The door jerked open the last half of its swing, and there in the dying light of our lanterns the Unborn Captain waited, hunched within the confines of the corridor, a parody of flesh, drawn out into malformations of every kind, a plague of bones jutting out around a face that spoke only of awful needs.

Somewhere out beyond the walls of the Black Fort the sun pushed its brilliant edge above the ice horizon and broke the long night.

The air between Snorri and me spat and sparked as our hands shaped to grasp the other. My arm filled with light so fierce I couldn’t look at it. Snorri’s became jet, a hole in the world that ate all illumination and returned nothing.

The unborn launched itself forwards.

We clasped hands.

The world fractured.

Night interlaced day.

Pretty much everything exploded.

• • •

The Silent Sister’s magic left us and pursued its prey. Detonations rang out throughout the keep, out into the dawn-dark courtyard, and off beyond the walls. The Unborn Captain had lasted less than a heartbeat. The twin cracks had run through him, dark had crossed light, and small pieces of him had ricocheted about the corridor as the cracks raced on.

The force of the blast set us both on our backs and blew us apart. I lacked the strength to disagree and lay where the explosion had dumped me.

The crack that had raced away from us began in the floor at the spot where we had clasped hands, the spot where our blood had mixed and spilled. The free end of it began to spread, slow this one, fracturing stone with a sound like breaking ice, the bright fissure woven with the dark one.

“Christ!” I blasphemed. May as well die with a final sin on my lips.

The crack veered towards me, blindingly bright, blindingly dark. I blinked at it and behind my eyes an echo of Baraqel stood, wings folded. “It’s in your hands now, Jalan Kendeth.”

I cursed him to be gone and let me die.

“It’s in your hands.” Quieter now, the image more faint.

Snorri struggled to get to his feet, using his axe for support. Somehow the big bastard was actually doing it—too dumb to know when to quit. Still, it didn’t do for a prince of Red March to be outdone by a northern hauldr. I rolled, cursing, set the point of my sword into the gap between flagstones, and tried to heave myself up. It was too hard. Somewhere in the back of my mind Grandmother loomed, tall, regal, scary as hell in her scarlets. Get up! And, roaring with the effort and the pain, I did.

A step back and my shoulders were to the wall, the crack a yard from me, sacks splitting as it fractured the stone beneath, corn kernels leaping into the air and turning inside out with curious popping sounds.

When there’s nowhere to run you sometimes have to resort to extreme measures. Baraqel had kept talking about my line. The Red Queen’s image dominated my imagination in that moment, commanding, fearless, but over her shoulders I saw Garyus and the Silent Sister, and before her, my father. I’ve taken his name in vain time enough, called him a coward, a drunk, a hollow priest, but I knew deep down what had broken him and that he had stood his ground when my mother needed him and not surrendered to his demons until she was past saving.