Janice pointed her finger. “She tried to contact you. She told me. Why…”

  He nodded. “I was shielded too, except for when I was trying to make contact. I couldn’t risk him discovering I’d survived.”

  “Couldn’t, or wouldn’t?” she demanded.

  He threw up his hands. “I don’t know! Both? I gave up after a few weeks.”

  Tears were welling in her eyes. “You have no idea what it’s been like, or what your wife’s been through!”

  Will’s expression darkened. “I have an idea. Currently, I’m trying to decide what to tell people when I go to collect her body.” Janice froze, and the two of them stared at one another for several seconds, before he added, “Can we just talk a little while before we start yelling? I’ve been to Hell and back, and that was easy compared to what happened today.”

  She began crying, which even given the circumstances was unusual. Janice was sometimes sentimental, and he’d seen her cry before, but she wasn’t the type to dissolve into tears during an argument. Will’s eyes took note of her swelling belly, and he reminded himself that he might need to be more empathetic. She pushed him away when he tried to hug her once more.

  “Just give me a moment,” she told him. Moving to the bed, she sat down and dabbed at her cheeks with one of her sleeves. After regaining her composure, she nodded. “Let’s talk.”

  Will went to Selene’s dressing table and claimed the chair she kept there, trying not to think about the last time he’d seen her in it, brushing out her hair. He dragged it across the room and put it a few feet in front of Janice, then sat down. “Want me to start?”

  She did, so he spent the next twenty minutes explaining what had happened to him over the past weeks. They were old friends, so he told her everything, including his feelings at various points during the story. He did leave out his embarrassing near death while trying to feed Tailtiu, but that wasn’t really important. He kept his trip through Hell brief and drastically abbreviated the weeks after, since not much had happened. Will spent most of his time describing what he had seen before, during, and after the death of Lognion. The ending was difficult as every word threatened to overwhelm him once more.

  Janice listened patiently, only asking questions when he missed an important detail, or when she needed clarification. As he got to the end, her expression became sympathetic, but she didn’t interrupt to comfort him. If his voice began to crack, she would wait quietly until he could continue.

  Afterward, he could see her eyes had grown damp again, but she launched into her own story rather than make him wait. Will tried to get her to pause, but she refused. “No. You need to hear this. We can sort out our feelings after.”

  Her story made his chest ache. In the days after Grim Talek’s announcement that he’d died in Hell, Selene had grown progressively more depressed. Having seen her just before the battle, Will had expected that, but what surprised him was the quiet dread in Janice’s voice as she described her efforts to stop Selene’s slide into despair. “She needed help, Will, but no matter what I tried, she wouldn’t let me into her heart. It was as though her light went out and she couldn’t see any more. She was walking blind in the darkness.”

  Will tried to emulate Janice’s reserve while she’d listened to his tale, but it was difficult. He put his face in his hands and listened as calmly as he could, though yet more tears were making tracks down his cheeks.

  Janice described their work on the golem that Tiny would use in the battle. She’d done quite a bit of the design herself, while Selene was the one who had performed the surgeries to implant enchanted gems into Tiny’s body that would link up with similar items that were built into the golem itself. The puzzling potion use Will had previously observed had been part of his initial training. The golem’s body was much stronger and faster, so until it was ready, Tiny had used the dragon-heart potions to polish his fighting skills under similar conditions.

  Will asked her about the dagger he’d found inside the golem’s helm, but she insisted there hadn’t been one. “Whatever you found must have gotten in there during the fighting,” she answered. “I checked everything before he left, and there was never a dagger in the design anyway.”

  He had trouble believing that one of the egg guardians or hatchlings had somehow cached a magical dagger on the fallen golem, but he urged Janice to continue her story.

  “The last two weeks were the worst. Selene and I only talked when it concerned our work on the golem. She spent the rest of her time in Wurthaven, either at the Healing building or in your laboratory.”

  “Laboratory?”

  “The workshop you built in the cellar,” she clarified, referring to the addition Will had made to the house they had once lived in on the campus. “When she wasn’t performing surgery or otherwise trying to help the children, she would spend her time there. She wouldn’t let anyone near it.”

  He’d already told her about how Selene had died, then died again, so they both understood the implications. Janice went on, “Some of the children didn’t make it.”

  “What does that mean?”

  Her response was hesitant. “She was having a lot of success before, but over the last two weeks, her luck was bad. A lot of the patients, mostly children, died.”

  Will’s heart dropped. “Do you think she…?”

  “I don’t know! I wouldn’t have believed it.” His old friend was as upset as he was, possibly more.

  “Selene told me she’d figured out how the lich did it, but I never heard the details. Did she tell you anything?” asked Will.

  Janice shook her head vigorously. “No, but Will, the ones who died—I don’t think she returned the bodies. She told the families they weren’t suitable for being seen. They were given sealed caskets to bury. It seemed odd to me when I heard, especially when I learned she was paying the families. Now I’m wondering if the bodies were really in the caskets.”

  Will’s head hurt. “I think Grim Talek uses living adults when he needs a new body. As messed up as all this sounds, I can’t imagine her hurting children.” He got to his feet. “We should check the workshop and see what’s there.”

