It took her a moment to realize that she was going to have to set down the knife before she could pull the sword out. It was truly stuck. Why had Charles felt it necessary to bury the damn thing? But she managed—Bran steadied her again.

Then she shoved her right hand deep into the cut the sword had made. She took a breath and then crushed her son’s heart until it quit trying to beat. She stood up and fumbled because both of her hands were slick with blood, but she managed to get the point of the sword into the cut and shoved it back in.

She jumped down—but would have fallen to her knees if Charles hadn’t held her up. He released her and she took a step, stumbling because sometime in the last few minutes her leg had gone from being painful to not working right. When Bran put his hand on her arm, she jerked it free.

“Okay,” he said, glancing up at the sky. “But we need to get back.”

“Here,” Anna said. And Leah was able to let her daughter-in-law help her, because Anna didn’t make her feel any uncomfortable or hurtful things.

They stopped when Bran quit walking. Then they all turned to look back at the lake and the cross on top of the hill.

Bran looked at Charles.

“I didn’t do it on purpose,” Charles said. “There’s no reason for it to work again.”

But when Bran didn’t say anything, Charles grunted. Then he raised a hand to the sky and said, in a quiet voice but one that carried power that reminded Leah of the scent of the Singer’s magic, “Now.”

Lightning struck the blade of the sword. And after that, it seemed to Leah as if nothing happened quite as it should have.

The strike should have blown the metal to pieces, she thought. Then she remembered who had built that sword.

Lightning should be instantaneous. A crack and then gone. But the blinding light lingered, emitting a buzzing sound that made the bones of her skull vibrate. She had to look away from the brilliance. Only then the thunder rolled and the ground grew so electric that it bit at Leah’s bare feet.

When the sound was gone, the forest was darker, and it felt so very quiet after the endless thunder that even the wind whistling through the trees seemed like a whisper. Leah looked toward the lake and saw the sword slowly falling over in the ashes that were all that was left of the Singer. And her son.

Leah managed to control her fall so that she simply sat where she’d been standing. But that didn’t work the way she’d expected, either. Because she kept falling until her wet cheek was pressed into the slime-covered mud, and her eyes closed.