“Claudia, please.” I bent to place my hands over hers, but she craned around and hissed like a feral creature, her eyes void of recognition. I jerked away. “What happened?”

“Dust. Dust. We’re mirrors in dust. We’re skulls without flesh, bones without marrow. Death. Death would be welcome. None are welcome. And you”—her dark gaze shot to mine—“you’ll burn and burn, and the moon will have her vengeance, and the sun will swallow us whole and there will be nothing left. Stars. The stars are out, and they’re falling like feathers ripped from the mighty raven because he craves their meat and she wishes to feed him until he’s gorged, but he will never be satisfied. He is sin and is glad of it.”

Black mirrors were used for scrying, and some people also used animal bones, though Nonna cautioned against using items touched by death. She argued the future should only be viewed by the living, that things rotting deep within the soil had broken down into something else, and moved on from this realm, and therefore were no longer worried about what was to come.

As far as I knew, Claudia only used a handful of gemstones or spell candles.

She rocked back and forth, whispering. Her words were rushed and laced with a frenzied panic. She wasn’t speaking exclusively in Italian anymore, and I didn’t understand half of what she said. I couldn’t help but fear she was repeating messages from creatures I wouldn’t want to meet in the flesh. I tried reaching for her again, not wanting to leave her alone in this nightmare.

She struggled to get away, but I wrapped my arms around her, smoothing damp hair from her brow. “Shh. Shh. The stars aren’t falling. We’re all safe.”

“Safe. Safe in chains and locks and black mirrors with no keys.” Claudia rocked in my arms. “I hear it, or them. It’s hard to tell. They’re all talking at once—the bones of the dead, and the dust of the stars, and the devouring moon with its vicious grin. The goddess who is and is not, is vengeance.”

A terrible suspicion pooled in my belly. “Did you use human bones?”

“It said I would know. That they’d tell me. The dead shouldn’t mind. The dead have no mind, no will. No memory. Our minds were made for forgetting. The locks don’t fit the keys. I only used the bones because it said to. Lovely stars were supposed to light the way, lead me to them. I was supposed to help. They won’t stop screaming . . . make them stop screaming!”

“Who’s screaming?”

“The damned! They think they burn, but there are worse fates than fire and ash.”

It was unnervingly similar to what Wrath had said earlier.