A sudden, sharp creak.

  My head snaps toward the sound. The door. The light frames the shape of a man hunched over a cane.

  Reginald.

  His eyes move. First, to the overturned furniture. Then, to the scattered stones of the Flesh Tax bag. Then to the dark, viscous smear on the floor. Each new piece of wreckage carves another line on his face.

  Only then do his eyes fall on me.

  And they do not move. They hold me in place.

  I see my own reflection in his pupils. Small. Broken. A thing to be swept up with the rest of the debris.

  His shoulders, which were already slumped with age, fall another inch.

  He closes the door without a sound. The latch falls into place with a quiet, oily click.

  He rests his forehead against the cool wood of the door for a long moment. He does not look at me. "James," he says to the grain. "I know you're hurting."

  His voice is a low, tired thing. "I know what Gwendolyn did with the bag was a monstrous act. But this… this changes nothing. This rage will only lead you to the same end as your grandmother."

  He pushes off from the door. A slow, pained shuffle into the room. "Let me talk to her. I can smooth this over. I'll tell her you were mad with grief."

  His kindness is a collar. It settles around my throat, warm and heavy. I can feel the buckle lock into place.

  My teeth grind together, the sound loud in my own skull. A mission burns in my gut. A clean, straight path out of this village. He is a wall in that path.

  A low growl builds in my chest. "No."

  My good leg finds its footing on the stone. I rise. The muscles in my back and shoulders are tight. I turn my body, my path a straight line to the door. "You'll stay out of it."

  His cane slams down on the floor between us, the thud a flat smack. "Don't be a fool, son. Don't throw your life away."

  I shove him. "Get out of my way."

  He is surprisingly dense. A bag of stones, not bones.

  My hand finds the iron bolt of the door. My fingers close around it. Freedom.

  Then, a hard, bruising blow.

  The crook of the cane slams into my breastbone.

  Then its length slams flat against me, a solid bar against my chest.

  He puts his weight behind the wood. A knot of muscle in my chest seizes.

  A sharp, wheezing gasp escapes him, loud in my ear. The sound of an old man winning.

  I am yanked backward, my spine arching, my wooden leg skittering across the floorboards.

  My hands clamp over his on the cane. His knuckles are a ridge of old bone under my palms.

  I wrench it.

  He locks his wrists, fighting the twist.

  His face is inches from mine. His eyes are clouded, the pupils lost in a milky haze.

  How can he even see?

  His foot shoots out, a sudden, surprising burst of speed. His heel connects with a ledger on the floor.

  It slides directly into my path. A dark, rectangular mouth, hungry for my footing.

  The slick leather of the cover strikes my wooden foot. A dull, solid impact. My leg twists. The scar tissue on my stump screams.

  A sickening lurch. My throat fills with bile.

  He uses my stumble, stepping in. He flips the cane in his grip and drives the solid handle, crook-first, deep into my abdomen.

  I can feel the shape of the handle pressing against things inside me that shouldn't be touched.

  A wet, gagging sound tears from my throat as I'm driven backward. My vision tunnels. The only thing in the world is the hard, round shape of the handle buried in my gut.

  I stagger back, my good leg scrambling on the floor.

  I let the momentum take me, guiding the fall.

  My back hits something solid. The table. The impact is a sharp, ugly thud that travels from my spine to my teeth.

  I plant my wooden leg against the table's base. The wood of my leg and the wood of the table become one solid thing.

  My vision clears. The fog of pain recedes. All that is left is the wood in my hands and the old man at the end of it.

  I meet his eyes across the length of the taut wood. He sees the shift in me. His grip tightens.

  A roar tears from my gut. I pull. Hard.

  The cane groans. A sharp crack.

  It snaps in two.

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  The sudden, violent release throws us both. I am sent staggering back into the wreckage. He is thrown forward, the jagged shard of the cane still in his hands.

  He lands badly, his ankle twisting under him with a wet, popping sound.

  I push myself up.

  He is on the floor. A heap of grey cloth and shallow breaths.

