The Lords say nothing. Their silence condemns me.

Lenoir, the half-blind Master of the Flesh Guild, arrives, huffing and puffing. He drops to one knee and presents the Tiger with his whip. A cruel leather cat-o’-nine-tails ending in metal hooks. It is rumored to be the whip that was used on him as a child, when his father sold him to slavers. They say he found the man who whipped him, cut out his heart, and took his weapon.

I’m not afraid.

The Fleshers untie me from the chair. They haul me up and turn me around so that I’m facing the Court and the Lords. Lenoir wants me to see them watching. Tomasis won’t meet my eye. Orso looks only at the Tiger. Corday watches me as if I’m a fly caught in a web. Yet I won’t look away from them. I’m fearless. Proud.

“How many times did she speak?” Corday asks.

“Five,” Lord Yelles answers.

“The strike. She drew blood,” Lenoir adds.

“But he struck her once,” says Corday.

“Five lashes, then,” Orso says. “No more.”

They push me to my knees.

They say the Tiger can rend flesh from bone. They say he had years of practice when he was a slaver.

I tense every muscle, waiting for the blow.

Even so, I’m not prepared when the first lash hits me. It’s like nothing I’ve ever felt. Like fire running through my body. My mouth inadvertently opens and a cry escapes me. Every part of me is aflame. Montparnasse is behind the Lords, his eyes fixed on mine. I see Loup, unsteady on his feet. Tears leave dark streaks along the ashen gray of his face; he weeps as he holds back Gavroche, covering the boy’s eyes with his hand.

The second stroke tears through me, and I can’t help but scream. Only two things exist: the pain that fills my body, and the thought that burns through my heart.

She’s gone.

The world is darkness threatening to engulf me. Blood and sweat pour down my back. Every limb shakes. Femi is there beside Tomasis. His chin held high; his hands are balled into fists.

When the third stroke comes, everything starts to dim. The sounds around me thicken and fade. The world grows cold. The darkness grows bright, and stars dance about me. The ground beneath me trembles, and I hear it: the voice of the City whispering my name.

When the fourth blow lands, I see my whole life laid out before me drawn in threads of crimson, gray, and black. I see how it started, with a sister weeping in her bed; a child so terrified she gave herself to a Thief; a girl who was so lovely, the world would go to war to possess her. And through it all, he is present. He is the hunting song calling through the night.

The broken boy beneath the lash.

It ends where it begins.

It ends with him.

He is the nightmare, the monster. The thing that stalks in the dark. He is the fear ensnaring each one of us, gripping us in his claws.