She stepped forward, instinctively disobeying his command, but was slammed against the wall and bound by invisible bonds. She thought to blast through the spell, but Emris waved his arm in a broad arc and her cane flew from her hand, as if ripped by a strong gust of wind.

“What do you think you’re doing?” she said, her voice tight and low.

“As you refuse to, I’m going to destroy it,” he said, his jaw set.

“Emris, you can’t,” she said, her eyes widening with fear. “You don’t understand.”

“It’s Chaos, isn’t it? Haven’t I done this a thousand times before?”

Nearby, an Ancestor started to lift its head, as if waking from a deep sleep. Constance watched, holding her breath, as eye-gems clattered to the floor—but then the head slumped back down and was still once again. How long before the spell untethered itself for good? Everything was slipping from her grasp.

“Emris, it’s not the same. And you don’t have fifteen other hunters to help you. And, Emris—” But with a sharp movement of his hand, his magic clamped her mouth shut.

She would have said: If you destroy the spell, Lena will die.

If you fail, the spell will destroy you.

He reached out toward the storm cloud’s heart, invisible threads of power suspended between his fingers. He circled his palms around it—and even this simple act brought beads of sweat to his brow, his fingers trembling.

She tried to shout out—but it was useless.

TWENTY-SEVEN

Cloud-Heart

Lena was searching, but the forest was empty. The trees stretched into the distance, cloud curling around their roots. Her boots disappeared into the mulch of the forest floor as she ran.

“Where are you?” she called, but her voice was swallowed in the silence. And what was she looking for anyway?

She felt an aching pain between her lungs, and when she looked down she saw her chest cavity was open. Her heart was fluttering inside, grumbling and flickering with electricity. She frowned. A pair of wings separated from the tangle of blood and thunder, slowly, slowly. A butterfly crawled out. Lena watched with a kind of dispassionate fascination as it perched on her rib cage and flicked its wings.

The butterfly flew from her chest and landed on a branch nearby, brass gleaming and wet with blood, a little cog whirring beneath each of its wings. It fluttered clumsily to the next branch off to the right, and Lena started to follow, pulling her old habit tight to hide her gaping chest.

It felt like forever, but eventually she heard a voice.

“Lena? Lena?” It drifted from far above, like dappled light through the trees.