My heart freezes.

Purian Rose turns his gaze back to us. “No, Mr. Fisher, I intend to break you down, piece by piece, until you’re begging me to kill you.”

He sweeps out of the room, and the door bangs shut behind him.

The instant he’s gone, Natalie buries her face against my chest. She’s trembling all over. I hold her until she’s calmed down. “Why can’t he just leave us alone?” she eventually says.

“He’s trying to frighten us,” I say, releasing her. “But threatening me isn’t going to work. If it’s a fight he wants, then that’s what he’s going to get.”

I stride over to the arched window, where Purian Rose had been just moments before. I look out across the city, at the burned ruins of the houses bombed during the war, at the thousands of white crosses decorating the city cemetery, at the familiar black line on the horizon separating us from the Darklings.

The half-eaten apple rests on my window ledge, a dark reminder of his threats. I toss it out of the window.

Natalie takes my hand, and my heart squeezes.

“I thought the war was over,” she says sadly.

I press my lips against hers in response. Her body is warm against mine, and I hold her like this for a while. I don’t have the heart to tell her what I’m really thinking:

The war’s only just begun.