Perched precariously on a tiny outcrop, Henry stared out into the darkness, focusing his hearing to catch any subtle alteration in the prevailing hush. He closed his eye and intentionally eased the strain from his body. They . . . would be safe. With Lapblood, Splintleg, and their united armies, they stood a good chance—to divert the Bane's attention from the city and fragment his forces into sections. Like this, the renegade gnawers and the Regalians could take them on easier.

Henry inhaled deeply, wondering whether Thanatos and Nike had brought Howard and Twitchtip to Regalia safely yet. Luxa had not accompanied them, as she was crucial to capturing the army's attention. She had let him take her sword and fasten his old device to dispense Ignifer pellets around the hilt silently.

It is loaded with three; each will burn for around fifteen minutes. Use them wisely, he had urged, and had been met with silence. No word, no smile, not even a fleeting look she had spared him as she had taken the sword after a brief moment of hesitation.

His plan was foolproof. The only part he hadn't considered was what to do with himself, so now all Henry could do was what he hated the most—wait.

He nearly fell off his ledge when he first heard the screams of gnawers. His hand flew to Charos' hilt, yet Aurora dashed past him with Luxa on her back, raising the flaming sword high above her head, before he could leap down. On her tail followed many gnawers, and before the first could reach her, Henry had leaped and cleanly slit its neck with his Greatsword.

He whipped out of the way of the spurting blood and gripped Charos' hilt with both hands, then vaulted onto a foot-sized rock, assessing the scene. More than a dozen closed in on him from all sides, and Henry's echolocation told him that many more were following . . . yet so were reinforcements.

He dug his soles into the stone beneath and raised Charos, giving a tremendous battle cry. Then Henry fought.

He surrendered himself entirely to the guidance of his echolocation. His great black blade worked wonders at keeping each attacker at a safe distance, and those who came too close were met with its razor-sharp edge, effortlessly cutting through skin, muscle, and bone. Henry ensured he was never encircled by staying in motion, weaving through the rows of assaulting gnawers as he dodged claws and teeth. Doing his best to stay in Luxa's wake, he eliminated anything that came close to striking her.

When he nearly slipped in the blood that had pooled out of a freshly slain corpse, a claw jabbed him in the thigh, and Henry gritted his teeth, urging himself to keep fighting. If he stood still for one heartbeat, he would be overwhelmed.

Instead of running ahead, he planted himself firmly into the ground and spun in a circle, holding Charos at a wide angle so that it cut through anything that came within range.

He only ceased when he caught a first glimpse of white fur. In the last second, he managed to leap out of the way of an enormous claw that whizzed mere inches past his head. His echolocation compelled Henry to let himself fall to the ground, soaking his entire upper body in the blood that had pooled around him before the Bane took a massive leap over his head.

An earth-shattering roar shook the very air around him, and the Bane's claws scraped the stone, crumbling rocks twice the size of Henry's head when he landed, thirty feet ahead.

Henry scrambled to all fours, spitting out blood and wiping soaked hair strands out of his eyes, only to watch the Bane leap again, his claws extended toward . . . "Luxa!"

Henry rammed Charos' tip into the ground to pull himself up, yet he knew already that he would not reach in time. Aurora was over twenty yards ahead, right in the Bane's way, and a wave of terror swept over him when his echolocation calculated that she had no space or time to dodge.

Henry vaulted toward her anyway, right over a heap of sprawled corpses, not leaving the Bane out of his sight. Yet just before the white rat could dig his massive claws into Aurora's wing, something rammed into the side of his head, throwing him off course and smashing him into the opposite wall. Henry barely caught himself when the stone around them trembled from the Bane's tremendous impact.

"Whitespur!" screamed Henry, barely having the mind to spin and hack off the paw that came toward him from behind. The Bane gave another earth-shattering roar, baring his teeth at Whitespur, who had her teeth sunken deep in his front paw.

Henry would have made his way over to help her, yet he found himself occupied with a fresh wave of gnawers coming at him from all sides. For one moment, fear for Whitespur clutched his heart until another gnawer tackled the Bane from the other side, tearing three deep gashes into his cheek.

"Ripred!" screamed Henry, hoping he would be heard over the howls and screeches of the ongoing battle. "Take him!"

Had he not been forced to confront a fresh dozen gnawers, Henry might have added something assuring, such as "I have the rest handled." Like this, he could only hope that Ripred and Whitespur understood that he was fine. That they had to do what he knew in his heart that they ought to—slay the Bane.

