The light that poured through the BlackClaw infirmary window was softer now, no longer smeared with ash or blood. It lit Annabelle's sleeping form in a golden quiet, as though the world itself were too afraid to wake her. She woke unwillingly, shivering breath like a leaf on wind, eyelashes quivering before she opened eyes on the quiet of a world reshaped.

It was a brief moment before she felt her own heartbeat. The first in what seemed an eternity, there was no shadow snarling at the edges of ...