“Is this…the sword of Rhydderch Hael? Dyrnwyn?” Nash said incredulously. “White-Hilt? You left behind a bloody fire sword when you went to Rivenoak?”

  “What, am I supposed to walk around with it and wave it at people like a cool party trick?” I snapped. “How was I supposed to know what was going to happen?”

  I’d left the sword behind because I hadn’t wanted to believe there was any use for it. At least, that was what I’d told the others, but it had been far harder to lie to myself.

  It was a piece of Avalon and the person I’d been there—the person I’d let myself believe I could be.

  Someone who cared.

  Someone worthy.

  I’d only brought it to the library because Neve had made me, and because I didn’t want it to be taken from the apartment while we were gone. But I couldn’t shake the fear that when I pulled it from its scabbard, the blade would no longer catch fire in my hand.

  The truth was, it had been a mistake on my part not to bring it. I knew Children of the Night had crossed into our world with Lord Death. It was inevitable we’d face them again, and if there was one thing a fire sword was useful for, it was scaring off monsters who hated light.

  “I should have suspected something like this would happen,” Caitriona said. “Avalon’s dead underwent the same transformation into Children when we didn’t burn the bodies.”

  “Is this happening to all the people they kill? Was that why Hemlock wanted her body burned?” Neve asked, horrified. “I thought the curse with the Children was connected to the isle, not to the way they died—or who killed them.”

  Nash pulled the sword from its scabbard, but only an inch. It was enough to spark the white flames on the exposed steel, the air whining and singing as the fire licked at it.

  I stared at it in disbelief. Him? Really?

  “Now I know that thing is busted,” I bit out.

  “Was it forged by the Goddess?” Neve asked hopefully.

  “Sadly, no.” Nash slid it fully back into its scabbard and handed it to me. “The first Lady of the Lake enchanted it with protective magic for a mortal king who swore to aid her in protecting the isle. I’ll talk to Librarian and poke around in the stacks to see what I can find about the isle’s divinely forged weapons. There’s a bathroom downstairs I’d advise taking advantage of, and I’m sure we can rustle up some food from the lockers.”

  It was strange, in a way, to feel relief at someone else taking charge of the situation and telling us what to do. But even after Nash vanished back down into the empty library, none of us moved.

  “Are we really going to leave Olwen in Wyrm’s hands?” Neve asked softly.

  The thought tore at me. “She’s strong. As much as it pains me to say, I think Nash could be right about this—she might have already gotten away.”

  “And if she hasn’t?” Caitriona asked. “If that despicable man brings her to Lord Death and he kills her and makes her one of his riders, or worse?”

  “We can’t think like that,” Neve said. “Olwen is useful to him. She’ll find a way to stay alive until we can get to her, wherever it is they’re hiding out. But I think we’re only going to get one good chance to strike at him before the solstice.”

  Less than nine full days. That was all we had left to find this sword, and with every night that passed, he created more hunters, and more Children. And as the Children killed innocent people, more and more would appear until they overran the mortals of this world.

  “The sorceresses can help.” Neve seemed galvanized at the thought of having something concrete to do. “They must have a sense of where Lord Death is hiding, and where we can find the sword. I’ll write to Madrigal again and ask.”

  Caitriona lingered even after Neve went downstairs, still caught in that painful trap of indecision.

  “Cabell won’t let anything happen to her,” I said, and instantly regretted it. She didn’t believe me, and her certainty shattered mine. In the quiet that followed, my own thoughts began to turn traitor.

  He stood by and let it happen, my mind hissed. At the tower. At Rivenoak.

  “We have to find the sword,” Caitriona said. I heard the tears in her voice, but didn’t turn around. Didn’t try to comfort her. That wasn’t what she wanted.

  She wanted her sister, and if I couldn’t give her that, I could at least give her privacy.

  I ran a thumb along the braided bracelet.

  “Together to the end,” I whispered.

