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together and shook her head. Farr was wrong. It wasn't just their belief they had lost. He had lost Grace Beckett to another world. And Deirdre had lost Glinda to the fire in the Brixton nightclub. To Duratek.
    All the same, Deirdre hadn't lost her faith. There was still so much to learn, and with the new card the Seekers had given her—with Echelon 7—there was no telling what she might discover.
    Deirdre gripped the silver ring on her right hand. “I can't go with you, Hadrian. I have to stay here. It's the only chance I have to learn what I need to.”
    “And that's the reason I have to go.”
    Despite his grim expression, there was something about him—a fey light in his eyes—that made him seem eager. He had always taken risks—that was how he had risen so high so quickly in the Seekers—but he had never been one recklessly to thrust himself into danger. Now Deirdre wasn't so sure. In the past, she had been angry with Farr, awed by him, even envious of him. Now, for the first time, she was afraid for him.
    “What are you going to do?”
    He shrugged on his rumpled coat. “You're a smart girl, Deirdre, and you've got good instincts. That's why I requested you for my partner. But you're wrong about something. You said we've done the one thing the Seekers have always wanted to do. Except that's not quite true.” Farr put on his hat, casting his face into shadow. “You see, there's still one class of encounter we haven't had yet. Good-bye, Deirdre.”
    He bent to kiss her cheek, then turned and made for the door of the pub. There was a flash of gray light and a puff of rainscented air.
    Then he was gone.

4.
    They came home to Calavere on a cold, brilliant day late in the month of Geldath.
    Grace Beckett smiled as the familiar silhouettes of the castle's nine towers hove into view, banners snapping atop their turrets, as blue as the winter sky. All her life, she had lived in places she had not chosen, houses in which she had not belonged—the orphanage, an endless rotation of foster homes, countless drab apartments where she had never bothered to hang a picture on the wall. But she belonged in Calavere; she knew it by the beating of her heart. If ever she had a home, on any world, it was here.
    A small form wriggled in the saddle in front of Grace. She wrapped her arms around the girl and rested her chin atop Tira's curly red head.
    “Do you see the castle on the hill over there?” Grace murmured. “That's where I live.”
    Tira reached out her hands and laughed.
    Grace stroked the girl's hair, smoothing tangles she knew would reappear in an eyeblink. In moments like this, it was possible to believe Tira was a normal child. Possible, if Grace didn't think about how she ran around in the frigid air wearing just her thin smock, yet was always warm to the touch. Possible, if Grace forgot how she had once risen into the sky like a star to become a goddess.
    Tira had not spoken a word since Midwinter's Eve, since she appeared at the Black Tower without warning, handed the Stone of Fire to Travis, and called him
Runebreaker
. There was so much Grace wanted to ask her—where she had been, how she had come back, and why she had brought Krondisar to Travis—only there was no point. Tira wouldn't—perhaps couldn't—answer. And Grace did not for a moment let herself believe she wouldn't be leaving again soon.
    “I love you,” Grace said, tightening her arms around the girl's tiny body.
    Tira gazed up with a placid expression, one side of her face soft and pretty, the other a blank mask of scar tissue. On Midwinter's Day, when they had set out from the Tower of the Runebreakers, Grace had wondered about Tira's face. Krondisar had turned her into a goddess. So why hadn't the transformation made her whole? However, as the leagues passed by, Grace understood. Tira
was
whole. This was what the Stone of Fire had made her.
    Grace kissed her forehead—the scarred half—and Tira looked again at the looming