Felun

Felun watched with growing dread as Iolite held the Healer down and forced the potion down his throat. When she was done, the Healer sat up, jerked his head to the side, and retched. Nothing came up.

“That was the worst wine I have ever tasted,” he said, between coughs.

“It is a truth potion,” Iolite said. Her wings flickered, just a fraction; Felun couldn’t tell whether it was amusement or irritation that caused it.

“There is no such thing.”

“No? Perhaps not in your wreck of a kingdom. It took many many, many days to brew. Ingredients and skill beyond your comprehension, human. You will feel it working soon.”

The Healer tipped his head to one side, the motion more insolent than thoughtful. “Regardless, it would only compel me to speak what I believe to be the truth. Elsewise, you would solve any number of worldly mysteries that way. Have you considered brewing something for that purpose instead? I am sure it would be more profitable.”

“Your own truths will suffice.”

“Perhaps I’m a court lunatic,” he offered with a mocking half-smile. “I may seem quite sane, but it is entirely possible that I have a strange, disturbed view of reality. You risk filling your own head with plausible lies.”

“We will see,” Iolite said calmly.

The Healer sighed. He caught Felun’s eye; there was a sort of brittle, dark amusement to his expression. “And who is that?” he asked. “One of yours? Some sort of mercenary brute? He looks a little young to be a half-decent mage.”

“Don’t concern yourself with Felun here,” Iolite said. “What I want is for you to tell me about the Library.”

The Healer set his jaw and didn’t speak for several, long moments. Then a muscle spasmed in his cheek; he coughed and made a strangled sound through clenched teeth.

“There we are now,” Iolite said lightly. “It is not very nice, is it, not being in control of your own faculties? I imagine you harbor even less sympathy for those of mine you maimed and killed. Now, who are you, exactly?”

“Zahir Saar-Salai.” The Healer spoke wearily, each word careful and measured. “Last of my blood and name. Stars grant they forget me once I’m dead.”

Iolite flicked her wings. “Now tell me about the Library, and its depths.”

The Healer tried to resist: furrowed brow, gritted teeth. Silence, and then—

“I used to…used it to study during my apprenticehood,” he said in a sudden, tangled rush. “It had many books on anatomy and spellwork and suchlike. Quite dull, really—the marked paths were safe. I never strayed. I do not know of its depths. They say it is not a static vault of knowledge—an interloper I patched up following his capture described it as a wellspring of sorts, thought to tap into pure magic itself. I stopped paying attention when he started raving about carnivorous winged rabbits roaming the stacks. You really should have kidnapped a Librarian.”

“Is there a map?” Iolite asked.

“Likely not.”

“Are there guides to the depths?”

“A select few Higher Librarians.”

“Librarians?”

“I do not spend much time in their company.”

“I want names,” Iolite said. She tapped her chin, chitin clicking. “You are resisting admirably, I must say. But I will ask again: who of those you know have been to the depths of the Library?”

The Healer clenched his jaw and looked faintly nauseous. Perhaps a minute passed in silence as Iolite swished her tail through the air in a slow, steady beat: softly, patiently, marking out the moments slipping by.

“Chief Librarian Giltyrzar,” the Healer bit out, and then the words left him in a torrent. “Probably the others too, Sheratan and the like. Zaina Osorin. Head Healer Algorab. Whatshisname Shahriyar. Aliyah Scions—” He cut himself off with a hiss.

Iolite’s wings gleamed with interest, little phosphorescent sparks skittering across their surfaces. “The Scionsong mageling, you say? Now that is very interesting, indeed.”

“No,” he gritted out. “That is not…what I meant. She is of no—she doesn’t—she entered the Library without authorisation and I am almost completely certain that she knows nothing of the routes that you seek.”

“You know nothing of what we seek,” Iolite said with barely-veiled scorn. “And what is your connection to Aliyah Scionsong?”

“She was my apprentice,” he said. “She is not—I do not think she is a threat to you.”

“I do not care to hear what you think,” Iolite said coldly.

“Was she an illusion?” the Healer asked. “The scent of blood faded as soon as your companion left the room.”

“If you have to ask, then you cannot be sure,” Iolite said with an idle twirl of her tail. “Notice how your spell-bonds remain though Suria has left? You are grasping at falling leaves hoping for flight. It is interesting, that you do not seem overly troubled otherwise. Are you humans in habit of such cruelty?”

