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I am a meiga trained for warfare. I know the map of a man’s bones, the web of his tendons and veins, the centers of nerves to cause pain and render an enemy inert. I turn that training on the one who gave it to me.

Blood sprays. Van Asten screams. His lifeless hand flops to the ground. It all takes less than a second, less than the tick of a clock, for me to plunge my scythe toward him, knocking him to the ground. I press my foot to his chest, the bloody train of my ruined dress draping over his body as I hold my scythe to his neck. He lies on his back, cradling the stump of his arm, tears in his dark eyes.

At the end, he cries like a child.

I feel an arm curl around me. “Vesper,” Lonan says.

He’s still difficult to see in the thickness of the shadows. But I feel him, that presence like autumn twilight, all around me.

He’s looking between me and Lord Van Asten. “Are you sure?”

Killing him would cripple Imaelhain. The Illuminated Kingdom would put the Darkness back into exile. But also . . . “He’s your father.”

The darkness of Lonan’s eyes deepens. “He raised a hand to you. I don’t care what happens to him. Run him through if it makes you happy. But count the cost.”

I look down at Van Asten. “I think we should leave it to Fate to decide.”

A cackle echoes through the clocktower.

“What do you think, Sisters?” Saint Nona emerges from the shadows, holding my godfather’s thread of life, black as night, twisted and dried like an old weed.

Saint Decima follows her, frowning as she caresses her scissors with small white fingers. “I think he would like death.”

“He has defied Fate for too long,” says my mother, casting an imperious look of judgment on him. “He loved death so much in life. Maybe he’ll enjoy receiving it as much as he gave it.”

“It has been so long since we’ve had a good slaughtering,” Saint Nona says. She extends the thread. “The measure of his life, Sisters.”

Saint Decima bears the scissors, chopping them experimentally in the way children do. “How shall he die?”

Saint Nona grins, mouth full of jagged teeth, at my godfather under the weight of my blade. “I do love a good beheading.”

Saint Morta peers down at me. “And I believe my daughter is in need of a new Dark anchor.”

Nona cackles and snatches the silver stake from my hand. Before I can protest, she hands it to my mother, who studies it for a moment, the way the blood of my friend and my bloodmate stain the silver darkly.

“Yes. This will do,” Morta says. She approaches and delicately touches the stake to the blade of my scythe. The metals melt together, like the silver is pouring into my blade, until they are one and my scythe has a stranger, darker hue, tinged the rusty color of blood.

I flex my fingers around the warm wooden handle experimentally. Overhead, past the floating lanterns, past the shadows of the bells, the golden light streams through the gaps in the wooden beams of the ceiling as the sun breaks the horizon.

I blink up at it, that barest gold, the Dim, the purest sliver of hope. Hope is a deadly, fragile thing. It’s something my broken heart has never been able to afford. But I look at Lonan. I meet his eyes, dark as the night. And somehow, in them I’ve always been able to find that hope.

He was my choice. My great act of rebellion, stars and Saints be damned. They do not bind me. I am half wild and hardy and free. That is my nature. That is my fate. One day I will die, but for now, I will remember to live.

I slice my scythe down through my godfather’s neck.

Chapter Sixty-Three

Ihave not seen the light in twelve dark hours. But now sunbeams warm my face. The rain has stopped, and the earth smells damp and clean. Trees arch over me, their branches weaving through the sky. I close my eyes to feel the sun’s rays.

I left the school just after the sun’s rise. I needed the earth, the woods, the grass. I needed to leave the walls of Gossemort to remind myself that I could.

There is chaos to deal with, the wreckage of the Ridding to face. But Lonan understood when I told him I needed a few minutes and marched off into the forest.

Don’t go in the forest, my father told me. I’ve been defying him ever since.

Movement in the grass makes my eyes shoot open. Instantly, my scythe is in my hand. I’m still jumpy, still expecting a terror around every corner. I imagine that won’t go away for a while.

But it’s just a cat. That same damned cat that was in the graveyard.