“Do you know what it feels like, being Harvested?” Shireen asked.

I shook my head.

“It feels like your soul’s being ripped away.” Shireen’s eyes were distant. “You can’t move and you can’t scream, but you can feel every bit of it. It takes minutes but it feels like years. I knew what was happening to me, and I knew it was Rachel who was doing it. And I hated her for it. She was my oldest friend and she was killing me, and I wanted her to suffer, hurt her as much as she was hurting me . . .” Shireen fell silent for a moment, staring past me. “There’s a vulnerability to Harvesting. When you open yourself to take in the person whose magic you’re absorbing, you open yourself to . . . other things. I called out, and something came. It passed into Rachel. I don’t know what it is and I don’t think it has a name. I know it doesn’t talk. I don’t think it can do anything to me. But it can do things to her.”

We stood in silence for a little while. “Are you really Shireen?” I said at last. “Or are you some sort of copy?”

“I don’t know,” Shireen said simply, and somehow she sounded very sad. “I can remember my life, but it’s patchy. Like old plaster flaking off a wall. Sometimes Rachel’s memories feel more real than mine. Maybe the real Shireen died and she’s gone away and I’m just an echo. Or maybe I am still Shireen, and I won’t die until Rachel does . . .” She looked up at me. “How would I know?”

I sighed, my anger draining away. “I guess you wouldn’t, would you?” I thought for a minute. “What happened after Rachel killed you?”

“At first Rachel was preparing for Tobruk to come back,” Shireen said. “She wanted to be Richard’s Chosen and she was going to fight him for it, kill him if she had to.”

“But Tobruk never came.”

“And in the end she figured out why. She didn’t believe it at first, but after they found the body even she couldn’t pretend. In a way the two of you were on the same side back then, though she didn’t see it like that . . . And then it was time for Richard to leave. And they brought out Catherine.”

I felt a sick sensation in the pit of my stomach. “Did Richard kill her?”

Shireen shook her head.

“Then is she—?”