Satoris, Third-Born among Shapers, laughed, and the shadows laughed with him. It was a low laugh, insinuating. “Are you so afraid, Lady of the Ellylon? Have I been such a poor host?” He gestured toward a chair, shadows wreathing his arm. “Sit. I mean you no harm. I would but converse with you upon the eve of battle. Who understands it as do we two?”

Cerelinde sat stiffly. “Do you jest?”

“Jest?” His eyes gleamed out of the shadows, twin coals. “Ah, no, Daughter of Erilonde! I made you an offer, once. Do you recall it?”

She remembered the garden by moonlight, the Sunderer’s hand extended, its shadow stark upon the dying grass. What if I asked you to stay? Her own refusal, and the shivering sound of the sorrow-bells. “I do, my Lord.”

“We reap the fruits of our pride, Cerelinde.” He sighed. “And it is a bloody harvest. I ask again; who understands as do we two?”

“It is not pride, my Lord.” Cerelinde shook her head. “It is hope.”

“Hope?” he echoed.

“Hope.” She repeated the word more firmly. “For a world made whole, healed. For the Souma, made whole and glorious, and order restored. For the Lesser Shapers to become our better selves.” The words, the vision, gave her strength. She remembered a question Meara had posed her, and wondered if she dared to ask it after all. “What is it you are afraid to confront, my Lord?” Cerelinde asked, feeling the stir of ancient Ellylon magics creeping over her skin, the scant remnant of gifts the Rivenlost had ceded to the Sundering. “I, too, posed you a question. I do not believe you answered it.”

“Did I not?” the Shaper murmured.

What might-have-been …

Unexpectedly, Cerelinde found tears in her eyes. She swallowed. “Your crossroads, my Lord. There have been many, but only one is foremost. Three times, Haomane Lord-of-Thought asked you to withdraw your Gift from Arahila’s Children. I asked why you refused him, and you did not answer. Do”—she hesitated—“do you wish to know what might have been if you had acceded?”

Satoris lowered his head, and the shadows roiled. His shoulders hunched, emerging like dark hills from the shadowy sea. His hands knotted into fists, sinew crackling. There was another sound, deep and hollow and bitter, so filled with anger that it took Cerelinde a moment to recognize it as laughter.

“Ah, Cerelinde!” He raised his head. The embers of his eyes had gone out; they were only holes, empty sockets like the Helm of Shadows, filled with unspeakable sorrow. “Do you?”

“Yes.” She made herself hold his terrible gaze. “Yes, my Lord. I do wish to know. I am Haomane’s Child, and we do not thrive in darkness and ignorance.”

“Nothing,” the Shaper said softly. “Nothing, is the answer. I need no trifling Ellyl gift to tell me what I have known for far, far too long.”

“My Lord?” Cerelinde was perplexed.