kaamos (n.) a melancholic midwinter realisation that many long, dark days lie ahead before longed-for sunshine returns to your life.

The district was alive with noise and colour and movement, even as the sun still strained over the edge of Wall Szymanska, and the Warriors were moving around one another in a silent, watchful ballet. One last chance, Zoran mused, to live as Illéans and to dream of a quiet life. He found that he was watching Ilja more than the rest, for Ilja would find it harder than the rest. This whole place was a peculiar kind of purgatory for Zoran's oldest friend, though that was a purgatory of the Chariot's own making.

Was it still right to call him the Chariot? Was that still what he was? Harder again to discern whether Zoran himself was still the Hierophant. Easier for the others – Ina had never been merely her curse. Kinga had rarely been anything more.

He thought that maybe she knew what he was thinking; her lone dark eye was watching him with thinly veiled amusement. Jaga – no, Kinga, Kinga – was wearing a thoughtful expression and her excubitor coat, her sleeves rolled up neatly to reveal a freckled forearm corded with lean muscle. It tensed and flexed; she was ill at ease, and disguising it well. There was a long scar on her forearm, knotted black as though healed over with druj leather.

Did it feel like losing a part of herself? Did it feel like a failure?

Did it feel like freedom?

They were sitting on the edge of the marketplace, a little way from one another lest they attract too much attention by seeming too familiar. Zoran wondered whether that mattered anymore. If this was really their last day in Illéa – the end, as Khalore had hoped that it might be, as Ilja had promised – then shouldn't they be allowed to draw close to one another, to put their arms around each other, to enjoy these last few moments as they never had before?

Zoran had found himself nostalgic, suddenly, for those last, long-ago, lovely moments together as they set up their new identities and their new lives and some semblance of a new future unfolding ahead of them.

Had they wasted this opportunity? Should they have taken the chance to make themselves into someone else? Zoran was still himself – miserably, tragically, sourly so.

He could have taken the opportunity, he mused. He could have remade himself. Taken his resentments and made them into influences. Kinga and Khalore had managed it – Kinga replacing her Pekka with her Kane, her Ragnar with her Ghjuvan, moving effortlessly into the skin of the Kaasik girl she might have been if she had been born here, while Khalore had sharpened herself, rid herself of all her weakest points without sacrificing the remnants of her softness, forcing herself into the shape of the best version of herself. Ilja had never decided for definite who, exactly, he wanted to be, which always made it harder to tell if he had changed here or if it was just the usual fluctuations of his character as he determined how best to fit into the world around him.

And, of course, Ina was perfect the way she was.

In Matthias' obvious, startling absence, Zoran rather felt as though he were obligated to give himself shit for that one. You're pathetic, Czarnecki.

The crowd in front of them had parted, but barely; Kane Hijikata still had to weave his path around the dancers, looking irritated that he had to, tugging impatiently at his gloves. "Kunegunda?"

"Boss," Kinga said, and rose. She was wearing a clean black eyepatch, over which she had sewn a big X in red thread; it was distracting, and made it so much harder to read into her gaze as she looked at the captain. Zoran had always compared it to the way she had once looked at Pekka, mired in the same kind of lingering, resentful admiration that the Hierophant himself had once held for the golden boy of Ina's heart – but this expression, on the day of the Fall, the day that it all ended, the day that they all Fell… it was different. Even without his curse – particularly without his curse – he could see it so clearly: this was how little Kunegunda Szymanska had, once, regarded Matthias Kloet. It was a distinctive expression, when one gazed upon a person that they would permit, over and again, to devastate them.

Zoran knew it well from the mirror.

They fell into step beside one another, walking closer than they needed to. The general, Lorencio Suero, was sitting on the veranda of a nearby leatherworker's studio, which had been converted to a teashop for the day; he raised his glass to greet them as they passed, while Khalore feigned a studious air of unfamiliarity. The lines of the harness were clear under Kinga's clothes as she waved back. Zoran hoped, desperately, that she would keep her focus. If they were to leave today – today, before the Radiance returned – then they would need a way out. At least one harness between every two people, for they had no Ghjuvan to ferry them out beyond the wall and they had no Moon to fly them to safety – home. To Illéa. No. Home, to Irij. He was struggling to do the maths, so cluttered his mind with the simple anxiety of finally finally finally.

Finally.

And what next?