  “Beyond that,” Caitriona answered, her tone hollow.

  We’d made our choice, but the problem with choices wasn’t in the making—it was in learning to live with them. And that was a poison without an antidote.

  After Caitriona went down to wash in the library’s bathroom and Neve busied herself looking for wherever Librarian had stashed Griflet, the attic had fallen silent again.

  Only Emrys, still unconscious, was left for company. I sat beside him, listening to him struggle for each wheezing breath, staring into the night air.

  A single word escaped him, a low murmur rippling with terror.

  “…don’t…”

  “Emrys?” I whispered. I moved to brush his dark hair from his forehead, to see if I could rouse him. Then those words, Don’t touch me, the memory of him pulling away like what I’d done had repulsed him, lashed at my raw muddle of feelings.

  I brought my hand back into my lap.

  “He’ll be all right.”

  Nash stood in the doorway, hunched slightly to accommodate the slant of the roof. In his hands were two steaming mugs of coffee. The smell of it all but purred through me, setting off a deep longing.

  “How would you know?” I muttered.

  “Fever hasn’t set in yet, which means the ointment’s doing its job staving off infection,” Nash said, hesitating a moment before he sat down next to me.

  The coffee mug was right in front of my face, my exhausted body was begging for it, but my petulance was stronger. “I don’t want that. I won’t be able to sleep.”

  Nash raised an eyebrow.

  Okay, no, my body and mind had hit the point of exhaustion where not even caffeine was powerful enough to keep me upright. My words were starting to slur.

  I took it from him, but I wasn’t happy about it. I rummaged through my workbag, bracing myself for Nash to comment on the fact that it used to be his.

  Instead, he eyed Emrys’s scars with a look of curiosity that made me feel protective against my will. “Don’t remember Endymion’s favorite toy being quite this banged up.”

  “He’s the one who did this to his son,” I said, fighting the knot building in my throat. The thick scars were darker, more pronounced against Emrys’s ashen skin, crisscrossing his body like a map of suffering.

  “Ah” was all Nash had to say to that.

  “Is that why you warned me to stay away from him?” I asked. “Endymion?”

  “The man had ice for a heart long before he joined the Wild Hunt,” Nash said. “When I heard he was spinning up the old Order of the Silver Stick nonsense, I made it a point to keep us away from the guild as much as possible.”

  Nash watched as I ripped open a soggy instant coffee packet from my bag and dumped that into the mug—drip coffee alone had never had enough flavor for me. Gripping the handle, I gave it a few careful shakes, trying to swirl the powder into the liquid. Nash looked on, horrified.

  “Bloody roses, you still drink that stuff, Tamsy?” he said with a startled laugh. “You’ll give yourself a heart attack.”

  “If you didn’t want me to drink it, you shouldn’t have given it to me when I was a kid,” I said. “And anyway, it tastes better.”

  “It tastes like it was brewed in a festering wound,” he said, taking a long drink of his own. “You need to eat something.”

  “I’m fine.”

  Next to me, a small bowl of dried fruit and nuts sat untouched. I’d never had a problem with it before, but the thought of eating a dead Hollower’s food just then turned my stomach.

  “You’re not fine. You’re all skin and bones,” he said. “You’ll need your strength if you’re planning to run off and do something foolishly brave.”

  I scowled, knowing he had a point.

  “Is this supposed to be your version of parenting?” I bit back.

  “Just common sense,” Nash said, drinking his coffee. He looked down at Emrys again, rubbing a hand over his mouth. This time, he kept his thoughts to himself.

  “It really is you, isn’t it?” I said, hating the throb of emotion in my voice.

  “Of course it’s me,” he said, exasperated. “Ask your questions, Tamsin, I can all but hear them knocking around your mind.”

  “Fine,” I said. “How are you alive?”

  “You found the coin,” he said. “You already know.”

