"I never wanted it to be you."Bara's eyes snapped open. The boathouse was dark, lit only by the thin gold glow crawling along his forearms, and someone was kneeling over him with a small knife held in a trembling hand.It wasn't pointed at his throat. It was pressed against the cord around Titan's tiny, sleeping body, where the bee had curled up on his collarbone. The blade shook so badly it rattled against the glass shard hanging there."Kirana," Bara said.She flinched as though he'd struck her. Her face was wet. She had been crying for a long time, and she hadn't made a sound."Please don't move," she whispered. "Please. If you move, I'll have to, and I don't want to.""Put it down.""I can't.""You can," Bara said softly. "You can, Kirana. You've had a hundred chances since we met. You've had this exact chance every night since the alley. You didn't take it.""Because I *liked* you." The words tore

"You don't get to trade yourself for me."Bara said it in the dark, fast, and caught his mother's wrist before she could take a single step toward the cellar stairs. She was stronger than she looked. It took both hands. She was trembling, and he could feel her pulse racing in the smooth new skin where the scars used to be."Bara, let go.""No.""That child is ten years old!""I know." His voice shook. "I know he is. And I'm not going to let you do this. Not for him, not for anyone. You spent your whole life paying my bills with your hands. You don't get to spend the rest of it paying with everything else.""It's not your decision.""It's not yours either." His grip tightened. "We said no more deciding for each other. You promised. Ma. *Promised.*"In the darkness, a quiet sob escaped her. Then the cellar exploded into motion.The eleven hollow figures, in agony, in the grip of Voss's violet leash, lunge

"The border took what mattered most. That's how it works."Sereth said it quietly, sitting on an overturned crate on the riverbank while the sun climbed over the water and everyone else pretended not to stare at the two people sitting six feet apart on the grass. He looked ten years older than he had the night before. His hands trembled on his knees."I told her a memory," Bara said. His voice didn't sound like his own. "She said her father's car. That was the deal. She *offered* that.""She offered what she thought was the price. The workings don't take what you name. They take what carries the most weight." Sereth's ink-dark eyes were full of an apology that was far too small for the size of the wound. "I should have warned you. I didn't know the pact would be sealed by a witness this close to the anchor. Sari's bond with you was the heaviest thing she owned. The border reached for it. That's all."Across the grass, Sari sat hugging her knees, s

"You don't wake a sleeping thing by shooting at its friends."The Tenant's voice came up out of the river like a tide, not loud but impossibly large, rolling across the bank until every silver mask stopped mid-stride. The water had risen to the level of the grass. It didn't spill. It simply stood there, black and still and glittering, curled up against the bank like a great patient animal.Vaska's stone face went slack for the first time. "That's not possible. The pact was supposed to bind it.""It did." The Tenant's voice was gentle. It was also, unmistakably, angry. "I chose these chains. I did not choose to sit quietly while you murdered the ones who freed me."A single luminous shape rose from the water, tall and slender, moonlit, no longer hunched in its gray blanket. It stood on the surface of the river with its hands loosely clasped, and the silver masks, all twenty of them, took one collective step backward."I made a promise," th