The wind carried Emma’s pronouncement away soon enough, though it seemed to hang in the frozen air, a nearly physical thing.

“It is not that simple,” Vicar said, a touch of exasperation in his voice. “You cannot merely say a thing and have it change reality. You are bound, child.”

“Is that so?” Emma lifted a dark eyebrow, a touch of her usual haughty primness entering her tone. “Well then, let us make it a bit more official, shall we?”

She looked up to Lady Eanor. “I will swear it. I, Emma of the Westvales, renounce the name Carreon. I will hold no lands or titles in that name, and I will have no children of my blood. I will be the last of the bloodline, the last to wield our Art, the last to bear our curse. I disavow all my ancestors and their deeds, I disown all their wealth and allegiances.”

Eanor looked shocked, perhaps even awed. “Child… you understand what this means? This is a curse unto itself, this thing. Should you renounce your ancestors, they will not forget, or forgive. Remember that dead is not gone.” She glanced at Jon Orley.

“I will bear their ire, then.” Emma folded her hands behind her back in a militant stance, one she’d likely learned from her sword trainer, planting her feet.

A low, throaty chuckle passed over the circle. It came from Mother Urddha, who cast an appreciative gold-and-green eye on the young noble. “Well, this is unexpected. Dear girl, little Eanor speaks truth. If you renounce your house, all the privileges and sacred protections given to this land’s nobility will be shorn from you. You will be at the mercy of all spirits and malisons. As it is, you at least have the certainty of knowing your fate. That is not a thing lightly discarded.”

The demigoddess let those words settle before continuing. “If you do this…” she shrugged. “You will be adrift on tumultuous seas, which shall show you no mercy. Nor will you be rid of your Blood Art — that is part of you forever, and many wolves will find you an enticing feast.”

“It should also be mentioned,” Kaharn growled, “that if you break this oath, this pact, and attempt to claim your titles once again, or pass your blood and magic on, you shall face dire consequence.”

Emma nodded slowly, taking this in. “I understand. Even still, I will swear it. I do swear it.”

“Emma…” I didn’t know what to say. “Are you sure? Do you understand what you’re giving up?”

“Nothing that hasn’t just been a burden,” Emma said, though she looked wistful.

Even still, what she’d just done boggled the mind. She hadn’t just given up titles and privileges, her place among the aristocracy, she’d also given up the magics that protected the nobility from various forces, allowed them to rule over domains riddled with supernatural beings. With her family’s magic still in her, spirits of all kinds, many predatory, would be drawn to try to feed on that power, and she wouldn’t have any authority to repel them, no certain protection. It would be like if I had all the gilded aura in me that attracted dark shades, with no preternatural command or sanctified arts to keep them at bay.

House Hunting would disown her. She wouldn’t be welcome among the nobles, who would ostracize her if they learned of her circumstances. She’d just made herself a pariah, both in the magical and mortal spheres.

I’d rarely seen anything so brave, or so sad. It infuriated me, that the world had pushed her to this.

“This is madness,” Vicar hissed. “It does not free her of us.”

“That, sir, is not correct.” Urddha grinned at the crowfriar, revealing green teeth as she threw his earlier words back at him. “It is House Carreon to which your realm has ownership, and I believe, as of now…” she spread her gnarled hands out. “You already have all of them. This child is no longer a Carreon. She is just Emma of the Westvales.”

“And you no longer have any business here,” Kaharn rumbled, glowering through his silver helm at the devil monk.

Vicar looked around at the gathering, lips pressed tight beneath the shadow of his cowl. Then, after a frustrated sigh, he grew suddenly calm. “Is this the Choir’s decision, then?”

Eanor clasped her hands together and nodded. “It is. We shall accept the child’s oath, and remember it. So long as Emma abides by her promise, then Astraea Carreon’s pact with Orkael shall not bind her. This shall be her doom: She will no longer be a Lady of Urn, and shall never rule over others, shall pass on no blood. Her Art will die with her.”

“So mote it be,” all the assembled immortals said together in a thunderous echo. I gasped at the force of that pronouncement as it embedded itself into the world, becoming a real, tangible thing, a part of reality itself. Vicar’s offhand comment, that one could not simply say a thing and have it be so, became a lie in that moment, proven false by the power of the Choir. I felt it settle into my own aura, joining the collection of memories and vows there, recorded by the Table.

Emma only winced, feeling the barest touch of the magic.

The crowfriar waited a moment, and I knew he consulted with the invisible spirit whispering into his ear — the true devil, the Zosite. His master, I realized. After a beat he bowed his hooded head. “The Iron Tribunal has heard it. I will depart.”

I saw the trap. “Orley.”

He paused, turning his darkened visage toward me. “Pardon?”

I nodded to the tree. “Jon Orley. You said yourself that he’s here by his own choice, for revenge. Were you planning to leave him to get a bit of your own payback?”

Emma looked at me, frowned, then glanced to the tree with the bound Scorchknight.

Vicar held my gaze a moment, then scoffed. “Perhaps you aren’t so slow as some like to believe, Hewer.”