  “The one you said to bury with bone and ash?” I pressed. Emrys and I had found it hidden beneath a stone at the ruins of Tintagel, but nothing had happened when we’d followed Nash’s note with instructions on what to do with the silver coin.

  Apparently something had happened after all.

  Nash nodded. “And I thank the gods you did. When you got the fixings just right, the coin’s magic was triggered. It made my body anew and called my sorry soul back from the darkness between worlds.”

  “I am the dream of the dead…,” I said quietly. The inscription on the coin whose meaning had eluded us.

  It seemed so obvious now. The dream of the dead was…new life.

  “You could read it?” Nash asked sharply. His eyes widened almost imperceptibly, his skin taking on an ashen quality. It wasn’t the anger I’d expected.

  “Yeah, I solved that problem myself,” I told him. “And gave myself the One Vision, since you refused to find a way.”

  He seemed to relax at that, though he hardly looked pleased.

  “Why not just bury the coin yourself if you thought you might die?” I asked, unable to keep the bitterness out of my tone.

  “Well, for one thing, I didn’t think old Myfanwy had it in her to cut me with a poisoned blade so she could keep both the ring and Arthur’s dagger,” Nash said ruefully. “Should have seen that coming, considering I was going to kill her for the ring.”

  I started at that. “You would have…you would have killed a sorceress?” For me?

  He grunted. “It was the only way to take full possession of the ring; you—”

  “—have to kill the bearer,” I finished. “I know.”

  Nash nodded, rubbing his mouth again. “The original plan was that I’d get the ring, have you kill me to take possession of it, and your curse would be broken, and I’d be revived with the coin, good as new.”

  My horror was so acute, I was momentarily speechless. “You expected me—at ten years old—to be capable of killing you?”

  “You hated me enough for it, didn’t you?” he asked quietly.

  I drew in a sharp breath.

  “Didn’t matter in the end,” Nash said. “I was prepared to kill the sorceress, and I was prepared to have her kin come after me for it. But the ring…the moment I touched it, I knew it needed to be purified. Only the High Priestess of Avalon was capable of such a feat. But the poison from Myfanwy’s blade started to take hold shortly after I crossed into Avalon…Should have known something was wrong when the Hag of the Mist wouldn’t take my blood offering.”

  “And you just…expected me to find the coin you buried at Tintagel and put all of the pieces together with the barest of clues?” I continued in disbelief.

  “It was my last coin—I had to take certain measures to protect it until the time was right,” he said. “I also thought you might find it a trifle faster, given all I’d taught you.”

  I all but heard the snap in my ears as the last fraying thread of my patience gave way. “I was a child!”

  “An incredibly clever child,” Nash said. “Too clever by half, even. I didn’t want to involve you until it became necessary, and I couldn’t leave a message for someone else to find. I thought you’d work it out.”

  “How was I supposed to do that when you didn’t even tell us you were leaving?” I demanded, the words like knives. “You never gave us any indication you were coming back!”

  Nash’s hand lowered, setting his coffee cup down. His Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed. “You…thought I meant to leave you…forever?”

  I didn’t answer. I didn’t have to.

  The man drew in a sharp breath, pressing the back of his hand against his forehead.

  “You said it was your last coin,” I said. “How many did you have?”

  “Nine,” he said, and I scoffed. Of course. It was almost too perfect. “And before you ask, I got them from a sorceress whose mother smuggled them out of Avalon. Fair trade.”

  “What, you didn’t go into that one planning to kill her, too?”

  This time, he scowled at me.

  “And all this because you’re convinced I’m cursed, when there’s absolutely no evidence of that,” I said, shaking my head. “You really are something.”

  “Your curse exists whether you believe it or not.”

  I didn’t want to talk about that. I’d come close enough to death these last few days to actually start believing it too.

  “Where did you go when you left the apartment?” I asked.

  “To Rook House,” Nash said. “I got in a mighty tussle with Madrigal’s pooka. Not exactly a fair fight when one of the participants can turn into a lion, now is it?”