  “Now?”

  He nodded. “Grim Talek probably won’t return for a few days, if he’s planning to come back at all. Selene, I’m not sure. At the end, the lich kept telling me I was killing her. She may be gone for good. If not, she might be there.”

  Janice seemed reluctant. “John still hasn’t woken. I need to stay with him. I rushed up here because I wanted to know what happened.”

  Will’s eyes inadvertently went to her swelling belly, and he nodded. “You probably shouldn’t be there, anyway. I have no idea what I might find.”

  “It isn’t that,” she argued. “I’m not ill. John will need me when he wakes up, and I want to be there. If you wait…”

  Will shook his head. “You’re right.” Internally, he felt a fresh surge of guilt. That’s what I should have done. His grandmother had warned him. I wasn’t there when Selene needed me, and now it’s all gone to shit.

  Before he could step out of the room, Janice gave him another quick piece of information. “The staff all expect the queen to be gone for a week. She and the lich made a show of leaving for Rimberlin this morning. He wanted time in case he needed to find a new body after facing Lognion. That’s the main reason everyone is surprised to see you back.”

  And she probably felt the same, thought Will. “I should be back before this evening. You said you were with Tiny. Where is he?”

  “We share one of the guest bedrooms. He’s laid out there. Just tell the servants you’re looking for Dame Shaw. They’ll know where to find me,” she answered.

  Will headed for Wurthaven, and after he left the palace, he smoothed out his turyn to make himself difficult to notice. He didn’t bother with a camouflage spell as that sometimes made it more difficult to walk the streets. The combination often led strangers to bump into him, whereas just using Darla’s technique alone meant they would just ignore him and step around.

  He kept it up on campus since he knew most of the faculty. Today wasn’t the day for small talk or questions. A short time later, he reached the house he had once shared with Selene while he’d been a student, before the war. It was empty now, and the doors were locked, though that wouldn’t be an obstacle. Will walked around to the back where the cellar doors were located. Down there was his goal.

  A chain and padlock held the doors shut. He’d had a similar arrangement before, but Will was pretty sure they’d been removed after they’d emptied everything out. The chain looked new, but what really drew his attention was the ward protecting the doors. She really didn’t want visitors, he noted. The chain also told him the cellar was unoccupied, since it wouldn’t have been possible to relock it after entering.

  The ward would prevent most from entering, but Will wasn’t most. He shifted his own turyn to match, then touched the lock and unlocked it with a bit of reflexive magic. He was irritated enough that he’d had the impulse to simply destroy both lock and ward, but it occurred to him he might want to keep his prying a secret, at least for now.

  Down below, things had changed. Will had originally used the space to bleed pigs to feed his captive vampire, which he then bled in turn. The stone block for the pig was gone, as was the cage he’d used for the vampire. A long, wooden table now filled one wall, and in the corner was a stone box with an iron door and a chimney pipe that led up to the surface. Will thought it might be an oven at first, but when he opened the door, he realized that wasn’t the case.

  It was a cremation oven. He'd seen one at the Healing and Psyche building once. The top chamber was lined with bricks and large enough to fit a grown man. Beneath it was a smaller space with enchanted ceramic blocks spaced along the length of it. No fuel was required; a caster would simply apply the necessary turyn, and the enchantment would do the rest. The ceramic blocks would heat up to white-hot temperatures and raise the heat in the body chamber above. With the door closed, the top chamber was completely sealed, except for the vent that let gases escape through the chimney.

  He was glad to find the oven clean and empty, but that meant little. Selene was an orderly person. Looking around, Will saw a long tool with a flat metal end used for scraping the ashes out afterward. Beside it was a stone box with a wooden lid. Inside, he found the ashes.

  How many people’s remains it held, he couldn’t say without weighing the contents and accessing reference books to find out the dry weight of a human body. It depended greatly on the size of the people cremated as well. It might be something else, he told himself. Just because it looks like a cremation oven doesn’t mean these aren’t wood ashes.

  Will couldn’t think of a good reason to use an enchantment to heat wood to ash when one could simply burn it on its own, but he reminded himself that he didn’t know everything. Reaching into the box, he sifted through the grey powder with his fingers. There was something solid within, so he lifted it carefully and saw it was a bone. It disintegrated when he applied a tiny bit of pressure, crumbling into dry dust. Exploring further, he found many more, though most were broken into small pieces.

  He'd studied anatomy enough to know they weren’t animal bones. They’d come from small humans—children. “Damn it, Selene! Why?” he swore.

  The table was empty, but from the turyn traces, he could see she’d done considerable work there, though he had no idea precisely what she’d been doing. Unable to find further clues, Will closed the oven and ash box, taking care to hide signs of his search. Just as he was about to leave, he spotted a crumpled page in the corner behind one of the table legs. Bending down, he reclaimed it and spread it out on the table.

  Selene had likely stored her journals and other work in her limnthal, but this page had been discarded, probably due to some mistake. It showed a rune construct and a ritual diagram. Both had been crossed out. Will didn’t recognize either, though if it was an original design, that was to be expected. It was the notes at the bottom of the page that sent a chill up his spine:

  Insufficient soul fragments leave the vessel unstable. Will redraw and balance for the next harmonic at nine since four was a failure. Don’t know what material Grim used as base. Could make a significant difference. For now, carborundum seems sufficient.

