Silence. Then, “You’re certain?”

“They were after me,” she said. “Dad, they brought a blowtorch, for my eyes.”

“But you got away,” he said, and there was something in his voice, surprise, or grudging respect. “Are you alone?”

Kate hesitated, eyes flicking to August’s violin case against the chair. “Yes.”

“Where are you? I’m sending a car.”

Kate rolled her head on her shoulders. “No.”

“Katherine, wherever you are, it isn’t safe.”

“It isn’t safe there, either.”

An exhale. A beat of silence. She could hear the words he wasn’t saying. I should never have brought you back. I should have kept you away.

She swallowed. “Where is Sloan?”

“He’s out. Why?” challenged Harker.

“Someone tried to have me killed, Dad. Someone tried to break the truce, and that someone had enough power to bend other Malchai to his will. And logically—”

“Sloan has always been loyal.”

“Confront him, if you’re so sure,” she said icily.

Silence again. When Harker spoke, his tone was careful. “You’re right, it isn’t safe here. You need to get out of the city until the problem is solved. . . . Do you remember the coordinates?”

She stiffened. “Yes.”

“I’ll call when I know more.”

Her fingers tightened on the cell. “Okay.”

“I promise, Katherine, the problem will be solved—”

“I killed them,” she said, before he could hang up. “The Malchai at Colton. I drove my spikes into their hearts, and when you find the monster behind this, I want to be the one to kill him, too.” Even if it’s Sloan. Especially if it’s Sloan.

A single word in answer. “Done.”

And then he was gone. It was the most she’d spoken to her father in five years.

Kate stayed on the line and listened to the silence until August came back.

August stood at the hotel window, watching the sun arc over the city skyline. The rain had stopped, the clouds broken from a solid pane of gray into a hundred slivers, blue shining through. Kate had burned through the last of her cigarettes, and when he refused to buy her more, she’d stretched out on the bed, and stared up at nothing, turning her silver pendant over in her fingers.

She said she had to get out of the city. She didn’t say where she was going, only pushed herself up from the bed and nearly tore her stitches when she fell. Between the blood loss and the painkillers and the lack of sleep, she wasn’t fit to go anywhere right now.

One night, he told her. They’d paid for the room. She could leave in the morning.

She. As if August was just supposed to walk away. That’s what Leo wanted him to do. That’s what Henry would probably tell him to do, if he actually phoned home.

“You should get going,” said Kate, as if she could read his mind. With his luck, it was probably the only thing written on his face.

“Yeah,” said August, sinking into a chair. “I probably should.”

“I’m serious,” she said, the faintest tremor in her voice. “Go while it’s still light out.”

“I’m not leaving you,” he said.

“What if I don’t want you to stay?” she asked, which wasn’t the same thing as asking him to go.

“Too bad,” said August. “I’m not staying just for you. Whoever’s behind this, they tried to frame my family. Do you have any idea what will happen if this truce breaks? If the city’s plunged back into territory war?”

“People will die,” she said hollowly.

“People will die,” he echoed, thinking of Ilsa. Ilsa in her room, surrounded by stars. Ilsa in the Barren, surrounded by ghosts.

“People are already dying,” muttered Kate. But she didn’t talk any more about him leaving, only sank back against the cushions and returned her attention to the silver pendant.

August shivered, his clothes still damp with rain. He turned away, and felt Kate’s eyes on his back as he stripped the shirt over his head, revealing the black tallies that had circled his forearm and were making their way like roots across his chest and back.

He drew the curtains against the sunlight, dizzy with fatigue. There was only one bed, so he sank to the floor beneath the window, his back against the hotel’s faded wallpaper. Kate said nothing but dropped a pillow over the side of the bed. August stretched out on the dingy carpet, tucking the pillow behind his head.

It was so quiet.

The motel was a nest of muffled noises: dripping water and far-off voices and the electric hum of appliances, and beyond, the growl of engines and tap of shoes on concrete. He missed his music player, missed the hundreds of more familiar sounds that came with living in the compound, every one of them helping to drown the gunshots that now rose to fill the silence in his head.

And then, mercifully, music.

He looked up to see Kate fiddling with the radio beside the bed.

“. . . hate quiet,” she mumbled, turning past a classical station to something with a low, heavy beat. She found his eyes in the curtained dark, and flashed him a tired almost-smile back before sinking gingerly back to the bed. Within minutes, her breathing had evened, and he knew she was asleep.

August let himself sink into the songs, drift past the words and into the instruments, picking apart the threads of sound as he tried to sleep. He couldn’t remember ever being so tired. The ceiling swam in his vision, and a shiver passed through him, like the cusp of a cold.

And then, just as he was drifting off, the hunger started.

August woke from fever dreams to cool air and the smell of mint.

His skin ached and his bones were humming, and a shape hovered over him, a nest of hair blocking out the last light beyond the window. His dreams had been a tangled mess of teeth and shadows, and for a second, he thought he was still asleep, still dreaming, but then he felt the cheap motel carpet beneath his back, and the shape leaned closer, revealing blue eyes and strawberry curls and skin covered in stars.

“Ilsa?” he asked, throat dry. But Ilsa couldn’t be here. His sister didn’t leave the compound. He tried to blink away the phantom, but she only grew more solid.

“Shh, little brother.” She pressed her fingers against his mouth and turned his face toward the bed. “Someone is sleeping.”