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My vision rushed back to me, blinding light forcing me to blink rapidly as I stepped back. Light filled the palm of my shadow hand, dripping threads of gold leaking between my impossible fingers.

Wellebourne’s crucible was empty. Without the souls holding it together, it cracked in two, the pieces falling to the floor.

Governor Adelaide wailed.

Ernesta and Master Ostrum stopped fighting. Master Ostrum turned, looking to me, his eyes hollow.

I plucked out the golden thread of light that was his soul, and I let it go. His body crumpled.

Free.

“No.” Governor Adelaide’s voice was low pitched and sorrowful.

Thuds echoed from the corridor as I let all the souls go. The guards’ bodies fell, empty, to the ground.

“It’s over,” Grey breathed, relief flooding his voice.

“No,” I said, looking at Governor Adelaide. “It isn’t.”

“You destroyed my crucible,” she snarled at me.

“But not the plague.” I could release the souls, I could break the iron. But the curse still existed.

Governor Adelaide’s eyes grew wide with horror. She tried to run away.

But she did not have her crucible to protect her anymore. And I had mine.

Power vibrated through me. I had never taken the soul from the body of someone living before.

I was shocked at how easily—hownaturally—it came to me. My shadow hand pulled at the strings of golden light radiating around Governor Adelaide, and her soul squirmed, trying to wriggle free. I clenched my incorporeal hand.

Governor Adelaide’s body froze. Her pulse thrummed violently in her neck, and her eyes darted wildly, but there was no other movement.

“Kill the necromancer,” I said, bending down to pick up the sword Master Ostrum had carried. “Kill the necromancy.”

SIXTY-NINE

Grey

Nedra struggled toraise the sword with one hand. I didn’t know how she forced Governor Adelaide to be so still as she pressed the tip of the blade against the governor’s chest.

“Ned?” I whispered.

“The plague still exists,” Nedra said in a matter-of-fact voice. “I cannot stop it any other way.”

I knew the rules. Nedra had been able to free the undead Governor Adelaide controlled, but she could not stop the plague.

Not while the governor was alive.

But I didn’t want to see my Nedra become a murderer. I crossed the room and reached for her. Her hair had come undone from its braids. It was paper-white, but still soft and supple.

Her shoulders trembled with the effort to hold the sword steady at the governor’s chest.

“There has to be some other way—” I started.

Before I finished the sentence, Nedra drove the sword into the governor’s heart. The light left her eyes. Her mouth grew slack, a rivulet of blood leaking from one corner. The governor’s knees crumpled, and her body fell forward, sliding along the blade of the sword until her chest slammed against the hilt.

SEVENTY