The mystic dropped to his knees, gibbering as blood pumped from his nose, ears and mouth. Muckle had already fallen, the poison in his blood quickened by the crown’s sorcery. He was perfectly still. At the base of the stairs, the thing that had once been Sir Corc rose from the broken form of Bantam Flyn, pulling a foot of dripping spur from the squire’s throat. The triumphant coburn issued a savage cry of dominance to the sky and then sunk down atop his slain foe, his life leaving him from a hundred flowing wounds.

Rosheen turned away from all the death and found herself looking into Padric’s eyes. Ages ago, she had known a life devoid of hardship, bereft of sorrow. Each day was a dance and a song and she, like all her kind, was content to laugh as they feasted. Even after the wars, she found it easy to put the bloodshed behind her, and for centuries she gave not a passing thought to the hatred of those days. And then this boy had been born, grown to a man in a moment, and with no power or Magic, he had enthralled her. Now, she would rather struggle on with him, in toil and misery until the last day of his short life than live herself, immortal and carefree, through the final Age of the world. She knew that now, just as she knew the life of the changeling boy threatened every life on the isle. But there was no evil in Pocket. And she could not give him up to this murderous spirit.

She wished there was another choice.

Padric met her gaze and nodded, crushing her with the choice he had already made.

“I will save him, Rosh.”

He charged up the stairs, over the blood and bodies of their fallen comrades, through the maniacal laughter of the possessed scarecrow. Rosheen flew after him, making for the crown. The iron would destroy her, but she did not care. She would give her beloved boys every chance.

The husk turned as she sped towards him.

A horrible constriction suddenly seized her wings and she fell roughly to the stairs. Straining back she found she was wrapped in spiders’ silk. The strands snapped and slithered over her body, winding themselves around her wrists, pinning her arms behind her.

Padric continued to barrel forward and was only a few steps away from the entranced form of Pocket when he lurched, stopping short and grunting with pain. He snapped his hand to his leg and blood welled between his fingers.

“We freed you,” he growled at the air, taking a limping step upwards. “This is how you would thank us?”

“Boy,” the girl’s voice was biting, “there is only one way to be free of my prison!”