His eyes met mine, straight on, without a flinch. I wasn’t sure if he’d ever done that before. What had changed?

“Or we fight,” he said. “To the bitter end. Try to rally Trollus against Roland and Angoulême. Roland isn’t invincible and Angoulême isn’t infallible. There are more ways to end them than pure strength of magic alone.”

“You’d make a good ruler,” I said, having thought it for a long time but never voiced it.

“Maybe during times of peace,” he said. “But to effect change, to rally people to risk everything, that requires a more ambitious and charismatic individual than I’ll ever be. Either way, I hope we’ll never have to find out.” Then he waited, because I hadn’t answered his question.

“We fight,” I said. “Until the bitter end.”

Sabine returned to the tower top. “Tips says they’re ready,” she said. “The half-bloods have blocked their ears with magic, and Fred’s men still had their rowan from the night of the masque.” She went to stand next to Marc, and it was not lost on me that she stood near enough to him that their elbows brushed. It made me wonder if Marc was ready, or even capable, of moving on from Pénélope, or if Sabine was pining for a young man who had nothing left to give. Either way, it was not my place to interfere, and given we might all be marching toward the end, what would be the point?

Sabine handed me a skin of warm lemon water, and I drank deeply, then ran through a series of exercises to warm up my neglected voice. She started to stuff her ears with wool, but Marc turned from his task and gently pushed her hands down. “Better not to take chances with you.”

Sabine touched the side of her face, and I knew she was feeling the warm press of magic protecting her from my spell.

Turning so they wouldn’t see the tears burning in my eyes, I took a deep breath, and then I sang. I chose a lullaby my mother – my real mother, not Anushka – had sung to me when I was a little girl, focusing my will into the lyrics and their sentiment. Be calm.

My voice filtered away from the tower and was caught with the threads of Marc’s magic, which carried it out across the city, over the wall, and into the fields and hills beyond.

Be still.

Power filtered up from the earth, through the stones of the castle, and into my feet. Wind soared in from the sea, carrying mist that tasted like salt on my lips. The magic felt pure, wiping away the tarnish of the blood magic I’d used, the troll magic I’d stolen, and making me feel clean. It was a gift.