To place Farin’s essence into the living vessel of another, to consign another to a fate mirroring mine—I could never forgive myself.

That doesn’t mean I won’t do it.

“I wouldn’t recommend it, my queen,” I say, though I can’t provide a valid reason without lying or delving into the morality of the situation. If the queen is bringing it up, then it’s already passed her elusive standard for right and wrong, and there’s no use in taking that approach.

“But you agree it would be more likely to be effective?”

I have to clench my jaw a bit when I answer, like my body is fighting being complicit in this. “I suppose it would eliminate one of the less stable variables.”

“I see.” The queen strokes the urn absentmindedly before setting it back on the workbench. In its place, she picks up the life-giving vial and caresses it.

When she shoves the vial to my lips and tips it back, it’s only instinct and shock that cause my throat to swallow.

I am no longer.

There is darkness and death and the echo of screams, but it is not my ears that hear them. Not my tongue that tastes the bitterness of death.

Inky waters engulf me, filling my lungs and sticking like tar to my ribs.

I am so very hungry.

Someone is laughing, but it is not me.

“Nox. Nox, my boy.”

I roll over in bed. Perhaps if Father thinks I’m still asleep, he’ll take pity on me and allow me to stay in bed a few minutes longer.

Besides, the sun is not yet up.

Everything is so dark.

“Nox, you presumptuous fool.”

My ears twitch, because it is not like my father to call me a fool. Zora—perhaps, because she’s most often deserving of the title, but never me.

But now that I think of it, the voice doesn’t sound like my father’s. It sounds like Gunter.

I’m plunged into a slumber of shadows and ashes and screams.

The next time I wake, I know I am not where I should be. I’m well enough aware that it wasn’t my father’s voice I was hearing earlier; it was Gunter’s. Something must have gone horribly wrong for him to slip and call me by my name.

But I am no longer with Gunter, either.

The twinge of copper coats my tongue, and I wonder if I bit through my cheek in my feverish haze. My stomach feels as if it’s going to burst, like an overfilled wineskin, and when I roll over, the contents of my gut slosh about.

The coppery scent hits me when I move, and something wet and sticky stains my forearm.

There’s something cold, too. Cold and clammy and…

I open my eyes and immediately regret doing so. A pale, limp arm brushes against my nose, and when I jolt back, the woman doesn’t stir.

It would be strange if she did, for she is very, very dead.

Fresh blood coats her front, though I can’t find the wound from which it originates. She is young, hardly older than I am, but her face is drained of color.

I jolt away, frantically searching my environment for any sign of the creature or being who might have done this to her. My stomach rolls over in my gut, cramping, as I examine the room. It’s small, with only a cot in the corner, no rug to soften the slatted floors.

The woman’s blood drips through the gaps in the slats.

There’s a window on the wall facing us, but it’s been covered with cheaply woven drapes. A latrine hides in the shadows, and a small chest sits at the end of the bed, but there is nothing here to see but the few possessions of a poor city-dweller.

There is no monster to be found.

No perpetrator to be discovered.

There’s only me and this dead body.

There’s only me in this room that I cannot remember frequenting; I cannot remember how I got here.

The memory of scalding liquid burning my throat as Abra pressed the vial to my lips and forced me to drink scalds my memory.

You presumptuous fool.

Instinctively, my fingers find my mouth.

When I pull them away, they’re coated with blood.

It’s then that I realize I didn’t bite the inside of my cheek.

The scent of the woman’s blood overwhelms me, and it’s like smelling a pie in the oven after already gorging oneself on scones. I feel as though I might become ill, and I do in the latrine in the corner.

The sight of what I vomit up is so much worse than I could have imagined.

What have I done?

I don’t want to gaze upon the woman again, don’t want to catch sight of her blood and taste her against my lips, but I can’t help myself.

She has beautiful green eyes, but they’ve glazed over.

I crawl over to her and press them shut, because I can’t stand to look at her like this. Can’t stand for those striking eyes to stare right through me.

My legs are shaking, but there’s something different about them. Something stronger, even as they quake.

I have to get out of here, have to get back to Gunter so we can reverse whatever’s happening to me. My mind flips through the possible side effects of each ingredient I used in the potion meant to bring Farin back to life. Ashes of the lost, a life sacrifice, liquid moonlight.

Liquid moonlight.

Legends of physicians found drenched in the blood of their dead patients. Gentle women leaving behind a trail of dead bodies along the mountain trials…