“Take your dog back to Hell with you,” I told him coldly. “And don’t come back.”

“Wait.” Emma stepped forward. “Before that… let me talk to him.”

I started to protest. “Emma, I don’t think that’s—”

Emma’s features turned hard, and she spoke with uncompromising authority. “I will speak to my great-grandfather. Please, don’t interfere.”

I studied her face a moment, trying to see what she intended. Then, nodding, I agreed. “Fine. I’ll be at hand, though.”

We went over to the tree, while Vicar and the Onsolain looked on from a distance. Emma paused in front of the bound lord, and for a while she didn’t seem to know what to say. Then, after a deep breath that plumed in the frozen air, she began to speak.

“I’ve spent my whole life hating you,” she said. “Ever since I learned your story, I hated you. I believed you to be a wretch who couldn’t accept defeat, and couldn’t take out your anger on the one who broke your heart, so you made my life a misery. I told myself I’d never be so weak. I made myself cold, tried to emulate my ancestors. I believed you were weak and foolish, and she was strong. Astraea. She won, and you lost, and that’s what I believed to be important.”

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Orley didn’t answer. I couldn’t see any change behind that melted iron mask, any sign he heard or felt anything about the girl’s words. I waited, tense, expecting danger. But I did not interrupt.

Emma needed this closure.

She folded her arms, shivering against the cold. I don’t know what power kept us from freezing to death in those arctic temperatures, but suspected it had something to do with the ritual of the place. I doubted it would last long, and knew we didn’t have much time.

Ignoring her discomfort, Emma continued. “Nothing is ever simple, is it? Grandmother didn’t tell me about the pact with Hell. Now I know all of it, I think I understand something. Have you guessed it too, Jon? Did you know?”

She waited, and to my surprise the fallen lord tilted his head up, as though listening more intently.

Emma leaned forward, her face very sad. “It was never about winning, was it? Astraea made her pact with Hell so she could put you somewhere she could control, so she could keep you to herself forever. Don’t you understand, great-grandfather? She was just as weak and foolish as you, in her own way. Even at the very end, she loved you.”

I looked from Emma to her ancestor, letting those horrible words sink in. Impossible, I thought. Why would anyone do that to someone they loved? I couldn’t believe it, couldn’t accept it. The idea sickened me, but I kept my silence, because this wasn’t my moment.

“I pity you both.” Emma stood straight again. “And I will not become either of you. I am done fighting your war.”

Orley’s helmed head slumped. I couldn’t be certain, but I swear he became… dimmer. More a smudge on the world than a metal shadow.

Emma turned her head toward me. “Release him.”

“Are you sure?” I asked.

She nodded. “Please.”

Expecting the worst, but knowing this needed resolution, I stepped forward and placed my hand on the side of the tree. A crackling sound filled the air, and the skeletal branches peeled apart. The tree did not vanish, but when I pulled my hand back I held my axe. It had changed — the elf-bronze head remained the same, but the uncarved length of oak that made up the handle had become even more twisted, entwining around the metal in a more organic fashion. It had grown longer, too.

Orley slumped forward, then collapsed to his knees as the trunk of the Malison Oak released him. He knelt there a moment, reeking of sulfur and hot iron. Then, slowly, with the grating peel of bending metal, he stood to his full, impressive height.

I tensed, clutching my axe tight, ready for trouble. But Orley only stared down at his descendent, any emotions he might have felt unreadable behind the warped visor of his helm.

Emma tilted her chin up, defiant. “I am not her. I am not yours. I am my own.”

Even still, the Scorchknight said nothing. I saw only blackness through the narrow, twisted slits of the visor. I could hear a shallow breathing, slow and laborious, like a plague victim.

Then, Emma shocked us all once more. “I will make this oath as well; one day, I will free you from Hell.”

“That is enough!” Vicar swept forward in a flurry of frayed robes. “This farce has gone on long enough. He is ours, and will remain so.”

I stepped in his path, glaring down at him. Unlike the Onsolain, he stood most of a head shorter than me. “Try anything,” I said quietly, clutching Faen Orgis, “and you’ll regret it. I don’t know if aureflame will burn you so badly as it would a demon, Kross… do you want to find out?”

He glowered at me with his hot-coal eyes, all the aloof airs and barbed humor gone from him. He leaned forward, speaking in a low, hateful voice.

“This changes nothing. We will still have her… she has her whole life to slip up, and we can be very patient.”

“She will disappoint you,” I said. “She’s too clever by half, and isn’t impressed by all your theatrics.”

His cracked, blistered lips split in a cruel grin, showing gray teeth. “It comforts you, doesn’t it? To see a child born of such wicked blood show such courage, such nobility? You must like the idea that any child you might have had would defy their darker aspect, that their very existence might not have been profane.” He let those words hang, then sneered. “Do not delude yourself. You and I both know that wouldn’t have been the case.”

