She awoke to find her cheek pressing against cool marble. There was a sharp, resinous smell – floor wax? Boot blacking? – and for a moment she thought she had been brought round by smelling salts.

No. Armour polish.

She rolled onto her back. The ceiling was a mess of chandeliers and white-plaster wreaths. She was in the glaring, gaudy throne-room at Pandemonium, panelled with mirrors on one side and French windows on the other, lit with hundreds of candles flickering down from gilded chandeliers and candelabras.

Val was moving from one to the other, lighting the candles with the aid of a long taper. The flames were reflected in her breastplate, making a little bronze galaxy of stars.

Ellini tried to catch her eye, but the woman kept on lighting candles, without looking at her. Perhaps she had always been a Wylie. She believed wholeheartedly in the uselessness of men, after all. And she had started out working for Robin, which you probably couldn't do unless you were also working for Myrrha.

Myrrha herself was sitting in the throne at the far end of the room, toying with a pack of playing cards that were stacked on one arm. She was restlessly cutting and shuffling the deck, kicking her ankles against the base of the throne, but she didn't look at Ellini, any more than Val did.

The only person who would meet her eyes was Robin.

He was standing by the throne, on the opposite side from the deck of cards. Ellini knew she should be surprised to see him, but she wasn't. She knew her heart should be sinking, but it couldn't. Perhaps she was still in shock.

He was pale but perfectly composed. There was an edge to his sharp features that looked like hatred.

She realized she had never seen anyone sitting in that throne before. Lord and Lady Vassago hadn't used it. There was only one throne, and their rank was perfectly balanced. Ellini seemed to recall that they were technically brother and sister.

There had been a slab of marble beside it, with the impression of two footprints sunk into the stone, but these had been too big for the dainty, slippered feet of Lord and Lady Vassago.

Now she knew that the throne had been made for Myrrha and the footprints had been made for Robin. They were in those recesses now, and they looked so perfect, as if the stones of the palace had grown up around them over long, slow, graceful years.

Like sleeping beauties – no, watchful beauties, gazing back and making plans all the time you were gawping at them.

It was a terrible thought.

Ellini got up as far as her knees, and then decided to conserve her strength. Staying upright wasn't as important as staying conscious.

She had brought the flavour of that dream with her into the waking world – and most of all, the memory of Robin trying to steady his voice, trying to suppress his emotions. And the conviction that the emotions he was trying to suppress were nothing but greed and excitement.

She tried to ignore that thought, because she didn't like where it led. She blinked hard and said to Myrrha, "I'm here to challenge you to a-"

"Mmm," said Myrrha, without looking up. "To a battle of wits. Why don't you take a few minutes to collect them first? There's no hurry." She cut the deck again and looked at the card she had just revealed. "In fact, I challenged you. Months and months ago. Didn't you realize we'd been playing all this time?"

Ellini hesitated. Robin shifted from one foot to the other, but there was no expression on his face.

"Oh," she said at last. "I see. The dream I just had..."

Myrrha smiled, as if she'd done a clever trick. "I sent it to you. You'll have to excuse the method of putting you to sleep. It was the quickest way."

Again, Ellini paused. She knew courtesy was important in these contests, but she was feeling too confused – and frankly too sore – to accept the apology. "You sent Robin to me? To win my trust? Was that the challenge?"

Myrrha's smile suddenly vanished. She stood up, sending a cascade of cards off the arm of the throne. "I treated you with more respect than you were entitled to. I sent you something that was very precious to me, to see if you could win it for yourself. And now I discover that you don't even have the wit to realize what I did for you."

Ellini was still too blank and bewildered for alarm. That smell – perhaps it wasn't armour polish – was collecting at the back of her throat and making it hard to breathe. "Are you saying I was supposed to win his love?"

Myrrha gave her a pitying look. "No, dear, his soul. Like I did. I had made him, you were supposed to un-make him. To turn him, mould him, influence him. Like I did."

Ellini didn't look at Robin. She didn't want to see the look on his face as he heard himself discussed like this. Though, probably, there would be no look. There certainly hadn't been one up till now.

She kept thinking about the envelope in her pocket. She'd never had a chance to read it, but she was sure it was from him. Why would he write her a letter if he was going to betray her? He wouldn't gloat in advance – that would spoil the surprise. And presumably he wouldn't have planned on her living long enough to read it afterwards.

Had it contained instructions? Some kind of advanced warning of what he was going to do?

"You were doing well, until Northaven," Myrrha continued. "There's something about the mechanical contempt with which you treated him that he really responded to. If you hadn't leapt into bed with Jack as soon as you were reunited with him, you might have had a chance."

"I didn't-" said Ellini, shaking her head and making her vision swim.

"I thought it would appeal to your romantic imagination. A battle for somebody's soul. The way Desdemona and Iago battled with souls. He poured his poison into Othello's ear, and Desdemona poured hope into Emilia's. But Iago was the only one of the four who survived. You should consider that."

