Liam beamed at him, then settled into the pollen-flecked chair like it was the finest chariot. Daniel joined him, then tugged loose the rope he’d wrapped around the braking system. They set off careening down the mountainside.

“Are you crazy? The minute I’m out of these ropes, you fairies are—YAUGH!”

Klaus was abruptly yanked off his feet as they descended. He dangled only a few feet up, for now. But the terrain was changing soon.

“These fairies get to decide whether you live or die, Klaus. So think very carefully about what you want to say next.” Liam pressed his knife’s blade against the rope that suspended Klaus below them. “Kreutzer’s project. What’s he doing to his soldiers?”

“Okay, okay, I only know a little bit—there’s this man helping him, this awful man, he looks like Death, all darkness and hatred—”

Even though he’d known it was coming, it still struck Liam like a kidney punch. “Pitr Černik.” He closed his eyes and saw that dark face looming behind him in the mirror. Heard the awful screams.

“Yes, that’s him. They’re manipulating—energy, I think they called it, imbuing soldiers with it. They were asking for volunteers—”

“Imbuing?” Liam asked. “Imbuing, how?”

“I don’t know! I didn’t sign up! Sounded like suicide to me.” The chair swayed as Klaus twisted against his bonds. “That’s all I know, I swear!”

“You said it sounded like suicide.” At a nod from Liam, Daniel swiped his blade against the edge of the rope; just enough to slacken the tension as Klaus dropped further. They were nearly over the river ravine now. “How do you know that?”

“My friend, he . . . he signed up for it. Said it was better pay, and it’s supposed to—do something, he said. They promised it would help him achieve his true Übermensch potential. But I didn’t see him for a week, didn’t know if he’d gotten deployed, or—” Klaus yelped as the rope frayed further. “Then I saw him again, in the bowels of the castle. But he wasn’t . . . himself. His movements were all wrong, his eyes were off, there was this horrible stench of decay to him—and his skin, God. It was like he’d been taxidermied, like there was something underneath that wasn’t him anymore . . .”

Liam set his jaw in a hard line. Kreutzer still hadn’t perfected his technique, but he was getting close. If he stabilized the bridge, there was no telling how many more soldiers he could transform at a time, or how many of the shadowy monsters he could chain to his control. And if he’d rescued Pitr from the shadow world and was using him too . . .

They reached the ravine.