“Olwen!” I gasped out. Her jaw set in determination as she rose. “Don’t—”

  “I’ll be right back,” she swore, disappearing from my sight.

  I craned my head around at the sound of her spell, its song bright and unwavering. Lances of fire and light soared between the trees and tore into the Children as they threw themselves at her.

  Lord Death turned his full attention back to Caitriona, to the sword in her hands. His face registered no shock. No fear.

  “I know I taught you better than to denigrate such an illustrious weapon with poor footwork,” he said, running a hand over his pendant’s glimmering stone. “Or to face a superior opponent alone. Not even Excalibur is powerful enough to account for your inexperience.”

  Caitriona’s face tensed as she bared her teeth. “I’ve plenty of experience slaying monsters.”

  “Hmm.” Lord Death lifted his hand from the stone. The cruel pleasure of his expression was suddenly lit by the souls that slipped through the gem’s cold surface. They whorled around him, forming a glowing ring that shifted its position, slanting, straightening, slanting with every heartbeat.

  “You do have practice in killing Avalon’s own, I’ll grant you that,” Lord Death said, clearly enjoying the rage that flooded Caitriona’s expression. “But tell me, are you willing to do the same with the souls of your beloved sisters?”

  The taunt was like boiling tar poured over my skin. Caitriona’s eyes widened, her face going bloodless with horror. For a moment, the souls shifted from sparks of life to the forms they’d had in their last life. My heart dropped into my stomach at the sight of the priestesses of Avalon.

  Caitriona released a bellow of fury and anguish.

  “Even if—and here we shall use our great imaginations,” Lord Death continued, “you were to land a blow upon me, you would have to cut through them first. Are you willing to risk Excalibur’s magic destroying them?”

  No, I thought. That wasn’t right. That wasn’t Excalibur’s magic—if the text we’d seen was correct, it only destroyed the souls of the wicked.

  I pulled at my restraints again. “He’s lying, Cait! Don’t listen to him!”

  Olwen shouted something behind me I couldn’t make out. I wondered if Caitriona could even hear us over the blood that had to be pounding in her head.

  Her hands tightened around Excalibur’s hilt, the shadows on her face lengthening with despair. As powerful as her first strike had been, as fierce as the storm of her rage, it all abandoned her now.

  She didn’t lower the sword—she was too well trained for that. But her hesitation spoke where she wouldn’t. For the first time, she wore the torment of the last few weeks openly, and the raw agony of it stole my breath away.

  My gaze slid to my right, to where the hound—Cabell—stood guard beside me. His hackles rose, and as his long body tensed, awaiting command, the ridge of his spine seemed chiseled from stone.

  “Do something,” I begged him. I knew he’d heard my rasping words, even if he didn’t acknowledge them. His ears twitched, and the low growl in his throat deepened.

  “I know you can hear me,” I squeezed out. “I know who you are.”

  It might only have been my desperate mind playing tricks on me, but the rumbling in his throat seemed to soften. Every memory of the life we’d shared seemed to rise at once. The swell of grief was as unbearable as it was true.

  “You can still come back,” I began, my tears too hot on my frozen cheeks. “All of those innocent beings died, and you did nothing to stop it. Do something now. Do anything. Please, Cab.”

  My hope was snuffed out as he surged toward me with an angry bark, his teeth snapping together in warning. He might as well have torn my throat out.

  But when he looked at me, his eyes weren’t glowing like fire. They were dark—so dark, they were nearly black.

  “Have you made your decision yet?” Lord Death taunted. He allowed Caitriona to circle around him, as if the sword in her hand were merely a wooden practice tool and they were back in the tower’s sparring ring, eager student and devoted mentor.

  “Cait, don’t!” Olwen cried. “Don’t listen to him! Focus!”

  “Shall I make it simple for you?” he said. “Perhaps you can begin with…strong, noble Betrys, who was first to fall at the gates of the tower? Or maybe young Flea—?”

