Nash made a soothing noise at the back of his throat, a hand clasped to her shoulder. The other sorceresses, including Madrigal, were starting to circle the table as well, and I suddenly felt like a lamb who’d woken up and found herself surrounded by wolves. I dragged both my workbag and Neve’s fanny pack across the table, tucking the latter into my satchel for safekeeping.

  Kasumi’s face was impassive as she bent over Neve, studying her. Drawing the thin wand over Neve’s body. Magic lashed out from under Neve’s skin, crackling along the wood. “And this girl, she’s of maiden rank?”

  “No, she is unaffiliated with the Sistren,” said the mousy brunette.

  “Her name is Neve,” I said. “And you rejected her when she came to you for schooling.”

  I wondered suddenly if Kasumi herself had been the one who’d turned Neve away—if she was the one who had mocked her lack of lineage and made her feel like nothing. Fury coursed through my blood.

  Emrys’s thumb stroked along my wrist, soothing. His eyes never left the red-haired sorceress as she leaned around Kasumi’s shoulder, fighting to maintain her disinterested expression. Her perfectly arched brows rose at something Kasumi murmured to them.

  “Well?” Nash asked. “What is it?”

  “Yes,” Kasumi said. “This is the power known as the Goddess’s light. I believe it is her.”

  The words turned the castle around me, everything, to ash.

  She’ll never be safe, I thought, horrified. As long as Lord Death lived, she would never be able to return to a normal life. She would never be safe from him.

  “She needs more protection than the four of you can offer,” Kasumi said. “I must bring her back to the Council.”

  “Absolutely not,” Caitriona growled. “You will not bring her into your nest of adders!”

  “I see the Avalonian opinion of sorceresses has yet to improve,” Nash murmured. “Think clearly on this, child. They are her own kind—”

  “They are not,” Caitriona cut in sharply. “And they’ll turn her over to Lord Death to save themselves.”

  “How dare you?” Kasumi’s calm demeanor was more frightening than any of the wands pointed at us. “We are servants of the Goddess. We will not relinquish the soul of her child to that monster, nor one of our own.”

  “One of your own?” I repeated incredulously. “You sent her away in the cruelest manner possible. You refused to help her before, so why should we believe you’d be willing to do it now?”

  “Child, are you under the mistaken belief that you have a choice?” Kasumi asked, the words edged with warning.

  Nash held up his hands, paternally cajoling in a way that got my back up, even now.

  “Between them, the Sistren have thousands of years’ worth of knowledge,” he said. “Would you rather risk having the magic burn her up? The poor dove was writing to them, asking for their help. Don’t you think this is what she’d want?”

  My hands clenched into fists at my sides, but I couldn’t argue with the truth. Emrys squeezed my wrist in encouragement.

  “There is another reason we will not give the soul to Lord Death,” Kasumi said.

  “That’s—” Nash interrupted. “That’s all hearsay, isn’t it?”

  She ignored him. “The soul possesses magic beyond our reckoning. If he were to kill your friend and take Creiddylad’s soul to Annwn, both she and that power would be entirely under his command, and that would spell an end for all of us.”

  “More lies,” Caitriona said, shaking her head. “You refused her before, just as you refused to help Avalon. You knew, didn’t you? What was happening on the isle, how few of us were left. And you did nothing.”

  Kasumi’s even stare was infuriating. “By the time we discovered what was happening, it was already too late. My only regret is not believing you’d be so foolish as to perform the ritual that unmade Avalon.”

  Caitriona surged toward her, only to be stopped by Nash.

  “Easy,” he crooned. “It’s not a fair fight.”

  “Maybe if you had come yourself instead of sending your little spy, none of us would be standing here,” I said.

  “Spy?” Kasumi repeated, turning ever so slightly to me.

  “Your pooka,” I said.

  Her head angled. “I sent no spy.”

  The others looked to Madrigal, who seemed offended by the suggestion. “Why would I send Dearie to such a place when I had an errand boy already there?”

