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B arnadine heard Elder! He saw Elder!

In his terror, he released me.

I tumbled over the edge. I grabbed the wide top rail. There, weighted down by skirts, petticoats, brocade, embroidery, and beads, I dangled four stories above the ground, struggling to lift myself up and away from this plunge to my death.

As I groped to pull myself back onto the balcony, the two men were . . . well, they weren’t exactly fighting. Barnadine, eyes so wide with terror that white showed all the way around the pupil, lunged at Elder, trying to grasp him, to bring him down.

Each time he did, he fell through the ghost.

Each time, lightning crackled and Barnadine shrieked in pain and horror.

With every screech, Elder taunted him. “Traitor! Murderer! Breaker of vows!” He moved like a swordsman, dancing away from Barnadine, luring him away from me and my desperate exertions, then plunging forward to meet Barnadine and envelop him for one crackling moment.

I would have enjoyed the purple-skinned panic that crept up Barnadine’s neck, chin, cheeks, forehead—if I hadn’t been dangling, weighed down by my clothing.

The rich beading on my sleeves and bodice slipped on the stone rail.

Cold sweat dripped into my eyes and my damp palms scraped along the rough stone top rail.

My feet scrabbled to find a toehold. To no avail.

With leisurely inevitability, I inched toward a plummet into the arms of death.

All Barnadine’s attention focused on Elder. “You’re dead. You’re dead!” he said over and over. “You’re dead!”

Way to state the obvious, Barnadine.

I wedged one leather-soled slipper between two of the upright rails and, for the first time, experienced a spurt of triumph.

Fury contorted Elder’s features, ferocity marked his every move.

He couldn’t directly strike at Barnadine, but somehow he channeled his implacable ire into the increasingly strong lightning strikes.

“ You killed me! You! My friend, my bodyguard. You drugged me. You stabbed me through the heart. The man who watched my back stole life and breath and future. Judas! ”

I turned my foot, leaned on it, used the strength of my trembling leg to lift myself the length of my smallest finger.

Even that gave ease to my straining arms and shoulders.

As I inched myself upward, grasped the wide rail more and more, moved my elbow to rest on the stone, I breathed more easily. I could do this!

I paused to give my shaking arms a rest, and the scene before me had changed.

No longer did Barnadine have to stumble through Elder’s essence to fry in Elder’s anger.

Now whenever he came close, he sizzled. Faint dark smoke began to rise from his hair and his hands.

His skin singed, gained the appearance of a seashell, tough and mottled with brown and specks of green and alabaster.

I could smell flesh burning. Elder was doing this. Somehow he was doing this.

“Stop it!” Barnadine shouted. “Stop it now. You’re dead! ”

“Righteous wrath burns the bloodstains on your hands.”

“Righteous? You’re a fornicator!”

“You—you kept my son from me!” Elder gestured to Friar Camillo’s still figure. “Now he’s dead. Murdered by his own uncle!”

Barnadine froze and stared. Stared at blood that trickled from the wound that broke through the skin on Friar Camillo’s tonsured scalp. At last, it seemed Barnadine had been yanked from his crooked footpath to face the consequences of his actions.

Elder moved to stand at Barnadine’s shoulder.

He spoke quietly, reasonably in his ear.

“You murdered me. You tried to kill my mother, the dowager princess, who welcomed you to her table, who considered you her ally. Now you’ve killed my son.

Your nephew! You’ve broken every vow, every binding that ties you to family, to mine and yours.

You’ll face the fires of hell for your wicked deeds. ”

Barnadine faced him, tears in his eyes.

Hey, Elder, you could at least have mentioned me.

Then Elder made his first tactical error, and I realized why he’d been silent about my likely fate.

He hadn’t forgotten that I hung four stories up . . . but Barnadine had, and when Elder glanced toward me, Barnadine smiled and nodded in a horrible parody of geniality. “If I’m doomed to burn, let me burn for all the reasons.”

I saw death in the wolf’s cold, dark eyes, and fueled by fear gave myself a mighty heave. I got my chest onto the rail and scrambled to get a leg over. My skirts hindered me, the weight of my clothing slowed my attempts.

Worse, nothing Elder could do—the lunging, the lightning, the insults—slowed Barnadine’s approach. Barnadine grabbed my shoulders, held me in place, and grinned at Elder. “Will you try to fry me now? When I hold your beloved Lady Rosaline in my hands, and life and death are mine to dispense?”

Elder shook his head and gazed at me, sprawled partly on, and mostly off, the rail. His lips moved. I’m sorry.

“Touch me and your powers that weaken me will weaken her, and she—” Barnadine leaned over and looked all the way down to the ground.

“The people of the palace see what’s occurring.

Hear them scream. Hear them cry. Yet they can’t save her.

” He gazed into my pleading face. “You’re not even insane.

He really is here.” Amazement and regret tinged his voice.

I clung to the rail, straining to hang on. “If you push me, Elder will put you in such pain as you have never known.”

“You speak truth, so let us go down together, and you’ll be my companion for the trip to hell!” Still clutching my shoulder in one hand, Barnadine slammed his other fist down on my arm.

My grip loosened. I screamed.

Elder roared and rose off the floor in fury.

From the ground below me, I heard shouts and cries, but all I could see was Barnadine’s brutal face, his lips peeled back from his horrible teeth.

He grabbed for my clutching fingers—

In a rush of silent savagery, Cal tackled him from the side.

I was saved!