Tas takes the Soul Catcher’s hand and we form a chain, Tas holding on to Harper, then me, Musa, Darin, and Laia.

“Walk as you normally would,” the Soul Catcher says. “Close your eyes if you wish. But no matter what you see, do not let go of each other. Do not reach for a weapon. Do not try to fight.” He looks at me when he says this and I nod grudgingly. I know an order when I hear one.

Seconds later, we are flying, the trees blurring by faster than I thought possible. It feels as if I am on a boat tearing across a wild sea with the wind at my back. Naked branches whip past, a massive oak, a clearing of frosted grass, a lake, a family of foxes.

The smell of the ocean fades, and we are in the deep woods, the canopy so thick I cannot make out the evening sky. Beneath my feet, the underbrush is soft and springy. I don’t understand how the Soul Catcher can move us through such dense forest without knocking us all unconscious. But, as when he was a soldier fighting at my back, he does it with complete confidence. After an hour passes, I let myself relax.

Then Laia screams. Her hair has come loose from her braid, streaming out behind her. Beyond it, a half dozen shadows stir, each with eyes that blaze like tiny suns.

My stomach plunges, and I want my scim so badly that I nearly countermand the Soul Catcher’s order and pull away from Harper. Because for a second, I think one of the shadows is him. The Nightbringer. The monster who demanded my mask from me, who engineered the hell rained down upon my people.

But these shapes are different. The Nightbringer is a typhoon of wrath and subtlety. These creatures are a shadow of that. Still, their anger is palpable, like the air before a lightning storm.

“Soul Catcher!” I shout.

“I see them.” He sounds almost bored, but when he looks back over his shoulder, he has the flat concentration of a Mask surrounded by the enemy. He cuts north—then west again, then north, then west until my head spins and I don’t know what direction we’re going.

The sun dips below the horizon, and for a time, it seems as though we’ve outrun the jinn. The River Dusk is nothing more than a flash of blue and a rush of sound before it is past. But not long after we cross, they catch us. This time, we can’t shake them. The jinn shriek madly and surround us.

Ahhh, Blood Shrike. The voice is sibilant and feels as if it’s worming through my mind. Without your sacrifice we would never have been free. Accept a token of our gratitude, a glimpse into your future.

“No!” I shout. “I don’t want—”

We see you, baby bird, not a Shrike but a small and weak thing, fallen far from safety. Parents dead, sister gone, and the other sister soon to join her—

“Stop!” I curse them, but they do not stop. The minutes are hours, and the hours are days as the jinn dig around in my thoughts. I cannot keep them out.

You do not love the child, they say. He is your blood, but you’ll see him dead and yourself upon the throne. You have always wanted it, wicked, wicked Shrike. They pack my mind with images of violence: my nephew, sweet Zacharias, lying limp, his small face drained of life. The horror of it is worse for his innocence, for the burden of rulership that he never knew he carried.

As I cry and beg that he be brought back, Keris laughs. The scars on my face ache, a soul-deep pain. Cook speaks in my ear, poor dead Mirra, but I cannot hear what she says because now there is a great roaring, a maelstrom coming closer, and it will devour us all—

Then I hear the Soul Catcher, though he is not next to me. “Do not listen to them,” he says. “They want to break the chain. They want to fall upon each of you, tear you away and consume your minds. Do not let them. Fight.”

“I can’t,” I whisper. “I—”

“You can. It is who you are. It is what you do best.”

It is what I do best. Because I am strong, and I dig for that strength now. I watched my family bleed out at my feet and I fought for my people and faced a horde of Karkauns alone on a hill of dead bodies. I am a fighter. I am the Blood Shrike.

You are a child.

I am the Blood Shrike.

You are weak.

I am the Blood Shrike.

You are nothing.

“I am the Blood Shrike!” I scream, and the words echo back to me, not in my own voice but in my father’s and my mother’s, in Hannah’s and in the voices of all those lost at Antium.

Broken, unmade thing, you will lose more before the end, for you are a torch against the night, little Shrike, and above all a torch burns.

