The woman stood among the trees, dark and pale all at once. Hair danced in a non-existent wind. A tattered, fibrous dress clung close about her legs and bare feet. Her face was Revekah’s own, but as it had been years before the ravages of age took their toll. The image flickered and crackled, as if she wasn’t truly there. A hallucination? Or a mind’s last, desperate trick as it fell under another’s sway?

“I knew you were coming,” she breathed.

“That’s why you sent him away?”

She sounded like Elda. Like Calenne. Like Tarn. Like Katya. Even like Crovan. Like Crovan most of all. Sounded like all of them, and none of them. A hollow voice billowing with a thousand souls. A voice for which there could be only one name. Malatriant. Revekah supposed she should have been terrified to come face-to-face with a legend, but she was too cold, and too weary.

“Maybe I just wanted some privacy?” No. No lies. Not now. “He’s a good man. He deserves better.”

“He deserves whatever I choose.”

“Why?”

“Because that is what I choose.” Malatriant drew closer. Her stolen face melted away into Katya’s likeness, her lips curling into that beautiful, long-lost smile. “Your town is built on my bones. My ash is in your blood. I know you’re tired. I know you want to let go. That’s why you came home to me, is it not?”

Somehow, Revekah found the strength to answer. “No.”

“You’re the last, Revekah. The others have embraced me. My children. My fading ash. So worn down by pettiness and jealousy. They longed for me to take their burdens. Now we are one – as all were one before the light divided us.”

The dagger dipped in Revekah’s hand, as if the weight of the world rested atop its pommel.

“I’ve fought all my life,” she gasped. “I won’t stop now.”

“You will. We are one. We are all one in the Dark.”

Malatriant knelt. Cold fingers drew Revekah into an embrace. The dagger slipped from her numbed hand.

Yanda felt it as soon as she stepped onto the balcony. The mood of the crowd was different. Sharper. Expectant. She couldn’t see it in their faces, but it was there. As certain as the wind in the trees or the fall of night.

Even Makrov felt it. He stumbled at the balcony’s edge in unfamiliar hesitation. “People of Eskavord! Blessed Lumestra has sent me before you this day! I—”

“Enough!”

The outburst cut through Makrov’s affronted splutters. “Who dares?”

Yanda peered out into the crowd, straining without success to see the speaker.

“By Lumestra’s light, you will show yourself!” bellowed Makrov.

“The light?” came the reply. “The light has no hold on Eskavord. Not any longer.”