  I stand over him. My boot is inches from his face. From this angle, he is nothing.

  The jagged shard of the cane is beside him. My hand closes around it. The splintered wood digs into my palm.

  Reginald's eyes are wide, fixed on me.

  I lift the cane high, ready to bring it down, to finish this.

  He flinches. A small, pathetic jerk of his old body. And in that flinch, I see him. Just a frail old man, terrified and broken on the floor.

  The heat in my chest vanishes, leaving a hollow, aching cold in its place.

  My grip loosens. The cane slips from my numb fingers. It clatters to the floor.

  The breath I was holding rips out of me in a shuddering, broken sob. My legs give out. I collapse beside him.

  The scent of spilt poison is sharp in the air between us.

  He pushes himself onto his hands and knees, gasping. His hand lands on something hard. The broken cane. He grips it, using it to lift himself upright. He stumbles to a chair, leaning on it, the jagged wood a new, ugly crutch in his hand.

  "James," he begins, each word an effort. "The man in the skin cloak... he broke something inside her."

  He takes a shaky step closer, his hand outstretched. "This isn't her. It's her fear, wearing her face."

  I look at him. At this broken, pleading man. The tight knot in my shoulders goes slack.

  "You're in love with her."

  A tremor starts in his hand, a fine, uncontrollable shudder. "I have been since we were children. She was… a light." He says it to the floor, to the stones, to anyone but me.

  A short, sharp laugh escapes my throat.

  His face changes. The broken man is gone, replaced by something sharp and venomous. "Don't," he hisses, the word a snake in the quiet hall. "Don't you look at me like that."

  The broken cane in his hand lifts, its jagged point now aimed at me. "I see that same fire in your eyes. The same as Gwendolyn's."

  A hot denial burns in my throat. My fire is not her fire.

  But he continues, his voice a low murmur that crawls under my skin. "You see Evangeline's name on those stones, and you are willing to become a monster. I see Gwendolyn turning into one, and all I can do is stand closer to the flame."

  He looks at me, his eyes two dark, empty wells. "I... I am your Evangeline."

  How dare you compare me to her. How dare you compare yourself to Evangeline.

  A wordless snarl tears from my throat. I plant my hands on the floor, my body ready to spring, to finish him.

  I stop. His words hold up a mirror. And in it, for a split second, I don't see my own face. I see hers. Gwendolyn's. Her same sneer of righteous fury.

  The denial in my throat dies. The rage in my gut curdles to a cold, black horror.

  I see it.

  My fire. Her fire.

  From the outside, to the people who get burned, they are the same.

  He watches me, a broken thing on the floor. He nudges the fallen ledger back into place with the toe of his boot.

  "I will tell her you broke things. That you were mad with grief for your grandmother." He gestures with his broken cane to the floor, to the black, viscous stain where the vial shattered. "But you will clean this. Every drop." He meets my eyes. "I did not see you."

  He limps to the door, his hand closing over the iron bolt with a quiet finality.

  Without turning, he speaks. "Belladonna came looking for you."

  My mind snags on his words. Maybe it's not too late.

  His head gives a small, slow shake. "Don't bother," he says to the door. "She's gone. Swamp road. An hour ago."

  He pauses, letting the words land. Letting the hope die.

  "Whatever fire you're about to play with, James," he says, his voice a dead thing, "you'll be playing with it alone."

  The bolt scrapes back. He leaves.

  I find a rag. I kneel.

  The poison is a black mirror on the floor. As my hand moves through it, a face swims into view. My face, but wrong. The eyes are two flat, black pits.

  The air on my skin turns heavy. Wet. A cold, clinging damp that rises from the floorboards themselves.

  The sharp scent of the poison thickens into the smell of black mud and decay…

  I am standing in black water. The ruin of the bell tower is a broken tooth, half-swallowed by the swamp. The stone is slick with a greasy, green film.

  I pull myself up the crumbling wall, my fingers raw against the rough stone. As I pass a splintered section of the tower wall, my hand lifts without thought. My thumb gently presses a loose shard of stone back into place.

