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She was waiting for us anyway.

So we made our way to the other side of the hall, leaving the dead girl behind, following the route through the building Rosalind’s sketches had set out for us. Still no sound seeped in through the thick walls. If not for the rubble and dust, one couldhave forgotten about the battle raging outside, the desperate screams of the wounded and dying.

The only thing disturbing the silence …

A faint, thumping pulse in the distance, growing steadily louder as we made our way through the ruined corridors.

I thought it might be the rhythmic beat of a hammer against wood at first, or a smith battering an anvil. Only as the second, softer thud added itself to the cadence did I realise what we were hearing …

A heartbeat.

The sound of aheartbeatwas echoing through the White Hall.

It swelled with every corner we rounded, until finally we stepped into the antechamber of the main hall I knew and it had grown loud enough to vibrate through walls and floor, everythumpanother tremor beneath my feet. A human man stood on each side of the hall’s entrance, lips grey, blue and black stones in their eye sockets. Their features were so battered it took me a second glance to recognise them – Halbert and Norris.

I had to dig my nails into my palms not to cry out for them.

Their gem eyes followed us as we cautiously crossed the open space towards them, their voices hollow and barely recognisable as their own. ‘The Mother—’

‘Is expecting me,’ I cut in, my voice too high. ‘I know.’

They let out forced, mechanical peals of laughter.Thump thump, the heartbeat pulsed on,thump thump, a little faster now …

As if even that cursed sound knew we were close to the end.

Creon’s yellow magic flashed as we neared the open doorway, turning my clothes plush and pearlescent one last time. I faltered and grabbed his hand – one last touch, one last echo of that love I’d follow into hell and back …

‘How romantic,’ Halbert’s almost-corpse croaked.

Creon swung a knife into his forehead without even looking, and the former consul of the White City went down without another sound. Next to him, Norris did not blink, continuing to stare at us with that utterly vacant expression.

But behind those doors …

A ripple of tinkling laughter, turning my blood to ice at the first giggle.

Creon’s fingers squeezed mine so hard it hurt.

Every muscle and tendon in my body was screaming at me to run,run, as far away from that cruel amusement as my feet could carry me … but Creon kept walking, and so I did too, towards that doorway I’d crossed three mornings ago with Delwin by my side. Into the boom of that thundering pulse, as if the heart of the city had come alive around us.

Into the monster’s lair.

Into a hall I barely even recognised.

Gone were the lily banners, the rows of statues, the galleries full of living, laughing citizens. A grave-like silence hung over the room now. The smell of blood and sweet perfume hung heavy in the air. Sapphire- and obsidian-eyed fae and humans stood quietly along the walls, shoulders stiff and faces empty, and there at the far side of the room, rising from the low stage like some ancient horror …

The bone throne.

Around its base, dozens more humans sat hunched up on the floor, dressed in melodramatic white cloaks like a circle of twisted priests.

And in its seat, lounging in black silk and velvet pillows … the Mother.

Still pale as marble. Still dressed in sparkling, shimmering slips of fabric. Still spine-chillingly beautiful, with those plush pink lips and that pointy face and those silvery white locks cascading all the way to her perfectly curved hips …

But where her damaged eyes had been, she, too, carried gemstones instead.

Zera help me, was she seeingthroughthe eyes of all those others? Like Orin and his moonstone eye – but so, so much more viciously?

I could sense Creon’s roaring disgust without looking at him, as if the intensity of his feelings was reaching my heart through our intertwined fingers. Trying to steady my breathing, I released him – we both ought to have our hands available when the inevitable attack came, and any moment now, she could strike …