His expression went curiously slack. “Oh you know how it is with the kingdom,” he said. “It’s all, kill your elders, eat your young.”

“Much as I expected,” Iolite said.

He slumped against the wall and laughed bitterly. “If only you knew. What did you do to the rest of my apprentices?”

“I have not the faintest clue,” she said sweetly. “I was not on the battlefield murdering innocents, you see.”

“So-called innocents who besieged our kingdom,” the Healer said with a faint shrug. “I did not wish to be there, either.”

“Your kingdom’s machines intruded upon our territory, did they not? One must kill the source at the root.”

“The Magicians seem to think so, too.”

Iolite’s tail lashed—once—before she relaxed. “Goading me will do you no good, I’m afraid. If you wish to place blame on someone for besieging your kingdom, you would do better to look at Felun here.” She nudged her tail in his direction. “His human kin, they see us as mere fool-allies. I will not dissuade them of the notion, but that pitiful attack on your kingdom was no more than an orchestrated human squabble—what do you people call it? A territorial destabilisation. If cooperating with their fanciful plans allowed me to weed out a select few loyalists of my own, then—well. Our Hive works better ways than the violent zealotry of your thaumaturges. You understand?”

The Healer raised his chin, though not high enough to expose his neck. “Are you planning to ransom me, or to kill me?”

“I have not yet decided your use,” Iolite said. “Certainly, I cannot allow you to attempt to ‘heal’ any of my people. Tell me, how does one learn your arts? Is there a certain book for it?”

“Not—as such,” he gritted out.

“I would like more detail.”

“It will not help you.”

“Tell me more detail,” Iolite ordered.

“Reading books from within…the Higher Library is not…sufficient,” he said slowly, each word wrenched from his throat through force of magic alone. “One has to be taught by a Healer, or the methodology does not…unlock, somehow. They never told me why. Also, I will not teach you.”

“Perhaps not willingly,” Iolite mused. “Hm. A potential course of action, though not for myself.” A smile crept into her voice. “My formulations are most effective, are they not? I have worked very hard on them. It is a most splendid form of satisfaction, to see all that effort pay off.”

“If I had my magic, I would rupture every organ in your body,” the Healer said. He spoke the words as if he were reciting them off a parchment. But he spoke them without hesitation, so Felun figured they must be true. He eyed the spell-cords keeping the Healer in place and was suddenly glad for Iolite’s presence.

Iolite laughed, a whispery, susurrous sound. “I am glad to see the persistence of my work’s effectiveness for myself. So I will let it pass, just this once. But in future, know that it is unwise to bite the hand that feeds you.”

The Healer shut his eyes and rested his head against the wall.

“Felun,” Iolite said, turning to him. She did not bother to lower her voice. “What do you think? Is the Scionsong worth keeping alive?”

Felun froze as his mind ran through several permutations of what she might want him to say. “I guess,” he hedged, “if the Healer…cooperates?” He felt faintly ill, saying that—this was like a sick game of theatre and charades, wasn’t it? Just smokescreens made from spells and illusions. But what else could he say? It wasn’t like he had much of a choice.

“You would not be able to,” the Healer said tiredly. He kept his eyes closed. “Keep her alive, that is. Do you think you can you fix peritonitis with herbs and bandages alone? Your endless pretense is dull and irritating.”

“So you cannot be certain you did not just kill her,” Iolite said.

“Now that you say that,” the Healer said, and snorted. “I think it is very unlikely she was ever here.”

“But you are not certain.”

“No,” the Healer said tiredly. “I cannot be certain of anything. Perhaps I am hallucinating from sleep deprivation, comatose upon my office floor. Not the first time it’s happened. When are you going to untie me?”

“Why should I do that?” Iolite asked, sounding genuinely curious.

“I will be of very little use to you at all if my skeletal muscles atrophy away.”

“Ah. All in due time. Felun here does not wish to be injured, I’m sure. I will send someone down shortly.”

The Healer opened his eyes and frowned down at the cuffs on each wrist, squinting as if looking for the ghosts of runework. “And what are these supposed to be?” he asked sourly. “I suppose they are to blame for binding my magic?”

“They were crafted by our opposition in the old wars,” Iolite said. “For use on us, you see. It is fascinating, how the world turns. I do believe I am gaining an inkling of how to deal with you.”

The Healer sighed heavily and shut his eyes once more.

“This has been a fruitful conversation,” Iolite said, turning round. “Come along now, Felun.”