  Caitriona screamed, bringing Excalibur slashing down over her head. Cabell’s dark coat shone with moonlight as he raced forward, his teeth bared.

  If I had looked away again, if I’d dared to so much as blink, I would have missed it—the sudden shift in the hound’s path.

  Excalibur’s arc through the air cut short as Caitriona feinted and kicked at Lord Death’s center.

  The hound’s jaws locked around the soft flesh and muscle of his master’s calf. Lord Death screamed in rage and pain, using the full might of his power to fling Cabell off him. Strings of bloodied flesh still hung from the hound’s teeth as he hit the trunk of a tree and fell to the ground, limp.

  “Cab!” I gasped out.

  Lord Death looked over at the sound of my weak voice, and it was all the opportunity Caitriona needed. Her boot slammed into her former mentor’s breastplate, knocking him to the forest floor hard enough to rattle his armor—and, it seemed, his focus.

  The spiraling shield of priestesses’ souls escaped his grip, exploding out into the forest. Silken mist glowed wherever they hovered; all silent witnesses to whatever came next.

  The momentary distraction had cost Lord Death his concentration, and the roots around me suddenly released with a hissing snap. I gasped for breath as I surged forward without a moment’s hesitation, fighting for balance over the rolling mounds of boulders as I ran for my brother.

  My body was stiff with terror as I dropped to my knees beside him and placed a hand on his side. Every one of his ribs protruded, but he was breathing. Shallowly, but still breathing.

  The metallic smell of blood overpowered even that of the damp earth; his muzzle was stained with it.

  “Cab?” I whispered.

  He’d—he had tried to help, hadn’t he?

  The hound’s eyes remained closed. His coat was matted with blood and flakes of bark.

  The remaining Children descended on us, clawing up through the tangled branches of the trees. They tore at each other’s sagging gray skin and limbs to get to Cabell first, shrieking until my eardrums rang and threatened to burst.

  It was a gamble, and a stupid one, but I threw my body over his. My hands fisted in his fur as the Children circled around us, snapping their teeth.

  Fire blew over my back as Olwen sang out another spell, scorching the Children. With breathtaking control, she threaded the fire through the trees once more, sparing them certain destruction.

  “Fight, you coward!” Caitriona bellowed. “Fight!”

  I looked back just as Caitriona sliced Excalibur down through the night, the steel singing as it neared Lord Death’s neck. Still on the ground, he rolled away and unsheathed his blade in a single, smooth motion.

  Two blades, one pure silver, the other stained by dark magic, swung toward each other.

  A clap of thunderous magic exploded around us as the swords met—and Excalibur’s blade shattered like glass.

  A lone sound pierced the haze of my disbelief.

  Laughter.

  Lord Death’s chortling broke into booming laughter. He lowered his own sword, seeming to savor the sight of Caitriona staring down at the hilt still clutched in her hand, at the jagged piece of the blade that remained. The pallor of her face emphasized its spray of freckles.

  God’s teeth. This couldn’t be happening.

  “No,” Olwen breathed out, returning to my side. “Oh, Mother, no…”

  “This is the divine blade?” Lord Death’s head fell back with another bark of laughter. “This is the slayer of gods?”

  Only Neve’s line can use its full power, I thought, sitting up but not loosening my grip on Cabell. Otherwise it’s just a blade.

  And now the one weapon we’d believed capable of destroying Lord Death lay in pieces at Caitriona’s feet.

  My body felt like it was vibrating with adrenaline, throbbing with every heartbeat.

  Do something, I thought to myself. Anything.

  I knew what my power was now—but recognizing the magic and tapping into it were two different things.

  What am I missing? I squeezed my eyes shut. There were the dreams—dreams that Olwen had claimed allowed me to connect to messages from something greater. From the Goddess.

  And then there was the white rose of Avalon.

  That dream had been unlike all the others. After I’d found the flower in the courtyard of the tower, blooming up between a crack in the stones where nothing else had grown, I’d wondered if I’d somehow dreamt it into being. I’d told myself it had only been a premonition, but what if it wasn’t?

