‘I thought I’d slip into something more comfortable.’ The man-being pats his jerkin. Having shrunk to more or less Mathew’s height, he’s gained a straw hat, a healthy grey beard, and boots over woollen trousers. The staff remains, gnarled and weathered, its handle shaped like a wolf. ‘That was my frightening guise, as it were. Larger than life. In this form, I’m pleasant.’ The man-being considers itself. ‘I think, at least. Do you?’

Mathew considers it, too. Its green eyes glimmer with amusement. Its hands are more knotted twigs than fingers, and its face has kept an inhuman wilderness, but it’s certainly grown less threatening.

‘Thank you.’ It nods. Mathew frowns. ‘I try. Not with all folk, but most. Some, maybe, if we are being accurate. And you can call me Vasi.’

Mathew’s frown deepens. He’d been about to ask.

‘I know.’ Vasi gives a slow, wrinkled wink. ‘I’m one of the Leshy, by the way. My wolf is Grey; I can be many things, but inventive with names is not one of them. Once, he saved your daughters.’

Sense trickles even further away. Mathew’s gaze flicks to Grey. ‘What?’

‘Last year,’ Vasi says. ‘He, and his pack.’

Proud, tall, but still a wolf, at least, Grey watches. ‘What do you mean, he saved my daughters?’ Mathew shakes his head. ‘This is—how? And also’—he forces his aching limbs up. It feels like he ran seven leagues without the boots—‘why do you keep saying a year? I’ve no idea what I was doing a year ago, but that doesn’t mean I wasn’t thinking. Existing.’ He rubs a hand down his face. ‘Christ. If I wasn’t existing then, I shouldn’t exist now.’

‘Sadly, none of that follows.’ Vasi taps the staff. Turning tail, the wolf trots away. ‘Through no fault of your own, I might add. But we have enough talk to fill Ørenna, and a great deal of time. It can wait.’

He turns. Mathew’s limbs tug. Fighting his brain for his memory, he lets the tug lead him, up the mountain and into the blue.

Kira opens her eyes. She’d been dreaming of Mathew: Mathew as he was, not the puppet he’s been painted. Her affectionate, slightly clueless dad.

It helps. It helps her drowsy mind to separate the two, the man he is and the monster he’s not. She’s become a pro in separating the Romys, and she’ll do the same now. She has to.

Her sister killed her dad. Her dad killed his parents. There’s not much between them in terms of horror.

Horror. Blearily, she blinks, swimming toward awake. All of it’s a horror: she fled the police, became a criminal, disguised herself, and now…now, she’s running through the fringes of the worlds.

Running. The worlds. Like a stab of ice, she’s awake. The Chlause.

They ran to the Chlause. They ran to Karliquai, found her painting, and the doll-faced figure sent everything strange. Carol, Talie, and Jay were running, running and shouting.

Where is she now?

Oh, god. Where is she?

Kira jerks up. Blood rushes to her head, and she wavers, her back ramming into a wall. ‘Ow.’ Her elbow smashes rock. ‘Ow.’

She’s caught in a corner. Screwing up her face, she rubs her offended spine and slips up her guard. Last time she woke in a rocky hole, a dead coven tried to kill her.

Not only that, they tried to recruit her. She touches her delicate elbow with a wince. What’s it to be this time? Burying her alive, so she sinks through the rock to the underworld? Sending her off in a Viking death boat and floating her up to the stars?

Shut up.

Scraping her fingers into fists on the rock, Kira draws her knees to her chest. It’s not just a hole; it’s a tunnel. The cold air is musty. The close, rust-red walls curl away around a corner, and although she’s bunched in a dead end, a rabbit in a trap should danger come, what makes her tingle, what makes her crawl, what chills her head is the ceiling.

Is it a ceiling? A pull inside her hisses yes, but the sky flickers and sighs. Sniffing, Kira hugs her knees. Swathes of colour dance in the dark: curtains of green paling to blue, sighing to rose, moving with violet, so vibrant they could be alive. They travel with the tunnel walls, sweeping along the curve. With her view cut short by the corner, they could well travel forever, a rolling sea of colour, gentle, silent, sad. Breathtaking; heartbreaking. As much as dread sneaks through her skin, she can’t deny it that.

She sniffs again. It has to be a ceiling. It can’t be the aurora.

If it’s not, though…what is this?

