Worse still, he doesn’t know how to follow the piper anymore because it’s a path Tom has lost faith in. And the piper knows it. Tom can see it in his father’s eyes now. And the more he stares, the clearer it becomes.

He hesitated, remembering something Finnikin had said to him on their journey. That somehow, even in the worst of times, the tiniest fragments of good survive. It was the grip in which one held those fragments that counted.

Then I choose to drown. In hope. Rather than float into nothing.

Sir Topher finally looked up. “Because any hope beyond that, my boy, would be too much. I feared we would drown in it.

Phaedra of Alonso’s death was a never-ending pain that gnawed at his insides. It made him a prisoner in his own cottage.