digging in. “Miss your friends that much, hmm?”

The click of his cane too loud in the ensuing quiet, Orpheus limped behind Atticus, Serval at his back, Duluth taking up the rear. Over a narrow bridge they crossed, barely wide enough for two men shoulder to shoulder, the tenement house they approached different from the others. Tall slender windows were set deep into the obsidian stone, barred cages framing the lower levels in.

Sanctuary’s prison, Orpheus acknowledged while Atticus grasped the wheeled lock with both hands and pulled. Metal squealed against metal, lock releasing so the door yawned open on sad, squealing hinges.