What choice did Lena have? She could carry on as she was, the storm’s heart tugging inside her like a child longing to return to its mother, remain ignorant of how to stop it, draw on the scrap of the spell’s power to pretend she was a true mage. Or she could die, and the spell would die with her.

Or … she could learn to command it. She felt a thrill of excitement. It felt right. This was why the butterfly had chosen her. This was her destiny. She watched as the small metal creature landed on her hand. She stroked it as she slipped it back into her pocket, the feel of its filigree wings calming her, as always. Now she would find out who she really was, and where she belonged.

But Emris … Worry and disappointment suddenly clouded her certainty. He had been sure that the spell had to be destroyed. Would he accept her choice? Where was he? Had he survived the forest?

“Lena, we have to go,” Constance said sharply, reappearing at the top of the steps.

Lena took a deep breath and followed her down into the fray. They skirted the courtyard. People were flooding the castle, their faces ugly and bloodthirsty, and screams started to rise from those discovered hiding inside the buildings. When a man in rough-spun clothing tried to grab Constance around the waist, she dispatched him with a calm flick of her fingers. He lay still on the cobblestones.

“Is he dead?” Lena asked, chilled by how easy it had looked.

Constance shrugged. “Come on, we don’t have much time.”

Nobody else noticed the two shadowy figures as they slid around the side toward the hall, up the broad steps to the door.

Lena hesitated at the top when she heard a particularly heart-wrenching cry from an upstairs window nearby—it sounded like a child—but Constance pulled her through the doorway, her hand curiously hard and cold beneath its velvet glove. “Come on. You already know how we can help all of them.” Her voice was hard too.

Doesn’t she care about her people at all?

Lena had never felt much affection for the citizens of Duke’s Forest, who had forced her to live in the dark … But they were still people. She tried not to think about what was happening.

Constance led her into the great hall. Some had already passed through here, and the bodies of two black-clad guards and one woman dressed in plain brown skirts lay among the bloodied floor reeds. The smell of death soaked the air, stale and metallic. She tapped her cane on the floor and the trapdoors to the crypts burst open with a bang.

“Constance!” a young man’s voice called.