Her face twisted into a sneer. “You’re wrong. You don’t know anything. If it were just you and your mother, I’d say let the world burn. But I won’t let it have my family. I won’t let it have my sister.”

“What is it going to do to Elspeth?” I asked, recalling Sonja’s body being dragged Beneath. We are being Harrowed, I heard Esther say.

“What it’s going to do to everyone if it isn’t stopped. You remember Valerie. Her vision. The end of the Kin. She saw what was coming. She knew it would happen here. But that Harrower you killed got it wrong. It was never about the Remnant. It was about now. It was about this.”

Valerie’s vision of the Kin’s destruction was what had begun Susannah’s search for the Remnant. It was the reason she’d come to the Cities, the reason she had gathered an army Beneath.

But Val hadn’t just seen the future, Daniel had told me.

She’d seen two.

Two futures.

The Remnant was never the one who decides it, he’d said. You are.

My mind raced, stray thoughts that reached toward understanding, and then skidded away. Memories surfaced. You set something in motion that night on Harlow Tower, Susannah had told me. That was the night Valerie had had her first vision, she’d claimed. The night she saw the doom of your Kin.

“No,” I said. I shook my head. “You’re crazy if you think I’m killing Gideon.”

“It has to be you. You’re connected to the Circle. To him. You have to do it. You’re the only one who can.” She turned her head, listening to something beyond my hearing. In the street behind her, a blackbird stalked back and forth and then suddenly took to flight. A feather floated down on the air beneath it, blown upward by the breeze. Iris closed her eyes. When she opened them again, they were white as a Harrower’s. “And you have to hurry. You have to go. You have to do it now.”

Alarm surged through me. A familiar chill crept over my skin. “What’s happening?”

“The Beneath. It’s near. Gideon is part human now—it can’t inhabit him. It’s going to unseal him. Hurry, Audrey. Go.”

I spun around, groping toward the car.

The driveway at Gideon’s house was empty. The drapes were closed, the windows dark. One of his sisters’ bicycles lay abandoned in the yard, but there was no sign of its owner. No one home, I thought at first, fighting down panic—but no, Iris had told me to go, to hurry. Whatever she’d sensed was close. And I had felt that chill of dread, that rush of horror. It was coming here. It was going to unseal Verrick.

I parked quickly, leaving the car running. I’d tried Gideon’s number as I drove, but my calls had gone unanswered. I tested the door and stepped inside when I found it unlocked. I made for the basement at half-gallop, not pausing to see if anyone else was there. Nothing mattered but getting to Gideon.

“Gideon!” I called when I reached the basement steps.

I didn’t know what I was going to do when I found him. I didn’t have a plan beyond reaching him. I would drag him to the car if I had to, and then I’d just drive. Drive and keep driving, until we were so far from the Circle that no Harrower could push through, no matter how powerful. After that, I would decide what to do. I would think of something to tell him—anything but the truth. But I’d think of it later. First I had to find him. First I had to save him.

“Gideon!” I shouted again.

“Audrey?”

Relief poured into me. I ran down the rest of the steps and pitched myself toward his room, nearly colliding with him as he opened his door and stepped through it. He looked like I’d just woken him from a nap. His hair was sticking up, and he blinked at me sleepily, rubbing his face with his hands. I grabbed his hand, gripping it tightly and drawing him toward the stairs.

He didn’t resist, but his pace was sluggish. “Are you okay? What’s wrong? What’s going on?”

I kept tugging him, urging him to move faster. “I’ll tell you later. You need to come with me. Just trust me, okay? We need to go. We need to go right now.”

“Go where?”

“I’ll explain, I promise—”

Abruptly, we were flung apart. Gideon’s hand was jerked from mine, and I found myself airborne, crashing against the wall. My shoulder took the impact, but I felt it all through me, sharp pain shooting out along my limbs. Dizzily, I groped my way back to my feet. Through the fog in my vision, I saw Shane.

My stomach plunged. My throat constricted. I had failed. Shane was going to unseal Verrick, and I couldn’t prevent it. Leon would arrive any second, I knew. And this time he wouldn’t even pause. He’d just grab me and teleport away.

“Gideon, run!” I cried.

But he couldn’t run. I knew that, even as I shouted it. There was no exit here, no avenue of escape. Shane—or the Beneath—had found him. If Gideon moved, it would follow. If he ran, it would give chase.

And it would catch him.

There was no question of that.

Gideon lay on his side, clutching his head. He made a noise, trying to pull himself to his feet. Shane stalked toward him.

His feet were still bare, I saw. The bottom ends of his jeans were brown with dried blood. Up to his ankles.

“I have heard the singing of your blood, prisoner,” the Beneath said with Shane’s voice. “I hear the drag of your chains. I am here to loosen your bonds.”

I wondered how I had ever mistaken it for Shane. I felt its malevolence in every word it uttered, every gesture it made.

“Run!” I screamed.

Gideon scrambled backward on his hands.

“You know me,” Shane said, herding him, keeping him cornered. “You’ve always known. You hide it away, you deny it. But you have felt it. You have tasted its call. The fury that feeds you. The thirst for the kill that hums in your blood. You understand who you are. This Kin-child lied to you. She speaks in untruths. She draws fictions out of air. She is not your friend. She is not your kind.”

“RUN!”

“Do you know what her kind did? What her Kin did to the girl you loved? They opened her veins. They gave her to the earth and let it gorge. I will gift you something in return. I’m going to give you vengeance. I am going to give you back your wrath.”

I struggled to my feet. Unthinking, uncaring, I hurled myself toward them.

Shane caught me one-handed, lifting me from the ground. “Your blood is not required, Kin-child.”

He tossed me backward. I hit the floor hard.

I rolled, trying to pull myself up onto my hands and failing. My arms buckled. My hands wouldn’t hold me. Something sharp sliced into my palm. I raised my head, and in the darkness of the basement, across the distance of the room, my eyes met Gideon’s. Our gazes locked.

Everything stilled. For a moment, there was no sound, no sense, no feel of the floor beneath me. I no longer saw Shane’s blood-crusted jeans or his bare feet. I saw only Gideon. In reality, it measured no more than a heartbeat, a blink, but in that moment, time was elastic. It drew us backward, across years, across memory, into a long ago morning and a sunny classroom that smelled of licorice and crayons. We were eight years old, and I was making my slow way through the door, pausing as I stepped. Gideon was there at his desk, turning to face me. I saw the light that clung to him, that beautiful, burning light, clean and shining. He smiled. I smiled. And I knew, right then.

We’re connected, I thought now. We are bound. By the blood of my father, and by the light of the Astral Circle, blazing so brightly around him. A thread drawn between us. And we would stay there, in that single stopped second. The rest of the world would go on, but we would remain. Nothing would touch us. Nothing would change.

But the heartbeat passed. Time sped forward once again. Gideon sucked in a breath. I saw a flash of understanding in his eyes, truth cutting through the fiction. He knew what he was. Somewhere inside, he’d always known. And he knew that I lied. I wanted to plead, to apologize, but my mouth wouldn’t form the words. Darkness swelled across my vision. My thoughts slipped away.