  “So you didn’t get inside,” I said. “And you didn’t get the ring back.”

  “Course not. I ran for my life, and it was still a damned near thing,” Nash said. “Then I got word from the Bonecutter you’d gone to see her, asking me to come get you out of her hair.”

  I bristled. “We weren’t just dropping in. We had business.”

  “I’m sure you did. I’ve never known her to like unwelcome drop-ins, though. I could have told you that, if you’d just stayed put and waited for me to come back.”

  I wasn’t about to get into this argument again.

  “Is she still under that curse?” he asked, scratching at his stubble. “The one that makes her look like an ever-so-slightly demonic child?”

  So it is a curse, I thought. Pride would never let me reveal I hadn’t found a way to confirm that myself.

  “Looks like it,” I answered.

  I drank down more of the thick sludge of coffee, letting its bitterness fill me. The old bones of the library’s town house groaned as they shifted and settled again.

  A hard wind was blowing in from the harbor, and a ghostly choir of moaning bled through the cracks in the walls. Sadness stole through me once more.

  The first night we’d heard the wind, wrapped up in our blankets, terrified about what our lives would become, Cabell had started giving each of those “voices” a name—Philbert, Grumbleton, Moorna—and suddenly, we were laughing and crying and laughing.

  “This is where we lived,” I heard myself say. “After you…left.”

  Nash lowered his mug, resting it against his knee as he looked around, absorbing the cobwebs, the exposed beams, the beginnings of dry rot. “Librarian took care of you, then? He’s always been a sweetie.”

  I nodded, my jaw sawing back and forth as I bit back resentment. It was awful, all of this—sitting here like it was one of our old campfires, hearing the rumble of Nash’s voice, taking in his familiar earthy, leathery smell. His old jacket, the one my brother had worn for years, had been lost to Avalon, and his new one didn’t have that same softness, the lived-in quality that only came after decades.

  “You took care of your brother,” Nash said. “I’m proud of you.”

  He could not have hurt me more if he’d ripped the heart from my chest.

  For years…years…I would have killed to hear him say those exact words. But there was no truth to them now. I hadn’t been able to protect Cabell when it mattered most.

  “I saw him,” I told Nash. “Twice.”

  “Hmm? Once with the hunt, I suppose?”

  “Yes,” I said. “And again at Rivenoak. I tried to talk to him there, but he wouldn’t hear me out. Cabell…he…”

  “Go on,” Nash said. His pale eyes were clear, focused, and for the first time maybe ever, I felt he was truly hearing what I was telling him.

  “Cab ran alongside the hunt as a hound, and he seemed so…natural. Free.” I traced a finger over the chipped rim of my mug. “Was his curse that he was forced to shift into human form?”

  “He’s not cursed at all, Tamsy,” Nash said with unbearable gentleness. “He never was.”

  I stared down into the bottomless black of my coffee.

  “Is that his true form?” I asked.

  “What is true but what we choose to be?” Nash mused. “When I found him on the moors that night, he was a pup, but I recognized him for what he was—one of the Cŵn Annwn.”

  Despite the heat of the coffee, a chill prickled my skin. The hounds of Annwn.

  “Why didn’t you just tell us that?” I demanded. “Why pretend like the curse was on him?”

  “You may not understand it,” Nash said, “and I know you think I’m about as trustworthy as an eel, but you were children at the time. And I thought—well, I didn’t want him to long for a place he could never return to. There’s an unkindness to that, too.”

  Crossing my arms over my chest, I glanced at him out of the corner of my eye, some part of me still in disbelief that the bastard was here, sitting beside me.

  “Gods forgive me, I know I was harsh on you at times,” he said. “That I could be a distant, moody old bastard when it came down to it. I didn’t always know how to give you the affection you might have needed, or how to console you…I’m not a soft man, I know this.”