Lena looked at Emris. He met her gaze, nodded, but his eyes were tight with worry. She supposed she didn’t have much of a choice. She approached nervously as Auris raised her hand.

“Relax,” she said, gently touching Lena’s brow with her palm. A white glow sputtered to life in Lena’s vision, initially almost invisible in the sunlight spilling through the glass dome, but slowly, slowly growing in intensity. It was the brightness of a candle, of a lamp, of a fire burning merrily in the grate—now it was the strength of the bright North Star on a clear night, the crescent moon, the full moon, the first break of day. Then it was too bright, explosions of random color forming in Lena’s brain. She tried to shut her eyes but found her eyelids pinned open as Auris stooped down to peer inside her soul, an owl face, searching and predatory, against the burning glow.

“Here it is again,” she heard Auris whisper. “There’s something there … deeper … some shadow lurking.”

“Stop … ,” Lena managed, tears running down her cheeks. But the probing sensation continued, light pouring into her brain like acid. Her discomfort turned rapidly to pain—the stinging in her eyes to a throb. A smell—like sulfur, or burning—filled her nose. She tried to call out, to pull away from the woman’s face, the small puzzled frown on her brow. Searing agony tore through her mind, but her body refused to shift. She couldn’t even see either side of her; the rest of the Council had been swallowed into the light…

… And she was back where she had started. The passages beneath the castle were dark and twisted. Lena walked quickly, her breath loud in her ears. She was afraid. Someone was following her, their footsteps slow and deliberate but somehow gaining. She was holding the butterfly tightly in her hand. Her other hand trailed along the wall, keeping her steady.

The storm cloud slunk at her feet like a cat, light flickering in and out like a tongue.

Impossible. The storm cloud never sinks beneath the earth.

And yet, here it was.

In the flashes of lightning she spied the niches containing Ancestors along the narrow passage, the names carved beneath their bodies long obscured by dust and cobwebs. A rumble of thunder sounded in the silence.

“What’s the point in running?” A harsh, cruel voice. “It’s no use. I will have what belongs to me.”

A flash of lightning came from behind, casting crazy shadows across the winding passage, and Lena started to run. “Vigo!” she cried out, her voice breaking. “Vigo!” But she’d forgotten—Vigo was dead: he couldn’t help her now. No one could.

She didn’t recognize this part of the crypts. She was lost.