“Shh.” His breath is hot in my ear. “Look.”

I was so focused on the veil, I didn’t see the figure sitting in front of it.

It takes a moment for my eyes to focus in the new light, but he’s so obvious it’s a wonder I didn’t see him before. He’s sitting cross-legged in front of the veil, wearing a high-necked coat and plain trousers. His hair is cropped close to the skull, like a soldier’s. But what strikes me the most is how young he looks. He may even be younger than Finn and me.

Something stirs in the dark. Another boy, leaned against the opposite wall, his eyes closed.

They haven’t yet noticed we’re here.

Finn snaps and a spark appears between his thumb and forefingers. He smiles and it lights up his whole face. He grins wide like he used to when we’d practice magic together in the woods.

“I can have a go at him from the left. Or you can do that clever trick with the neck you used to take out Vykotsky… that would be quick. I can take the one on the right…,” Finn whispers, thinking out loud. It takes me a moment to realize what he’s suggesting, but I should have seen it sooner.

“You mean to kill them?” I whisper back in horror.

Finn’s eyes go wide at my reaction. “What else do you suppose we do? We don’t know how much time we have until his friends join him. This is an extraordinary stroke of luck, to find only two of them, unarmed and unprotected.”

“No—” My answer is immediate and as sharp as I am able to make it and still keep my voice low. My eyes well hot with tears. “I won’t do it. I won’t, I can’t, I can’t.” The tears fall despite my best efforts to stop them.

My chest seizes up, my heart feels as if it is struggling to beat, all at once moving too little blood through my body. I feel as if I might pass out, as if I might die.

I cannot add another ghost to the parade of them that haunt me late at night. I cannot have another’s blood on my hands. I cannot take another life.

I’d rather be dead myself than have to live a life with the knowledge that I have killed yet another.

I bend, placing my hands on my knees, and attempt to suck in a full breath, but my lungs are stuck too.

“Shh,” Finn soothes me like a spooked horse. “Goodness, Frances, calm down. What has gotten into you?”

“I can’t, I can’t,” I cry.

“Shh, you have to be quiet. He’ll hear us.”

“I don’t care. Let him kill me, I’d rather be dead than do this.”