“Don’t die.” I say it over and over, like a prayer. Don’t die. Don’t die. Don’t die. My father’s face flashes in my memory.

My mother’s.

Gran’s.

I’ve lost too many people. I can’t lose Tessa, too. But her eyes are vacant.

Jacey kneels beside me. Her breathing is ragged. She presses two fingers to Tessa’s neck. “She gone.”

I shake my head. Wipe my nose with my sleeve. “No.”

Don’t die. Don’t die. Don’t die.

“Saskia, there’s nothing you can do.”

But there must be.

A yawning chasm of despair opens inside me. This is all my fault. Tessa didn’t want to come. She practically begged me to go to the Grand Council instead of handling this on our own, but I wouldn’t listen. And now she’s dead.

What have I done?

I look up, tears blurring my vision as I take in the scene of destruction. Shards of glass glitter at my feet. Gran’s broken bones are strewn across the floor.

Suddenly I’m hit from behind. It knocks the wind out of me.

Lars.

He grabs me roughly around the waist and drags me forward. I try to struggle free, but he’s too strong, and I can’t land a blow. What is he doing? He doesn’t need to get close to me to end me. He could kill me from afar, snap my neck like he snapped Tessa’s.

And then I see it. His bone pouch has come loose and is lying across the room. Bram’s pouch rests alongside it, and a handful of small bones are strewn across the floor between them.

Lars is using me as a shield.

“Put her down!” Bram shouts. But Lars doesn’t even acknowledge him. He handles me like I weigh no more than a rag doll. My head bounces up and down with each step.

And then abruptly, he drops me. My hip hits the floor and I cry out. Lars sweeps both bone pouches into his fist, and races toward Bram. I try to crawl to my feet, but my leg throbs.

A sickening crack splits the air. My throat closes.

No. Bram. No.

My gaze flies to him, my breath trapped at the base of my throat, terrified of what I’ll find.

Bram stands over Lars, who lies in the corner in a heap. Dead. Bram’s face is a mask of rage. His eyes are bleak.

“You did this?” I ask him.

“I couldn’t let him kill you.” His voice his haunted.

A sob rips from my throat. “Tessa is dead.”

He scrubs a palm over his face. “I couldn’t let him kill you too.”

I think of Declan standing in my house in Midwood, helping Latham until the end.