They left the Healer to his imprisonment and navigated the twisting plaster tunnels back, Iolite leading the way. Her wings cast a soft, shimmering beacon through the dark. The light washed over creeping patches of rusty fungus and lumpy, fleshy outgrowths of plaster that seemed to pulse if Felun looked at them for too long. It felt as if it were taking twice as long to return the way they came.

Iolite was the first to break the silence.

“Felun,” she said. “I would appreciate it if you shared any human insights you had into the Healer-mage’s behaviour.”

“Uh,” he said, racking his brain for anything useful and coming up short. This was like an exam’s essay question, only worse. “He seemed like he was pretending his apprentice wasn’t useful leverage? But you probably know that. And uh, he seemed like he wanted you to call a ransom on him? Because that’d probably keep him alive and, I don’t know, turn out badly for you if the kingdom sends people to retrieve him. That’s all I’ve got.”

“It is useful to corroborate information,” Iolite said. “I do not expect you to work miracles, Felun. You are not a sleuthhound, but you are certainly another set of eyes, and two is better than one is better than none. Speaking of which—you know we are all very busy, yes? Well, I have a special task for you.”

“…Okay,” he said, really not liking where this was going. “Does it have to do with the Healer?”

“How very observant of you,” Iolite said without so much as a hint of irony. “Yes, Felun. It has to do with him. You may also have noticed that he asked after you in particular. It is a quirk of humans to trust their own kind despite your total lack of basis for it, is it not? At least, he will trust you more than he trusts us. I am thinking that we can perhaps exploit his little bias towards your shared species-hood.”

“Right,” Felun said. He cast his mind back to how Iolite had cheerfully blamed the ravaging of the Songian kingdom on the plans of his family alone. “Uh, I really don’t think he’s going to tell me anything useful, though.”

Iolite shook her head. “It is not what he tells you, Felun. We all have many priorities, and it would not do to leave a human prisoner unaccompanied for long periods of time. You are social creatures, are you not? He will not be much use if he goes mad from the solitude—I now know about these kinds of considerations. There were unfortunate outcomes with the previous Breaker. If you happen to glean any morsels of information in the meantime, well, so much the better.”

“Okay. But isn’t he…you know, dangerous?” Felun asked, cringing at the note of worry that had crept into his voice. True, the Healer’s magic was locked away—but the way he’d sprung at them, earlier…

“Aren’t you dangerous?” Iolite asked calmly.

“Not like that,” Felun said slowly. “Aren’t you worried that I could like, break open his locks?”

Iolite’s wings suffused with an amused gradient, a cascade of iridescence that fell in whimsical little swirls. “Do you not harbour love for your family, Felun?”

“…Sure,” he said cautiously.

“Then I am certain you will do all you can to avoid reneging their agreement,” she said pleasantly. “Besides, I am not sure that even you could break these locks, hm? Alas, our old Breaker gave up her life in sacrifice for them. It would be a shameful stain on that noble legacy to try such a thing.”

“Right,” he said.

“Silly Felun,” she said with a shake of her head. “I intend for you to stay firmly on our side of the iron doors.”

That probably counted as a threat too, right? It was sometimes hard to tell, with Iolite.

“Besides,” she continued, “there will be others in the safehouse; if anything concerning occurs, you need only send a beacon into the walls. Someone will feel it. You are never alone with us, Felun. Never alone.”

“Th-thanks,” he said.

“Then you are to visit our unfortunate captive at least once a day for, oh, perhaps several minutes? Whatever minimum you think will keep his sanity. Thorn is to bring his meals and amenities, though I will tell him that you can do the same duty in event of him being otherwise preoccupied, yes?”

“Okay,” Felun said. She phrased it like a suggestion, with the questioning yes at the end, though it was anything but. He was reminded, uncomfortably, of similar habits in certain blood relatives.

“Wonderful,” Iolite said brightly. “I have so very many things to handle—potions and amphoras alike, they all require attention. I will be sure to include you in them soon. Your efforts are very much appreciated in the meantime, Felun.”

He’d long suspected that, in some ways, she viewed him as some kind of simpleton. This just about confirmed it. Well, whatever. He was used to putting up with shit like this.

===

He went back down to the dungeons in the morning.

