She slams the torch down. Fire races across the floor in a furious line, circling me and Peighton, cutting us off from the others. Heat roars up my legs. The air thickens with smoke.
Keira clutches the baby. Micha tries to reach us and is forced back by the flames.
I could let it happen. I could step into the blaze and vanish. I could drag Peighton with me and fulfill every word Mother wrote. One simple choice and the noise in my head would stop forever.
Peighton turns to me instead of running. Always instead of running. Her hands shake. Her eyes are bright, fierce, so full of me it hurts.
“I love you,” she says simply. Not shouted. Not screamed. Just spoken, like a truth that does not need defending. “You are not your mother. You are not your father. You are mine. She can’t have you.”
Something in my chest snaps like a taut wire finally breaking.
I grab Peighton’s face in both hands, ash smeared over her jaw, and kiss her hard. Her hands fist in my shirt. For one second, there is no fire, no birds, no ghosts. Only us.
“I love you, too,” I breathe against her lips. Then I turn her and shove her toward the edge of the flames. “Run.”
Micha lunges forward, grabbing her wrists and yanking her through a narrow gap. I try to follow, but the fire closes in. She screams my name but the fire swallows the sound.
Heat sears my skin. Flames curl around my legs, higher, higher.
I’m on fire — burning alive.
No escape.
The voices scream in triumph and terror. Mother’s laughter cuts through it all, wild and delighted. This is what she wanted. She killed my father and wanted to do it again. To kill anyone who has his blood. She loves the taste of vengeance. That’s why she wanted a baby. Vera. Another life. Repeat the cycle.
“My God,” I exhale.
A sound cuts through the chaos.
Peighton.
Bare feet slap against stone. She barrels back into the room with a thick wool blanket in her arms, ignoring Micha’s shouts. She doesn’t hesitate. She runs straight into the fire to get to me. Then the blanket slams into my body. She wraps herself around me, trying but failing to smother the fire, gasping as embers sear her lungs.
“We promised,” she pants. “We’d never leave each other!”
The room shudders.
The line of fire around us sputters and then extinguishes as if someone turned off a gas valve. The heat drops. The crackle fades. When I blink, Sophia is gone. The torch is gone. The ravens burst back through the window in a frantic flurry, black feathers vanishing into the bright sky.
Silence.
Real silence.
No whispers.
No voices.
Nothing.
I am on my knees, holding Peighton, breathing hard. Both unburned. She clings to me as if she will never let go again.
“Gustav?” she whispers.
I search my own head for the familiar noise, for the itch, for the shadows. There is nothing. Only the sound of my own breathing and the frantic pounding of my heart.
“I’m here,” I say, and for the first time in years, the words are not echoed by anyone else.
We stumble down the stairs together, half-laughing, half-crying. In the main hall, Keira runs to us with our daughter. Micha stands guard, eyes sharp, gun still in his hand.