Ellini did consider it, since it seemed she couldn't think about anything useful. The idea that Iago had won just because he was alive at the end of the play had never occurred to her. And yet it wasn't quite as ridiculous as it sounded. He had been denounced and discovered – he was on his way to be tortured – but his last words had been ones of pure, poisonous defiance.

'Demand me nothing. What you know, you know. From this time forth, I never will speak word.'

It was a stance of power, in a way. Could silence and suffering be power? But of course they could. She had proved that as Charlotte Grey.

Still, the idea that he had won...

It would only occur to someone who thought living and snarling and never backing down was the way to be happy. It was so childish.

"I don't quite know how," she murmured, "but I think you've misread the situation."

"Interesting," said Myrrha. "What do you think is going on here? Were you so convinced you were right that you can't accept it, in the face of all the evidence?"

Ellini looked at Robin, who stared impassively back at her. No, not impassively. There was a slight smile in the darkness of his face.

She ran a dry tongue over her lips, and said, "I suppose I've lost, then."

Myrrha looked at Robin. "What do you say, my dear?"

"I say she's lost."

His voice was steady, but somehow thick, as if he was drunk. That thought stabbed into Ellini like a pin.

"If I've already lost, shouldn't there be some kind of sign?" she persisted. "Shouldn't I have lost my powers, or my ability to speak?"

"Yes, I wondered about that," said Myrrha. "Perhaps it'll happen when you fully realize that you've lost. Let's face it, my dear, you are being rather slow tonight. Still, it shouldn't take too long. You know your stories, even if you're hopeless at real life, and it can't have escaped your notice that you've come dressed as the victim. Pre-soaked in your own blood. You know, in the earliest printed version of Red Riding Hood, there's no woodcutter. She and her grandma are both gobbled up by the wolf. I've cast you in one of the oldest stories in existence: that of a little girl who won't learn her lesson."

Ellini tried to resist the beckoning, beguiling sense of this idea. She knew that, if she believed Myrrha's story, the contest really would be lost. It would be like that look of recognition she had seen in Mari Lloyd's eyes, a second before she'd lost her voice. It would be a capitulation she could never take back.

But it sounded so much like something her mother would have said. Child, the world is not romantic...

"Robin," said Myrrha, without bothering to glance at him. "Tell her what you are."

"She already knows," he rumbled. "That's what makes it so stupid-"

"I said tell her," said Myrrha serenely. "The truth of your soul, right here and now, before us both. Tell her what you are."

She raised a hand and then clenched it. Robin stiffened and straightened. The sharpness of his face intensified. He spoke now as if the words were being dragged out of him.

"I loved torturing you," he said. And, as he said it, it seemed to get a little easier. He smiled. "I loved killing your family. And I haven't had a single, unadulterated moment of joy since."

"I know," said Ellini, into the silence that followed. "But I don't think that's for the reason you think it is."

She tried not to see Robin as the Big, Bad Wolf. She tried not to feel the ridiculousness of being savaged by him and then letting him get close enough to do it again, as if she thought he was going to eat out of her hand instead of biting it off.

She had always hated Charles Perrault's Red Riding Hood story. It had seemed like yet another tale in which the woman was blamed for her misfortune. It implied that, if Red Riding Hood hadn't spoken to the wolf – hadn't smiled, or worn such eye-catching, provocative clothing – she would have been safe. As if predators needed encouragement.

But oh, if only it hadn't reminded her of her mother! Looking at the bare bones of the Red Riding Hood story was just like being forced to look at her own naked body in the mirror and list every dangerous, undesirable thing she was: a woman, part-Indian, part-demon. Made to be a victim. 

Her mother had been right then. Right that the world was not romantic. Right that Ellini's beauty and demonic heritage would make her a target.

But they had also made her everything else. They had given her Jack and India and nights of rooftop running. They had given her her dark glow. Her power.

Myrrha got up and stroked Robin's cheek, as if to soothe him. Perhaps just to feel his sweat on her fingertips. He shot her a look that was half-wild and half-pleading, as if he desperately wanted to believe she was going to be nice this time – like a dog that's been kicked at random so many times, and doesn't know what he can do to stop deserving it.

"She still doesn't believe it, my pet." Myrrha picked up one of her playing cards between thumb and forefinger, and idly bent and flexed it as she spoke. "I wonder if Red Riding Hood went to her grave believing she was right too."

From somewhere, Ellini managed a smile. Maybe this was only Myrrha's Plan A, but at least she had the comfort of knowing that it had failed. "You'll never convince me like that. I'm not a child anymore. And I know a weak story when I hear one."

Myrrha bent the card so hard that it popped out of her hand and skittered across the room. "Fine," she said, hitching her smile back in place. It was a lot less serene now. "I don't need you to lose your powers, or even your life. I just need one of your bones – probably a femur, because you know I don't like to be sparing with my ingredients. You might survive the amputation, you might not. I don't intend to honour you by treating you like an equal again."

She looked over at Val, who was shining sullenly in the corner. "Val, be a dear and pack a bag for Oxford, will you? You'll go ahead of me, with some grisly souvenir of the amputation. Not the femur itself, of course, I'll be wielding that. Just something to break their spirits, something easily identifiable as hers. Maybe one of her fingers with that ghastly ring on it. That should work."

