Emris breathed deeply. “I think I’ve figured it out. Constance believes the heart of the spell is housed in the butterfly. But what she doesn’t realize is that when you found the butterfly, the spell passed to you.”

Lena pressed her hand against her chest as if she could feel the spell inside her. “But how …?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never heard of anything like this before. I wouldn’t have thought it was possible.” Emris smiled slightly. “But then, this is perhaps the greatest spell ever cast. Of course it would have an intelligence of its own.”

“It … it’s conscious?” She remembered how the spell had taken over when she was attacked by the snake, which had mysteriously died even as she passed out. She remembered how the Radical had told her she was something different. She remembered too how her power had appeared to help her in the shop, bringing the butterfly back to life—how the mechanical creatures had launched themselves at their creator as if animated by some other, vicious consciousness. How, outside the Holy Council, she had severed her ties to Faul so that her power might overwhelm her and take care of Chatham. Saving her. Saving itself.

“A spell like that has Chaos at its core,” said Emris, “and it wishes nothing more than to be free of anyone’s control, to wreak its own havoc on the world.”

Lena looked down at her hands, feeling like an imposter or the host of a parasite. But who is really the parasite in our partnership? “So my power … isn’t really mine at all? I’m not a mage?” She felt a kind of pain in her chest, a grief as she let go of the person she had thought she was becoming—a stronger, better person. Someone who had the power to defend herself, to walk in the sunlight and turn her face to the world. She heard her breath, shallow and fast, roaring in her ears. And suddenly she understood why she always dreamed of the crypts and of the forest, why she felt this constant urge toward a place of death, and sorrow, and pain, and darkness, drawn like a creature on the end of a lead. Because the spell’s heart had to return. Because otherwise … otherwise … well, she wasn’t sure what. But if she wanted to know the truth, one thing was certain:

“I have to go back,” she whispered.

TWENTY

Hope

A night had passed since Constance had spoken to Emris, draining the best part of her energy.

Rats rustled somewhere on the periphery of her sight, glistening shapes pushing through sodden straw, tails pale in the half-light. She pulled her knees to her chest, rested her chin on the ruined material of her ceremonial robes, feeling the silky smooth embroidery against her throat. She breathed the rancid air deeply and watched the entrance to the crypts.