That gob of saliva hit Gwendolyn's boot.

  I remember that.

  She opened her mouth. She was going to say something. But she spat instead. Why?

  The question pulls me from my house, into the grey morning. I walk.

  A flash of blue wool against the grey stone. Grace. She hurries across the square, a bundle of firewood clutched to her chest.

  My shadow falls over her before she sees me. "Grace. Have you seen Ursula?"

  She flinches like I've struck her. A log slips from her arms, the impact a sharp crack on the cobblestones.

  She looks past me, at the faces in the windows around us, her breath coming in short, sharp bursts. "Don't say her name." Her knuckles are bone where she clutches the remaining wood. "She's a stain, James." Her eyes finally meet mine. "You don't look at a stain. You look away until it fades."

  She snatches the wood from the dirt, hugging the bundle to her chest. She flees.

  The forge breathes a plume of dark smoke. I stand in the doorway, letting the heat wash over me.

  The hammer rises, falls. Rises, falls. He knows I am here. He does not care.

  "Ward. Are we just leaving Ursula out there to rot?"

  He does not stop. "She's not our problem anymore, James." Thunk. "You don't poke a dead hornet's nest." Thunk.

  He thrusts the glowing iron into a bucket of water. The hiss is a violent, final word.

  "We have walls to mend. Mouths to feed." He hangs the cooled metal on a hook and finally turns to me. "She's a waste of resources we don't have."

  The sweet smell of baking bread hits me as I turn away from the forge. Peter and Anna work at a long table. Their hands push and fold the dough, their movements a mirror of each other.

  I watch their hands. Push, fold. Push, fold. I break the rhythm with the name. "Have you seen Ursula?"

  Anna's voice is a dead thing, flat as the dough under her hands. "She is where she belongs."

  Peter nods once, a short, sharp jerk of his head. "Gwendolyn is teaching us a better way. A happier way." He picks up a sifter of flour. The white powder drifts down, coating the grey dough, erasing its texture.

  He looks at me. His eyes are empty rooms. "Bad flour ruins the batch."

  I buy bread. I do not eat. It is not for me.

  I walk the path to the well, the bread a heavy stone in my satchel.

  The shadows under the oak have a sound. A lullaby. Rory is there, his voice a small, foolish noise in the dead quiet of the morning. He sings to the bundle of rags that is Ursula. His voice is the only clean thing here.

  Then, a sound that does not belong in the world.

  A wet rasp from deep inside the wreckage of her chest. It catches on something broken. It finds a pitch. It holds it. A low, unsteady drone that rises to meet his melody.

  She is trying to sing with him.

  Rory's voice cracks. For a long heartbeat, the lullaby dies. The only sound is her wet, ragged drone, a solo in the sudden quiet.

  Then he closes his eyes. He takes a breath. His voice returns, softer now. He finds the note again, holding it, letting his voice become a support for her broken sound.

  When it is over, Rory touches her shoulder. His fingers are gentle on the fouled rags of her robe.

  "Good job," he whispers.

  He rises, turns, and walks away. He doesn't acknowledge me. It is as if I was never there. As if the moment was only for them.

  I walk the dead circle of earth around the well.

  Against the cold stone, she has made a shelter of broken branches. It is a thing a dying animal would build. A place to crawl into and be forgotten.

  The rags stir. The head lifts. Her eyes, two wet holes in the skull, find the bread.

  From the weeping hole where her mouth should be, a pale, segmented worm of a tongue protrudes, twitching at the smell of the bread.

  I place the bread on a flat stone before her. Her eyes track the movement, but her head lifts to stare at my face.

  "Gwendolyn," I say, my voice low. "She's enjoying this, isn't she?"

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  A low, wet rattle starts in her chest.

  "Nora… gone…" A string of black drool leaks from the hole of her mouth. "Now… grandson… a new… skin."

  I do not move. Cannot. A hot spike of bile climbs my throat. I swallow it down.

  She knows. She knows what I am.

  She sees the terror. Her eyes, those two wet holes, seem to soften. The rattling in her chest grows stronger.

  "Don't… worry…"

  Her hand, a claw of bone and filth, lifts. A single finger taps the ruin of her throat. "No… words… left."

  A shudder racks her body. She fumbles inside her robe. Her hand comes out holding a key. It is a long shaft of blackened iron, its head a simple, heavy circle worn thin on one side.

  She shoves it into my hand. The key is cold. Her skin, where it brushes mine, has no temperature at all.

  "Gwendolyn… fool…" The words are a dry hiss of air from the ruin of her mouth.

  Her skeletal hand closes over mine, over the key. The strength is a shock that jolts up my arm. Her sunken eyes hold mine. The light in them does not waver.

  "She is… a sickness…" she rasps. "Be… my… poison."

  I turn the key. The lock gives a tortured groan. I shove the heavy door open and walk straight into her.

  Belladonna.

  Her eyes flick down to the key, then snap back to my face. Her mouth is a thin, hard line. "You have a key."

  I keep my face a blank slate. "I took it. During the riot. I saw my chance."

  She shakes her head. The muscle along her jawline gives a hard, brief spasm. "I don't care." She looks past me, into the dark of the hall. "I have no loyalty to the Elders. They're a waste of my time."

  "Who else knows?" My voice cracks on the last word. "About the Mimic. The letter said Council Members. Do the Elders know?"

