The mooring spikes in her torso turned to molten fire. It seeped through every torn fibre and every lesion, setting nerves wailing and muscles atremble.

Rosa screamed, and found strength in the sound. Metal scraped past bone. Flesh tore free. Every inch was a scarlet eternity. She closed her eyes, blotting out the Raven, the fire, the smoke. There was only the molten metal in her chest and the hope of redemption.

And beneath it all, the sound of gravelly laughter, and soft applause.

The scream was like nothing Sevaka had ever heard. It rose to a raw, jangling pitch and then was lost to the rush of flames. Rosa was gone. Choking down a sob, she rammed back her elbow. The kernclaw shifted her grip and the blow struck empty air. Vice-like fingers closed about Sevaka’s weapon-hand, striving for mastery of the blade.

Talons pressed against Sevaka’s throat. “Drop it! I won’t burn, not even for a sister.”

The kernclaw yelped. Her hand slipped from Sevaka’s wrist. A heartbeat later, the talons followed. Sevaka staggered away, legs buckling as she sought footing. Through stinging eyes, she stared back toward the gibbet.

A smoke-stained figure stood amid the leaping flames, soot streaked in her tangled blonde hair, and the edges of her ravaged clothes curling with smoke. She had one hand about the kernclaw’s throat. Another about her wrist. A mooring spike deep in her left shoulder confirmed the impossible.

“Rosa?”

Arms convulsed. The kernclaw vanished into the smoke with a thin cry. Rosa stepped through the rising flames and toppled. Sevaka caught her.

“It’s not fair.” Tears of sorrow and joy mingled on her cheeks. “It was my turn to save you.”

“I saved you?” Even with Rosa’s lips practically touching her ear, Sevaka barely heard her reply. “You saved me first . . . Gave me something to fight for.”

She sagged. Sevaka held her tighter, as if to bind spirit to abused body. The smoke swirled. For a moment, Sevaka glimpsed the outline of a thin, dark man, tipping an imaginary hat in salute. Then the smoke shifted, and the vision was gone.

Gritting her teeth, Sevaka dragged Rosa away.

The shadow’s scream bled away. Viktor reknitted his scattered thoughts. Every inch, every scrap of his being, throbbed with pain beyond reckoning. As if he’d plunged into the heart of a forge and the depths of an ice-crested caldera all at once.

His body was a distant presence on the edge of perception. The muted greys of the shadow’s existence were all. Dark. Bleak. And afraid of the light.

Arrogance had all but unmade him. The same arrogance that had failed Anastacia. The same arrogance that had led him to believe he could end Ebigail Kiradin’s ambitions with a handful of willing blades.

To all things there was a limit.