Iris Ravenclaw stood in the burned record-house exactly where the night had left her.
The stones lay whole and unmarked beneath her feet. Under them, in a separate dimension, Count Corvane was climbing.
She could feel him doing it.
That was new. Her hell hung off her like a second heartbeat now that she'd gotten a bit acclimated to it, and every push of the count's ruined hands arrived in her chest as a warm coal.
'One,' she thought. 'One is not enough.'
Boots crossed the scorched floor behind her, careful of the ash, and she knew them without turning.
"Iris. Before you start." Felicity had the king's seal out of its case and a fresh warrant flat on the reading table, and she was dripping the wax onto it herself. "We need this on paper."
"Corvane was sentenced in front of a royal commission," Iris said. "It's done."
