Greaves woke to the sound of birdsong.
It took him a moment to understand what was wrong with that. Birds had been silent in the Thornwood for days—fleeing the resonance between the Blade and the mandoline, the scarlet light that poisoned the air, the sense that something fundamentally wrong was happening in their territory.
But now they sang. Tentatively at first, then with growing confidence. As if testing whether the wrongness had passed.
Greaves tried to sit up and couldn't. His hands were bound behind his back, rope tight enough to cut off circulation. His ankles were similarly tied. When he turned his head, pain lanced through his temple where Marron had struck him.
Memory returned in fragments. The fight. Lucy's emotional pulse cracking something inside him. Marron's words about cowardice and choice. The desperate lunge. Then nothing.
He'd lost.
