Abruptly, she changed her mind. It had been her intention to go to her home, retrieve a travel cloak and weapons, and flee south to one of the other villages. But there was no time for the former and the latter was the obvious choice—and she could not afford to make a mistake. Instead, she veered north toward the deep woods and the high country. Sider’s country. She would go there. She knew it well enough to find her way. She would go to his childhood home, abandoned now, fallen into disrepair, and find what she needed.

She ran hard, and soon her breath was ragged and her muscles aching. She had left the village behind, the madness and chaos consuming it. But even escape could not free her from her sense of disbelief and shock.

That—that thing—inhabiting Skeal Eile’s body wasn’t the Seraphic. Old stories recalled themselves—stories of the time when the Hawk led his people into the valley. They had been pursued by many evils, but chief among them were the demons.

And now one was in their midst, disguised as Skeal Eile. She had no doubt this was what she and Brickey had faced. And suddenly she stopped where she was, appalled.

That old man, the ragpicker, trying to charm her into revealing what she knew about Sider and his talisman. That old man, who had threatened her in his chillingly soft-voiced, terrifyingly confident way, letting her know that if she crossed him she would live to regret it. She could still feel herself wilting under the force of his words, only just managing to hold on.

Skeal Eile was only a pawn in this, not the instigator she had thought him to be. The eyes gave away the demon within; there was no mistaking it. But the demon had not always been there; if it had, she would have noticed. Sider would have noticed. The demon was new, and it had taken the Seraphic’s form, which was why it had been able to kill her husband so easily, why it could charm the people of her village as the real Seraphic had never been able to do, why it had upended everyone’s lives in a single night with false promises and twisted dreams. He was the reason Arik Siq was free and she was made to appear responsible. He was the cause of everything twisted and bad that had happened.

She almost collapsed with the weight of her revelation. It was a struggle even to continue to walk, to put one foot in front of the other.

She forced herself to start moving faster. She could not afford to be recaptured.