Seeing the horror that must have shown on my face, for I felt it, he let out a harsh, barking laugh. “Yes! I know. Back in the chapel, you did not tell me your true sin, Alken Hewer. You painted over it with self-indulgent whining about how difficult your life has been, all the great circumstances beyond your control… but my realm knows you.”

He held out his hand and dropped something. Instinctively I caught it, then opened my palm to look.

The world fell out from under me. I barely heard his next words.

“We know what happened during your tenure with the Alder Table,” Vicar crooned. “Before I began my work in this land, my masters briefed me thoroughly on you, knowing our paths might cross. We know all of it.”

“This is a trick,” I whispered in a hoarse voice. “A lie.”

“Believe what you will,” Vicar told me. “But I ask you this — where do you believe all the sinners and monsters you smite with that sacred fire go?”

In my hand I held a scarred, burnt medallion bearing the image of a golden tree ringed in a silver sun. A knight’s mark. My mark, once. Despite my verbal denial, I knew in my bones it was the same medallion I’d lost in Seydis ten years before.

Not lost. Given away.

“How did you get this?” I demanded, stepping forward. I reached out to grab the crowfriar by his robe, but he glided out of my reach.

“I think you can guess,” Vicar said, turning his back. He pointed at the medallion. “Your world is filled with wounds, Alken Hewer, a battered, broken place, aged well past its time. Things have a tendency to slip through the cracks… and we catch them. Think on that.”

The wind had picked up, sending flurries of snow over the circle. Already, the growing storm had obscured the pillars and the Onsolain, who I could no longer see. Jon Orley had gone, faded like a wraith. I distantly heard Emma’s voice, calling out for me.

We were being taken back. Vicar stepped into the storm, his form becoming hazy.

“Wait!” I stepped forward. “Tell me how you got this, you bastard!”

He laughed. His voice had grown very distant.

I pushed forward, again trying to grab at him, but I only grasped frozen water and air. Then, it all faded away.

I spent some time lost in a torrent of snow and wind. Then, suddenly, it all cleared. I stood on a desolate shore overlooking the frozen sea I’d heard distantly through the debate with Vicar. Great hills of ice and depthless, black water spread out to the horizon. I’d rarely seen anything so unsettlingly bleak.

Perhaps it is true, that some of the worst hells are made of ice and water rather than fire and iron.

“You did well in this,” a soft voice said to me. Lady Eanor stood at my side, a towering, regal figure perfectly at home on the frozen shore. Somehow, she made the whole scene look less bleak, like a missing piece of a tapestry.

I stared down at the medallion, lost in my own thoughts for a long moment. “Did I?” I asked. “Emma did the hard part.”

“She would never have had the chance without you,” the Onsolain said. “Take some pride in that.” Her eyes fell down to the medallion, and she let out a small sound of heartfelt sympathy. “Ah, my dear champion. That is a cruel thing. There is a reason my queen disavowed the Infernal Ones.” A shadow fell over her surreal beauty. “Many.”

“Is what he said really true?” I asked. “Are the agents of Hell allowed to operate freely in Urn again?”

With a troubled look, Eanor nodded. “Few are pleased by it… but, I think, some of the Choir secretly welcome this change. Orkael once served the First Realm most faithfully, though that was long ago, and a very different time. With this new era of chaos and uncertainty, some long for an uncompromising law. They forget so easily just how unfeeling Iron can be.”

She looked down at me then, clasping bejeweled hands together. “You must be vigilant, Alken Hewer. This shall not be the last time you will encounter the crowfriars, and now they will know and be cautious of you.”

I took that warning to heart. “Thank you. I can’t help but wonder though…” tearing my eyes from the damaged medallion, I met the Onsolain’s shining eyes. “Did you and Nath plot this together? Getting me involved? I know you two are estranged, but I can’t imagine you didn’t have anything to do with your twin cooperating with the Choir.”

Eanor lifted her chin, then looked out over the sea. With a sigh, she shook her head. “My sister tells me nothing without a trace of poison, and I have long learned not to trust her. In this, she acted of her own volition… perhaps she believed her actions to be for some noble purpose, whatever twisted means she employed to accomplish it. That has always been her way — to veil every deed in a twisted bramble, so you can discern neither motive or intent. There is a very good reason why she gravitated toward the Briar.”

She lifted her head toward some distant point, as though hearing a far away sound. “Our time is done. I will leave you with this, Hewer — we shall not forget this service. We forget none of your work, but in this there is no mask of blood to sully the cause. You put faith where it was needed. In that, you have my support.”

“Just yours?” I asked wryly.

“No doubt many will be watching Emma for signs of corruption… with her fate untethered, who can say what she will become? But I shall have faith, for your sake and for hers.”

It was as much as I could have asked. I bowed to her. “Thank you, my lady.”

The wind picked up once more, hazing the world in white. I knew I would be pulled back soon, to Venturmoor and all that would come after this night. Eanor’s eyes pierced that gloom, fixing on the medallion.

“You should not keep that thing. It is a treacherous gift, and best left in the past.”

Before I could reply, the world turned to white void. Even still, I clutched the medallion tightly.