“Yes! Long live the Cure, and may She bless my path! May I wander for forty days and forty nights and return a Bearer of Grief in Her service! May the Godhead die, and the Cure rule the earth for evermore!” And may you all go to Hell, he added in his mind. I, the Orphan called Minho, will never return.

Hard hands pushed him from behind, and he fell over the edge.

Thoughts of Kit gave him wings.

She sat in the quiet dark of her room, drinking a strong tea, urging the panic that threaded through her veins to unweave, to leave her with some semblance of peace. This was a problem that could be dealt with, and she already had several plans of action lined up inside her mind. However, this very second, there was nothing she could literally do to make those happen any faster, and she tried, tried very hard, to allow herself some measure of respite.

But that peace refused to come, even after going through the digits. Images of the Coffin—the artifact taken from the Box by Mikhail—continued to flash across her vision, as if it floated in front of her, an inexplicable thing that stirred up her ancient terror of madness. A terror so deep-set that it often made her worry that she’d go mad from it. Oh, the circular logic, the irony.

She stood up and walked to the sink and poured out the remains of her bitter tea. It tasted like the bile of a starving, emaciated beast. Something stronger. That’s what she needed. Something stronger that would scorch her throat, warm her stomach, deaden her brain.

There was a knock at her door.

“Flint?” she called out. In how many ways could she tell the man that she didn’t want to be disturbed? Was it time to throw a little violence in? It had been a while . . .

The door opened—she heard the barest of creaks, the swish of the bottom rail against the thick carpet. Violence. Yes, violence. Her anger ignited, she marched out of the kitchen and entered the main hallway of her apartment, ready to unleash all the frustrations of her day on to poor Flint. But it wasn’t Flint.

“Nicholas?” She barely recovered in time, barely dissolved her anger and rage and haste. Citing the digits within her mind, calmness spread through her like a quick shot of drugs. But if anyone could perceive . . .

“Why so agitated?” Nicholas asked.