Ina and Eero, Khal and Ilja, Kinga and Zoran himself. Azula and Belle. Hyacinth and Pjotr, if they were still people, if they could still exist in the real world outside the walls. Was that all? Was that all they had been reduced to? Was that enough?

And what next?

He watched Kinga and Hijikata disappear back into the crowd and felt unease steal across his spine, an intruder unwanted, a prophecy unseen.

And what next?

He had dreamed of nothing again, for what few hours of sleep he had stolen between dusk and noon, and had awoken feeling like he had wrestled with angels in his sleep. Was this, now, waking? Was he still sleeping? Nothing thicker than a knife's blade separated happiness from melancholy; he found himself straddling its edge. He was here, awake – or maybe asleep – or perhaps awake – and all that which had been he was dissipated and now he was him and maybe that had always been the case. It was a hollower feeling than ever it had been before, less complete.

He had felt like this but not quite this, in the moment of initiation's completion, when all was finally well. He had felt, for the first time, complete. He had wanted, for a moment, for nothing.

And then he had Seen. Though the Hierophant had left him – or perhaps retreated to sleep, slumbering somewhere at the back of his skull, like Matthias did, like Dimitar and his strangling grip, like Nadezhda with her awful staring eyes – he could still remember well the visions that initiation had accorded him and he obsessed over them like a broken tooth. He could not help but tongue at them, though answers were not forthcoming: the silhouette of a dead thing on the floor, which maybe had been Ghjuvan or Mielikki or Hyacinth or Nerezza; blood on the cobblestones, which had become so ordinary a sight he could not have named it if he tried; and the shape of the stars in the sky, which might have been Ina's nights on the roof tracing constellations.

But they had named those constellations, hadn't they? The shape of a deer with magnificent, marvellous antlers, Zuen; the shape of a hammer, the Commandant; the shape of a man asleep on his desk, Zoran. He was immortalised now. She would remember him, looking at the sky. Even if he faded. Even when.

And a girl standing alone, the sound of the ocean devastating in his ears, overwhelming all else. Have you ever seen a Hanged Man go so cleanly? Yet to come, he thought. Yet. A mirror and a face that was not his own, a desolate sun and the stars blighted, the tower fallen and a girl bleeding and suffocating and watching him. He flinched from the memory; he recoiled from it as though burned. A memory, then. A prophecy fulfilled. Wasn't he a Hierophant, then? Hadn't he been of some use?

If only we had cut her strings. Something had fallen from the stars, trailing feathers, and she had watched him with those amber eyes of hers and saying, did you see this? Did you say nothing?

Had he said nothing? This was the voice of nothing. This had been his madness. Did that retreat with the curse? Was he himself for a day? He had always blamed this muddle on the voices in his head – past and future, Matthias and Gracjan, Gijsbert and Dimitar – but even when they had fallen silent, he found that his thoughts scattered, cat-like, into the crevices of his mind, where he was least likely to seize upon them again.

Better to let them away, he thought. Better not to try. Penny for them. If that was the worst of it, then he would manage. Home would be better. He could get that apartment, the one on Majnun Street, of which he had dreamed, and he could live alone and bother no one. He could fill its windowsills with flowers: purple tears-of-Siarka with broad, flat petals and pointed tips, red-and-grey Hanged Men, all intertwined vines bleeding pollen, blue Milena irises, golden Nirari roses. He could cook dinner for whoever made it back from Illéa alive. Zoran, I'm talking to you. Maybe Ina would come for tea. If she forgave him. If she ever could. Oh, Zoran, could you just –

Inanna snapped her fingers in front of his eyes. She said, softly, sweetly, "I don't suppose that means you're… feeling better?"

"No," he said. He could not help but smile. "Just..."

"You're thinking again," Ina said. "You know I hate it when you do that."

He didn't know how to tell her that she had, as ever, expected too much of him: that he had not been thinking, that he rarely thought around her, that he had only been trying to remember this memory utterly as it was. It was as though God himself had crept through the clouds and painted the world in jewel tones, all rubies and sapphires and emeralds. The girls dancing in the square were wearing gold buttons, in which Zoran might usually have glimpsed their deaths, and the young men lining the plaza, waiting their turn, were wearing silver cufflinks in which Zoran might have usually seen their childhoods. Today, however, the world was worth reflecting.

In the end, he didn't say anything at all. Ina nodded, without needing an answer, and leaned into him, and then it was just that, on and on again: noise, and laughter, and sunlight on the cobbles.

