“I would like you to imagine a butterfly. Picture it: its colored, iridescent wings. It is beautiful. Beloved. And then look at the moth. It takes the same shape—but look at the differences! The moth is pale and weak and ugly. A pitiful, self-destructive thing. It cannot command itself, for when it sees a fire, it desires the heat. And as it finds the flame, it burns.” His voice echoed everywhere. In my ears, in my head. “That is how we see your world, Paige Mahoney. A box of moths, just waiting to be burned.”

His dreamscape was so close. I readied my spirit. I didn’t care how much damage I did. He’d killed Liss; now I would kill him. Warden grasped my wrist. “Don’t,” he said. “We will deal with him.”

“I want to deal with him.”

“You cannot avenge her, dreamwalker.” Pleione didn’t take her eyes off the enemy. “Go to the meadow. Time is short.”

“Yes, go to the meadow, 40. Take our train to our citadel.” Gomeisa emerged from behind the pillars. His eyes were fresh with aura—the last he’d ever take from Liss Rymore. “Was it so terrible here, 40? We offered you our sanctuary, our wisdom—a new home. You were not unnatural here; lower, yes, but you had a place. To Scion you are a symptom of the plague. A rash upon their shallow skin.” He held out his gloved hand. “You have no home there, dreamwalker. Stay with us. See what lies beneath.”

My muscles were stretched to breaking point. He looked straight at me—into my eyes, into my dreamscape, into the darkest parts of me. He knew his words made sense. He knew his twisted logic well; he’d relied on it for two centuries, using it to tempt the weak. Before I could answer him, Warden swept me back with his arm, right off my feet. A curved blade came singing over his shoulder, over my head. I hadn’t seen it in the darkness. As I hit the floor, he ran toward Gomeisa. Terebell and the male went after him, both gathering spools, chiming out horrific sounds. Nick pulled me back to my feet, but I couldn’t feel his hands. All I could feel was the æther, where the Rephaim were dancing.

The air around me thinned to a silver gauze. I couldn’t see the four Rephs, but I felt their movements. Each flex of muscle, each turn and step sent a shockwave through the æther. They were dancing on the edge of life. A dance of giants, the danse macabre.

The spirits of the Bone Season still lingered in the hall. Terebell’s spool flew through the pillars: thirty spirits, all weaving and rising together, converging on his dreamscape. No voyant could survive being hit by so many at once. I waited for the blow to fall. at once.