They are burning to death, and she gives a weak cry, useless anguish, as she stumbles closer. Black smoke gathers over it all like storm clouds, and still the buzzing rises, rises.

Where is Eren, where are the children? Lisbet struggles closer, but she must take a wide circle, the heat beating her back. Sweat and tears pour down her face, her eyes blind with smoke, her body racking.

It is not until she is beneath it that she knows. Not until she is beneath the smoke, blotting out the blue with black Hellfire. That it is not only smoke, blocking the sun. That it has breath.

The bees that have survived are swarming, and it is exactly like a flock of birds, twisting the air, miring it with wings. She trips back, away from the swarm, and as she does her gaze falls groundward, and she sees more bees there, another, smaller swarm that has taken the form of a man, a man black and crawling with bees, and she knows it is the Devil, at last come to her.

She falls to her knees as he rears up, his voice a deep bellow. Ulf runs from between the burning skeps, his fur singed and eyes wide with pain, runs full at the Devil and sends the bees lifting in a furious and shapeless mass toward the sky. It is only a man, bloated with stings, wailing. He stumbles towards her, and she sees it is Plater.

‘Frau Wiler!’

It is a girl’s voice, but she does not stop to see who speaks, who pulls at her skirts, because there is movement deeper in the flaming hives. Eren is in there, Eren is amongst the burning skeps.

She knocks Plater to the ground, plunges into the smoke and swarms. She feels the bees, made mad by their terror, piercing her neck, her hands as she claws through them, smoke made solid and stinging, but she does not care, she must fetch out Eren.

Coughing, not hers. There. She noses towards it, eyes blocked and streaming with smoke, her lungs becoming heavy. Her baby. She cannot remain here but she cannot leave. There, again.

‘Eren!’ She chokes on his name, but there he is, he has hold of her, pulling her back.

‘Away,’ he calls, his strong hands on her, voice clear in her ear. It is all confusion, all stink and terror, and all that holds her tethered is Eren, Eren’s hands holding tight—

Then, there. Plater. He is suddenly before them, filling her vision, bees crawling over burnt and stung skin. He is full of venom and smoke, he grunts in pain and anger, and she knows as he stands and wraps his hands around her throat what he intends.

‘Bitch,’ he grunts, his breath thick with alcohol. ‘See now who I am. See what I can do.’

He speaks, she is certain, not only to her. He speaks to Ida, to Nethe, to every woman who defied him with her happiness. She knows, as red gold sparks pop behind her eyes, that he means to murder her. But she is not only her. She is her, and her boy. Her child, who has survived nearly nine months inside her. Fury surges as breath leaves her. Plater will not take him from this world.