There came a point when nothing mattered except the ending. This was Del, but it might as well have been the Man, whipping the pup she’d been. Leaving her in the metal cage to nurse her wounds after a turn in the ring, when the fever shook her. Laughing as she chewed at the mesh, trying to get at him. Banging a stick against the crosshatched metal wire to make her retreat.

She was here to bring Jilly back.

But she was also here to put an end to the piece of the Man that lived deep inside her own head, the way that Del lived in Jilly’s. If she died doing it, so be it. She’d die with her jaws on his throat, and not even death would be able to pry them loose. Not magic or power or whatever it was that let Del rule in this place.

Because he didn’t rule her.

No one would rule her again.

So as Del tightened his finger on the triggers of the shotgun, she charged up the last few stairs separating them.

The shotgun went off with a roar that sounded like the world ending.

Grey

The woman who opens the door to Raven’s house looks from me to Odawa. She knows my grey jay blood the same way I know hers is raven—for cousins, it’s as quick and familiar a form of recognition as looking at somebody’s face. She also knows Odawa belongs to the salmon clan, but I don’t think that’s what makes her frown before her gaze returns to me. At least it’s not the only thing.

“Lucius will see you,” she tells me after I explain why I’m here, “but the fish man can’t come in.”

Though I’ve never met her, I assume this is Chloe Graine, Raven’s long-time companion who looks after him those times when he withdraws from the world. She’s elegant and tall, dark-haired with strong, stern features and midnight-dark eyes that warm somewhat when she faces me, but go flat and cold whenever her gaze turns in Odawa’s direction.

Something’s off here, I realize. Exactly what, I can’t tell.

“Why not?” I ask.

“Think about it,” she says. She brushes her hair back from her eyes, and I catch the faint scent of anise. “I’m surprised you even have to ask.”

Beside me, I can feel Odawa stiffen. It could have been with tension, it could have been from anger. I can’t tell. I just know that the last thing I need is for him to cause some kind of a scene now, just when I’m going to get my chance to talk to Raven.

“I’m really in the dark here,” I tell her.

Chloe gives me a look that seems to ask, are you a moron?

“Well, for starters,” she says, “he murdered Lucius’s goddaughter.”

“His goddaughter . . . ?”