“No,” said James tightly. “But it doesn’t matter. I made a promise to Daisy, and I will keep that promise. If you wanted to prevent me from doing the right thing, you should have started the campaign quite a bit earlier than the night before my wedding.”

Everything was very quiet for a moment. The four of them were still, barely breathing. Snow dashed itself against the panes in soft explosions of white. James could see himself reflected in the glass: his own dark hair, his pale face.

At last Matthew said, “You are right, of course; it is only perhaps that we worry that you are too honest—too good, and goodness can be a blade sharp enough to cut, you know, just as much as evil intent.”

“I am not as good as all that,” said James, turning away from the window—

—and suddenly the room and his friends fell away, and he had the sensation of falling, twisting and turning through a long expanse of nothingness, though he was also standing still.

He had landed on a hard patch of earth.

No, not now, it can’t be. But as James got to his feet, he found himself in a barren wasteland, under a sky covered in ash. It wasn’t possible, he thought—he had seen this shadow realm fall apart, as Belial howled in rage.

The last time he was in this place, he had watched Cordelia drive her sword into Belial’s chest. An image of her appeared unbidden in his mind, striking the blow, her sword out and her hair streaming, as if she were a goddess captured in a painting: Liberty or Victory leading the people.

And then the world itself had yawned open as the sky split and red-black light fell upon the crumbling earth. And James had watched Belial’s face cave in and his body shatter into a thousand pieces.

Belial wasn’t dead, but he had been so weakened by Cortana that Jem had said he would not be able to return for at least a hundred years. And certainly since that moment, all had been quiet. James had not seen his grandfather, nor a hint of his grandfather’s shadow realm. But who else but Belial could have drawn James here now?

James spun around, narrowing his eyes. Something about this place, which he had seen so many times in dreams and visions, was different. Where were the piles of bleached bones, the dunes of sand, the twisted and gnarled trees? Far in the distance, across a desolate expanse of weed-choked scree, James saw the outline of a massive stone structure, a towering fortress rising above the plains.

Only human hands—or intelligent ones, at least—could have built such things. James had never seen a hint of such history in the desolation of Belial’s realm.