“Ignazio! You’re better than this!” I called. “If you harm those children, you will damn yourself forever. You can’t come back, once you cross that line.”

Lady Savony left the room without breaking stride. But Ignazio paused in the door, his hand on the frame.

“It’s too late,” he said softly. “I made my peace with damnation the day I poisoned you.”

The door closed behind them. The lock clicked into place. A line of light flared briefly around the door as the artifice seal activated.

That bastard. My hands clenched in my lap. He didn’t deserve to bear the Cornaro name. Our family might be pragmatic and manipulative at times, but even the most ruthless had never stooped to murdering children.

I sat still for a few moments more as their footsteps receded down the hall and then descended the stairs. When I was sure they were gone, I staggered to my feet, snatched up the lantern, and brought it over to the portcullis. A tremor passed through me as I examined the mirror, making the lantern light quiver, but my attention didn’t waver. I had to set Marcello free, with or without Ignazio’s jewelry.

One weave of beaded artifice wire carried the command from the mirror to the winch to drop the portcullis. Another ran to the portcullis itself, activating the magical seal that kept it locked in place. Five empty niches in the mirror frame awaited Ignazio’s rune stones, no doubt, which presumably acted as the keys to unseal it again.

That was a problem. But Ignazio knew little about artifice. Unlike alchemy, its rules could sometimes be rewritten by nimble fingers and a skilled mind.

I held the lantern close to the golden wire that wove around an iron ring atop the portcullis, defining the seal. Five blue beads formed a pattern in the delicate traceries of wire, matching the mirror keystones. If I could line them up just right on the complex swirls, like the tumblers of a lock, it would release the energy to signal the seal to open.

I could do this.

My breath rasped more and more quickly through my lips, but it still wasn’t enough air. With trembling hands, I delicately, carefully slid the beads along the wirework. I had to keep my mind sharp and focused, no matter how much my body came apart around me.

My numb, clumsy fingers kept pushing the beads too far, or rotating them on the wire. I wanted to weep with frustration. I knelt by the portcullis, the lantern oil burning lower and lower, my vision growing narrower and narrower. Those tiny beads became my entire world as I fumbled them, with agonizing slowness, into place.

Finally, finally, a jolt of energy ran through my fingertips. I had them lined up. The seal was open.