The infected was already moving.
Azure looked sideways at me, waiting for any signal at all. I gave her nothing and started walking, and Ingrid caught me up in three strides — feet quiet on the stone, the practical pace of someone who had already decided how much of this climb she was going to waste on hope.
The rest of them fell in behind. Everybody moved except Celine and the man, who stayed where they were and let us pass them. Their eyes tracked us the way handlers track stock.
The corridor air changed as we crossed the threshold out of the cell.
I looked at the patch of stone where the giant had put Sinn down.
Nothing there now. Somebody had cleaned it. A man who called himself Lord of these walls went out of the world on that spot and there wasn't a mark left to say so — no stain, no scuff, no evidence that bone had given in a wet sound in a stone corridor.
