Instead she settled back onto the hearth beside Simon. He wanted her to listen, for whatever malicious reason he’d concocted? Fine. She would listen. And, later, she’d make him regret it.

“The door was already smashed,” Linnet was saying, “because we had a party with Mama. She said, Let’s have a mess party.”

“A mess party?” Patrik whistled low. “That sounds fun. What is that?”

“That’s when you make your house dirty instead of clean,” Linnet explained.

“That sounds like the best kind of party I could possibly imagine.”

Linnet bit her lip. “We set fire to the garden and let our animals go loose, and then Mama… She smashed the windows with an ax. It made her cry, doing it, because Papa loved those windows.”

Hob glanced up, his face soft. “Why did he love them?”

Linnet shook her head slowly—back and forth, back and forth. “Because,” she whispered after a moment, “I painted them.”

Eliana looked away, toward the dying fire. The air in this place was stale, sour. Too many people with unwashed bodies and rotting hurts. She breathed in and tasted death on her tongue. An ill knot was expanding in her belly, forcing its way up through her chest.

Her mother’s words returned to her: If you don’t learn to tuck away that sick feeling, it will consume you.

She closed her eyes, clenched her fists. The fire was too near, too hot. Her skin crawled from it; the heat siphoned all the air from her lungs.

She should never have left her bed.

“Why are you making me stay for this?” she asked, her voice tight and low.

“Because I can,” Simon replied and then downed the rest of his drink.

“We tore up our beds and our pillows.” Linnet was whispering faster now. “We made red dye from berries and painted the walls. Mama said…Mama said…”

Patrik glanced at Hob. “Maybe we should stop for now—”

“No!” Linnet flung away her doll. It hit the wall and dropped to the floor. “Mama said it had to look real.” She gasped a little, like her own words were choking her. With nothing now to hold on to, she clutched the table’s edge, stared fiercely at it. “Mama said it had to look like people died there. We were hiding, and the bad men came, and Will sneezed, because he sneezes when he gets excited, and I was crying. I couldn’t help it. Mama said…hush. She held her hands…over my mouth—”

The girl was having trouble breathing. She looked around, wild-eyed, and then, before Eliana had time to prepare herself, Linnet scrambled off Patrik’s lap and ran to her.

She slammed into Eliana’s front, threw her arms around her neck, and buried her face in Eliana’s braid. She clung there, her little bird’s body trembling like it was ready to crack. Her breath came in frantic gasps against Eliana’s ear.

“Mama said…” Linnet whispered, over and over. “Mama said hush. Mama said please be quiet…”

Eliana couldn’t move, could hardly breathe with this weight she didn’t ask for hanging from her neck. She wanted to shove the girl off her, then rip Hob’s notebook from his hands and throw it into the fire.

It will consume you.

Breathing thinly through her nose, she tamped down the rising panic winging hard up her throat.

She didn’t think of Remy, probably tossing with nightmares down the hall. He’d never slept away from home, not once in his life.

Didn’t think of her dead father, her vanished mother, the soft way they’d looked at each other before war ripped them apart.

Didn’t think of Harkan and his warm bed, the scent of him like coming home.

A girl couldn’t think of these things, couldn’t think about teary-eyed children and their tragic stories—not if she was also a killer.

I am the Dread of Orline.

“Then what happened?” Eliana asked. Her voice came out thick, not the hollow, flat thing she’d tried for, and she hated herself for it. She needed to get out of this room before it ate her alive.

I will not be consumed.

“They marched inside,” Linnet whispered. “I saw wings on their chests. That’s the Empire’s sign.” She turned her face into Eliana’s neck. “Did you know that?”

“Yes.” Eliana’s collar grew wet beneath Linnet’s chin. The heat of the fire licked up her back. What was the old prayer? For Saint Marzana, the firebrand. Remy would know. “I did know that.”

Ah, yes. She remembered the prayer now: Burn steady and burn true. Burn clean and burn bright.

She stared across the room at Hob and Patrik, hoped her unblinking bright glare made them squirm.

“They took Mama by her hair,” Linnet said, “and dragged her into the back room. She was screaming so loud it hurt my ears, and Will, he’s big, he beat the bad men, had one of his fits when he starts spitting and hollering, and he looked at me, and…and…”

She didn’t say anything after that. She pressed her face tight against Eliana’s neck, shivering.

“He told you to run,” Eliana finished for her. “He gave you time to run.”

Then she unfolded the girl from her body, lowered her to the floor. Patrik was there immediately with the abandoned doll and a quiet endearment.

Eliana pushed past them both to Hob’s table. Rage snapped up her body like the lash of a whip.

“Why did you do this?” She jerked her head at Linnet, now cradled in Patrik’s arms. “Why make her relive it?”

Hob watched her calmly. “She wanted me to write it down, so she wouldn’t forget.”

“How many do you have?”

“One thousand three hundred and twenty-five. I’ve filled twelve books so far. People come through here, they have stories to tell. Some of them want me to write them down. Some write them down for me.” Hob took a deep breath. “I think someone ought to know about them. About everyone. Even if it’s only me and Patrik.”

Eliana eyed the notebook and its gnarled pages with disdain. “It’s a waste of time,” she spat, “writing stories for the living dead.”

Then she left them, Linnet calling faintly after her. The girl didn’t even know her name: “Mama?”

Eliana stormed out into the cramped, dark corridor and around the first corner, then subsided against the wall, her heart drumming for an escape and her hands shaking. She fisted them in her jacket, bit down hard on her tongue.

It had been a mistake—to leave Orline, to strike her bargain with Simon, to drag Remy along with them. Reckless and sloppy.