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The Piper tilted his head and smiled cruelly, as if sensing an opportunity for further torment. “Farewell to her child,” he purred. “Let it not be said I am without mercy—to a point.”

He gestured with his hand, and Stephen spun about on his heel and stood above the battered figure of his mother once more.

It was all John could do to keep his expression placid, and his voice steady. “Aven,” he said, “accept the Piper’s mercy. Say goodbye to your son. Say good-bye…and give him one final kiss.”

Please, thought John. Please, Aven. See this. See this connection. For the sake of us all, see this in my eyes, and know what you must do.

Aven saw it.

She looked up at the Piper, showing him a pleading, already grieving mother, needing, wanting this one small thing. “May I?” she asked. “May I give my son a kiss?”

The Piper preened at the plaintive, almost desperate tone in her voice.

“Yes,” he whispered. “For this, the last time you shall ever see your son, I shall permit a kiss.”

Aven tilted her head slightly in acknowledgment of the act of mercy. She stood shakily, weak from loss of blood, and slowly, painfully, walked to her son.

Stephen looked indifferently at his mother, his arms crossed. His gaze was not dead, but it was passionless. There was no spark, only drive. He was a tethered life that lacked his soul, and it showed in the vacancy of his eyes. And in moments his master was going to use him to start a conflagration that would consume the world.

Aven choked back a sob.

She leaned in, as if to kiss Stephen’s cheek—then, masking the motion with her crippled left arm, she swiftly reached up with her right hand and pulled something out of her tunic.

She kissed him, and at the same moment slipped the small silver thimble into his hand.

For an instant it seemed as if nothing happened. Then Stephen’s eyes went wide, and he began to shudder.

The Piper’s eyes narrowed. Something was amiss.

Aven watched a myriad of emotions suddenly flowing across her son’s face, and he made a small noise, as if in pain. And then his eyes cleared. They widened, focused, narrowed.

And Aven’s son smiled at her.

“Mother,” he said softly. “You know I don’t like being kissed in front of my people.”

The Piper snarled and lifted his pipes to his lips.

Before she could react, Stephen thrust Aven behind him and in the same wheeling motion hurled his long knife at the Piper.

It struck him in the throat, before a note could be sounded by the pipes, and he let out a choking scream.

There was a thunderclap, and a shattering across the sky. And the figure of the Piper exploded into shards of darkness.

Guided by the shadow that had sought him out and bound itself to him, Jack steered the Indigo Dragon past the last of the Wandering Isles into the sixth and final district of the Underneath, to the last island.

The Ninth Circle, according to Dante. The center of Hell. Not someplace one might choose to go willingly. But Jack did, not because he was compelled by the shadow, but because he felt its need. It needed help, and it had sought him out. Not one of the adults. Jack. Young Jack. It trusted him, and he could not betray that trust.

Incredibly, the ninth island was small and unremarkable. All that it appeared to hold were a few stunted trees and a tumble of stones that appeared to be a cairn, or perhaps the entrance to a cave.

Jack tilted the guidelines of the Indigo Dragon, spun the wheel, and headed for the island.

The pieces of darkness that had formed the Piper’s body were thousands upon thousands of crickets, which scattered into the crevices and under the rocks, the better to escape the light. But what remained behind had nowhere to go.

It was a shadow. And only a shadow.

When its body was destroyed, the pipes fell to the ground and cracked apart. They would not be easily repaired—and the effect of their breaking was obvious and immediate.

The children began to awaken.

The long enchantment they had been under was over.

As their eyes began to clear, they became themselves