The lace itched against her sweaty chest as she hurried through the corridors. She’d wrapped her new ring of heavy keys in wool to muffle their chime. She felt for the right one—knew it by touch, even in the dark, and slipped it into the lock. She was early. Joseph hadn’t come yet. She waited, beads of sweat tickling her back and behind her knees, till she heard footfalls in the hall. It wasn’t the soft leather touch of Joseph’s shoes. She hid behind the desk.

The door swung open and she saw boots appear. Above them, Joseph’s voice.

“Come. We’re going for a walk,” he said.

Mallow had dressed for a tryst, not a hike. She followed the flap of Joseph’s coattails up the trail and rubbed at where the lacy underthings chafed her. They might not be in any condition to return now.

She knew this winding trail better than he did, and stepped over the rocks that caught his toes. The ones that had raked Darcy on the way to her last rite. Mallow’s shoes tightened over her refilling blisters.

“Where are we going?” she asked, though she knew, and he knew she knew. “Or, I mean, why are we going?”

“To see that the job is done. That the last of this mess is cleaned up. Every trace gone.”

Mallow heard a slice of the air. Stars overhead blackened and sprang back to light in a cyclone of silent shadows. The birds didn’t usually scavenge at night. They were sunlight creatures—should be back at their nests, heads tucked under wings, over warm eggs. They must be hungry. They must have learned that food follows when people visit the cliffs.

Mallow shivered. She felt like a mess. Like a trace.

The scrape of Joseph’s boots silenced ahead of her, and she nearly walked into the back of his dark coat. She could feel the warmth of him through the narrow space between them. The birds seemed to feel it, too. The breeze that kicked up around them wasn’t the cool pine wind, but something musty, cast off carrion-stained wings.

Fire flared, and Mallow stumbled away from Joseph’s warm back. She raised her arm to shield her eyes and felt his hand close around her wrist. He drew her to the stained rock. She opened her eyes.

Only Darcy’s skull remained, too slick and round and heavy for the talons to hook. But their beaks had been at it, and there was nothing much left of it but pale stone, like the pit of a peach, but with no hope of sprouting.

“It’s done, then,” Mallow said.

“It isn’t done.”

A rank gust puffed out the delicate flame. The mountain sky fell to blackness traced with the remnant specters of fire.

The tok tok tok of the skull bouncing down the mountainside echoed off the cliff faces.