“I can’t leave Saba here,” he begged, forming tears making his eyes glisten. My eyes were tearing too, but for a totally different reason. The smoke was spreading quickly, and there wasn’t much time before the fire would follow.

“She’s gone, Magnus. It’s an empty shell.” I grabbed the back of his neck with both hands and dragged him down to my eye level. “Listen to me. If we don’t get out of here we’ll be dead, too. Do you know how to ride a horse?”

“I haven’t ridden in three years.”

“Good enough.” I took his hand and we ran outside to the stable.

We’d lingered too long. The near-moonless night was now glowing red, flames shattering the windows, licking the stone castle black. The horses must’ve sensed something was wrong, because when we threw the stable door open they sounded upset, although I couldn’t see anything. I used my pen to light the closest lamp, and the room was suddenly haunted by elongated shadows of panic.

“Stay back, Andi!” Magnus shouted, rushing up to a stall and opening it wide for a horse before rushing to the next one. I don’t know if it quite knew what to do with the information now, but it would if the fire got any closer.

I grabbed Magnus before he could unlatch another one. “I’ll do this. You get a horse for us.”

I released the other horses—seven in total—then went to help Magnus, who had gotten reins onto the archbishop’s horse but was still strapping the saddle.

“We don’t need one,” I said.

“Are you out of your mind?” He yelped, wincing at the sound of something inside the house crashing down. “I’m already wearing a blanket for a skirt, I don’t also want a sore backside.”

“A sore backside is the least of our worries right now!”

Magnus tightened the saddle, then gave me a boost onto the horse, climbing up behind me and taking the reins. We rode away from the heat into the natural cool of the desert night, the other horses following our lead, the flames cleansing all the memories and pain of that castle just as well as any amulet.

EPILOGUE

I gripped Magnus’s hand, barely processing it as I stared at the doors to my childhood home. It had been a month since I’d last been here. A month since Magnus and I left the castle behind … a month since I’d lost a father and a friend.

Magnus adjusted the lay of the amulets around his neck—the very same ones that had cleansed him of the Evil Eye. “You can’t be serious, Andi. This is where you lived?”