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‘She could become a thunderer,’ Corrigan suggested.

‘Not that, either,’ I said.

Galass still hadn’t moved. She was standing there in the tatters of her now filthy silver sublime’s gown, the red locks of her hair dancing around her face as they generally did before she accidentally bled people to death.

‘No,’ she said.

I’ve never so badly wanted to choke someone with my bare hands before. ‘No?No?I’m offering you a cure, Galass. A future. Alife.’ I jabbed a finger towards the hallway. ‘The Apparatus is the most precious artefact ever lusted after by wonderists everywhere, and you’rerefusing? Have you lost your mind? Why am I even asking myself that? Of course you’ve gone nuts. You’re a fucking blood mage and that happens to all of you sooner or later!’

Still she hadn’t budged.

‘Are you done yelling at me?’ she asked.

‘Not even close.’

‘How many have you known?’

‘What?’

‘Blood mages. How many have you known?’

‘Not many,’ I admitted. ‘But the ones I did are all dead, as are all the ones any other wonderists have ever heard of.’

Her eyes went to the floor, and she bit her lower lip. For a moment, I thought maybe I’d got through to her. As in so many things, I was wrong. When her gaze rose to meet mine again, I knew I’d lost the fight.

‘How many blood mages spent their childhoods training to be sublimes?’ she asked, though it was obvious she wasn’t expecting an answer. ‘How many have gone through the things I’ve gone through? Suffered the way I have?’

‘I. . . I doubt any of them.’

On light footsteps she ran to me, coming to stand before me as if she wanted me to see her fully– not as the fragile, brittle girl I’d met in the Ascendant’s camp, but as the woman she was and perhaps always had been. ‘Cade, I can do this.’

‘Do what?’

She held up her hands, reached out with one slender finger and held it close to my cheek. I felt the slightest flush rise in my skin, but nothing more than that. ‘These abilities, as strange and awful as they are, they’re part of me now. Without them, we all would have died. You said that blood magic is the only kind whose power born ofthisrealm. Why would nature allow some of us to be attuned to it if nothing can come from it but horror?’

‘Because it’s a shitty world?’

She placed her palm against my chest. I felt my heart beating faster, but only because of the unexpected intimacy of another human being’s touch that wasn’t them pummelling me or trying to kill me. It didn’t feel so bad, actually. I guess it must’ve been written on my face, because Galass rose up on tip-toes, kissed me on the cheek and whispered, ‘For a bitter, cynical wonderist who consorts with Infernals for his spells, you’re not such a terrible person, you know that?’

Someone coughed. Or maybe gagged. It was Alice.

‘Are we done here?’ the demoniac asked, her wings twitching with irritation. ‘I’d like to leave this fortress before it collapses on us.’

‘How about you?’ I asked. ‘There’s no reason the Apparatus shouldn’t work on a demoniac. You could attune yourself to the magic of the Aurorals if you wanted, maybe become a proper Glorian Justiciar. You’d hear the Auroral Song everywhere you go. I imagine the Lords Celestine will be hiring now that all their other justiciars have been slaughtered.’

Her stare could have wilted an entire garden. ‘Iama proper Glorian Justiciar.’ She tapped a finger to where the heart would have been on a human. Who knows what Infernal organ demons have there. ‘And the song of my teacher plays inside me all the time.’

Good grief. Hazidan really did a number on her.

‘Well, somebody had better use the Apparatus before some wandering arsehole wonderist we don’t like gets to it.’ I turned to Aradeus. ‘You could get a real attunement instead of that rat nonsense.’

He gave me one of those hideously graceful bows. ‘A generous offer, brother Cade, but I will decline.’

‘As will I,’ Shame said, holding on to him for support. ‘Whatever the penance for my crimes, I will face it as I am, not as I wish myself to be.’

Corrigan gave a yawn. ‘Don’t look at me. Tempestoral magic is the best kind anyway.’ He made a flowery gesture towards himself that somehow ended at his crotch. ‘Why mess with perfection?’

‘Seriously?’ I asked, turning to stare out into the hallway that led to the chamber where the Apparatus was waiting. ‘The most precious artefact in existence andnobodywants to use it?’