In Irij, Kur fairytales didn't end with and they lived happily ever after. Zoran had never even heard that line until he was in the Programme; he had learned it from Uriasz, whose father had not been Kur at all, whose father had left them when he had realised what he had produced, whose father had turned away from them when he saw the cadets in the street lest he recognise his own.

Instead, the stories always ended like this:

And then they danced.

He imagined this was rather what that might look like: turning and twisting, coming back together and separating anew, a continuous, sinuous, mellifluous maelstrom of colours and music and footsteps. It was less permanent than saying and then they lived, more realistic to say and then they danced. Tonight they danced, for who knew what tomorrow would bring?

Ina said, a note of rebuke apparent, "Zor."

He blinked, and he looked at her.

She said, "you'll draw attention to yourself, sitting here. Staring."

"I'm not the only one."

"Yes," Ina said. "You very much are."

She was wearing the dress that Khalore had made for her, specially for the day of the Fall: blue, which wasn't her usual colour, a soft teal which lightened into an icy shade of sky-like silver. Ilja hadn't been keen on her leaving the house today, not with those black marks under her face, not when they were so close to ending this all. Eero had painted over those obsidian-black scars, carefully, gently. It had clearly still stung; tears had pooled on her eyelashes, clinging to them like so much silver dust. It had helped little; he could still see them clearly, but diminished, as though they were wounds inflicted ten years ago rather than ten days ago. Nonetheless, they had drawn looks, stares which Ina had borne with good humour and her usual dazzling smile. It was, ironically, the least that she had been stared at for all this time in Illéa.

"Let's walk," Zoran said. "I haven't seen much of the festival."

Ina nodded, and rose. She was not smiling.

Ilja was gone. He had been gone for a while now; Zoran had not notice him leave. He would be expected back at the palace to guide Silas to the chapel for the Fall Service, and then to distract for as long as he could, to deter the royal family from discovering the Warriors rattling about on the bottom floor of the palace in search of the Radiance, or the thing which had held it. Zoran's heart filled with lead at the thought. They would have to be swift. The court would be at the Fall Service in its entirety; it was their only real chance, while the Radiance was disarmed, to strike.

They moved through the square. A few market stalls had been set up here and there, to sell trinkets and souvenirs and little kitschy tokens of affection. This one, nearest to them, stirred a memory of Matthias that was but half-formed, more a dream than anything remembered. The stall was cluttered with tiny clocks, some no larger than Zoran's thumbnail, more than a hundred accumulated together so that the wooden table veritably groaned under their collective weight. They were ticking together, just out of unison, so that it sounded instead like a very busy conversation, all chitter-chatter. Inanna said, "what's wrong, Zor?" and he didn't have the heart to tell her that he was beginning to miss the voices in his head, that it was starting to feel lonely inside his own skull. Instead, he smiled, and said –

"I should buy you something."

Her voice was wry. "With what money?"

He smiled at her. Her eyes bore into his. He said, "we won't have much use for Illéan currency after today. We can afford to spend."

She glanced back at the stall, at all of the assembled little clocks. He knew which one she would want: it was a delicate thing, all filigree and exposed cog, gilt-leaf and glitter. It was, he thought, remarkably like the clocktower at the chancellery at home. Home was Opona, and the clocktower of Opona was a work of art: its workings were bare to the air, a complex series of filigreed wheels; its hands were gilded and golden; it tracked not only the time, but the movement of the moon across the night sky. It was said to mark the precise geographical centre of the city, and the burial place – supposedly – of the man who had first crafted the curses for the Kur Empire.

Ina's finger traced the clock's face.

She said, "we shouldn't bring anything back from this place."

He stared at her.

"It'll hurt too much," Inanna said. "To remember what we've done to them."

On all sides, laughter and music.

Her hand dropped to her side; her smallest finger found Zoran's, and twisted tightly around, and squeezed. It burned where she touched him.

"I appreciate," she said, "the thought."

He thought, I think of little else.

The drums had started up. Lovers were finding one another on the floor. He hadn't realised that brown-eyed Eero was with them until he had leaned over Ina's shoulder and spoken. "Come on," Pekka was saying to Ina. "Come on," Eero was saying to Ina. He had a voice that Zoran could not have distinguished from Pekka's. He could not remember if Eero was meant to be here. They had agreed that he would stay behind with the comatose Tower and Sun while the others infiltrated the palace – Eero did not seem to trust the World with the Radiance, and Zoran privately agreed with him. It was a sour taste in his mouth, that agreement. "Tonight we dance, for tomorrow –"

"Don't even say it," Inanna warned him.

