The dragon biting its tail.

Stephen Bathory’s tomb.

There are only a few other things of note in the chamber: a knight carved in a slab of red marble that looks as though it was formerly broken in two. A stone crest—the dragon again.

That is it.

I clutch my head. Nothing makes sense except the ticking of the seconds, the precious hours we spent driving here. Nearly two of five days . . . gone.

I almost miss the slight figure of the man who comes to inquire of Rolan in a voice so soft it’s as though he has only a short breath to speak each sentence. He is thirty, if that, his thick glasses making him appear older.

The comb-over doesn’t help.

I don’t have the concentration to try to hold a conversation, turn away as Rolan speaks with him. Not that I’d understand them anyway—they’re talking in Hungarian.

Meanwhile, Luka is somewhere in a semi trailer, bleeding out for all I know.

Just beyond the last row of pews, I press the heels of my hands to my eyes. I refuse to replay the last words we spoke, or to dwell on how strong his hand was, holding mine, the way he smelled. I force myself to focus, to speed and calm my mind at once. But I can feel the tears seeping down my cheeks.

“Audra,” Rolan says. I hear him as though from a distance. Because I am praying a petition that is both plea and demand at once, in a deafening mental scream.

“Audra!” Rolan says.

My eyes snap open. But he is not standing there with a diary, or with a long-hidden lockbox. Or with a map of local landmarks that somehow form a dragon, three teeth like the center of an X.

“I am Pastor Tamas,” the man says, so quietly that I squint, as though doing so will help me hear.

“Welcome to our church,” he says. I glance desperately at Rolan. I am not here for the indoctrination tour!

“The pastor says this was once a Catholic church,” Rolan tells me. I blink at him, sure my expression is blank.

“Yes, it is Calvinist now since the sixteenth century,” the pastor says, before launching into something about the freestanding bell tower outside.

I glance down at my feet, at the marble beneath my sneakers, rebuilt in the lifetime of Elizabeth.

“There are thirty-three monks buried under the main church floor,” he says, following my gaze. I back a step. I’ve never understood the practice of burying priests or prominent elders beneath the floors of churches in a holy minefield of souls. Of entombing poets, patrons, and artists along the walls, or far below in crypts.

My first thought is that I hope we don’t have to break through a slab of marble to find the diary—or whatever it is—that will save Luka’s life.