  Emrys drew in a deep breath; I was mad enough to spit nails, but he was clinging to his composure with white-knuckled tenacity.

  “If you didn’t send it, who did?” Nash asked. “One of the other members of the Council?”

  “No one would do such a thing without my explicit orders,” Kasumi said. “It would involve dismantling all of the careful spellwork we’ve put into place. However that pooka got into Avalon, it was not our doing. Perhaps it was there all along. What matters now is ending this, while we still have breath in our bodies.”

  My thoughts whirled. You couldn’t trust a sorceress, I knew that, but she seemed genuinely surprised by the accusation.

  The other sorceresses don’t like her, I reminded myself. We’d listened to them discussing her leadership in the vault, what felt like weeks ago. If the Council or other members were acting behind her back, what did that say about her ability to protect Neve?

  Caitriona’s thoughts seemed to follow a similar path. She moved toward Neve again, as if to carry her away from all of this. But Neve still didn’t open her eyes, and when a surge of magic rolled over her, she cried out in pain.

  And that was answer enough for me.

  We have to, I thought, feeling my heart crack inside my chest. There isn’t another choice.

  I had to believe that this was the path Neve would choose for herself.

  “This entire time,” I told Kasumi, “all she wanted was to help the Sistren. To save you.”

  “Then let us return the favor and help her,” Kasumi said. “We haven’t the time to debate this. The hours pass swiftly in our world. When we return, there will be less than two days until the solstice—until he opens the pathway to Annwn and allows the dead to spill back into our world.”

  The thought sent terror skittering down my spine. “Time moves that slowly here?”

  The High Sorceress nodded, though there was something victorious in her expression, as if she knew she’d played her trump card.

  “Tamsin, you can’t be seriously considering this,” Caitriona said, her thick brows lowering.

  “If you take her, we’re coming with you,” I told Kasumi.

  “Tamsin,” Caitriona pleaded. “Don’t do this.”

  “I would expect nothing less.” Kasumi cast a look of pure loathing at Nash. “I will even tolerate his presence.”

  “Cait,” Nash said, drawing her off from us. “I understand, I do. But this is happening whether you will it to or not. Take a moment away to steady yourself. Fetch our things if you’d like. Just steady yourself.”

  Caitriona looked me straight in the eye as she said, “All of this was a mistake.”

  She sounded nothing like herself. It was as if the wounded animal we’d all sensed inside her, the very one we’d been trying to appease at every turn, had suddenly broken free of its cage. She looked utterly frantic, cornered—and in her pain, anger was the easiest thing to reach for.

  I was surprised at how little her words stung once I understood what had fed them.

  “Cait,” Emrys tried, but she whirled on him, daring him to say something. He did. “It’s only a mistake if we don’t fix it.”

  She turned on her heel and strode out of the great hall, her footsteps echoing like hits to the chest. I started after her, only for Nash to catch my arm.

  “Give her time,” he said. “She needs a moment alone.”

  “She’ll need more than that,” Madrigal said. “I’d recommend copious amounts of wine, and, failing that, an hour or two in the iron maiden.”

  “Madrigal,” Kasumi said sharply. “Isolde.”

  The slight brunette beside her straightened, eagerly awaiting her instructions.

  “Go retrieve the sword so we can examine it,” she continued. “Aife and Annalise—collect what you can from the dragon.”

  “You’re welcome for that, by the way,” Nash said.

  Kasumi’s lips compressed into a tight line. “Don’t make me stuff you up its foul end.”

  The remaining sorceresses used their wands to carve sigils into the table beneath Neve. The top pulled free of its legs and hovered on some unfelt buoy of air.

  “Oh, look at this,” the Sorceress Annalise said, holding up the dragon’s limp tongue. “The scholars will be thrilled.”

  A cackle echoed off the soaring stone walls in answer. Isolde was scurrying around the doorway, bent at the waist, her face becoming more and more frantic. But Madrigal only leaned against the wall, laughing.

