They had seemed to grow, though their size never changed. They remained silent, contemplative, though everything suddenly seemed to flow through rather than around them. And later, when dawn should have been burning away the night, Angel and S’Hivez had laughed some curse at the sky and painted it dark with their victorious souls.

Angel had been holding the boy’s ruptured corpse ever since.

The hawk had died moments after they finished rooting through the boy’s insides, and Lenora thought they would fall. The great beast’s tentacles were flapping in the wind, its gas sacs deflating with a stench that almost made her pass out. But then S’Hivez had buried his arms in the creature’s neck, rooting around inside as he had probed the dead boy’s carcass. The fall had ended, the creature had risen again, and from then on the dead hawk bore them northward.

Going away, a voice said. Lenora looked around, squinting against the wind. She had heard that voice intermittently since the fight with the Monks and machines, and she knew what it was: her dead, unborn daughter’s shade still craving the unknown comfort of her mother’s arms. Lenora buried her face in the hawk’s stiffening hide and cried, tears tainted with anger. She lifted her head slightly and looked at them as they were caught on the wind and blown into Noreela’s skies. She hoped they would spread and fall with the next rains, casting her sorrow across plains and valleys, mountains and lakes, where vengeance would be waiting for her. They were a long way from Robenna now—and it was falling farther behind with every heartbeat—but now that she knew she would return, the heat of revenge was growing brighter within her.

The people of Robenna had driven her out, poisoned her and murdered her unborn child. Given time, their descendants would pay.

“Dreaming of death and vengeance, Lenora?”

Lenora looked up and stared straight into Angel’s eyes. The Mage had crawled back along the hawk’s spine and now sat astride the root of its huge tail, her face a hand’s width from Lenora’s. Whatever time had done to her, she had now found the power to undo. She was beautiful. The might of new magic flickered behind her eyes, and its potential seemed to light her from within, brightening her skin against the dark skies she and S’Hivez had created.

Lenora tried to speak but found herself lost for words.

“Don’t worry,” Angel said. She drew closer still, until her blazing eyes were the whole world. “So am I.”

“Mistress . . .”

“I frighten you?” Angel raised an eyebrow.

Lenora could only nod.