The courtroom had dissolved into a blurred cacophony of guards dragging the Baron away and the High Magistrate's frantic gavel. To everyone else, the room was a chaotic triumph. To Eliza, the world had gone silent and monochromatic.
The only thing with color was the Collector.
He stood in the center of the aisle, the smoke of his face swirling into a grin that wasn't a mouth. Eliza felt herself slipping—not to the floor, but into that familiar, freezing "In-Between." Silas was holding her body in the physical world, but here, she was alone with the Auditor of Souls.
"You were magnificent, Eliza Vane," the Collector's voice vibrated in her skull like a funeral bell. "You traded your years for a signature. You bought your father's justice with your own heartbeat. Look at the glass."
Eliza looked at her wrist. There were perhaps a hundred grains of gold left. They were falling with a terrifying, rhythmic tink-tink-tink.
"I did what was necessary," Eliza gasped, her spectral form shivering. "The Baron is ruined. Maryan is exposed. The Vane legacy is safe."
"Safe? Legacy is a word for the living, Eliza. You are currently a footnote," the Collector countered, stepping closer. The air around him smelled of extinguished candles. "You have three minutes of 'Borrowed Breath' remaining. When the last grain falls, Silas Thorne will be holding a corpse, and your father will wake up to a funeral instead of a daughter. Was it worth the trade?"
"It was," she whispered, though her soul felt like it was fraying at the edges. "But I'm not finished. There is still the matter of the 'Devourer'—the entity Maryan serves. I felt it in the courtroom. She hasn't given up."
The Collector paused. The smoke of his face stilled. "Ah. You noticed the stain on your stepsister's soul. She didn't pay in years, Eliza. She paid in 'Others.' Every life she ruins feeds her patron. If you die now, she wins by default. The vacuum you leave will be her feast."
"Then let me stay," Eliza pleaded, reaching out. Her hand passed through his smoky sleeve like mist. "Give me back the years the Baron's lies stole. I won the argument! The truth should have value!"
"The truth has the value you assigned to it," the Collector hissed, leaning down until his void-face was inches from hers. "You want more time? Fine. But the universe demands a vacuum be filled. You cannot have your years back for free. Someone else must hold the hourglass."
"No," Eliza recoiled. "Not my father. Not Silas."
"Then who? You want to play God, Eliza, but you're just a girl with a stopwatch. Who is a life worth less than yours?"
Eliza's mind raced. She thought of the cold water of the fountain. She thought of the slow poison. Then, she thought of the cellar where the Baron was currently being held.
"The Baron," Eliza said, her voice suddenly like flint. "He stole five years of my life in the first timeline. He stole my father's health. Take his remaining years. He has no use for them in a gallows cell."
The Collector let out a sound like breaking glass—a laugh. "A poetic theft. But the Baron's soul is sour, Eliza. It's thin. It will only buy you a year. Maybe two. Is that enough to finish your war?"
"It's enough to sharpen my blade," Eliza snapped. "I don't need an eternity. I just need enough time to make sure Maryan never sees another sunrise. Take his time. Give it to me."
"And the price for the transfer?" the Collector asked, his smoky hand finally solidifying as he reached for her wrist. "Every year I take from him and give to you will be marked by a scar. You will carry his sins on your skin, Eliza. Every time you look in the mirror, you will see a piece of the man you hated."
Eliza looked at the last ten grains of sand.
"I'd rather wear my enemy's sins on my skin than his leash around my neck," Eliza declared. "Do it. Fill the glass."
The Collector grabbed her wrist. A scream tore from Eliza's throat—a sound of raw, shearing agony as the black sand of the Baron's life was forcibly bleached gold and shoved back into her hourglass.
In the physical world, Eliza's eyes snapped open. She was back in the courtroom, slumped in Silas's arms.
"Eliza! Breathe, damn you!" Silas was shouting, his face pale, his eyes wild with a fear she'd never seen in him.
Eliza took a ragged, deep breath. The color rushed back into the world. She looked at her wrist. The Hourglass was half-full again, glowing with a fierce, borrowed light. But across her collarbone, she felt a burning sensation—the first of the "scars" from the Baron's stolen time.
"I'm here, Silas," she whispered, clutching his coat. "I'm here. But the price just went up."
Silas pulled her close, his forehead resting against hers. "I don't care about the price, Eliza. I'll burn the counting-house down before I let him take you again."
"He didn't take me," Eliza said, looking toward the cells where the Baron was currently screaming as his hair turned white and his skin withered in seconds. "I took him. And now, I'm going for the rest of them."
She stood up, leaning on Silas, her eyes fixed on the gallery where Maryan had vanished.
"The law had its turn," Eliza said, her voice sounding older, layered with the weight of the years she had just stolen. "Now, it's time for the haunting."