His mother’s garden. He hadn’t been here in so long. It was overgrown and rippling with shadows, the weeping willow dunking its branches into the pond over and over again.

“Merry, you’re hurt,” Vivia said. She stood beside the marble bench, body squared to the gate but gaze lingering back. Wind hurtled through the cattails behind her, yet her waterlogged uniform barely moved.

Was this actually his sister before him? When Merik stared at her, he saw none of her swagger. None of her condescending strength or self-righteous Nihar temper.

Merik saw, in fact, his mother.

A lie, though. A trick. Just as what he’d seen below had not been Kullen.

“Your stomach,” Vivia added. “And your leg.”

Merik’s eyes sank to a hole in his shirt, a hole in his breeches. Blackened, bloodied marks peeked through. He’d been hit by those arrows at the Cleaved Man; he remembered now. He pressed his fingers to the blood, but no pain followed. He felt only puckered skin below. It had already scabbed over.

“I’m fine,” he said at last. His hands fell away. “But Cam. I need…” Merik trailed off. He didn’t know what he needed. He was cast adrift. Aimless. Sinking beneath the waves.

The holiest always have the farthest to fall.

For weeks, he’d been hunting for evidence that his sister had killed him. For weeks he had wanted that evidence, so he could prove once and for all that her approach to leadership was wrong—and Merik’s approach was right.

That was the truth of it right there, wasn’t it? He’d seen what he’d wanted to see, even though, in the deepest furrows of his mind, he’d known Vivia was not the enemy. He had simply needed someone to blame for his own failings.

The enemy was himself.

“Your friend,” Vivia said, mooring him back in the present. “The girl? I sent her to Pin’s Keep. We can go there, but I need to tell the Royal Forces what’s happening underground—” She broke off, her forehead suddenly creasing. She twisted toward the gate, toward the city.

Then Merik heard it too. A wind-drum was pounding, its song almost lost to the black tempest overhead, where lightning crackled from a spinning heart.

A second drum joined in, then a third, until a hundred wind-drums hammered across Lovats. Louder than the winds, louder than the madness.

Attack at Northern Wharf, their cadence bellowed. All forces needed. Attack at Northern Wharf.

Merik didn’t even think. He sucked in his magic, a wind to fly him fast and fly him far. He scooped it beneath his sister’s feet, beneath his own.

Then together, the Nihars flew for the Northern Wharf. The gardens shrank back, revealing grounds that crawled with humanity. The streets of Lovats crawled too, like a tide carves through the sand leaving rivulets of water to chase behind.

Everyone ran in the same direction. Away from the Northern Wharf, away from the pluming smoke—black, choking, unnatural. It swept over the harbor, erasing all details. A cloud to burn through everything.

Yet the closer Merik and Vivia flew, the more Merik caught glimpses of what caused the smoke—of the black flames, spreading fast, with cores of pure, boiling white.

Seafire.

Merik had heard tales of entire fleets burned to ash atop frothy waves. Seafire ate through everything, and water only spread its reach. His own ship had succumbed to it—he had succumbed to it—and more ships burned now. Docks too, and buildings that hugged the wharf.

If the storm swirling above finally broke, then nothing could stop this fire from claiming the city.

Merik’s eyes streamed as he strained to see where, amid the smoke and wildness, the Royal Forces charged. He fell lower, Vivia tumbling behind him. Then lower still until he caught sight of a blockade forming at the end of Hawk’s Way. Stone and sand piled higher, higher, blocking the river. Blocking the streets.

It held back the seafire.

Before Merik could reach the blockade, a familiar whisper trailed down the back of his neck. A leash being pulled. A reel being tightened.

His flight slowed. He flung his gaze back. Toward the storm’s eye. Toward a slithering darkness that tentacled down into the city.

The shadow man.

“What is it?” Vivia screamed over Merik’s winds. Her uniform flapped—dry now—and her hair fanned in all directions. She wobbled and grasped at air.

“It’s the shadow man,” Merik answered. He didn’t shout, but he didn’t need to. Vivia had already seen, had already understood.

She didn’t argue when Merik swooped them lower—faster, faster, smoke rushing over their faces—only to release her near the blockade.

Nor did she argue when Merik didn’t land beside her. When instead he spun away, riding an updraft of thick, flaming air back toward the rooftops.

Rain began to fall.

* * *

Vivia hit the ground. Shock pummeled through her heels, ankles, knees. She almost fell, but soldiers were there to catch her, to help her to rise. Then they pointed her to the nearest man in charge.

Vizer Sotar.

Stix’s father towered above all others, bellowing commands at Windwitch officers lined beside the blockade. “We must keep the stones dry! Keep the smoke back!”

Spotting Vivia, he charged over. Lines of smoke-clogged rain ran down his face.

“Update me,” Vivia ordered, as soldiers and civilians scurried past, carting stones and bricks for the blockade.

They carted bodies too. Some still living and screaming, but most charred beyond recognition.