“They feed the maelstrom.” Maro’s fear makes him talk. “It must be fed if we are to breach the wall between worlds.”

“Silence, Maro!” the Nightbringer hisses, but all his wrath is for me. “Release him, human.” His magic lashes out like a whip, and it burns the skin of my arms so badly that I nearly release Maro. But Blackcliff has trained me well. I hold on to the jinn and reach for Mauth’s magic. I need a shield—something to protect me so that I can spirit Maro away and question him without the Nightbringer’s interference.

But the magic is too far away, just like when Umber chased me. The power fills me slowly, like droplets in an empty bucket.

“Give me back my ghosts,” I tell the king of the jinn, “and I’ll let him go.”

The Nightbringer’s flame eyes narrow, his attention drifting to the city, to the screams of the efrits, louder than before as the fire draws closer. Understanding lights his gaze, and it is terrible to behold.

“Ah, I see now, little Soul Catcher, the game you have played,” he says. “So clever to empty out the city. To use the efrits. But it changes nothing. Your kind is a plague on this world. There are always more humans, and so there will always be more to reap. If not here, then another city.”

“Not if you don’t have your soul thief.” I dig my blade into Maro again, and this time, fire leaks out.

“Stop.” The Nightbringer’s fists clench. “Or I will find her, I swear to the skies. And I will tear her soul from her tortured body myself.”

“Spending time with my mother, I see.” The Nightbringer is usually completely in control. But now his anger is reassuring. He is vulnerable.

And I can take advantage of it. I need to understand him. If he were a human, I would reach out with the tendrils of my magic, a touch too light to be felt. But the Nightbringer will sense any scrutiny—and he will not welcome it. If I want into his head, I will have to force my way in. So I scrape up every last drop of Mauth’s magic and launch my consciousness at him.

The moment I do, I hit a wall, miles high, miles thick, and I drift through it like a ghost. I know instantly that I am not in the Nightbringer’s mind. I am somewhere else. Somewhere real, even if it is a place where I have no corporeal form. The wall is magic, and that magic speaks to my own, for the source is the same. This wall is Mauth’s creation. I am in Mauth’s dimension.

Behind the wall is an aching Sea of Suffering that is too powerful to understand, too vast for any earthly being, fey or human, to control. I have seen it before, I realize, every time I have visited Mauth in his realm.

The Sea surges against Mauth’s wall, even as the Nightbringer pours the suffering of the ghosts he has thieved into it, giving the Sea more power than it should have. With every ghost, that raging ocean grows stronger. With every bit of suffering fed to it, it wears away at Mauth’s wall a little more. In time, it will destroy the wall altogether.

How much time, I wonder? How much more suffering does the Nightbringer need?

“Where are you?”

The Nightbringer’s question is heavy with contempt. For the blink of an eye, I think I see him, a thread of fire in the darkness, blazing with hate. Between us, an enormous whirlpool of wailing souls cries out, spinning down endlessly into the Sea. I reach for them, trying to pull them with me, trying to escape this place with them.

Then I am flung away from the Sea, the wall, the ghosts, and back into my body. I still have an arm around Maro, but he wrenches away from me and runs toward the Nightbringer.

Bleeding, burning hells. The king of the jinn pushes Maro behind him and strides toward me, murder thrumming in every sinew of his body.

Then an arrow flies out of the night from the staircase, sinking into Maro with a strange, hollow thump.

She didn’t run. Of course she didn’t.

Maro collapses, and the Nightbringer howls as he did in Aish. I am already past him, down the stairs, grabbing Laia and leaping out a window, harnessing the wind so we do not break our necks. Still, I hit the flagstones too hard and spin into a roll. Her head hits the ground with a sickening crack, knocking her out cold. I sweep her over my shoulder and tear through the city away from the jinn, not stopping until I reach the desert beyond the northern gate, empty now that the Tribes have evacuated.

“Soul Catcher!” Afya appears from over a hill, my brother Shan riding beside her.

“What the hells happened?” Her face drains of color as she looks at Laia. “Did you fall?”