  And I knew. Somehow I did. It felt like the world was crumbling beneath me.

  “What?” Emrys asked, then stopped, realizing it too. “Oh, gods. No…”

  I hurried toward them, joining Isolde’s frantic search, following the path I’d seen the sword take as it had spun away from us.

  Instead, I found footprints. I followed the trail of them to the castle’s once-grand entrance, down the stairs leading back out into the dead kingdom.

  A scream clawed up my throat, but when I dropped to my knees, no sound came.

  Caitriona was gone, and she’d taken Excalibur with her.

  As it turned out, Nash’s journey to Lyonesse hadn’t involved bartering with ill-tempered ancient beings or breaking through the spell barriers of high magic that sealed our world off from the Otherlands. He’d slipped in like a spider through a crack between the worlds—the very one the sorceresses themselves used.

  “How in hellfire did you know about this?” I demanded.

  Kasumi and the other sorceresses looked just as vexed as they shuffled toward us through the icy snow, Neve on the tabletop floating between them.

  “Yes, I should like to know that myself,” Kasumi said.

  As we’d walked the long path from the castle back to the abandoned village, the crunch of our footsteps in the snow the only sound between us, Nash had led us to the front door of what appeared to be a simple home.

  The key Nash retrieved from his leather jacket’s pocket looked similar to the skeleton keys we’d use to open a Vein and enter a sorceress’s vault. This bone, however, was less a bone and more a claw, and it was longer than the hand that clasped it.

  “Is this a Vein?” Emrys asked. “Or just a split between the worlds?”

  “Give me that,” Kasumi said, snatching the key from Nash. She held the razor-tipped end up in silent threat and he lifted his hands in surrender.

  “After you, milady,” he said, making a sweeping gesture as he pushed the door open.

  Emrys had his answer. It wasn’t like any Vein I’d seen—rather than a spiraling fabric of iridescent spellwork, the darkness ahead of us was shrouded in mist. It slithered out, searching.

  “How?” I repeated, forcing Nash to stare at me.

  “I’m a man of fewer and fewer secrets, my little imp,” he said, with the smugness I knew so well. “Allow me to keep this one, won’t you?”

  “No,” I said flatly. He pulled me aside to allow Kasumi and the others to pass through the doorway first, handling Neve with a gentleness that I begrudgingly approved.

  “I traded a sorceress for it, all right?” Nash said gruffly, scrubbing the snow off his face. He looked weary as he followed my gaze.

  “The girl made neat work of that snaky beast when she sent it to its death,” he told me. “She’ll be all right.”

  “I know that,” I snapped. That was never my fear. Caitriona was more than capable of protecting herself. Nash had suggested searching the nearby rooms, on the off chance she’d fallen through some floor or gotten herself trapped, but we’d both known it was a waste of time. She’d probably called for Rosydd the moment she stepped out of the castle.

  My disappointment stung so deep, it left me breathless. I tugged at my braided bracelet, trying to rip it off, but the knot held firm.

  Caitriona was as stubborn as stone; only death would change her path now. A part of me hated her for this, and the longer I lingered there, in pain and resentment, the uglier my anger became.

  We had chosen each other. We were supposed to see this through together.

  Together to the end.

  But I blamed myself, too. I’d felt her there on that precipice, all along, every moment since that last day in Avalon. I’d thought that if we were together, we’d be there to draw her back from the darkness that seemed to be gathering around us at every turn. To save her from her own fury.

  “There are some journeys,” Nash said, “we can only take ourselves.”

  “It’s not right,” I told him.

  “No,” he said, placing a hand on my shoulder. “But it is necessary.”

  None of us were who we used to be. The Caitriona I knew would never abandon a sister, or a friend. She would never seek revenge, as the sorceresses had so many centuries ago.

  You weren’t enough, came that old voice inside me. The one that had ruled over my heart for years like a tyrant. You were never enough to save the people you love. To keep them with you.

