I am broken.

I don’t know how long I sit there, clutching that fistful of silver and staring at the body that no longer holds him. Part of me still urges the metal to heal, heal, heal, even though I know it’s too late.

At some point, Maisy and Clementine flap down beside us. They don’t have proper control over their sólfox and once they dismount it bursts away from them, back into the sky. I think I hear the questioning. The gasps. The moans. Teddy’s voice: low and crumbling behind me.

And I sit there, broken, with Lukas’s body in my arms.

Overhead, the darkness thickens. I can feel my proclivity curling through my veins. The earth stings, frozen cold beneath my knees. Someone is weeping behind me, but my own body is oddly silent. Still. Stiff. Numb. As though it isn’t Lukas who has died, but me.

When the sólfox flies overhead, I almost don’t notice. I don’t care. A pair of wings, as black as night. Lord Farran. It has to be him, soaring forth into Taladia.

And suddenly, I’m not numb. I’m furious. The hatred is so strong – in my gut, my lungs, my throat – that I can taste it. It tastes like fire. It stinks like sulphur. Lord Farran caused this. It was his war. His fault. His fault that all those soldiers are dying.

His fault that Lukas is gone.

‘Where’s he going?’ Clementine whispers.

An echo of Annalísa’s voice fills my head. ‘Midnight. Oh frozen night …’ The words of the song rise up inside me.

 

Oh frozen night,

How the dark swallows light,

When the glasses of hours hold on …

 

And as the meaning hits me, my breathing stops.

We had it wrong. All this time, we had it wrong. ‘The glasses of hours’. That line was never a warning about quicksand. It wasn’t a map for refugees. It was a reference to the most crucial place the prisoner crossed in his travels.

The glasses of hours.

The Hourglass.

I look up at my crewmates. My voice is hoarse. ‘I know where the Hourglass is buried.’

And before they can stop me, I run for the sólfox. Teddy cries out in alarm but I leap upon the creature’s back. Only I have a temporal proclivity. If Annalísa is right, only I can control the Hourglass.

Only I can stop him.

Teddy has tied the sólfox to a boulder, but I yank free the reins and kick with all my strength into its furry sides. It tries to snap at me, but Quirin’s knife-bridle still clings tight around its jaws. There’s a rush of air and suddenly we’re aloft, leaving shouts and cries and curses below me. My friends can’t follow me: not when the twins’ own sólfox has vanished into the night.

‘Danika, no!’

‘You can’t stop him alone! You’re going to –’

I don’t hear the rest of the cry. I block my ears and steel my heart. All that matters is the rush of the night and the bluster of wings as I rise. The sólfox twists, fighting me, and I know that Teddy’s calling it back with his proclivity. But I tighten my grip on the reins, and the creature jerks at the threat of the knife-bridle against its face.

The sólfox shrieks like a hawk, and I think of the shout on Lukas’s lips when he connected to a creature. The shout in his lungs when he felt it cry. I clutch the charm necklace tight, wrapping my flesh against the silver feather.

The last thing Lukas touched.

The charm that he imbued with his proclivity.

I can feel him there. I feel the shiver of magic within, stronger than any alchemy charm I’ve touched before. I close my eyes and think of Bird. Of flying. I’m not afraid to bond with this alchemy charm. It carries part of Lukas.

Power flares in my fingertips, in my veins, in my mind. And through the alchemy charm, the creature’s mind meets my own – a delicate dance in the rush of the wind. Stars fly above us and the lake below gives way to rivers, to the borderlands, to the churn of forests and islands and the hidden boats of smuggler clans.

The sólfox flies. I fly. Lukas connects us, his proclivity burning through the silver.

Together, we will find Lord Farran.

Together, we will stop him.

It’s almost midnight when I reach the mountains.

My sólfox glides high, its vast wings catching every current in the sky. I clutch the reins and bend down low, my heart pumping, my skin alive with the sting of Night. The Central Mountains stretch out before me. White caps, dark shadows.

This isn’t just frost. It’s true snow, rich and thick and white. The sort of snow that kills you on a winter’s night in Rourton, when you huddle in an alleyway and blow into your palms and curse the sting of your lips, your nose, your eyes. Snowflakes spin around me, flurrying pale and bleak.

We soar above the Knife. This narrow canyon once guided us out of these mountains towards Víndurn and a new life. Now, the thought makes my skin grow even colder. I think of our nights camping in that crevasse. Of Lukas, lying near the outskirts of our camp and keeping an eye on me while I sat on guard duty.

My entire body convulses: a physical jerk, a seizure of grief, and for a moment I can’t breathe. My throat burns as though it’s filled with smoke instead of air.

I wrench my head up, snot and tears smeared across my face. I let out another cough, a pathetic wheeze, and thrust my head towards the stars. They’re so bright here. Lukas’s line comes back to me; the line he first recited in these very mountains.

You can’t have stars without the night.

And finally, I soar down to Midnight Crest.

The ruins shine a little in the dark. They’re half-buried in snow, but the blackness is lit by a circle of shining lanterns. Alchemy lamps? I squint, urging the sólfox lower. Then I recognise the shine. Not alchemy lamps, but firestones. They’re arranged in a perfect ring, encircling a dark hole in the snow. Snowflakes flutter down around them, crisp and white. Some stones are half-buried, leaking eerie ripples of light through the snow.

This is the place where Lord Farran became ‘the prisoner’, three hundred years ago. His first prison cell. When he broke free, he burned this fortress to the ground.

In the centre of the ruins – encircled by Lord Farran’s firestones – lies darkness. A crack in the earth, barely as wide as my fist. But it’s deep. I can feel that much in my bones. I feel it with the touch of my proclivity: the way the edges of Night curl down into the black.

Lord Farran is somewhere down there. He has arranged this circle of firestones, presumably to transmit some kind of magic. He has melted into Night, plummeted through snow and stone. And down in the darkness below …

The Hourglass.

We land in a tumble of feathers, just outside the circle of firestones. My sólfox gives a quiet shriek and I quickly move to hush it, Lukas’s charm clutched in my fingers. I sense the creature’s consciousness on the edge of my own. But my control is still weak: the power of a passenger, not a true driver. I don’t hold Lukas’s whole proclivity – just a silver trinket. One preserved spark of his magic.

I take a moment to settle the sólfox, guiding it to a clump of bushes. It flaps a little and snaps at me before it begrudgingly drops into the leaves. I don’t expect to need it again. I don’t expect to ever leave this mountain. But after years of looking after myself, it’s hard to quash my scruffer instinct for ‘just in case’.

The crack is deep and black as ink. I kick one of the firestones, hoping to break Lord Farran’s perfect circle. But the stone repels my touch, blasting violent pain into my foot. I swear under my breath. Clearly, Farran has used an alchemy charm to keep the stones in place.

I drop to my knees with a soggy crunch and stare down into the fissure. Nothing. Just darkness. Just –

And then I see it. No, not see exactly. I feel it. I feel it with the same tingle that calls my proclivity. A twist of silence, an itch along my veins. There’s something down there. Something calling, down in the dark. But the crack is only as wide as my fist. There’s only one way to descend.

So I close my eyes, and fall into the Night.