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And then there’s Duncan, with much smaller numbers. But even from here, I can see daggers swirling with flames in their fists. Their attention is not on the Sphere, not on Beaulah, but on House of Marionne. Darragh is a dead woman.

One of House Duncan steps forward and the silence on the hillside somehow grows quieter. My heart thuds. All at once House Duncan lower to their knees. And raise their hands.

Things happen very quickly.

Shadows ribbon through the air to them, connecting with their hands. They all slam both hands of dark magic together and bury them in the snow.

The ground rumbles.

From their hands, a crack rips across the ground, right in Darragh’s direction.

The air rings with shrieks. People shove one another out of the way. Darragh steps aside, glaring not at Duncan but at Beaulah Perl, whose House has linked hands and formed a circle around the Sphere. Duncan huddles again, doing something else. Pressure builds in my chest, but I can’t tear my eyes away from the impending chaos. The Dragunhead doesn’t move beside me.

“How do I protect the Sphere?”

The seconds are ticking by like hours when something dark is flung through the air at Darragh and her House. It hits the snow and explodes. Ash and snow, broken bits of earth, shoot through the air. And in a radius around everything the toushana bomb touched, the ground blackens. My heart stumbles. Toushana. Duncan’s using dark magic. They’ve allied themselves with Beaulah. As if they’ve learned nothing from their past. I look for Quell but don’t see her. More explosions rain from the skies.

“Go to Beaulah!” The Dragunhead shoves me forward.

My body responds before my words can. Darting across the snowy graveyard is like navigating a minefield. Darragh Marionne marches toward Beaulah, dodging explosions. Black thrashes in her hands and my throat goes dry. She has toushana. Quell was telling the truth.

Bombs stream through the air, and I run faster.

Eruptions of darkness and wails leave my ears ringing.

My nose stings with the scent of burned earth.

I pull at the cold, trying to summon enough toushana to cloak closer to Beaulah. But the mist that floats toward me scatters, pulled in every direction by the battle. I urge my feet faster, dashing past bleeding, decaying bodies ornamented in blush and gold. The hillside reeks of death. Yagrin, where are you?

Those who don’t have weapons shift them out of whatever they find on the ground. The violence only seems to roil the black matter inside the glassy orb, making its waves crash harder. Below it, Beaulah stoically watches the mayhem she caused. Yani, Felix, and the rest of them are rigid by her side. I look once more for my brother, but I run smack into Charlie. Or some hollowed-out version of him, no more than skin and bones. His hand thrashes with toushana and I reach for mine again.

“I’m not your enemy, Charlie.”

“It’s looking that way.”

I try to charge past him but he shoves me back, hard. My arm burns as his magic tears the fabric of my shirt. He’s so fragile, he loses his step. I grab him by the shirt and throw him to the ground.

“Stand down!”

His ripped shirt reveals a purpled body with a sutured cut at the meeting of his ribs, black at its seams.

“What have you done?”

He scrambles backward, trying to get up, and winces.

“Jealous? That she could make me into what you will never be.” He spools shadows in his fist, and they do not come from the world around us. They come from inside him. I swallow. Somehow she’s bound him to toushana.

He tries to stand, but whatever experiment Beaulah has done to him has overwhelmed his body.

“Magic is eating you from the inside,” I breathe, unable to stomach the words. Unable to accept what I’m seeing. This is Charlie, my mentor, the stand-in uncle who taught me the way of things when I arrived at Hartsboro. He took me on my first raid and made sure I didn’t get hurt.

When he manages to get to his feet, I don’t have the heart to stop him. He’s done more damage to himself than I could ever do. He will be dead in days.

“Out of my way,” I say.

He widens his stance.

I step forward; he reaches for me. And I bury my dagger in his belly, in mercy. He slumps over my shoulder, and I hold him, tears pricking my eyes. I lower him to the snow, close his hollow stare, and force myself to keep moving.