And then they were away.

"Do you know the motto of the tagma?"

Nine months in this place, and Khalore could not say that she did. She answered appropriately: "I do not."

"Solus ante muros. We stand alone before the Walls."

It was an uncharacteristically cynical pronouncement; Khalore found herself examining the general from some faint air of concern. What else could one expect? Suero was correct to express so little faith in his fellow devils. Usually, however, he hid it better. "Is that what you believe? That we all stand alone in the end?"

"I do not," Lorencio said. "I do not believe that is what it means. Have you ever seen a tagma soldier stand alone? When Mag Mell fell, men and women rushed to the district to ensure that they would fall together. For every druj attack I have seen, I have glimpsed more human kindness than I believed such a small world could contain. But that is not our motto – we do not say solus ante druj."

Khalore, quite unable to follow this philosophical train of thought, took a sip of her tea.

"Solus antes muros…" Lorencio nodded. "We do, in the end, stand alone before the Walls. We alone decide what they signify. What they mean. How much they contain."

Do you believe that there is a world outside the walls, Khalore?

It had been his first question to her. He had used it to parlay into a conversation about the druj and their sources, but she suspected that it had been a mere thrust-and-parry sort of conversation, an opportunity to rattle her before he feinted off into a different direction entirely.

This was different. This was a man expressing some doubt, deeply hidden, fervently felt.

She said, straining to immerse her voice with a healthy dose of scepticism, "what could survive? That the Walls did not contain?"

He looked at her. He smiled. There was a tiny piece of confetti caught in his moustache. It made him appear charmingly off-kilter. "Oh," he said. "I haven't the faintest clue, Khali. I rather think this tea might be a bit too strong."

"I've heard," Khalore said, "that the only cure for a strong drink is a second."

She signalled the attendant. Better he was drunk when it happened, she thought grimly. Maybe she could find some little corner of the Schools for him to sleep off his hangover while she and her family brought this little universe of his crashing down. This was the end of days, lovely though it looked.

Khalore was standing at the precipice of Armageddon, and some small, awful part of her could not wait to get it over with.

She was meant to stay in her room. This, she knew. This, she understood. This, she ignored.

She had left it a full hour before she slipped out the door and down the corridor. This impatience was most unlike her. She was usually the most placid of girls. Belle Seo had never been accused of contrariness ever before.

And yet.

The windows of the library were made of stained glass. What little illumination the courtyard could spare sent strangely shaped, strangely coloured shadows dancing across the shelves. There, where the greens and blues and reds met and melded, Silas Schreave had his head bent over a book. The candle danced dangerously low, dangerously close to his hair.

For a moment, she thought that he might have fallen asleep, so intent was his focus on whatever he was looking at. She moved closer. Her footsteps were not loud, but he jerked to attention. His nails curled over the edge of the page, as though preparing to rip it from the rest. Then he looked up, and blinked, and seemed practically on the verge of a smile.

Belle sank into the chair opposite him. It was exactly the kind of seat with which she would have filled a library of her own design: soft and warm, with little designs of thorned roses raised on its plush surface as though the fabric contained something more than simply stuffing.

"You're meant to stay in your room."

"You're meant to be with your guard."

"He's not hard to slip."

"Perhaps you should fire him."

"I don't think Lady Chae would forgive me that. She finds him interesting."

"Certainly not," Belle said, "if she heard you calling her that. What are you reading?"

"A book."

"You never cease to impress me."

She drew her legs up beneath her; he did not react, and only returned to his reading. For a moment, they were silent but for the turning of pages and Belle's own soft breathing. She had been, quite without realising, studying his face. He looked, perhaps, a little worse for wear after their nighttime rambles, but there was something else to the tightness of his mouth and his eyes. King of the druj indeed. The candle danced lower still.

The library was more paltry than she had expected, for such a palatial space. Thought the shelves were long and the ceilings were high, there were very few books on the shelves and none that Belle recognised. She was trying to recall what Instructor Tofana had imparted to them, long ago in the academy. The Kur Empire had fled with nothing, to nowhere. That was what they had been taught: a druj-strewn wasteland, blighted in every direction, fretted by unholy fire, only a single fortress remaining for the devil Schreaves to huddle in…

She looked again at Silas.

He spoke without looking up. "Quit the staring, Seo."

