Nina flexed her fingers, and the drüskelle dropped their rifles, hands going to their heads, screaming in pain.

“For my country,” she said. “For my people. For every child you put to the pyre. Reap what you’ve sown, Jarl Brum.”

Matthias watched the drüskelle twitch and convulse, blood trickling from their ears and eyes as the other Fjerdan soldiers looked on impassively. Their screams were a chorus. Claas, who had drunk too much with him in Avfalle. Giert, who’d trained his wolf to eat from his hand. They were monsters, he knew it, but boys as well, boys like him—taught to hate, to fear.

“Nina,” he said, hand still pressed over the smooth skin on his chest where a bullet wound should be. “Nina, please.”

“You know they would not offer you mercy, Matthias.”

“I know. I know. But let them live in shame instead.”

She hesitated.

“Nina, you taught me to be something better. They could be taught, too.”

Nina shifted her gaze to his. Her eyes were ferocious, the deep green of forests; the pupils, dark wells. The air around her seemed to shimmer with power, as if she was alight with some secret flame.

“They fear you as I once feared you,” he said. “As you once feared me. We are all someone’s monster, Nina.”

For a long moment, she studied his face. At last, she dropped her arms, and the ranks of drüskelle crumpled to the ground, whimpering. She released the other soldiers, and they fell back into their slumber, puppets with their strings cut. Then her hand shot out once more, and Brum shrieked. He clapped his hands to his head, blood trickling between his fingers.

“He’ll live?” Matthias asked.

“Yes,” she said as she stepped onto the schooner. “He’ll just be very bald.”

Specht shouted commands, and the Ferolind drifted into the harbor, picking up speed as the sails swelled with wind. No one ran to the docks to stop them. No ships or cannon fired. There was no one to give warning, no one to signal to the gunnery above. The Elderclock chimed on unheeded as the schooner vanished into the vast black shelter of the sea, leaving only suffering in her wake.