We start off again, my legs protesting. Despite that, I try to keep our pace even and confident. Though no one should be out of the coronation yet, I would hate to be stopped and questioned.

After a minute, the boy asks, "Why did you get me out of there?"

Shades, he's grateful. I frown. I wasn't betting on any nice-guy types being in the dungeons.

"It wasn't personal." I infuse my words with ice. "You were just there."

He hesitates. "Then what are we doing now?"

"You agreed to do what I told you. I didn't agree to explain to you what that was."

He stops walking, clearly unsettled.

"Now," I say, "this castle is under lock-down, if you haven't heard. Kadranians at the doorstep."

He winces at their name and nods.

"That means you have nowhere to run. And if you don't do what I ask, then run is what you'll want to do because I will give your position up to the guards in a heartbeat."

His lips tighten, that same fear-of-death look in his eyes from earlier.

Remorse tugs at the back of my mind, but I swallow and shove it away. He was in the dungeons. He can't be a decent person or else he wouldn't have been down there. I'm going through with the plan. I pin him with a gaze.

"Fine."

"Good." I smile. "Then come on."

The fool actually stayed. The thought keeps ringing in my head as I lead him to the abandoned halls and stop in front of my secret room. I push the stone to open it. The little crystals that I left on set the tiny space aglow.

I glance at the prisoner. His heel bounces, but he doesn't try to leave.

Regret twinges in my chest, and I realize some small part of me had hoped he would be smart enough to try to escape. As it is, he's a harmless fly that I ventured out to find and brought back, ensnared, to my web. And the fool actually stayed.

I push him into the room. He stumbles forward, but makes no move to respond.

If he'd even tried to get away from me, then I could be without remorse. Then I could feel justified in tracking him down and dragging him back and doing to him no more than the Captain surely would have if he'd stayed in the dungeons. Then I could be without remorse.

What a fool! Anger burns deep in my chest, but I force my expression neutral as he turns to face me. I slip in and close the door. Nerves spike in my stomach at what must come next, simultaneously dreading the idea of him fighting back and hoping he does.

"So what now?" he asks, voice deceptively solid against the constant shifting of his eyes.

I don't know how long it will take the amulet to overpower him once I put it on, and I don't want to chance anything untoward happening in the meantime. No, that won't be the first step.

"You drink something for me."

He draws back, fear resounding on his face. "What?"

"You agreed to do what I tell you."

He stands, head and shoulders above me. He radiates tension, and his stance is taut, as though he's ready to run at any moment.

I stand between him and the door.

"I don't easily break my word." He hesitates. "But I won't just let you hurt me, if that's what you're doing."

Within me, excited relief battles fear. He's not just going to lie down and die, and I triumph in that. My head tilts up at him, easily, confidently. For a moment, fear and regret still reign, and the lie spills off my tongue like poisonous vapor. "I'm trying to help you." My fists clench, nails digging into my hand. I will be without remorse. I must be.

He doesn't move, and neither do I, so we stand there, the seconds raging like hours. We're locked in a dangerous battle of wills, as if some spell holds us as statues staring into each other's eyes until someday we've stood too long and death with open arms drags us screaming into Antium.

The spell breaks when he opens his mouth. "Either tell me all of what you're about to do to me, or let me out." My mind races, but there's no way I can come up with a convincing lie for that this quickly. No. Plan B, then.

My lips press together as I pretend to continue weighing the odds. "Fine," I growl. I step to the side, tugging open the door. "I'm sure I can find someone more worthy." My words freeze in the air.

He eyes me. The tension in his steps betrays his distrust. I sweep one hand toward the door, ushering him through, to distract him from my other hand sliding into my pocket. One step, then another. One last step—and he's passed me.

Now I am without remorse.

In the same motion, I draw the amulet out of my pocket and step behind him. I slip the chain over his head, yanking it back like a garrote.

His strangled cry echoes down the empty hall, and he loses his balance. Stepping out of the way, I relinquish my hold on the amulet; his feet slip from beneath him. His head smacks the stone floor, and I cringe.

Come on, come on, I think uselessly at the amulet as I rush to pull the door closed. The sound of him scrambling off the floor rings in the small space, and I spin. He towers above me, reaches to push me out of the way, and then—dark green smoke explodes from the amulet, cool against my skin but immediately drawing back from wherever it touches me. The prisoner stumbles away from the smoke, but it follows him, twisting in the air as if alive.

It searches for him, and I am hypnotized. I've only seen this once before, and it simultaneously sickens and fascinates me.

Still seeping from the amulet, the smoke gently probes, finds his nose, his mouth. Then his eyes shoot wide, and the smoke shoves itself down his airways. He falls, convulsing, then stills, unconscious.

If this is anything like last time I saw this process, he won't be out but for a minute. I drop to the floor beside him, fingers fumbling through my pocket for the shaudacerise. In my haste, the information from the apothecary hides on the outskirts of my mind.

"Was it twelve drops or sixteen?" I hiss. Hands shaking, I start measuring the drops into the bottle from the kitchens, pausing when I get to twelve. I can't kill this body.

But I can't chance him waking up before it's time. Thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixt—

The prisoner's eyes snap open, pained and frightened. "Wh—what have you done to me?" He sits up, scrambling back. "What's happening? What was that stuf—" His eyes squeeze shut, and he doubles over, hands clutching his head. A low moan burbles out of him.

