She froze. Calenne started forward, but Viktor waved her back. Anastacia’s tone worried him. They reminded him too much of a young boy, lashing blindly out at the vranakin who’d murdered his mother. There was no telling what she might do.

He lost track of how long they stood there in silence, Anastacia unmoving and Calenne an anxious presence at his shoulder. There was only his ragged pulse. This would pass. Anastacia was his only connection to Josiri. She’d gather herself. She had to.

Anastacia’s head snapped upright with a low, mournful wail. She gazed at him with hatred that the immobile doll’s face should not have found possible.

[[I cannot leave,]] she moaned. [[I cannot return to what I was. You’ve sealed me in a tomb.]]

“No!” Viktor again took her hands, speaking low and urgent. “I can make this right, I swear to you.”

[[Release me!]]

She hurled him aside as if he were a child. His head cracked against a column. The world flashed bright and dark. The floor rushed upwards.

The second lantern shattered on the floor as Anastacia rose from the altar. Darkness flooded in, the moonlight of the chapel windows the only reprieve. Viktor tried to stand, to call on his shadow. Anything. Lost in a world of blurred vision and red thunder, nothing responded as it should. He slumped to hands and knees. Blood trickled down his brow and spattered on stone.

[[I never should have listened! What is there for me now?]]

Porcelain fingers clinked into fists.

A shadow stepped between them. Calenne. “Leave him be.”

Anastacia raised a fist. [[Stand aside.]]

Viktor waved an urgent hand at Calenne. He nearly lost his balance doing so. “Do as she says.”

Calenne hesitated, as one suddenly aware of her own actions. Uncertainty danced across her face, perhaps in regret at an impulse that had placed her between a vengeful demon she hated, and the Black Knight she’d feared for so long. Then her expression hardened, and she folded her arms.

“No.”

“I don’t want her to hurt you,” gasped Viktor.

“She won’t.” The words were hard as the mountains. “Because if she does, my brother will never forgive her.”

[[And what use is Josiri to me any longer, or I to him?]]

“Touch me, and you’ll never find out.”

Anastacia loosed another soul-wrenching wail. Her hand fell to her side. The golden patterns of her face gleamed in the moonlight. Then she vanished into the growing darkness behind Viktor’s eyes. Glass shattered somewhere distant and a cool breeze rushed in.

Viktor felt Calenne’s hands beneath his arms. Her face crowded close, more worried than he’d any right to expect. With her help, he regained his feet. He stared across the chapel to the broken window and churned footprints beyond. Unfamiliar failure thickened his throat. It hurt worse than the blow to his head.

“What have I done?” he breathed.