The orphanage looked the same.

  Different timeline, same shabby buildings, same smell of peat smoke and salt wind. A year older here. The garden had different vegetables, and the fence leaned where it had stood straight before. The children looked older behind the glass.

  The Hound stood in the tree line and watched the lights in the windows. Eventually, a woman's silhouette crossed one of them.

  He had done this before.

  Something rose in his chest. It always did. The cottage light looked obscene to him. Warm, yellow, and wrong. The smoke curling from the chimney made his jaw tighten. The life she had built here, the fact that it existed at all, scraped against him like grit under the eyelid.

  He didn't know why it ran so deep. He assumed it was the leash. The years of servitude, the missions, and the Weaver's voice in his skull. Anyone would feel this way after what he'd been through.

  His hand found the hilt of his short scythe, and he moved toward the building.

  The fire caught faster this time. He knew which beams were dry, which walls would fall, and which doors to block. He started with the back entrance, jamming a timber through the handles, then circled to the kitchen door and did the same. The front door he left open. Let them think there was a way out.

  A boy ran past him in the first hallway. Small, maybe five.

  There had been one just like him in the other timeline. Same size. Same terror. Same futile scramble toward a door that wouldn't save him.

  Cú Dubh remembered how that one had felt.

  He caught this one by the throat and threw him into the flames that were already climbing the eastern wall. Held him there longer than necessary. The same way he'd held the other one. Savoring it the same way. Letting the heat wash over them both while the small body thrashed and then didn't.

  It was just as good the second time.

  The screaming started in the dormitory. High, thin, and confused. Children waking to smoke. Children realizing the doors wouldn't open. He moved through the building with purpose. Every kill fed something in him. Every kill made him want another. A girl with red hair made it to the back door and found it blocked; he caught her by the hair and opened her throat. Two boys hid in a closet and held their breath; he found them anyway. An older girl tried to lower the younger ones from a window; he caught her ankle and pulled her back inside. The hope in her eyes made the kill sweeter.

  Different faces. Same ending. He wanted them all.

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  He found Brigid in the hallway outside her study, crawling toward the door. Smoke had thickened the air to soup, and she moved by feel, one hand on the wall, coughing so hard her whole body shook. She didn't see him until his shadow fell across her.

  She looked up. Her eyes found his face. The sleek black fur, the yellow eyes, and the shape that was almost human yet entirely wrong.

  "Why?" she asked.

  For half a heartbeat, something flickered in his chest. Something older than the fury that consumed him now. It was something that felt like it belonged to someone else. It made him sick.

  He doused it in hatred like he always did.

  He drove the short scythe through her back and pinned her to the floorboards. She gasped once, reached toward the study door, and went still.

  He stepped over her body.

  The search was quick this time. He knew the layout, and he found the girl in the study.

  She stood behind Brigid's desk, smoke curling around her, a knife in her hand. Same face as the one who had vanished. Same eyes. A year older here. Eighteen instead of seventeen. Old enough to die standing.

  "You," she said. Her voice didn't shake. "You're the one from the stories. Brigid told us about you. The Black Hound. Fate’s dog."

  Dog. The word landed like a slap.

  "I'm no one's dog."

  She lunged.

  He caught her wrist, twisted, and heard the bone snap. The knife clattered to the floor. She didn't scream, just gasped as her face went white. She tried to pull away, tried to kick, tried to bite.

  He held her there for a moment, looking at her face. The face of the girl who had escaped him in another world. This one hadn't escaped. He was going to enjoy this.

  His scythe curled through her chest. He watched the light leave her eyes, then let her fall.

  The safe was behind the desk. He knew where to look. Same place, same hidden seam in the wood. His fingers found the latch and pulled.

  He opened the safe to find trinkets and reagents. Dried herbs, a pouch that clinked like coins, and a lock of hair tied with red thread. He sifted through it. Slow at first, then faster, then violent, smashing things against the wall.

  No locket. No cloth wrapped in lavender. No Knot.

  The fire roared around him, eating through the walls and collapsing the ceiling in the front rooms. He barely noticed.

  Then he laughed.

  The sound that came out of him wasn't relief. It was the sound of something cracking. It was a man realizing the only door out went through his own chest.

  The safe held a trove, but the Knot was already gone. Half the mission failed, but the boy was still out there. A fisherman's son near Ballinacor. He could still find Oisín, still drag him back to the Weaver like a good hound.

  The thought curdled in his stomach.

  The Heart pulsed in the Loom, a world away. He could feel it even here. The tether stretching, the ache of distance. It was steady and patient. Waiting for him to come home.

  He thought about the corridor of thread and light. The Weaver hanging from her cables. The endless time ahead. Fetching, killing, and forgetting why everything tasted like ash. The collar pulling tighter every year until there was nothing left of him but the Hound.

  No, no, that was’t true. What if… what if he didn't have to go back?

  He didn't have to wake the Sister. He could become the Sister's Arbiter instead. Command her and make her do whatever he wanted.

  Make her kill herself.

  He would then be able to use the Heart to travel back to his timeline. The Weaver would pull on the leash once there, and the thought of being dragged back made his stomach turn.

  The thought of dying didn't.

  Two Looms. Two deaths. Then nothing would be left of the machine that owned him. Even if nothing meant nothing at all.

  Cú Dubh walked out of the ashes and into the night. The roof collapsed behind him. Sparks rose toward unfamiliar stars.

  He did not look back.