Paul met us in the hall. He looked exhausted, must’ve been up all night with her. Add more guilt to the mountain of it.

He’d spent countless hours taking care of her, cooped up in that room. “I’m glad you’re back, Evie. You should go in and say good-bye.”

“Thank you for staying with her.” What would we do without him?

“Of course.” With a respectful nod at Aric, he left.

I knocked on Gran’s door and opened it, but I gazed back. Aric had taken a seat in the hall, his eyes promising me, Not going anywhere.

Inside, I called, “Gran?”

She was barely holding on, her chest rising and falling with labored breaths. She held the chronicles in her arms, embracing them like a child.

A bout of dizziness hit me, and I was taken right back to that morning at Haven, when I’d first seen Mom after she’d died.

Two tears spilled down my cheeks. I kept waiting for grief to swamp me, but it didn’t.

Gran cracked open her eyes. “A rat, Evie,” she murmured. “A rat on my table . . . gnaws the threads . . . the salamander stares at me from the shadows . . . the serpent coils around the tree . . . and chokes its roots.”

How had she gotten so much worse in such a short time? “It’s okay, Gran.” I pulled up a chair beside her bed.

Her gaze darted. “Spite couldn’t spit . . . and the Devil knew his verses. The cups see the future . . . in a chalice of blood.” She was rambling more than ever. “Only you can bring us back. You must win . . . the earth depends on it. Cards know it . . . beware the Fool . . . dark dealings. The dark calling, the calling dark.”

This was new. When she started on another rant, I touched her arm. “What about the Fool?”

“The wild card! The game keeper.” She reached for my hand, digging her yellowed nails into it. “You have to kill Death. He will turn on you—they all will. Death is poisoning me!”

I pulled free of her. “No, Gran, he’s not.”

“He’s murdering your last blood relative. A rat! The agent of Death. A salamander. Noon serpents in the shadow. Midnight takes my life!” She was getting infuriated with me, even now.

I reached for the chronicles, but she hugged the book closer. “I could read them to you, Gran.”

She hesitated, then relaxed her grip.

I slid the heavy book onto my lap and opened the cover, that familiar smell wafting up. Ages seemed to have passed since I’d read and illustrated these pages.

I began to read to her: “What followeth is the trew and sworne chronikles of Our Lady of Thorns, the Emperice of all Arcana, chosen to represent Demeter and Aphrodite, embody’g life, all its cycles, and the myst’ries of love. . . .”

For hours, I read, and the words seemed to soothe her. Her eyes closed, and she lost herself in tales of murder and betrayal.

When I recounted the Empress’s “most glorious victories,” Gran’s lips would curve and her thin fingers would clench.

I read until her chest no longer rose and fell. My grandmother was at peace.

For some reason, I turned to the last page. Gran had updated the chronicles. The first entry:

The cunning Empress has beguiled Death, until all he can see is her. He reunites an Arcana with her Tarasova, courting his own destruction.

Another entry:

They are murdering me, but the Empress turns a blind eye. Though they have tricked her, I see clearly. She won’t do what’s necessary, so I have put the end into motion.

She can never be with him. She has no idea what Life and Death become. . . .

What had she meant by that? And what “necessary” thing had she put into motion? The last few lines were barely legible, her handwriting declining as much as her mental state:

I left you clues, Evie. Nothing is as it seems. Midnight serpents choke the roots. The Agent. The ro—

She’d never finished the last word. Mad ramblings? Or a legitimate warning in code? Filled with unease, I closed the book and laid it under her hands.

Aric entered, his concerned gaze flickering over my face before he wrapped me in his strong arms.

My grandmother had wanted me to murder this man.

He pressed a kiss against my forehead. “Come.” He ushered me out of the room and back to his study. This time he poured two shots of vodka; we each knocked one back. I grimaced at the burn. He poured again. Another down the hatch.

He guided me to the couch, pulling me across his lap, my head against his warm chest. “Talk to me.”

“She wrote worrying things in the back of the chronicles.” I told him the gist. “Do you think she could’ve done anything to hurt the people here?”

“There’s very little that’s vulnerable,” he assured me.

“I feel guilty—because I don’t grieve her enough. What if my grief is broken?”

“It’s not, sievā. I suspect you might be in shock. I can’t think of another person who has lost as much as you have in such a short span. In just four hundred days or so.”

“I figured out that I would have attended a funeral about every month,” I said. “I know I should have been with her more at the end, but I wouldn’t change last night.”

He rubbed my back with a big palm. “Try to recall your good memories of her.”

I would. I wished these last few weeks would fade to a blur—compared to memories of her laughter as we played hide-and-seek in the cane.

“What do we do now?” I asked, my voice sounding lost.