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If the boy is on this pile of death, time has run out to find any key, that necessary proof to bless his mother with the mercy of knowing her son’s fate.

What happens now? Can’t Sion come back earlier on this night and save the boys doomed to serve the poisoned wine who will be killed to ensure their silence? He should let Matthew die in peace now and then return instead of badgering him like a criminal.

A sob rises in the dark. I can’t tell if it’s Sion, Matthew, or a different victim crossing from life to death in the pile.

“I want to save your ma. Do ya understand?” It’s Sion who weeps. His cries slice my own soul. If I’m supposed to be the one to help him free the soulfall, I won’t succeed by hiding.

Clutching my skirt, I step through the shimmering wall and press next to Sion in a corner of the narrow shaft. The deathscape is a thousand times worse up close. Bodies twitch in the stack. Gasps sound from under corpses. The flickering light animates forms, thick black snakes writhing and sliding in an overcrowded nest.

I slip between Matthew and Sion, who grasps my arms to turn me away, but I’ve already seen. The body of Matthew Kennedy, a slender teen with delicate features akin to an antique porcelain doll, arches over the evil wooden spike piercing his body.

I don’t understand how he can still be alive. Is the Veil sustaining him long enough for Sion to find the key to his mother’s redemption? I’m forced to shift a body out of the way to lay a hand on Matthew’s cheek. Death presses in around me. It’s suffocating in the cramped shaft that can’t be more than five or six feet square. The insubstantial give of the transforming wall is the only reason Sion and I can maneuver at all. Even so, he wraps his body around mine to fit into the tiny space.

Will the proof we’ve found Matthew be enough of an artifact to release his mother’s soul? Máthair’s ring glints in yellow flickers. I check Matthew’s fingers for a ring. Harriet needed her doll. What does Alaina Kennedy need?

I brush a lock of hair from the dying boy’s eyes. “What can we take to your ma to remember you?”

Sion sputters. “He’s got no more words.”

With painstaking slowness, Matthew bobs his chin twice to his chest. I run a hand over his vest. A button? A pin? What does he want me to find? In a final effort, he lolls his head to one side, and I see a thin leather cord around his neck. As gently as possible, I slip my finger beneath it, tracing its length until I find the knot holding it in place. It isn’t hard to work free. A simple silver cross with worn etchings across its surface dangles on the cord.

Sion makes the sign of the cross, touching his forehead, then three points on his chest. Matthew’s mouth purses so slightly if I wasn’t staring at his face, I’d miss it. I hold the silver jewelry to his lips for a final kiss. A moment later, he’s gone.

With a featherlight touch, I close his eyelids. “May angels sing you home, dear one.”

Chapter 12

The Morning Light

Sion and I stumble out of the Veil passage like drunkards misjudging the height of a curb.

Our less than graceful travel pummels my insides. I take a series of deep breaths to stave off nausea and force myself to look up.

“Go.” I push Sion toward the soulfall tower. He disappears between mossy stones. The cry of souls, fingernails scraping concrete, resonates to the roots of my teeth.

“St. Augustine, let Sion make it before she jumps.” I can’t bear to watch Alaina Kennedy’s soul drowning in her gray loop of sorrow once more when we’ve brought the key to end it. We found her Matthew, and she deserves peace.

Alaina’s figure fills the arched window. The silhouette of her clothing against tangerine firelight is strikingly period now that I know her context in time. Her woeful song drifts down over the grass. I clasp my hands and hold them to the sky. “Please, let Sion reach her.”

She steps into the air, but this time, instead of flinging her arms wide, hands press to her lips. Moonlight bounces off the river, catching the silver of Matthew’s cross as she kisses it. The precious piece of metal shines like a beacon. With a slight turn of head, Alaina faces me. She reaches out a hand as if asking to grasp mine before she bursts into a million raindrops of fire.

I collapse onto the damp ground. We’ve done it. Victory sweeps the last of my nausea away. Alaina Kennedy’s virtue of mercy is restored. A mother is blessed with knowing her son waits for her in heaven.

A cry of misery with enough power to banish clouds from the sky blasts from the tower, a reminder Alaina is but a single spirit freed from this labyrinth of torment. I curl onto my side to avoid watching the remaining souls pound onto rocks. Nothing, not even my arms wrapped over my ears, shields me from the sound of their grim endings.

When silence returns, I release my senses from shutdown and become aware of someone lying close.

Sion

He’s next to me not quite touching. How has he endured listening to the soulfall without going mad for?—

I shudder.

Two—hundred—years.

Is it because he’s actually dead? The heat radiating off his body says otherwise. Sion isn’t in any ghost or spirit form I know of. He’s as real as I am. People see and touch him.

Whatever this man is, we now share a bond of purpose.