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Raoden wakes hung over a saddle to new pains everywhere — scratches, cuts, bruises, and a sharp ringing at the back of his skull where Dilaf's fist landed. As an Elantrian each wound is permanent and unmuted, and for a moment the load is almost too much to keep his mind on. The grim irony of his recent training saves him: after weeks of standing against the Dor's flood, ordinary bodily pain — however severe — feels small. The thing that nearly destroyed him is now holding back insanity. He hears Fjordell voices around him. The horse trots through the dark and stops. Hands haul him off and set him on his feet.

*Wake up, Elantrian,* says a voice in Aonic. He blinks. They are at the base of Kiin's hill. The blockish house is only a few yards away and he can barely make it out; his vision will not steady. Dilaf is calling up to the dark windows for the princess to come see what he has brought, and to negotiate. Raoden tries to shout her back inside and can only croak. The blow to his head has done something he does not know the shape of yet — and as the dizziness refuses to clear, he realises with a cold settling certainty what it is. He cannot heal. The vertigo is going to live with him now for as long as he does.

Inside the house Sarene is at one of Kiin's slitted windows watching Raoden sway. Kiin tells her quietly that there is no bargain to be made. She knows; she only needs to say goodbye, and even that aloud through a window the priest will hear. They agree on a plan: they will climb to the roof together, Kiin with the Aon Reo axe in hand, and the moment a bow comes up they go back inside. Daora and the children are hidden in the basement under Lukel's watch; whatever else she gives up to Dilaf she will not give him those. She opens her mouth on what she thinks may be the last words Raoden ever hears from her.

The trap closes the moment she shows herself. Dakhor monks who had been clinging to the foundation stones of the house in the dark sprint straight up the walls, finding footholds in arrow slits and brick seams as if gravity does not apply; others already waiting at the back of the roof swing up and cut off her retreat. By the time she and Kiin understand the shape of the ambush, one of the monks has her in his arms and drops back down to the street.

Dilaf orders Hrathen to fetch the seon; the gragdet of Dakhor knows about it because Wyrn does. The seon flares; Dilaf asks for King Eventeo and the ball of light molds into the face of an overweight man with a proud chin who does not recognize the voice in the dark. *I am the man who has your daughter,* Dilaf tells him, and prods Sarene in the side until she yelps. He gives his title — Gragdet of the Dakhor Monastery — and watches Eventeo flinch. *I thought you had converted.* The terms: wake the Teos, get every warship in the city loaded and ready to surrender formally inside the hour; he will arrive in Teoras one hour from now, and if they are not in attitudes of surrender by then he will kill the girl. Sarene yells at her father that he cannot be trusted. Dilaf swipes the call shut.

He tells Hrathen flatly, in Fjordell, what the call was: an excuse to put himself face to face with Eventeo and personally kill him, then burn the Teo fleet in port with the sailors still aboard. With the armada gone Wyrn can land an army on an undefended coast and use Teod as the public proof of his might that the world needs to see. Hrathen protests sickly that this is unnecessary — he *had* Eventeo, the king had given his oath, the conversion was real — and is told that he had been simpleminded to think Eventeo would ever have let Fjordell troops onto his shore. He calls Dilaf a monster who will slaughter two kingdoms for the sake of his own hate, and asks what Elantris ever did to him to earn it. Dilaf shouts him down — the Dakhor are outside the law and he need not hesitate to kill a gyorn — then catches himself, breathing the rage back down, the question unanswered.

Raoden, still half upright, has been stumbling toward his wife with one arm out, not in a fighting motion, only in a reaching one. *Oh,* Dilaf says, almost amused. *I forgot about you.* He draws his sword and runs it through Raoden's stomach almost in passing.

The pain is total and immediate. Raoden drops to his knees holding his belly with trembling hands. He can feel the Dor, suddenly closer than it has ever been. He cannot fight any more. The woman he loves is being carried away while he kneels in a street and bleeds. The self that has held against months of attacks gives at last under the combined weight of the wound, the Dor, and the failure. After that there is no pain because there is no longer a self to receive it. *Failed,* his lips form. *Failed my love. Failed.* It is the mantra of the Hoed.

Sarene screams. Dilaf orders her brought along. To the monk who asks about the others he gives instructions: gather every captive in Kae and march them with the Elantrian bodies into the centre of Elantris — making sure to collect every fallen New Elantrian body, since Elantrians do not die like ordinary men and none must be allowed to crawl out from under the pile. The monk reports that his men have already attacked New Elantris. *Good,* Dilaf hisses, pleased. Once the bodies, the Elantrians, and the future Elantrians of Arelon are gathered in one place, the monks are to perform the rites of purification and burn them all together. *Come, Hrathen,* he says. *You will come with me to Teoras.* Sarene is dragged away in a stupor, eyes fixed on Raoden's slumped form until the dark takes it.