  What if I’d been right, and I’d somehow created it, transforming the decay in Avalon’s soil to give it new form—new life?

  Lord Death circled Caitriona, watching as her shoulders heaved, his amusement plain.

  “Do you recall that very first day I arrived at the tower,” Lord Death began, “and you came to me, your dress still stained with the blood of your beloved High Priestess, and asked to be trained? Do you remember what I said to you then?”

  Caitriona only lifted her chin, jaw clenched.

  “Skill can be taught, but courage cannot,” Lord Death said, continuing his slow, spiraling path around her. “I always knew that you were special in that way.”

  Olwen appeared again at my side, wrapping an arm around my shoulders, holding both of us there. I stared up at her face. She was bruised and worn from the strain of the last ten days, but she held herself with a serenity I couldn’t fathom.

  “You were quick on your feet, quicker of the mind,” Lord Death continued. “And you seemed to enjoy it—there truly is no comparison to the rush of blood, to the exhilaration, that comes with running headlong into battle, knowing at any moment you might die, or you might live.”

  Caitriona stood as straight as a blade, her face revealing nothing.

  “Perhaps you will feel it even now, as I offer you this,” Lord Death said. “Kill the hound, and I shall release the souls of Avalon to be reborn.”

  Nash used to say that living your life was like shuffling a deck of cards. One day you might draw a good hand, the next, a bad beat. But buying into that meant surrendering what control we did have.

  Life wasn’t drawing cards at random, it was choosing to pick up the deck, it was choosing how to shuffle, it was choosing the rules of play. It was the thousands of choices we made every single day, and the path those choices created for us.

  Olwen held me firmly, even as I tried to jump to my feet.

  “Let me go,” I gasped out.

  “Wait,” Olwen said, repeating the word until it became a prayer. A litany. “Wait, wait…”

  I could no longer see Caitriona’s face through the churning mist. She was nothing more than a dark outline until a wind came to bellow through the clearing.

  She stood exactly where she had before, staring down at the remaining fragment of Excalibur’s blade.

  “I’ve never known you to hesitate,” Lord Death said, sheathing his own sword.

  A new, painful chill took hold of me as her words in the library’s attic circled back to me, just as cruel and terrible the second time.

  He’s a monster, Tamsin, and you know what must be done. There is only one way to stop a monster.

  “Cait…,” I started to say, but her name was drowned out by Lord Death’s baritone.

  “You were always too strong, too fierce, to be a mere priestess,” he continued, drawing a step closer to her, then another. “What binds you to the isle now? I know what your heart desires. You’ve already discarded the beliefs that once held you back. Allow me now to break the shackles that remain. Kill the hound. Prove your loyalty to me, and your sisters, all of Avalon, will be reborn in this world.”

  Olwen’s hold on me tightened again, but her expression never changed. She didn’t call out reassurances, or even beg her sister to hear her, the way I would have expected her to.

  “You…you would have me come to Annwn?” Caitriona rasped out.

  “You would lead armies of the dead to punish the wicked—all the wicked of all the Otherlands,” Lord Death continued. “You would ride alongside me in the endless hunt, your power limitless.”

  “Don’t do this,” I begged her. “This isn’t what you want. This isn’t who you are.”

  If Caitriona heard me, she did nothing to acknowledge it. Instead, she looked up. My skin crawled as Lord Death laid a heavy, gloved hand on her shoulder, his expression a sickening play at seeming paternal.

  She’s going to do it, my mind screamed. She’s going to kill him.

  “It is who you are,” he said. “My crown allows me to weigh the worth of a soul, to judge it. What I sense in you now is the hate necessary to survive.”

  Even at a distance, I saw the way her lips trembled as she pressed them together. The bleakness of her dark eyes. Her shoulders sloped down, as if the fight were draining from her.

  “No,” I tried again. “None of that is true! You aren’t your pain. You aren’t your anger—”

  But with one last look at Lord Death, she started toward me. Toward us.

