The Princess of Ida beheld the mess around her: then she slapped herself very lightly, like you would to wake someone up. “Get it together,” she told herself. “You nearly lost that.” She turned to Gideon, Camilla, and Harrow, and she said— “There are worse things than myself in this building. Have that one for free.” Then she stepped backward, into the puddled spray of Silas’s blood, and disappeared. They were left alone in the room, with the quiet, stretched-out corpses of Silas Octakiseron, Colum Asht, and Naberius Tern; and the low, dreary breathing of Coronabeth Tridentarius, looking like
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