  “Life is a mirror,” Nash said. “There are times we must stare into its depths and face what we have become. The true fight is in saving ourselves if we cannot accept what we see there.”

  I am enough, I thought. I am enough. I wasn’t going to be the one to let go of us. And maybe that made me a fool, and pathetic, and all the things I used to be afraid of, but I knew now that choosing hope was the braver thing than letting go first to avoid being hurt.

  I chose them, and I would keep choosing them, no matter what happened, or who we became.

  “Until she returns, we must keep moving forward,” Nash said, guiding us back to the door the sorceresses had already passed through. He entered first, whistling some soft song, leaving Emrys and me to watch him disappear.

  Emrys leaned down to kiss my cheek. I turned toward him in surprise, flushing.

  “It’ll be all right,” he said softly, as if knowing every storm in my heart.

  “You can’t promise that,” I said.

  He took my hand. “I just did.”

  We walked through the split between the worlds together. I turned back one final time, but only to watch the shadowed land of Lyonesse vanish as I shut the door behind us.

  * * *

  “Where are we, anyway?”

  “Highgate Cemetery,” Emrys answered after a quick look around.

  “It’s the Circle of Lebanon,” Nash corrected.

  “The Circle of Lebanon located in Highgate Cemetery,” Emrys said in turn.

  Nash peered at him in the darkness, looking more and more peevish by the moment.

  “So, London,” I said, rolling my eyes.

  I hurried past them, trying to catch up to where the sorceresses were cutting a slow path through the nearby tombs. Burial vaults lined the walls on either side of us, curving around to form a sunken circle set apart from the rest of the cemetery.

  The location of the Council of Sistren’s headquarters was a closely guarded secret, though many had assumed it was in London, just by virtue of how many sorceresses were spotted there. Every time a Hollower tried to follow them back to wherever it was they met, they invariably became lost and found themselves on the steps of the Tower of London. I’d always thought that last bit was a nice touch.

  Emrys fell in step beside me, taking a long look at the cedar sapling tree looming over us. It had been planted on top of the tombs at the circle’s center, its youth at odds with the vaults’ moss-flecked stone facades. Their Egyptian-inspired architectural flair was dulled by age.

  The family names etched into the stone above their doorways were barely visible as nature encroached from all sides. Creeping fingers of ivy and dying grass spread with abandon.

  The night seemed to breathe disquiet. I felt unseen eyes watching us from beneath the stalks of leaves jutting out of the shrinking mounds of snow, through the cracks in the walls of the vaults. Cold pressure materialized at our backs, as if filling in the place Caitriona had vacated. But when I turned, only Nash was there, his expression grim as he surveyed the burial grounds.

  “You okay?” Emrys asked quietly.

  “Fine,” I managed to get out.

  I hated that my first instinct was to lie, but paranoia was contagious. It was better if one of us held on to their nerves.

  “Just worried about Neve,” I added, which was true. Thinking of Neve gave me something to focus on besides the horrible sensation of tingling and rot that had returned to my skin.

  We followed the curve of the walkway until we found a set of stairs that would lead us out into the surrounding woodland. There, the tangle of man and nature was even more pronounced. Graves had been reclaimed by the wild, their stone markers dislodged or set crooked by stubborn roots.

  A flash of red hair ahead made me slow.

  “Great,” Emrys muttered, ducking his chin and keeping his eyes on the ground.

  Madrigal was huffing and puffing, muttering darkly to herself as her heeled boots struggled against the cobbled path.

  “Nice night for a walk,” Nash noted as we passed her.

  She glared at him, then turned her narrowed gaze onto Emrys, sizing him up. For a moment, I was genuinely worried she was going to ask him to carry her the rest of the way.

  “Why did you even come?” I asked, my hate for her overcoming even my fear of what she was capable of.

  “Beastie,” she growled at me. “Do you honestly believe I would have left the comfort of my home if I had any say in the matter?”