Lilyana strode to intercept her. Josiri blocked her path. “You’re a devout woman, Lilyana. I know that. What would Lumestra have you do?”

The look she gave him was filled with ice. But after a moment, she stepped aside.

Josiri beckoned to Sidara. “Are you sure?”

She gave a small nod.

“Then do what you can.”

Hesitantly, but with growing confidence, Sidara reached across the table. Her face flickered with revulsion as her hand touched Sevaka’s ravaged flesh. She closed her eyes.

At first, nothing happened. Then the first crack of light shone beneath Sidara’s fingers. It hissed where it touched blood, then blazed into a gold-tinged white so bright that Josiri had to shield his eyes. He raised his hand too slowly. In the moment before flinching away, he could have sworn he saw winged silhouettes among the brilliance. Then he closed his eyes, and they were gone – or perhaps had never existed at all.

The light strobed and ebbed. Sidara cried out. Half-blind, Josiri caught her thin, shivering body as it fell.

“Are you all right?”

She blinked and stared at her outspread fingers. The hand was still bloody, but what remained was dry and friable. “I’m tired, and a little cold.”

He smiled. “I’m sure you are.”

She pushed upwards and away, her shoulders atremble.

“Sidara!” Lilyana knelt beside her daughter. Careless of her bloody hands, she held the girl tight and peered intently into one eye and then the other. “Are you hurt? Tell me.”

“I’m fine, Mother.”

“Don’t take that tone with me.”

Josiri disentangled himself from broiling domesticity and turned his attention to Sevaka. She remained dead to the world, and paler than any living body had any right to be. But her breathing was deep and steady, and her wounds . . . What had been red, seeping flesh was crusted shut by dried, clotted blood.

“Raven’s Eyes,” breathed Malachi. “She did it.”

“Where is she?” Rosa slammed the hearthguard against the wall. “Tell me, or I’ll break every bone in your body!”

The man scrabbled at her gauntleted fist, eyes wide with terror. Well-trained and well-paid though the hearthguard of the nobility might have been, they were nothing to a knight of Essamere – a fact that the trail of bodies from the listing gate had surely rammed home. Rosa knew she’d not so much crossed a line as bolted madly past it. She didn’t care.

“Tell me!”

Another slam – hard enough to shiver Rosa’s own elbow, let alone the captive’s spine.

A pained gasp burst from his lips. “The rose garden. She’s in the . . .”

Rosa planted a fist in his face and let him drop. The rose garden? She knew Ebigail to be an early riser, but it was yet some hours to dawn. Respectable folk were in their beds. Then again, Ebigail Kiradin only pretended at respectability, didn’t she?