  The bell is a dark, silent mouth above me. The rope hangs from its throat. Thick. Rusted.

  My hand reaches for it. One pull, and he will come.

  Then, a sound. A soft, high-pitched crying.

  I follow the sound. Up. Into the bell.

  A nest.

  A beak. A tiny, pink, translucent mouth, blindly begging the air for food. And over it, the mother, her eye a black, unblinking point of terror fixed on me.

  My hand freezes. Inches from the rope.

  I cannot do it.

  My hand falls to my side. I turn to leave. Defeated.

  "I was wondering if you'd have the stomach for it."

  His voice comes from the shadows. A low, gravelly thing that scrapes the silence.

  He has been there the whole time. Leaning against a petrified tree. Watching.

  He steps into the grey light. "You still move like someone who thinks the world can be mended."

  "They're just birds," I say. The words are a dry rasp in my throat. I cannot meet his eyes.

  He stops beside me, so close I can smell the scent of them. The waxy, lifeless smell of cold, cured skin.

  "They think because the bell is silent, they are safe. A mistake." He doesn't look at me. His stare remains fixed on the nest. "They are blind to the jaw that will close."

  He turns from the bell. His eyes find mine.

  "You do the same thing," he says, his voice flat. "You build your little nest in that pathetic village. Raising another man's whelp. And you think you are safe."

  "He is my son," I grit out.

  The cruelty on his face is replaced by a look of pure, almost childlike, confusion. He tilts his head. "All this noise… for a sack of fragile bones?"

  He bends down and picks up a stone. It is the size of my fist.

  He looks at me. Then at the bell. Then back at me. He tosses the stone from one hand to the other. The sound is a soft, wet slap of rock on skin.

  "Tell me," he says, his thumb caressing the rough stone. "Do you want to see what happens when you build a nest in a giant's mouth?"

  My throat is a knot of muscle. "Don't." The word is a dry, pathetic thing.

  He studies my face. He sees the frantic pulse in my throat, the widening of my pupils. He sees the animal fear he despises.

  The flicker of interest on his face drains away, leaving only a weary boredom.

  His hand opens. The stone falls. The black water swallows it without a ripple.

  "You're not ready," he says. The words are flat. Toneless. He doesn't even look at me as he turns his back. "Come back when you're done crying."

  He walks away without another word, leaving me alone with the drone of the insects.

  The memory recedes. I am in the hall, the rag still in my hand. The air no longer smells of mud, only of spilt poison.

  I get to my feet. The location. I have it now.

  But to ring that bell is to become him. I look down at my hands. The hands of a mender. I see them, for a split second, crushing the nest.

  I walk out of the hall, leaving the wreckage behind. The grey light of the square is a shock after the dimness. My eyes find her instantly. Evangeline. She's standing by the charred remains of the notice board. Shoulders hunched. A pale, lonely shape in the afternoon quiet.

  She sees me. Her face is a question I have no honest answer for.

  I stop in front of her. My throat is a knot of dry muscle. "I'm going to the woods," I say. My voice is rough, unpractised. I cannot meet her eyes. My own are fixed on a blackened splinter of wood at her feet.

  "The woods?" she asks. "James, what for? Are you leaving?"

  "No," I say, too quickly. "It's for Pip. A project." The lie is a foul taste on my tongue, worse than the poison on the floor. "There's a grove, near the old road. Looking for some rare burl wood."

  A small, tired smile touches her lips. "For Pip?" she says. "Of course. Be safe, James."

  I turn from her without a word.

  The walk to the swamp is a descent. The clean, hard sound of my wooden leg on stone dies. It is replaced by a soft, wet cough as the path dissolves into mud. Now, every step is a countdown.

  The ground is not ground. It is a living thing, sucking at my leg, trying to pull me down into the rot where I belong.

  Each step is an agony, a choice.

  I could turn back. I could go home.

  I don't. The tower is waiting.

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