Quite suddenly, we stumble to a stop in a clearing. A dimly lit cabin rises out of the darkness. I stumble toward it, along with Darin and Harper. Laia has an arm wrapped around Tas, her teeth bared.

The Soul Catcher stands between us and the heavily cloaked jinn, who pace beyond the clearing. He has no weapon. He needs none, for in this moment, he calls to mind his mother’s quiet violence.

“You will not touch these humans,” he says. “Leave.”

One of the jinn detaches from the others. “They are your weakness, Soul Catcher.” She drips with malice, shakes with it. “You will fall and the Waiting Place will fall with you.”

“Not today, Umber,” the Soul Catcher says. “They are under my protection. And you have no power here.”

The softer the Commandant spoke, the more dangerous she was. The Soul Catcher’s voice is very low indeed, and power pulses through him. The air in the clearing thickens. The fire in the jinns’ eyes pales, as if suddenly quenched.

The jinn retreat, fading into the trees, and when they are gone, my legs go weak, my wound aching. Harper is beside me instantly, shaky himself but trying to hold me up. Musa stands apart, eyes glazed. Darin is pale as he wraps an arm around Laia’s trembling shoulders.

Tas is unaffected, and glances between us. “What—what happened?”

“Are you okay, Tas?” Laia pulls him close. “It wasn’t real what they said. You know that—”

“They didn’t speak to the child.” The Soul Catcher casts an appraising look at us. “The border is close,” he says. “But they will be waiting, and they are strongest at night. You are depleted. As am I. Come. They cannot hurt us in the cabin.”

The cabin is large and smells of wood shavings, but it’s tight as a drum and solid as Blackcliff. A stove squats in one corner, with copper pans hanging from hooks on the wall. Beside it is a shelf with baskets of carrots and gourds and potatoes. Strings of garlic and onion hang from above, along with bunches of herbs I couldn’t begin to name.

There is also a table, fresh-built with a long bench on either side. A fireplace sits in the center of the room against the back wall, with a soft Tribal rug and cushions strewn about. The Soul Catcher’s bed is spare, but Tribal lanterns hang above it, making it seem almost cozy.

After a moment I realize what the cabin reminds me of: Mamie Rila’s wagon.

The Soul Catcher prepares a meal and though I know I should help, I do nothing, still numb from the jinns’ predations. Only Tas has the energy, setting out plates and cups until the Soul Catcher bids him sit.

I always preferred Elias’s cooking on long journeys. Distantly, I understand that the meal he serves us is hearty and well seasoned. But I do not taste it. From the silence at the table, no one else does either.

After, we take turns in the washroom, and though the water is ice-cold, I scrub off a week’s worth of sea brine gratefully. By the time I emerge, Musa, Darin, and Tas are fast asleep on the floor. Harper has lain down on his roll too, his eyes shut. But if he’s asleep, then I am a walrus. I wonder what the jinn said to him. I do not ask.

Instead I sit beside Laia, who is cross-legged before the fire. She runs a comb through her long hair, pointedly ignoring Elias as he cleans. His sleeves are rolled up, big hands carefully scrubbing out the stew pot with sand. His hair is longer, curling at the ends, but other than that, he looks like he’ll turn to me any moment with a smile on his face and a tale that will have me in stitches.

“The last time the three of us were in a room together, I was about to kill you,” I say to Laia. “Sorry about that.”

“I’ll forgive you—one day.” Laia smiles, but her eyes are sad. “Do you want to talk about it?”

I shake my head. After a moment, I realize she might have asked because she, too, is haunted by what the jinn said to her.

“Do—do you?”

She wraps her arms around her legs and makes herself small. “I was alone,” she whispers. “Everyone was gone. The Nightbringer had taken Darin. You. Tas. Afya Ara-Nur. Even E—the Soul Catcher. And there was this—this storm. But it was alive and—”

“Hungry,” I say. “A maw, wanting to devour the world. I felt that too.”

The Soul Catcher turns toward us. We lock eyes for a moment, until he shifts that cold gray gaze to Laia.

“You spoke of a hunger, Blood Shrike,” the Soul Catcher says. “What did it feel like? Look like?”

I consider. “It was a storm. Massive. And it felt—skies, I don’t know—”