It hasn’t been the best week in Liz Sweeney’s life, and now, now the snow!

Everybody says the winters are colder than they used to be, that nobody should have to put up with temperatures like these the week before Halloween. But nowadays thermometers always take a dive after September, and the instructors think nothing of dragging the class for a pre-breakfast, barefoot run through the slush.

“No offense,” says Aoife to Horner. “No offense, sir, but me and Liz Sweeney, we’re just out of the Cage. That biscuit was our first food in days, sir. Sir?”

Horner rarely speaks, English or Sídhe or anything else. He doesn’t even like to shrug, but he manages one now, dragging it out of the black hole of war that ate his personality thirty years before. He has a tiny smooth face, with greying curly hair and great big eyes that any Sídhe would be proud of. Liz Sweeney has to drag her gaze away from his before it sucks her into nothingness. Just looking at him is enough to make her shiver, regardless of the weather.

That Aoife’s a lazy shit, Liz Sweeney thinks, but for once she’ll keep that opinion to herself. The girl cried every day in the Cage and it wasn’t about food, although all of them were bent double over cramped bellies. And looking at her tears, Liz Sweeney didn’t think of weakness, as Conor did. No, she wanted to weep too. For herself. For Chuckwu. For the sister she lost. For her brother Kieron, in Year 6 up in another college and not yet Called.

She’ll hear news of him very soon. Yes, because farther north, near Bangor, Kieron Sweeney has also been ordered to go for a run in the snow. It’s heavier there, practically a storm, and half an hour from now his abandoned tracksuit will spend three minutes and four seconds getting wet.

Liz Sweeney can’t know any of that. As part of the Round Table, she constantly tells herself how strong she is. How little she feels—other than scorn—for the Aoifes of this world, and admiration for the Conors.

Her life is about to be turned upside down.