My face is buried in Neev’s empty pile of clothes when I smell the smoke. The lookout is burning. Some of my lightning must have ignited the rafters and the dead ferns. A part of me wants to stay and let the smoke sedate me until I’m engulfed in flame. But Gate shakes me, forcing me to sit up. “Thedra, we have to get out.”

We choke on dark gray smoke as he clambers down the spiral staircase, pulling me behind him. My eyes sting, streaming until I’m blinded by my own salty tears. His grip is iron, and I choke out, “Gate, help us escape!” His calm infuses my grief and terror, helping me keep my head and not panic, reminding me to crouch low on the stairwell so I can breathe.

Just when I think my lungs will burst, we spill out onto the greensward fifty feet below where we started, coughing and retching into the sodden grass. The rain has stopped, and we find Plover and Dette waiting by the boat near the lakeshore. She has shed her swan’s form, and she runs to me, but this time I can’t return her embrace. My arms hang at my sides like lead weights.

“Where is Neev?” she asks.

“She’s gone,” Gate answers for me. “The tower is burning. Hurry.”

Dette takes my hand without questioning me and pulls me toward the boat. We help Plover in, and Gate pushes us away from shore and hops into the bow. The water laps gently against the sides as we row away from the isle. The tower is a flaming brand behind us, the heat rolling off it in waves.

“Were there others?” I ask.

“Others?”

“So many girls with power disappeared before you were taken. Sylphs, too.”

“He said there were others before me, but they all died. Rothbart said my power at greenhealing was what saved me every time I transformed. He used it against me.”

“What did he do with their bodies?”

“He threw them into the lake.”

Horrified, I look at the black water surrounding our boat.

“What an accursed place,” mutters Gate.

He’s right, and I wait until we reach the far shore to do anything for fear of ending up in a watery grave after escaping the fire. I’m too weak to summon lightning after my struggle with Rothbart, but I promise myself I’ll have one triumph over Alder Tower, even if it has torn the heart right out of me.

As Gate and Dette secure the boat, I wade into the shallows and hold my hand out over the water. I whisper the secret word and say, “By Zori’s power, I summon those who lie buried here.”

“What are you doing?” asks Plover, but Gate shushes him, whispering, “Watch.”

A spot deep in the bottom of the lake glows. And then another. And another. The shades rise to the surface, glowing white and blue and green in the starlight. They walk across the surface of the water toward me—the daughters of earls and vassals and mages. Forcefield-makers and water-benders, spell-casters and alchemists, sylphs and mermaids.

“What do you want of us?” asks a shade with black skin and shells and bones in her hair. There are shiny, iridescent scales beside her eyes. One of the merfolk. I wonder what power he wanted from her, and if he got it.

Thinking, as always, of the nameless sylph-girl in Thornewood, I say, “Tell me your name.”

“Cerith,” she answers.

“And the rest of you. Tell me your names.”

They reply in a jumbled symphony of sound, in different languages and voices. I turn my hand, so my palm faces up, and say the words I said to the guard on the pass. “The one who murdered you is no more. Your deaths are avenged. Leave this place and go to your resting places. Into the mountains of the sun, the depths of oceans. Across the Endless Sea.”

Slowly, the shades fade and disappear, leaving the lake empty, a dark mirror reflecting the burning tower. Agate helps Plover sit with his back against the trunk of a tree and speaks softly to him, holding his hands. Dette stands watching the castle burn in silence. Then she goes to examine Plover’s wound, asking if the arrow had a poison tip.

I stand apart from them, continuing to watch the castle turn into a fiery inferno. I don’t want to quake and fall to pieces in front of them, but I’ve been holding myself together for so long, and I don’t think I can any longer. Tears roll down my cheeks and I don’t bother to wipe them away.

After a while, Gate joins me. “I’m sorry.”

I swallow savagely, trying to hide that I’m weeping. “You don’t hate her for what she did?”

“No. But it wouldn’t matter if I did. You loved her.”

He puts a hand on my shoulder, and my first instinct is to push him away, but I don’t because I know what he’s doing.

“It won’t help,” I say. “Let me feel it.”

“It will. It helped you escape the tower. It will help now.”

I nod. “All right. But don’t make it a dream of her. Not yet.”

“Of course not.”

He keeps his hand on my shoulder, a gentle pressure. I was wrong to think it would take away my sorrow. It doesn’t, but I’m calmer. He doesn’t use the strong kind of magic he calls soporific. This is mild and tinged with heartache, like a cool cloth on a feverish forehead, or a lament sung for a lost lover.