My insides trembling, I finish the last drop. I hold the bottle out to him. "Here, here. This will hel—help with the pain." Not that that's why I'm giving it to you.

You're dead either way.

Painful regret blossoms in my chest, but I've gone too far, too far to go back now. This man will die, but I can ease his going. It's a small price to pay.

He doesn't look up, instead beginning to rock back and forth. Tension accumulating in his shoulders says a scream is building inside him, and I can't afford that. I crawl over, dose still in hand.

"This will help stop the pain. Please! Take it."

He forces his head up, eyes glazed, face taut.

"Here." I lift it to his lips. Shades. Please don't let me have given him too much. He drinks, white-knuckled hands fisting his clothes.

I sit back, tense in fear and anticipation, then remember that I sincerely need to tie him up. I don't know how long it will take for him to be evicted from his body, and I don't want him to be free when he stops being himself.

I pull him back into the middle of the little room, and he keens in pain, a hand coming up to cradle his head. My eyes burn, and I blink rapidly to end the sensation. I bind his wrists and ankles with twine, then go back for his fingers. I can't tell if the pain is what prevents him from fighting me off or the poison. The medicine, I remind myself.

Distracted securing the knots, I jump when he screams. The sound reverberates off the walls, piercing my ears again and again until he runs out of breath. Tears prick my eyes, but I push his mouth closed. He can't do that again. Someone might hear, might come. Beneath my hand, I feel the tension in his muscles leaking away, and his blurry, red, aching eyes slowly close.

I swallow. The medicine's finally kicking in. Shades, please don't let me have given him too much.

He moans again, something soft, scared, and coated in agony, then relaxes into sleep. The tension in my body suddenly flees, leaving me jittery and nervous. I drag in a deep breath, trying to steady my shaking hands. Men have died at them before, but it's different, knowing that this could've been anyone else. This didn't have to be him, the prisoner whose biggest crime in my time knowing him was gullibility. I twist my lips, trying to push the thoughts away. He tried to escape. Now I can be without remorse.

It's too late for remorse to do any good anyway.

I lean forward and bind his arms to his body. I want him to have as few chances to mess up my spell as possible. I've waited for this moment so long, the dark anticipation feels like nausea in my throat.

I stand and close my eyes, calling to mind all the things Alaar has done to me. His twisted, vile shades with their dead fingers in my mind. All the people he's made me hurt, all the people I loved that he hurt. All the times he struck me, starved me, cast on me, dragged me through the dirt, reminded me I was his—

The magic wells up dark inside me. Its whispering tendrils creep within my chest. It knows what we want. It knows what we've been plotting through cold, sleepless, painful, starving nights.

I know what to do.

My eyes snap open, and I begin to cast, dragging chalk over the floor around him in a complex diagram.

The words fall from my lips like leaves blowing off Antium's autumn trees. The spell takes my fingers, my hands, then arms, legs, back until all I am belongs to the magic, and I dance, rising and falling with the music of the incantation. Elaborately, the magic throws me to kneel beside the prisoner, my arms high in the air, crystal-light glinting off the silverglass in my outstretched hand. Then my hands descend, the empty one clutching his jaw and drawing it open. The silverglass's tip wedges beneath his canine.

With a shout, I jerk the shard, and a bloody pop echoes in the small space. The tooth tumbles out of his mouth, and I catch it, grinning. The spell's song is silent for now, but it still grips my body as I draw away and plunge the tip of the tooth into the pad of my thumb. Pain shoots through the digit, but I forget it beneath the lightning of the magic sizzling through my body, under my skin. Blood wells with the withdrawal of the tooth, and I descend, cross-legged, in a circle of the chalk. My fingers twine five bird feathers into a braided chain, the blood from my thumb slicking the bracelet, which stiffens into something dark and leathery.

The words drip from my mouth again, soft and slow at the start, then building into a raging torrent as I insert the tooth into the bracelet and stand, approaching the prisoner. He twitches in his sleep, eyes flicking back and forth beneath their lids. He's fighting, and much harder than I expected. Last time, the man barely lasted a few minutes.

I crouch beside him and, still incanting, wrap the bracelet around his wrist. Dropping off into a staccato, metrical whisper, I twist the cord to a close, and it sizzles as it fuses together. The tooth gleams up at me, still bloody, from the center of the bracelet. My feet carry me back to my circle, and I spray powder at the prisoner, once, twice, three times. On the third spray, the blood on the tooth creeps over it, congealing and hardening until it's a dark red bead. The words cease, and simultaneously, the chalk lines ignite in cold fire. It burns for but a second, and with its fade, the spell releases me. Held up no longer by that strange force, my exhaustion takes over, and I crumple.

* * *

The first thing I notice is the emptiness. My chest is hollow from the flight of the spell, and my bones ache. The phantoms of my dreams dance like death around burning fires, and shamans...

I startle awake the rest of the way, eyes opening. Face level with the ground, stone and the motionless body greet me. The chalk lines have disappeared.

He's still. Panic grips me, and I push onto trembling arms. I gave him too much of the poison, I know I did...

I peer over his head, sick with fear and anticipation. He's got to be dead, he's dead, and the first half of the spell was pointless, it was all pointless—

Alaar's cold eyes snap open.