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“The powerful always underestimate the paths used by those who serve them,” Beth said. There was old bitterness in her voice, the kind that came from experience.

“Yes. They do.”

The column had stopped behind us, women gathering in the shadow of a copse of bare trees at the city's edge. The cold found us immediately, pressing in through cloaks and wool. We were close enough to see and far enough to remain unseen, for now.

Esther was organizing teams with quiet efficiency, her voice carrying just enough to reach those who needed to hear. Beatrice stood with her eyes closed, her hands raised slightly, reading the threads of the city ahead. The younger Weavers clustered together, some of them seeing Oxford for the first time, all of them understanding what it represented.

The heart of the enemy.

And at its center, my father. Waiting. Perhaps knowing we were coming. Perhaps not.

It did not matter either way.

Lily appeared at my side, her hand finding mine in the darkness. She did not speak. She did not need to.

I looked at the city where I had been made into a monster. At the tower where my father waited. At the woman beside me who had given me back myself.

“Teams in position,” Esther reported, appearing from the shadows. “We're ready.”

Beth looked at me. Waiting.

They were all looking at me. Dozens of women in black, their faces pale in the moonlight, their eyes reflecting the stars. Waiting for the Hawthorne heir to lead them against the Hawthorne legacy.

I squeezed Lily's hand once, then let her go.

Then I turned to face the army that had chosen to follow me into the dark.

“Tonight,” I said, “we end what my family began. Tonight, we take back what was stolen. And tonight . . .” I looked at the Iron Spire rising against the stars, the monument my father had built to his own cruelty. “We make them regret every thread they ever unraveled.”

No cheers. No battle cries. Just nods, grim and determined, from women who had spent their lives being hunted and were done running.

We moved toward Oxford.

And the city that had made me a monster welcomed me back as something else entirely.

CHAPTER 31

LILY

Oxford slept in the grey hush before dawn. We moved through its streets like shadows, keeping to alleyways, avoiding the pools of gaslight that dotted the main thoroughfares. The city that had produced scholars and poets and centuries of polite civilization had no idea that an army of witches was flowing through its veins.

August led us with the certainty of a man who had walked these cobblestones a thousand times. He knew which corners to avoid, which streets had watchmen, which buildings cast shadows deep enough to hide a column of women in black. This was his city and his prison. The place where he had been made into something monstrous.

Now he was bringing that weapon home.

The weight of his memories bled into my chest. That corner—I hunted a Weaver there when I was seventeen. That doorway—a woman hid inside and I dragged her out. That alley⁠—

I squeezed his hand. Sent warmth through the connection. You are not that person anymore.

The streets remember. Even if I have changed.

Then we'll give them something new to remember.

We passed a church, its spire reaching toward stars that seemed impossibly distant. A pub with darkened windows, the smell of old ale seeping through the cracks. A row of townhouses where respectable families slept in respectable beds, dreaming respectable dreams, never knowing that magic had once flowed through this city like a river before men like Elias Hawthorne had dammed it with blood.

We reached the square before the Spire and stopped in the shadow of a merchant's warehouse.

The tower rose against the night sky like a blade waiting to fall. Gothic revival stone and reinforced iron, built to intimidate. The windows were narrow slits designed for archers, the doors thick enough to withstand a battering ram. Gaslight flickered from brackets on either side of the main entrance, casting pools of amber that didn't quite reach the shadows where we gathered.