She reached over, and pinched her fingers over the wick of the candle, extinguishing the flame; she drew her hand back, her nails painted with wax. Another minute or two, and the whole desk might have been ablaze. "I know you're frustrated," she said, softly, as though she thought the ghosts of Schreaves past might be lurking around the rafters of the library, waiting to swoop down and seize her by the hair if she spoke too loudly. "But I don't think arson is the answer, Silas."

He looked up again; the corners of his eyes were soft with tiredness, but there was still that hollow sharpness to his face, the slightly cruel tilt to his mouth that made it look as if he were perpetually sneering at the world. When he spoke, however, his voice was – well, he just sounded weary. "You sound like Sena."

She raised an eyebrow. "Hurt me more while you're at it."

"She is not so bad."

"She's your sister," Belle said. "I should hope she's much better than all that."

"She is the best of us."

He turned the page, languid.

She waited.

"She doesn't," he said, sounding thoughtful, his eyes tracing something down the page. "Shirk her duty."

"I see why you admire her," Belle said. "I think most of us do."

He had misunderstood, quite purposefully: "what duty do you shirk, Eun-byeol?"

What duty, indeed? She was still wearing a piece of Ghjuvan Mannazzu stitched into her dress. She said, "I'm losing this Selection."

He corrected her: "losing with a smile."

"Yes," she said. "I'm being very magnanimous about it all."

"I'll make sure it's reflected appropriately in your score."

She said, "what are you reading, Silas?"

"Fairytales," he said. "Eggshells."

"You're taking them very seriously."

"One must." He was, on this point, very serious.

This – this was danger incarnate. Belle could feel it in every hair on her arm, in the very fibre of her teeth, in the tips of her eyelashes. A wrong word here, and he would know, instantly, that was did not belong here. That she was a liar. He would know.

Maybe he already knew. She was suddenly aware of how large and empty and dark the library was. They had been told to stay in their rooms. Why had she chosen, now of all times, to rebel?

She leaned forward. She said, quite simply, "why?"

"You would think me," Silas said. "Mad."

"I already do."

He was regarding her as one might a mouse on the floor of their study: partially concern at how it might have wormed its way in past the walls, partially relief that it is not a rat or something much worse, partially curiosity at which way it might dart next. He said, "it is a fairytale, Eun-byeol."

"Belle," said Belle. "Please. All my friends… I'm called Belle at home."

"Belle," he said again.

"Silas."

"Evanne believes in human druj. Do you?"

She hedged. "You do."

"Am I so easy to read?"

"No," she said, "but you wouldn't have opened your explanation thus unless..."

"Alright," he said, "I'm predictable."

This was not like getting an explanation from Ina or Mielikki, who were always pleased to outline their thinking, always eager to unravel their chain of logic and field whatever questions arose. This was a conversation with Ragnar or the Commandant – about as convenient and efficient as pulling teeth. All she could do was wait as he turned his words over in his mind and his mouth, and finally came up with…

"Imagine a coin."

Her voice was steeped in wry good humour. "I'm imagining it."

"Right," Silas said. His eyes were dark and uncertain. It was quite unlike him to look so. It did little to ease the strain in Belle's chest. "This coin is… being a human druj. The state of being. The ability to become."

"Okay." She nodded. Her mouth twisted.

"This coin," he said. "It's been passed down through my family for more than fifty generations. It can be thrown from person to person, or it can be given."

She watched him closely. She hoped he would mistake her scrutiny for scepticism.

"But the coin," Silas said. She could see that he was already regretting this metaphor. There was a certain frenzied irritation in his eyes. "Is very… hot."

She laughed. "Alright. Got it. Very hot coin."

"It burns you," he said, "that's what I'm trying to say –" He couldn't help but laugh at himself as well. It was almost endearing, how contagious he seemed to find a simple smile. "It burns you and if you hold onto it for too long, then it..."

"Burns you badly," Belle said.

"Worse again," he said, "but you get the gist."

"So you can't hold onto the coin for too long. You need to keep passing it on."

"That depends on how strong you are," he said. "How long you can bear it."

"So," Belle said. "That druj at the ballroom… was a Schreave?"

"No," he said. "That was… those are different coins. Forgeries."

The strange electric stun of this explanation being offered to her so freely – after so much time, with so little effort – replicated, she thought, the effect of a young Illéan girl being told about the existence of xrafstars for the first time. At least, she hoped it did. It had to. "Forgeries," she repeated, softly. "Those… there are more than one?"