Ellini's hair was wet and bedraggled – pungent with floor-polish, or whatever that persistent, chemical smell was – but she could feel its weight on her shoulders, like a reassuring hand. "But you haven't taken my powers," she said. "What's to prevent me from burning you to a cinder before you get close?"

"I'd get on with it, if I were you, dear," said Myrrha. She waved a hand to dismiss Val, and then called her back. "Oh, and Val? I wouldn't enter the city by the North Gate, if I were you. That will be all."

She turned back to Robin. She looked tired now, as if all that sprightly energy had deserted her. Is she disappointed in me, Ellini wondered? Am I disappointed in myself? I can make an inferno of this place – why am I hesitating?

"We'll use Gram to take her leg off, darling. It won't be as efficient as a saw, but it will be slow and personal, and I know you like things to be slow and personal."

Robin's hand went to his side again, as if he was trying to restrain the knife in its sheath inside his jacket.

Ellini began to feel the panic now, but not the conviction that she had lost. Her mind was far away, but her feelings suddenly rose up and grabbed her by the throat. She could see the candle-flames flaring, rearing, stretching upwards as her agitation rose.

But when she looked back at Robin, who was walking towards her, flexing and clenching his fingers as if in anticipation, he mouthed the words, 'Not yet'.

Ellini froze. The flames guttered and sank under her own uncertainty.

Was he trying to warn her? Could she believe anything he said? She knew she couldn't – and yet, still, she didn't move, didn't think, waited for him to draw nearer. She didn't even raise a hand to shield her face when he struck.

He lashed out and caught her across the cheekbone, then kicked her in the stomach to ensure she went down.

In the confusion of the moment, her first thought, even before the pain, was, How odd for Robin to use his fists. How odd for him to be fighting without Gram in his hands. Where was that fine, silvery snickering as the blade sliced through the air?

She tried to get up, clutching her stomach, winded, but he seized her by the hair – hissing in pain or satisfaction as it blistered his hands – and threw her across the room.

And still she waited. This couldn't be trust. It had gone too far for trust. What was she thinking? What was she doing? Why couldn't she act?

He had said 'Not yet'. And his movements were big and shaky and off-balance, as if he was drunk...

She landed against one of the candelabras. It toppled over, and the candles were dashed out against the floor.

And then she saw, behind the curtains, a trail of black powder, leading off into the shadows. She touched the curtains – tried to pull herself up – and found them sticky and pungent with paraffin.

And she suddenly remembered that Myrrha had no sense of smell – that Val wore so much armour polish, she would never notice the extra scent – and that Robin had warned her not to lose her temper.

And now she was shouting, only half aware of what she said. "Robin, don't!"

He seized her by the hair again and knocked her through the French windows. The latch gave way against her weight – though one of her elbows must have smashed a pane of glass, because she could feel the shards prickling through her sleeve, more scratchy than painful at this moment.

The night air rolled over her. The smell of jasmine and climbing roses knocked away the paraffin, though it still lingered as a kind of rawness in her nostrils, a sharpness in her throat. "Robin, don't! Please!"

"Keep pleading," he said, between clenched teeth.

She rolled away from his boot and staggered upright, propping herself against the stone balustrade.

Myrrha's voice called out from a long way away. She hadn't even got up from her chair to see the fight. "Not off the balcony, Robin. We don't want any of those useful little bones broken into pieces, do we?"

Robin lurched towards Ellini, plunged his hand into her hair again, slipped something heavy into the pocket of her cloak. Then he breathed into her ear, even while his hand was blistering. "Roll when you hit the ground."

"No – don't!"

She could see, now, how carefully he had prepared for this. She could see the straw-stuffed mattress, half-hidden in the rose bushes at the base of the wall.

Still, she grabbed his arm as he reached up, mechanically, to push her shoulder back. He wasn't looking at her. He was calculating, lining her up, judging the trajectory of her fall.

She took a breath – maybe to protest, to say goodbye, to start the fire while he was out here and still had some chance of surviving it – but he wasn't interested in anything she had to say. He had said goodbye to her a long time ago.

And as she fell, she saw him turn and go back inside, without looking back. And she saw the flames blossom up and billow out like a sudden sandstorm.

Even when she landed and struggled to replace the breath that had been knocked out of her, she could still see fire streaking out across the sky, as if there was a dragon breathing jets of flame out of the French windows.

***

It would be quick. A quick and merciful death, just like the last one had been. What had he done to deserve that, he wondered?

But, in the seconds after he dropped the match, while blue runnels of fire were climbing the curtains, and sparks were skittering along the powder trail to the kegs he had hidden so carefully behind the dais, he found Myrrha and held her close, pressing his lips to hers before she could let out a scream.

He had some vague notion that she could have got away – that she could have turned into a dragon and escaped through the blown-out ceiling.

And he didn't know whether it was the fire or the fumes or the approach of death, but he was sure she did turn into something – many somethings, writhing against his grip: snakes and claws and burning brands.

But he held her to him, lovingly, and did not let go.

***

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