For peace, thought Henry, as he slaughtered gnawer after gnawer in his way. Suddenly, he was overcome with a powerful wave of longing for the bloodshed to be over. Would there ever come a day when he might finally cease collecting scars? When might he hang Charos on a wall for commemoration and not miss it on his back?

From the corner of his eye, he caught sight of Luxa's burning sword lashing across the Bane's face. He rose onto his hind legs in a retort, forcing both Ripred and Whitespur to let go.

As he flailed his front paws frantically toward anything that moved, Henry screamed—not from the pain of a rat's claws in his arm but from the sight of the Bane's paw catching . . . Whitespur. He swatted her off the wall she had clung to, throwing her into Ripred, who whipped around and pierced with his teeth the claw that the Bane had now hooked into her.

For one heartbeat, the three of them remained there, interconnected by claws and teeth. Henry heard every drip of blood hitting the earth as if there was no other sound. And he heard . . . three heartbeats. Three. This certainty alone kept him on his feet.

Only when the Bane smashed his head into the wall to shake Ripred, bringing Whitespur down with him, did Henry vault toward them. Yet before he could reach, Ripred had already released the Bane and swept Whitespur up, away from the sporadically flying claws of the white rat.

Henry slit the neck of a gnawer in his way, then severed the tail of another beside it. "Whitespur!" he screamed because he could no longer see her. Focusing became harder when he felt strong emotions, and Henry could no longer keep at bay the swell of fear.

He severed a row of teeth and a pair of front paws, then swung Charos with so much force that it cleanly decapitated the next gnawer. He vaulted through the raining blood and gore, steadily toward where he could hear the two heartbeats that were suddenly his only solace. "Whitespur!"

No matter how desperately he fought, he knew that he could not move so quickly as to reach them on his own. And so Henry leaped and clung to the back of an unfortunate gnawer, using its disorientation and rage to create a path forward for him.

She had taught him that, he thought, she had taught him to . . . There!

Henry swiftly killed his ride and caught a glimpse of Ripred's tail disappearing in a niche, some twenty feet above the battlefield. With the last of his strength, Henry pulled himself up the narrow path leading up, until . . .

"Leave me!"

Upon the voice, Henry flinched. It did not sound like it ought to. Not like—

"Will you be reasonable?" retorted Ripred and by the sound, Henry made them both out at the back end of the cave. "I will take you to Regalia. They have doctors. Good ones."

"Re . . . Regalia . . ." Whitespur choked the word out, reeling into the opposing wall and barely catching herself. She lifted her paw to her own throat and produced a labored gurgle that quickly turned to strained coughs.

"Whitespur!"

Her head jerked around when the name slipped from Ripred's mouth. For one heartbeat, she stared at him, then bared her teeth and swung her paw, striking his face with her talon. Ripred fell back onto all fours, yet he did not retreat.

"Leave me!" she repeated, heaving. "Leave . . . mm . . . m . . ."

Neither of them flinched when the sound of Charos crashing to the ground ripped the stifling air. Henry could do nothing but stand there, watching Ripred hunch over Whitespur as she slowly sank against the wall, and listen to their hearts beat. Three beats, he told himself. It was three . . .

"Forgive m . . . mm . . . me." Her light fur glistened with the fresh blood dripping from Ripred's face before it mixed with her own, pooling around them. "It was all I c . . . could offer. It w . . . was . . ."

"It was too much," said Ripred in a tone unlike anything Henry had heard from him before. "You should have never—"

"It is a good way," Whitespur cut him off. "It is . . . good. It is . . . Is he here?" She moved her head. "Are you here . . . Nox?"

The words brought Henry back to life. "I am here." He vaulted forward, dropping to his knees by her side, burying his bloodied hands in her stained fur. "I told you that you shall have me, always."

"My warrior . . ." Whitespur brushed his hand with her paw. "Take care of him . . . for me," she said—to which one of them she was speaking, Henry could not tell. "And I will tell them."

"Be still," hissed Ripred. "You—"

Whitespur pressed her face into Ripred's shoulder as he cradled her. "I will . . . tt . . . tell them that you loved them, Prometheus," she whispered. "As I . . . love you."

Henry could do nothing but sit there, feeling her bloodied fur slipping through his fingers, and listen to her heart. He listened to Ripred yelling at her to shut up, then to speak. To move. Until her heartbeat slipped out of his ears too.

Only the realization that he could no longer hear her jolted Henry. His head jerked toward Ripred, who held her so close that Henry could barely tell where one of them ended and the other began.

When he finally took in Whitespur's face, a smile registered in his mind. Henry barely realized that he could detect the expression solely through echolocation. All he thought was that Whitespur . . . smiled.