“Step back from me,” she commanded, shutting her eyes again and sending the thought along the strings.

And the Ancestors shuffled a few steps backward.

She who spins the cloud weaves the storm.

Threads, spinning, weaving. From all her years as a cryptling, helping to cut open and stitch Ancestors back together, she knew a little about that. She rested her hand over Emris’s body, trying to find the threads of him … and there … there they were. Unlike the threads of the Ancestors—gray and dusty and weak as spiderwebs—his felt strong, a shining string of silver wisping away into the ceiling … She tugged, trying to catch it in a needle of her own power, but she couldn’t keep hold of it. The effort of sensing it, of controlling it, was like trying to stitch an eyelid while wearing mittens.

Her eyes fell upon the mask Constance had discarded on the floor, and she had a stroke of inspiration. Constance had clearly found it helpful—perhaps she would too. She stood up and moved cautiously through the standing Ancestors to pick it up. When she slipped it on, the room changed abruptly. She could see magic. The spiderweb threads connecting the Ancestors to the storm spell in her heart shimmered softly. The remnants of the spell Constance had used to bind her to the central plinth glowed a soft, fading purple. And the ghost of Emris’s magic was here too—gray smears like moonlight scattered across the floor where she had forced the cloud from his grasp.

She choked back a sob at the sight of him—because there was no magic in his body now that he was dead.

Focus.

She knelt at his side once more and started to weave the thread of his life back into his body. Sparks flew from her fingers as she held them over his chest, tugging the thread down, down, down…

He returned to himself with a gasp so loud it was almost a scream. He opened his eyes.

“Constance?” Fear was written over his face.

She pulled off the mask, and his expression changed, caught somewhere between love and regret.

“What have you done?” he whispered.

And she kissed him on the lips to shut him up. She didn’t want to hear what he had to say.

EPILOGUE

One week later

Lena stood on the summit of the east tower, gazing out at the winter horizon. The rising moon was an eerie pinkish-red in the light of the dying sun. In the sky’s farthest deepness, stars sputtered to life like tiny candles. She shut her eyes. Opened them again. Somehow the new world remained—no howling hounds, no Justice, no thunder except for the beat in her own heart, no cloud but her own breath in the freezing air.