  Soul fragment was an ominous term, and Will wondered how many could be gained from a single person. Was it one? Did it take four people to produce four? He wanted to burn the page, but he resisted the urge and stored it in his limnthal for future study. It wasn’t her final solution, but studying the rune construct could teach him a lot about the technique she had tried to perfect.

  “Did perfect,” he corrected himself. He’d seen her open the second gate to try and save him, and though he hadn’t realized it, she’d already been dead at that point. “The question,” he asked the empty room, “is where is she now? Where did she put her phylactery and is she still in it, or has she taken a fresh body already?” He also didn’t know what the requirements were for new host bodies. Did they have to meet certain criteria, and how did the transference happen? Will doubted they were volunteers.

  Will left the cellar, replacing the chain and relocking it as he had found it. The ward showed no sign that he’d passed through it. He didn’t have the emotional energy left to be disgusted. It was weariness and disappointment that defined him as he left Wurthaven. As he walked, he considered his next step, and his brain finally connected a few more of the dots.

  Aislinn had reminded him twice to think about what she’d told him previously, and though he had, he hadn’t fully processed it at the time. One line stood out now. “His current body and the object that binds him here have to be on the same plane,” she’d told him. Entering the pocket dimension would have required Grim Talek to take his phylactery with him, otherwise the gate would have disrupted his connection to his body and sent him back to the phylactery.

  “It was the dagger.” Will stopped in his tracks, then changed course. He needed to go back to the ley line chamber. He’d left the dagger there with the bodies. As he went his sense of urgency caused him to break into a run.

  He felt like a fool. Recalling Aislinn’s face when he offered her the weapon, he now understood. She thought I was offering her the chance to decide his fate, but I was too dull to realize what she sent me to recover! There had never been a reason for him to use Erica’s Abyssal Barrier either. With the phylactery in hand, he could have simply destroyed it and ended Grim Talek then and there.

  Ten minutes later, he was racing down the stairs to the chamber beneath the old Arenata house. At the bottom, he received a fresh surprise. Selene’s body was gone, along with the dagger. Only Aislinn’s remains were still there.

  Will managed to find the energy to jump up and down while he practiced every foul phrase and vile swear he’d ever learned from his grandfather. Some of it he directed at himself, but most was aimed firmly at the lich.

  Grim Talek had carried his phylactery with him, then hidden it in the golem’s armor just before they crossed the gate into the nest. Will had found it and been completely oblivious. When he’d seen the lich flee, deserting his bones, the evil bastard had only gone a few feet away, returning to the iron dagger.

  And now it was gone, and almost as bad, Will couldn’t bury Selene now either. Was it one of her people, or one of his that recovered the dagger and the remains? It might not even matter, which bothered him more.

  After he calmed down, he decided to store Aislinn’s body in his limnthal. It felt somewhat disrespectful to the dead, but now that the others had gone missing, he worried someone else might steal his grandmother’s remains. There was also the added bonus that it would keep her body from decomposing until he could bury her. I should have done the same with Selene and the dagger before I left the first time.

  You were overwhelmed. You still are, suggested Laina’s voice. You need rest.

  Will’s only reply was a growl as he left. Half an hour later, he was back at the palace, and after a few awkward questions, he found the room that Tiny and Janice shared. His overlarge friend was sitting up in the bed when Janice let him in.

  “He just woke a few minutes ago and he’s still groggy,” warned Janice. “I just told him you’re alive but that’s all so far.”

  As Will stepped in, Tiny’s eyes focused on him, showing shock for a moment before his expression went flat. “Where have you been?”

  “A lot of places,” said Will, trying to keep his tone light. “Hell and back, and today I saw the end of Lognion. That wouldn’t have happened without your help.”

  Tiny lowered his brows. “Help? You’re saying I helped? I marked him for the final blow.”

  “That definitely weakened him, but it didn’t finish him off,” said Will. “Not that it matters. I’m just glad you’re doing well. Janice told me th—”

  The big knight’s face darkened. “Are you trying to claim credit for today?”

  Will froze. “I don’t really give a damn about credit. What are you so mad about? We haven’t even talked about it yet.”

  “Screw talk! You weren’t even there, Will! Now you’re going to pat me on the back for being a good boy? Fuck you! You’ve apparently been playing dead somewhere all this time, and now you want to claim you did something?” Tiny’s voice had risen to a thunderous volume, and his face had gone red. Will had never seen him so mad before.

  Janice tried to intervene. “John, let him talk. You haven’t heard about…”

  “To hell with that, Jan!” yelled Tiny, causing Janice to blanch. “I was there! Not him! The damn place was swarming with lizards and vampires, not to mention that goddamned lich, but that was it. Even Selene stayed outside. I saw the dragon fall; I saw it die. Now this asshole wants to come in here and lie to both of us!”

  Will closed his eyes and took a deep breath while his friend ranted, then tried to be reasonable. “I’m not trying to steal your glory. More happened after you fell.”