“She hit her head on the flagstones.”

Blood trickles from the corner of Laia’s mouth. As I lay her down on the earth, it feels as if a giant fist is trying to squeeze all the blood out of my heart. Please, please. I don’t know what I’m asking for. Or who I’m asking. I only know that when I feel her pulse at her throat, strong and steady, I can breathe again.

I glance over my shoulder, but the Nightbringer has not pursued us. I find I am shaking, not in cold or exhaustion, but in dread. I thought the Nightbringer’s intent was to destroy the Scholars. But if he pours enough pain into the Sea of Suffering, he will unleash it. And it will destroy all human life.

The horror of it is too great, and even through the Mauth-inspired fog in my brain, I can’t bring myself to stand up. Why? Why is he doing this?

He is lost, Soul Catcher. His grief has taken him.

The voice of Death is so soft, I nearly miss it. “Mauth?” I whisper.

Afya and Shan exchange a glance and step away from me.

You have been away too long, Banu al-Mauth, Mauth says, and I feel the pull I have not felt in months, to return to the Waiting Place.

I turn to Afya and Shan. “I’ll come back,” I swear to them. “Tell her.”

The words are barely out of my mouth when I feel myself dragged, inexorably, back to the Forest of Dusk. Mauth speaks again, and this time his words resound in my very core.

It is time to come home.

XLIV: The Blood Shrike

Perhaps the shrieking wind from the north is a portent. Spring is not far, six weeks away at most. And yet the storm out of the Nevennes puts a foot of snow on the ground and howls down the palace chimneys until it sounds as if the place is possessed by ghosts.

“It’s not a bleeding portent,” I tell myself as I lurk near the kitchens. “It was one night. It never has to happen again.”

“Pardon me, Blood Shrike?” A passing Martial servant glances at me, alarmed, but I wave him off. I’ve been here for nearly a half hour, contemplating how to ask for the herbs I need without engendering gossip. If there’s one thing I know, it’s that I do not want children. Ever. Watching Livia give birth taught me that much.

“I was looking for you.” Harper’s voice makes me jump and my cheeks burn.

“It’s going to be difficult to act like nothing’s happened if you blush every time you see me, Shrike.” He holds a cup in his hand, and the smell is familiar. Mamie Rila taught me to brew it when I needed to slow my moon cycle at Blackcliff. Training while suffering cramps was a special sort of hell. The brew also prevents pregnancy.

“This might be what you’re looking for.”

“How did you—”

“You’ve mentioned you don’t want children,” he says. “Once. Or ten times. And I’ve brewed this concoction before.”

I nod and keep my expression bland. He’s had lovers—of course he has. Many, I imagine. Though imagining isn’t the wisest idea.

“The last Blood Shrike didn’t want unexpected heirs,” Avitas says, and the fact that he offers this information with a straight face despite my obvious jealousy makes me want to kiss him.

Instead, I nod emphatically. “Right. Thank you.” I take the cup from him and make a face, remembering how awful it tastes.

Harper’s eyes drift over my shoulder. “If you’ll excuse me, Shrike.” He disappears quickly, and a moment later I understand why.

“Good morning, sister.” Livia comes down the hallway, her guards behind her. And there’s nowhere to throw the damned tea. The only thing to do is drink it as fast as possible, but of course, it’s bleeding hot, and I nearly scald my face trying to get it down.

“Careful there,” she says. “You’ll burn—”

She takes a deep sniff. Her eyes follow Harper leaving.

“You—” she says, a slow smile spreading on her face.

“It doesn’t mean anything.” Two servers emerge from the kitchen holding trays, a Scholar and a Martial. They giggle together, going silent when they see us, curtsying to Livia before hurrying away. I drag Livia away from her guards. “Shut it—”

“Your eyes are glowing,” She hooks my arm in hers and starts marching breakneck toward her apartments. “Your skin is glowing. Tell me everything.”

“There’s nothing to tell!”

“Lies!” my sister hisses. “You dare deceive the Empress Regent? Tell me, tell me, I need some joy in my life, sister—”