In the opposite corner, someone shifts. Kira starts, shot with shock again, flinching into the rock. She’d been too taken by the tunnel, by the speckling stars in the indigo sky; she hadn’t seen the huddled lump. Tensing her limbs, she squints through the gloom.

‘Ouch.’ Groaning, Callum sits up. ‘Where are we?’

Kira slumps. ‘Oh, thank God it’s you.’

‘Mmm.’ Callum rubs his head. ‘Who else—agh.’ His mouth pops open. ‘I think I slept on a stone.’

Shifting her sore coccyx, Kira’s eyes drift around them. ‘I think you probably did.’

Slowly, Callum follows her gaze. Slowly, the sleep clears from his face, and slowly, he frowns. ‘What happened?’

His attention floats up to the ceiling. ‘I don’t think it’s real,’ Kira says, as his contracting frown widens. ‘There’s no air.’

His disbelief slides down to her. ‘Then how are we breathing?’

‘No.’ Kira shakes her head. ‘I mean, it’s the same as a cave, or an attic. Sniff and you’ll see. We’re not outside.’ She twists her mouth. ‘Don’t the northern lights sound kind of electric?’

Callum shrugs.

Kira waits, but that’s it. ‘Either way,’ she says, ‘there should be something.’ She rolls her head through the air toward him. ‘We could be in the stillest place on Earth, and there’d still be a smell. A sound. Something.’

In the half-light, Callum’s eyes seem deeper. ‘You think it’s an illusion?’

Oh, please, no. Kira peers down the tunnel. Is the rock reflected in the sky, glinting on the corner? ‘No,’ she says. ‘I think it’s a ceiling.’

Silence. To her surprise, Callum huffs. ‘Of course.’

Kira blinks at him. ‘What? What’s funny?’

Dramatically, Callum exhales. ‘It’s always about glass ceilings.’ He tuts. ‘Women. Honestly.’

It takes a moment to click. ‘Shut up.’ Mock-serious, Kira punches his arm. He grasps it in mock distress. ‘Is this really the time for your jokes? Or anyone’s? It could be the end of the world.’

He lowers a figurative pair of glasses. ‘When have I not made it time for my jokes? Without the banter last time, we would have gone mad.’ He offers up his familiar smugness. ‘And if Urnäsch is wedged between Whiteland and home, we are at the end of the world.’

Kira hits him again. ‘Don’t say “banter.” It’s become a vessel for lad-boys to pretend they’ve got some wit. That said’—she pats the spot she punched—‘I’m glad that you’re okay.’

‘I did feel the same.’ Callum clambers to his feet. ‘Now, I’m peeved. Is that word better?’

Kira nods. ‘Blame the glass ceiling. Wait.’ Accepting his hand, she frowns at the tunnel. ‘Where are our bags?’

Callum looks down. ‘Ah,’ he says. The rusty rock is bare. ‘Well, shit.’

For a moment, they’re quiet. Well, shit, indeed. ‘Let’s hope we don’t get cold.’ Kira sighs, morose. ‘Or stuck in the dark.’

‘Or in any kind of fix, really.’ Callum pulls a face, more than peeved. ‘I was so prepared this time, as well.’

Kira mirrors him. So was she; maybe the stress will play hormone havoc.

‘We might as well go,’ is what she says, sighing again at the rock. They’d packed all that food. ‘We have to find Romy. Assuming she made it.’

‘And assuming Talie’s a wanton liar.’ Callum takes her hand. ‘Security,’ he adds, catching her querulous look. This isn’t like him. ‘I’d rather not risk the separation trick they played in the woods. Or the boat.’

Quelling her hesitation, Kira laces her fingers with his. ‘Okay.’ She squeezes once, and they walk. His skin is cold. ‘I guess they’ve already separated Romy.’

‘Exactly.’ Callum glances over his shoulder, as if expecting to see her there. ‘Which brings us back to Talie. She must have told Mum and Jay the truth, however that bundle of joy turns out, and they came to try and stop us.’

Kira’s apprehension bruises, growing and spreading to yellow, to brown. Her brief amusement has drowned. However that bundle of joy turns out. Wherever they are, it’s markedly other, nowhere close to Whiteland-sharp but colder. Corpse-like. Stifled. Whatever Urnäsch is, it feels dead.

Like they’ve left the pan for the fire.

Kira tightens her fingers in Callum’s. Edging around the corner, they leave the northern lights for a deeper, blacker night.