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I sprint toward the entrance of the school, my bare feet slipping on the muddy earth. I’m nearly there—another few steps. Something crashes into my back, and I tumble forward, my shoulder landing painfully against an errant tree root. I have one arm desperately clutched around the book while the other reaches for my scythe. Hands wrestle me for it, nails ripping at my dress, my skin. I roll, scythe in hand.

Poppy.

She pins me to the ground, red hair curtaining chaotically around her snarling face. I catch sight of her eyes. Not white—blue. And merciless.

My grip on the book barely slackens. She grabs it, tearing it out of my arms. I lunge at her. And then we are rolling in the mire, in more vicious a fight than any I’ve been in tonight. I scream her name over and over, as if I can jar her out of this, while we struggle for possession of the book.

She sinks her teeth into my arm, and the pierce of her fangs is a pain so sharp I release her. She jumps to her feet and backs away from me. I lift myself on my elbows and meet her eyes. No whiteness clouds them as she stares down at me.

“I’m sorry, Vesper. I’m sorry. The headmaster needs this.”

What does Poppy know of Van Asten’s desire for the book? “We can’t give it to him,” I shout to her. I still trust her, even now, even with my arm bleeding from the punctures of her teeth. I still believe I can reason with her.

Her lips flatten to a thin line. “You don’t understand, Vesper. He has my brother.”

Ice falls down my spine. Poppy’s brother, who she has not heard from in months, was fighting on the front.

“He’s in some Imaelhain prison cell. He said if I didn’t help him . . . I’m sorry, Vesper. I’m so sorry.”

Poppy glances back toward Galvin. He finally grabs hold of the cat and throws it aside. The cat shrieks as it’s flung through the air. Its head cracks against a gravestone, and it lies unmoving on the earth. Galvin rounds on us, stalking toward us through the cemetery.

Poppy turns to me. “Let Van Asten have the book, Vesper. Please. If you do, he promised my brother would be set free. I can’t let him die.”

Sharp fury rises in me. I have lost two parents to this war. My friends, my school, my humanity, and my morality have all been sacrificed tonight. But Poppy is running from the reality of this fight, refusing to choose what is right in the face of loss.

“The book,” Galvin bites. Poppy glances between us.

We charge toward her at the same time. I cannot let him have it. She clutches it tightly, still uncertain what she should do.

A scarlet blade breaks through the dark in front of her. Lonan’s face is illuminated in panes of red as he raises his sword, pointing it at Poppy’s throat. I can still see his dark irises, but they’re clouded with an opalescent haze. “Give me that, Poppy,” he says calmly.

I stop short. Lonan harbors no hate for Poppy, but he is ruthless. If she refuses, I don’t know what Lonan will do. Galvin, however, does not stop. He knows Lonan cannot hurt him without hurting me. He reaches for Poppy, and she runs, sprinting back toward the sheltering branches of the willow tree.

All three of us give chase for the book—Galvin for Gault, Lonan for Imaelhain, and me for both and neither. I aggressively elbow Galvin, and he hisses, ripping me backward by the hair. Lonan sweeps sideways into him, and I shove both of them. We’re neck and neck, and I mentally curse cumbersome dresses and bare feet and shorter legs as Galvin starts to pull ahead.

Poppy rushes beneath the branches of the tree. But it does not allow her past.

The willow branches lash around her, binding her like ropes. The ground trembles violently all around us. Galvin stumbles, and I unconsciously grab Lonan’s arm for balance. The earth begins to undulate and shift, like something below is coming awake.

Poppy barely has time to scream before the ground opens beneath her. It takes several moments for me to recognize the strange objects covered in earth that burst beneath her feet. I catch a patch of white, a familiar shape—bones.

Across the entire graveyard, the mud vomits the last remains of the residents of the graveyard. Femurs and skulls roll across the ground toward us. Spines slither and inch like caterpillars across the cemetery. Even small teeth tumble in our direction. We are surrounded by the dead. There is nowhere to run.

The bones sprout from the ground. They gather with those rolling toward us, creating a platform beneath me and doing the same with Galvin, Lonan, and Poppy. Before I can leap off them, they’re pushing me upward on a pillar of bones. I nearly slip and catch myself with the staff of my scythe. The others rise on their own pillars, higher and higher, bones piling atop each other to lift us into the air. Finally, the bones come to a stop, and the four of us stand on our individual morbid platforms, high over the now-empty graves, level with the face of the clocktower.

Poppy hugs the book, shivering on her pillar in the center of the graveyard. Lonan, Galvin, and I form a triangle around her on our own columns. Then the bones shift again, building, stacking, rearranging into long, narrow bridges between each of our columns and Poppy’s like spokes on a wheel.

A cloud passes over the moon, washing us in darkness once more. Small, icy droplets of rain begin to stab my skin. My eyes find Poppy’s, then Galvin’s, then Lonan’s. And then I understand.

This is the third trial.

This is destruction.

Chapter Fifty-Seven

They called me heartless. So heartless I am.

This was what my godfather did not account for, what neither of my parents planned for me, what no one has acknowledged. They have not allowed for what a monster I can be.