Enet looked at Pikte and another scream threatened, one that had nothing to do with the bleeding stump of her finger. ‘Please,’ she breathed, too low for him to hear. ‘Don’t.’

‘Choose, senior Chooser of the Singing City,’ Xac mocked her. ‘Choose what happens next.’

Don’t.

‘Choose,’ he hissed suddenly and she jumped. Jumped – and chose.

Enet shuddered, dizzy with pain and cowering at the promise of more to come, pain such as she’d never known and that would never leave her.

For the Empire.

‘You have cast out our son. He will live and die unknown and unmourned.’ She sobbed out breath, sobbed out her heart and her spirit and cast them to the Underworld. ‘I do not raise my voice in protest but offer you the stone knife.’ The ritual words were obscene upon her tongue as she made a tiny, innocent-seeming gesture with the tip of the blade.

She could not save Pikte. Whether on the streets or here in the source, he was already dead. But she had this chance to save herself and so elevate the Empire into glory brighter than it had ever known. To do the unthinkable in order to reap the unimaginable.

If she would offer the Singer even this, how could he cast her aside? No other would feed his spirit this way. Only Enet. Only his beloved Enet.

‘Nothing you do is wrong, holy lord,’ she whispered as the song began to swell and in her cowardice she did not look at Pikte’s tear-stained face. ‘You are the Singer. You are divine. And I offer you the stone knife.’

He’s dead anyway. Dead anyway dead anyway dead anyway.

There had never been anything Enet would not do for the Empire, for the glory of them all and not just herself. For the world spirit. But never had she been pushed so far; never had her choice been so difficult, or felt so wrong despite being right.

Setatmeh, please. Setatmeh, tell me this is right.

The Singer snatched the knife from her and she flinched. His power made her dizzy, squashed her to the size of an ant beneath his gaze. ‘Nothing you do or desire is wrong, holy lord.’ The words were foul on her tongue.

‘And if I ram this into your eye?’ he breathed. The song rumbled in the background, the lust inside it building.

Enet swallowed. Do it. Do it and leave my boy alone. Do it. ‘Then I will watch your greatness through the other.’

The Singer hefted the knife and Enet tensed against the promise of pain. Power surged through the source until the air crackled as if with pent lightning and Xac’s skin flushed golden-red with magic and he tightened his grip on the boy’s arm until Pikte howled, a howl abruptly cut off by the blade crunching through his bird-delicate ribcage and into a lung.