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The launch pulled away from the harbor and crossed the gray water until it was little more than a dark speck.

Someone on the battlements began to cheer. Another voice joined in, then another, and within seconds the sound had spread along the entire wall.

Tamsin was hanging from one of my arms and Jax had taken possession of the other, but I barely heard either of them. My attention stayed on the harbor.

A little farther along the battlements, someone else was silent too.

Delphine Marrow stood alone in a pale gray coat, her white-blonde hair whipping around her face as she watched her father's boat disappear. She held herself very straight, both hands resting on the stone in front of her. Her expression was as controlled as it had been at the altar, and I couldn't tell what she felt as she watched him leave.

Then she turned her head and caught me looking.

For several seconds, we simply stared at each other across the wall while everyone around us cheered.

To my surprise, she started walking toward me.

Jax went still at my side. Tamsin made a low sound in her throat that was suspiciously close to a growl.

Delphine stopped a few feet away. She ignored both of them and looked directly at me.

"The pictures from the Baths," she said. Her voice was quiet and precise. "Imogen's phone had the only copies. I made her delete them while I watched, including the deleted folder, and swear she hadn't sent them to anyone or backed them up. After the soup, Kaelen took the phone apart and destroyed the storage. I watched him do that too." She paused. "They're gone. I thought you should know."

For a moment, I had no idea what to say.

"And the staff," she continued. Something tightened around her mouth. "At the Proving, I didn't know it had been tampered with. Whatever else you think of me, Hale, I don't need a sawn stick to win a fight." She lifted her chin. "I wanted to beat you properly."

"You nearly did."

"I know."

There was the faintest change in her expression, almost a smile but not quite.

Then she said, "Don't make me like you. I have enough problems already."

She turned and walked away along the battlements without looking back.

Tamsin stared after her.

"What was that?"

"I don't know," I said.

And I didn't, exactly.

But I remembered the way Delphine had breathed out at the altar, the way she'd pressed a hand over her heart when she thought no one was watching, and I wondered if I had understood less about her than I'd thought.

Marion arrived on the four o'clock ferry.

It was the same tired green ferry that had brought me to Ironmoor, and I recognized it as soon as it came around the headland in the dusk.

I was already halfway down the three hundred and eleven steps before I realized I had started running.

By the time the ferry bumped against the harbor wall, I was standing at the bottom, breathless, waiting for the gangplank to come down.

A small figure appeared at the top of it.

Marion was wearing a borrowed gray coat several sizes too large for her, and she held the railing carefully as she made her way down because of her hip.

She looked older now. Not dramatically older, but enough that I noticed. She had lost weight, and someone had pinned up her gray hair. There was a tiredness around her eyes that hadn't been there before.