I knew where this dream had taken us. Phelan and I were standing in the fortress in the clouds, in the hall of the mountain castle.

“A dream of the Seren Duchy,” I said.

“Did you ever read Knox Birch’s most recent nightmare in my book, Miss Neven?” Phelan asked.

“Yes,” I whispered, and I remembered it with a shudder. Mr. Birch had dreamt of the Seren throne and had unknowingly cut down his wife and two daughters in his hunger to claim it. “Do you see the duke’s chair?” I asked, unwilling to take my eyes from the southern end of the street.

“Yes,” he said. “It’s ahead of me.”

“Then Mr. Birch will be coming from my direction.”

“Do you want to trade places?”

“No,” I said, but I drew my rapier. “I’ll tell you when I see him approaching.”

I had yet to meet Knox Birch in the flesh—I had only read the account of his dreams—but I knew he lived one street over. I waited for him to appear, my palms slick with sweat.

At last, a man emerged from the darkness, striding through swaths of fog. He reminded me of my father, middle-aged and tall, with hair the color of a faded penny. His eyes gleamed gold, as if he was haunted, and yet his face was cold and merciless, like nothing could break him from his ambitions.

“He’s coming,” I said.

Phelan turned, and I felt a swell of cold air wash over me as he put some distance between us.

“He cuts down three shadows,” he reminded me. “I suspect you and I are two of them.”

I thought the same, but I had no time to agree with him as a woman with a pale, sorrowful face and long hair materialized from the shadows. Knox’s wife, I realized, and she boldly intercepted him, pleading, “Please, Knox . . . please don’t do this. Choose us, choose us.”

A rapier bloomed in his hand. He cut her down quickly, his blade piercing her core. She fell with a sickening thud, crumpled as a rag doll on the flagstones, her blood spreading beneath her like a crimson cloak. I knew he saw only a sinister shadow. He didn’t see her until the end, when he got what he thought he wanted: a place in the duke’s chair.

I was the next barricade in his path.