“You are a danger to yourself and everyone you touch. Your awakening allowed our plans to come together, but I hoped you’d reveal your true nature so that I could kill you and be done with it.”

I shake my head. I came here with a purpose, and I still mean to finish it. “But you couldn’t. Not without proof. Because every shaman and shadowblessed in Thiy believes I’m a soulguide, and killing me would turn them against you.”

He releases a soft breath, all the long years of his life condensed into that single sound. “How quickly they forget that Thiy would have fallen without me. It was my power that saved it.”

I try to imagine him as he might have once been—merely a man trying to protect his home. “You devoured your familiar so you could become powerful enough to fight the Soulless.”

“And still, peace couldn’t be found. The kingdoms insisted on their conflicts, their petty grievances, their bids for power.” He shakes his head, and when he speaks again, it isn’t with anger or regret. He sounds resolved. “I did what was necessary, just as I will do so now.”

In a twisted way, I understand him. He sacrificed everything, even his humanity, to bring peace to Thiy, and the kingdoms gave that peace so little regard. But now he means to wipe them all away. This is far from a solution.

“The Soulless is poisoning you. You know that, don’t you? His magic is twisting you the way it twisted him.”

His gaze flicks away, just enough to confirm that he knows very well what the Soulless’s magic is doing to him. But it doesn’t seem to matter. He’s chosen his path. Whatever decency he once possessed has long since been corrupted.

I slowly shift my weight to my injured leg, testing its strength. It doesn’t hurt as much as it should, whether from the medicine or the energy coursing through me.

“How do you plan to control the Dead Wood?”

“I will find a way, as I always have. But if none can be found, then perhaps that is the ending Thiy deserves.” At his back, his spider’s shadow grows impossibly larger. “For what it’s worth, I hoped that you might truly be a soulguide.”

His head jerks to the side as his body stretches and contorts. I back away, horrified as his lower body swells grotesquely. His clothes rip away to reveal the bulbous abdomen of a white Spinner. Six enormous legs erupt from the Spinner’s body, dusted with wiry white hairs. His upper body remains human, the transition between spider and human torso a mottled stretch of armor and skin. He brushes away the remnants of his tunic. Lines crease his forehead as if the transformation pains him.