A CORPSE, the hunger answers, and I fling my body—claws first—into the two heats that stand connected, the ones my witch wants ripped apart. Luc…the prince. Lucien. I remember him, his name ringing like a bell. This one we remember, this one we don’t want to kill—

Metal. Metal flashes in front of my face, slicing my hand clean off. Blood splays over the snow, beautiful crimson heat. A beautiful nuisance. With a low growl, I grab the metal with my other hand and fold it backward, the screech of its resistance deafening as it curls in on itself in a useless spiral. The beneather holding the ruined weapon widens his ruby eyes at my face, at his sword, and I slice at him with my half-healed hand, the bone claws growing back through the stump of my wrist before anything else. The smell of fire, and something hot and burning, collides with my face, the scent of flesh sizzling and the sound of my own roar of pain as I turn to face the witch who threw it—Lucien, his palm blackened to the wrist and held out at me, his eyes midnight orbs.

Run.

RUN, LITTLE SHEEP, THE STARVING WOLF HAS COME TO PLAY—

Run, please.

I reach to tear Lucien from the other heat, the girl. Shouting. Lucien shouts, once, and the girl holds up something in front of me—a dagger, glimmering with jewels, the metal blade glimmering a pure white, and stabs it into my chest. Too high to reach my unheart, too left to reach my lungs, just right. White-hot fire curdles my blood, numbness spreading from my brain to my toes and back again. The stump of my hand stops healing rapidly, the skin reconstructing now with near-invisible slowness.

The smell.

THEY ARE THE TrAiToRs

White mercury.

I look down at the blade in my chest—the metal is surely white. Not a vial of mercury but a blade of it, like the four swords lost in the war. Like the sword attached to Varia’s hip even now, the only one left in the world. The hunger starts to crumble, the silence I’d been clinging to so hard roaring up to greet me, enveloping me like a long-lost mother in its cooling embrace. The rage is not mine anymore, my despair is not mine, and they chip away from me, leaving me light. Silent.

The hunger has stopped singing.

“No!” I hear Varia screech, indignant and furious. “Fione! Dear heart, what did you do?”

“I did what my uncle couldn’t,” Fione says softly.