  “What are you doing?” I asked, leaning protectively over Cabell again. Panic trilled in me.

  “Wait,” Olwen breathed out.

  “Stand aside, Tamsin,” Caitriona said, emotionless. “It was always going to come to this.”

  She’d said it herself before, in the library. There is only one way to stop a monster.

  “Cait, please,” I babbled. “I know what he’s done. I know that he hurt you in so many ways and nothing will ever truly make it right. But it’s not too late for you. You don’t have to cross this line.”

  “You forgive him?” Caitriona asked, advancing toward us, her silver hair swaying around her face with each step.

  “No,” I said. “I don’t. But I love him, and I can’t kill that part of me—I’ve tried, Cait. I’ve tried.”

  He was my brother. He had done horrifying things he couldn’t take back. But he was my brother, the same little boy who held my hand when we walked alone in the dark, both of us hungry and exhausted. And now he was coming back to us. He was climbing out of the darkness alone.

  “He can make amends,” I swore.

  Caitriona looked worse up close. Clumps of moss and stray leaves clung to her hair. The skin beneath her eyes looked bruised by sleepless nights.

  “Don’t worry,” she told me coldly. “It’ll be a swift end.”

  “No!”

  Caitriona’s expression changed then, as if a stone mask had fallen away to reveal the familiar flint in her eyes. Her face came alive with new focus, her body rising to its full, impressive height.

  Shame scored my soul, because I understood then why Olwen had held me back. Wait, she’d said. Wait. Not out of denial. Not out of fear.

  It was faith.

  Caitriona turned her back to us, addressing Lord Death with steel in her voice.

  “I am the High Priestess of Avalon,” she said. “And I serve only the Goddess.”

  A ragged cry erupted from Caitriona’s throat as she thrust her hands forward and called her magic to her.

  Golden fire exploded through the air, racing toward Lord Death’s dark figure. He threw a protective arm up, a pulse of silvery magic flaring around him to deflect the river of flames to the open moorland and small stream behind him.

  The remaining Children descended from the trees, called to their master’s defense. Caitriona had an answer for them, too. She dropped what remained of Excalibur and sent writhing knots of fire toward them—one, three, five—leaving them screeching as they collapsed into blazes or fled into the sanctuary of the gnarled trees.

  “Olwen!” she called.

  Her sister answered, racing after the Children, driving them back and back with yet more fire.

  “You fool,” Lord Death thundered at Caitriona. “I offered you a life of glory, but I’ll gladly enslave your soul in death!”

  His magic struggled against hers, pushing forward across the clearing, silver devouring gold. Caitriona’s arms shook, beads of sweat dripping from her face as she screamed again. The fire fought back, and the renewed clash sent sparks of magic scattering among the souls still hovering nearby.

  Watching, I thought. Powerless to stop him without form.

  “Tamsin,” Caitriona got out between gritted teeth. “Tell Neve…tell Neve I’m sorry.”

  “You tell her yourself,” I shot back, rising to my feet. Fear rippled down my spine at her bleak expression.

  Useless, I thought desperately, watching the warring magic. After everything, you’re still useless.

  I tried to reach out for the magic I’d felt around me before, sensing those flickering pulses. The potential they had to be reborn into something new. Something that could help us. I had to figure out the right way to call it.

  The white rose. That had to be the key.

  “When I drop the ring of fire around us, take your brother,” Caitriona said, her feet sliding back with the force of the warring magics. “Take him and Olwen and run.”

  “I’m not leaving you,” I told her. The stone of Lord Death’s pendant was lit from within, stirring with the souls imprisoned inside. “Cait, look—!”

  The warning came too late for either of us to dive away from the roots that burst from the ground, crackling with death magic.

  “No!” Caitriona shouted, but the word died on her tongue as the roots lashed around her body like a vise and threw her to the ground. Her golden fire went out with one last desperate flare as her body was caged against the boulders. She fought, trying to twist herself free.