He was silent.

She said, "Silas, why are you telling me this now?"

"Usually," he said. "Winning the Selection means winning the coin."

Belle's voice strained out. This was it. Duty indeed. "You turn the girls into druj?"

"Just one." He turned over the page of his book again. "You've played chess, haven't you? The queen is always the most powerful piece. To protect the king. To protect everything."

Kasimira?

"So whoever you pick," she said. Why else would he be telling her this? She and Evanne were the only two Selected with which he spent any time. Had she entirely ignored the warning signs? Had she, Seo Eun Byeol, at last made herself, uncursed and unneeded, of some use to the cause? Was this fulfilment of her duty? "Becomes..."

He said, "my father refused it. He loved my mother too much. He… shirked his duty. He hurt many people to save one. He weakened us. The kingdom."

"And now," Belle said, "there are forgeries."

She took a deep breath.

"Silas," she said. The world yawned open before her. The horizon seemed suddenly closer; the dark seemed suddenly claustrophobic. Ghjuvan's teeth burned fervently against her skin. "Why are you telling me this?"

Ask me. Get over with it. Ask me. This is my duty. This is why the Commandant sent me.

He said, "because I'm scared, Belle."

She stared at him. And she could not help but ask – "why?"

This question, he had not expected. It stunned him: he did not react physically as Zoran might have, jerking back as though slapped. He took it like Ilja would: a tilt of the head and a knotting of the eyebrows and a sudden, uncharacteristic, inability to speak.

"It won't be you," she said. "It won't be you that takes it."

"It should be," he said. "Shouldn't it? Isn't that more fair?"

"I don't think..."

"It'll be you or Evie," he said. The words escaped like an exhale and a prayer, some pressure released from a place she could not glimpse. "That's Sena's preference. That's who she'll choose."

Belle wanted to volunteer for it. She wanted to leap for it. This was why she was here. This was why she had been sent. It was suddenly so clear. This was why she had not been given a curse at initiation. This was why she had been made civilian. And yet, the words would not leave her mouth, simple though they were:

And I'll do it willingly. Give it to me. I don't mind. And then we'll dance.

And yet: she did not want to die.

"Seems fairer if it's me," he said. "Seems more right."

He smiled. There was blood on his teeth again. Were they ever otherwise? It made him look like something rabid and feral and cannibalistic. It made him look, properly, like Silas.

"It might be good for me," he said. "It might be a cure."

At last, she managed to breathe out her words: "it might kill you."

"Or you," he said.

Yes. Or her.

Had she not felt a single note of relief sound in her chest when the Commandant had not called her name, all those weeks ago?

"I don't want you to tell anyone," Silas said. "Not even Evanne. I just needed to tell someone. Say the words out loud. Make it seem real."

"When?"

"Today," he said. "Today gives me the best chance." He did not smile, but he was looking at her with an unreadable expression that she could only recognise as affection by the way his eyes turned up at their edges. "Today is… The coin is cool today."

"You can't do it alone," Belle said. "If you're doing this to protect Evanne and I – if you mean that – then you have to let us help." She hastened to cover for herself. "Whatever that means. Whatever that looks like."

"Belle," he began, but before he could say anything else, the door to the library had swung open and a grey silhouette had appeared at the threshold.

"There you are, your highness." The guard's voice was cold. "We are readying for the off. Lady Seo, you were meant to be in your room. I believe your chaperone is looking for you."

Belle nodded, and rose. She threw Silas a silent warning look – "don't forget our dinner plans, sir" – and slipped out past the guard, who turned, almost imperceptibly, to watch her go.

Should she say something?

What if Silas overheard her?

Worse again – what if Ilja heard her perfectly?

She had to make her decision. Silas had made some strict command in his soft, cold voice, which had Ilja retreating from the threshold and shutting the doors behind him as Silas hid the books over which he had pored all these long hours past.

Ilja glanced at Belle. She could have sworn that his eyes had once been hazel-brown, but now, leeched of all colour, they were some shade closer to white. Inhuman, those eyes.

He said, "all going well?"

Her mouth moved of its own accord.

"He's initiating tonight," Belle said. "He's going to take the Radiance."

It was clear: Ilja did not believe her.

That mattered little. She had fulfilled her duty.

She turned her back on both of them – the grey Chariot and the King of the Walls – and she walked away, slowly, as though her words had only tripled the weight of the duty which lay upon her.