  She walks a few paces down the hall, her boots silent on the dusty floorboards. "They were all warned, yes."

  She stops, turning to face me. "A mistake, in my opinion." Her hand comes up, and she plucks a single, loose thread from her black wool sleeve. She lets it fall to the floor. "What's done is done. We just have to hope they're smart enough to keep their mouths shut."

  She closes the distance between us. Her face is inches from mine. "Can you picture it, James? Evangeline, finding out what Nora really was? What a mother would do to protect her son from a monster in the house?"

  She doesn't wait for an answer. "No one else can know."

  Stepping back, her focus changes. "I'm going to Darkwater. You're coming with me."

  The image of Gwendolyn's hands on Pip burns behind my eyes. A cold, clean rage settles in my chest. "I have business here first."

  She holds my stare for a long moment. The muscle along her jaw gives that hard, brief spasm again.

  "Fine," she says. The word is a chip of stone. "Play your games. But when you are done, my offer stands."

  She turns and walks away. Her shadow recedes down the long, dark hall until it is gone.

  The door to Gwendolyn's chamber is unlocked. I step inside.

  The room is a quiet scream of order. On a shelf, a line of porcelain dolls sit, their smiles identical, their eyes vacant. Each one a perfect, soulless copy of the last. The scent of lavender is a chemical sweetness that coats the tongue.

  A cold spot forms in the centre of my skull.

  Abandon this foolishness. Go to Darkwater. This quest for vengeance is a childish game.

  I grind my teeth. I focus on the task.

  The poison.

  I start turning the room inside out. I rip open drawers. I gut the wardrobe, throwing her silks and linens to the floor. I overturn a chest of polished stones. They skitter across the floorboards like dead insects. Every neat, ordered thing she owns, I break.

  But it is not here.

  Nothing.

  I turn to leave, empty-handed.

  My eye catches a dark alcove. Ursula's things, tossed in a heap.

  But before I can step out, a shape in the room stops me. On a chair, sitting like a king on a throne of Gwendolyn's folded grey robes, is the bag.

  The Flesh Tax bag.

  Drawn by the sheer arrogance of it, I walk to the chair.

  I open the bag.

  I reach inside. My fingers close around a single stone.

  I pull it out.

  The light from the window hits the carved letters.

  Evangeline.

  The blood leaves my hands. They are cold, numb things. A cruel joke. It has to be.

  I plunge my hand back into the bag. My fingers close around another stone.

  Evangeline.

  And another.

  Evangeline.

  I tip the bag, my fingers sifting through the stones, desperate for a different name. Another stone. Another. Her name. Her name. Her name.

  A raw sound tears from my throat. I throw the bag. The stones spill out, a scatter of small, grey tombstones on the floor.

  I fall to my knees. My fingers scramble, flipping them over. One by one.

  The name is always the same.

  A roar builds in my chest. This ends now.

  I storm out of her room, my focus a single, burning point. Ursula's things. I am on them in a second, my hands tearing, ripping, searching. Robes. Books. Then, a small, locked rosewood box.

  I hurl it against the stone wall. It explodes. From the ruin of wood and velvet, a vial skitters across the floor.

  The liquid inside is clear. Motionless. Except for a drop of pure black, hanging in the centre.

  The poison.

  My feet are moving before I tell them to. My hand closes around the vial before I feel the glass.

  I stalk down the hallway to the sitting room. My eyes find her collection of porcelain teapots, gleaming on a shelf.

  I uncap the vial. A small, dry pop.

  I lift it. I tilt it.

  A blur of motion erupts from my left side.

  My hand.

  It clamps onto my right wrist, a trap made of my own sinew.

  The eye in my palm is a hard, black stare. It watches me. It judges me.

  It squeezes.

  My wrist bones grind together. A scream is torn from my throat. The glass of the vial gives way, shattering in my grip. Poison and blood spill over my fingers.

  A shard of glass, slick with poison, slides across my palm and slices into the eye's soft tissue.

  The eye convulses, then inverts, folding in on itself as it sinks into the flesh of my palm.

  Skin closes over it, leaving a puckered, angry scar where the eye used to be.

  Then the puckered scar bubbles. A soft, wet sizzle as the dead tissue dissolves, eaten away from within. It is replaced by a smooth, white surface that spreads from the centre. A tiny circle of pearlescent skin.

  My hand lifts, trembling. I bring it to my face.

  I press my thumb against it. Hard.

  It feels like pressing my own thumb against my own knuckle. But there is no skin in between.

  The sensation is wrong. A piece of me, dead and alien. But then the realisation hits me. A jolt. My heart, a sudden, hot kick against my ribs.

  The eye is gone. My hand is my own.

  My fingers clench. A fist. My own fist.

  This is not over.

  I am on my feet, tearing through Ursula's discarded belongings.

  There has to be more.

  I rip the lining from her robes. I splinter the wood of another small keepsake box. My fingers dig into the cold, damp earth of a potted plant.

  Nothing.

  The adrenaline turns to a cold, heavy dread.

  A pressure fills my skull. A soundless laugh that vibrates in my teeth.

  I have a cleaner one. Go to Darkwater. No Maximus, no Flesh Tax.

  My plan is ash. The Voice's plan is all that is left.

  To go to Darkwater. To kill him. My father.

  The bile I swallowed earlier rises again, hot and sour.

  The Voice is right. I have to do it.

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