Though Grace and Tatiana had left it only recently, Blackthorn Manor had the air of a place long abandoned. One of the side doors was unlocked, and James found himself in an empty front hall, lit only by the moonlight pouring in through the great windows. The floor was covered in a thick, feathery dust, and above him hung a chandelier, so roped about with spiderwebs it resembled a ball of gray yarn.

He passed through the empty hall in the quiet of the moonlight and up the sweeping curve of the staircase. As he reached the second floor an oily film of blackness dropped before him: the upstairs windows had been covered with thick black curtains, and no light escaped around their edges.

He lit his witchlight rune-stone; it illuminated the long-dusty passage stretching before him. As he made his way down it, his boots crunched unpleasantly on the floor, and he imagined himself crushing the dried bones of tiny animals as he walked.

At the end of the corridor, in front of a curved wall of covered windows, stood the metal creature: a towering monster of steel and copper. On the wall beside it, as he had recalled, hung a knight’s sword with a wheel pommel, a rusty antique.

James took the sword down and, without a moment’s hesitation, swung it.

It sheared through the torso of the clockwork monster, slicing it in half. The upper part of the body clanged to the ground. James drove down with the sword again, decapitating the creature; he felt half ridiculous, as if he were hacking an enormous tin can to pieces. But the other half of him was full of rage: rage against the meaningless bitterness that had consumed Tatiana Blackthorn, that had turned this house into a prison for Grace, that had turned Tatiana viciously against her own family and all the world.

He broke off, breathing heavily. The clockwork suit was a pile of scrap metal at his feet.

Stop, he told himself, and oddly, he saw Cordelia in his mind, felt her hand on his arm, steadying him. Stop.

He tossed the sword to the ground and turned to go; as he did, he heard a soft explosion.

The pile of shredded metal had caught fire and gone up as if it were tinder. James took a step back, staring, as the fire leaped up to catch at the spiderwebs stretched across the walls: they caught alight like burning lace. James jammed his witchlight back into his pocket; the corridor was already alive with gold and crimson, strange shadows shuddering against the walls. The smoke that rose from the smoldering drapes was thick and choking, emitting an acrid and terrible scent.