The hungry roar of flames growing all around him, Viktor approached the cottage. He hesitated at the door, haunted by Malatriant’s promise of misery yet to come. What if Calenne was dead? What would he do then? And even if she still lived, how could she ever again look on him as anything other than a monster? Could he live with that?

He’d have to.

Viktor grasped the door handle. In the distance, the first screams began.

Josiri jerked upright into bitter gloom, all but tipping himself from the tent’s narrow bed. Numbness and thick bandages about head and shoulder sapped him of what little coordination he had left. Only the intervention of slender hands stopped him striking the floor.

“Have a care,” said Melanna. “You’ll be unsteady until the bethanis tincture wears off. When it does, you’ll wish it hadn’t.”

Jumbled memories fought for dominance. “What happened?”

She eased him back and turned away. “I did something foolish. Then you did something foolish. And then Lord Akadra . . .”

“Viktor? Where is he? Where’s Anastacia?” And what was that damnable smoke? It grew thicker with every breath. “I want to see them.”

He swung his legs clear of the bed, only to overbalance a second time before his bare feet touched the floor. Again, Melanna came to his rescue.

“Did you hear nothing?” she snapped. “The tincture has your wits. You’ll fall before you get a dozen paces.”

“Then you’ll have to help me, won’t you?”

She pinched her lips together. “I won’t make it even half that far.”

Josiri forced blurry eyes to focus and at last saw the rope binding Melanna’s hobbled ankles to the tent’s central pole. “I see.”

“It has been made clear to me that another rope awaits me, should you die.” She forced a thin smile. “So please, no foolishness.”

[[I’ll take you wherever you want to go.]]

The tent flap parted, leaving Anastacia silhouetted against an amber sky.

A little of the tension in Josiri’s chest faded. “Ana. You’re all right.”

[[Naturally.]] Something in her hollow voice sounded amiss.

With Anastacia’s help, Josiri hobbled from the tent and into the commotion of a camp half-set. King’s blue uniforms vied with the green of Essamere and the scarlet of Prydonis. Horses, men, the beginnings of a ditch and palisade. The army had finally arrived.

In the middle distance, Eskavord burned, black plumes of smoke looping into the clouds. There was no darkness, only the midday sun stretching from Branghall’s fire-wreathed tower to the uneven rampart of Eskavord’s east gate. The only home he’d ever known, caught in one last, all-consuming inferno.

“What . . . What has he done?” Josiri breathed.

“What I’ve always done,” rumbled Viktor. “What was needed.”