The Healer sat slumped with his back against the wall and refused to respond as Felun tried to speak of harmless topics—of which there were precious few. Even the weather was awkward to bring up, on account of the Healer being stuck in a room with no windows. It wasn’t like he was much better off, but hey—he could walk around, and there were lights in some of the other rooms. That was something, right?

He ended up offering a recount of what Iolite had asked of him to a reception of stony silence, and a partial summary of the shitty mystery novel he was reading, set in the ruins of Fawnfell. He rambled self-consciously about how he’d been to Fawnfell himself, and how it was nothing like in the book; just people picking over the scraps, the ruins mostly gutted after centuries of hosting naive, upstart dungeonrunners—exactly who he’d been, at the time. The Healer had seemed to perk up at that portion of his one-sided conversation, but he still hadn’t said anything in return.

It was only as he made to leave that the Healer lifted his chin and asked, “Was she real, then?” There was a flask of water next to him, put there by Thorn, but his voice sounded cracked and dry all the same.

Felun startled, and stepped back to peer through the close-set iron bars. “Sorry?”

“Scionsong,” the Healer said, turning to stare a hole into the wall. “Was I right? Or is she rotting in a shallow grave as we speak?”

Felun swallowed.

“Your pleochroic companion seemed intrigued,” the Healer continued. “Perhaps she would try to keep her alive for kingdom-killing purposes? I can only assume that is why I am still here.”

“Why would you assume that?” Felun asked.

The Healer turned his head to look at him, expression taut with a knife-sharp intensity. Felun almost flinched. He was reminded, then, of how Iolite had claimed the man had fought multiple souped-up faeries, and won. It didn’t seem so outrageous a claim, all of a sudden. Then the Healer’s expression relaxed, and whatever strange, lightning frisson of fear he’d felt vanished like dust on the wind.

“It does not take a cognoscente to realise the implications of her questioning regarding the Higher Library,” the Healer said dryly. “Now if you have the slightest shred of mercy left in your heart, you would tell me whether my apprentice is still alive.”

“The mage girl?” he asked warily. “I…think so.”

He did not want to give anything away; it was supposed to be the other way around, him extracting information from the Healer, but saying she was probably alive did little harm, didn’t it? It was what they wanted him to believe. A dead Scionsong wasn’t much in the way of good leverage.

“Hm. Interesting. You don’t actually know, do you? Still, the thing with the keys—now that was real, wasn’t it?” he murmured. “Clever of her. You broke them, didn’t you?”

“Wh-what?” A trickle of unease ran down his spine. How could he possibly know that?

“I felt it,” the Healer said. “It was my spellwork, and threaded with such contingencies, so I felt it. Or at least—I believe I did, within the stasis-fugue. I could also feel every single one of my cells slowly dying, while I was in there. Did you know, that the seconds pass in real time?”

Felun shuddered. “Sorry…?” he offered. “It wasn’t like, my idea to put you in there or anything.”

The Healer shrugged, loose and easy. “It was an interesting process,” he said, rising to his feet and stretching. “Thank the stars for the natural resilience of bodily equilibriums.” He began to pace. “A true Breaker, then. What do you know of these restraints?”

“I know I can’t break them,” Felun said warily.

“No?” the Healer asked. He sighed, a rattle of weary breath. “Not even if I bribe you with riches beyond compare?”

“You don’t have riches beyond compare,” Felun pointed out.

“I had a decent amount of coin back in the kingdom. And spellbooks. Could throw in a few bags of blood too, if you like.”

“You don’t have coin now. And I don’t want it, anyways.” Felun shuddered at the thought of the blood, congealing. “Also—bullshit, that’d go off so fast. Stop fucking with me.”

“No?” the Healer asked, drifting closer to the door. “What of healing? I’ve never seen it for myself, but I’ve read that the side-effects of Breaker magic can be quite unpleasant.” He jerked his chin pointedly at Felun’s bandages.

Unpleasant was a mild word for it. Felun thought of Orhan sequestered away in his shack, a bulging, crumbling wreck of sundered flesh. The blisters on his hands itched in sympathy.

“You can’t heal anyone right now,” Felun said warily. “And if you think you can get me to try getting those cuffs off you so that you can try, you must think I’m far more of an idiot than I am. I’ve seen what Scionsong can do with her magic. You’re supposed to be worse, aren’t you?”

A ghost of a smile drifted over the Healer’s face. “Much worse,” he said agreeably.

“So, obviously no,” Felun said.

“How is your skin doing, in any case?” the Healer asked with pointed interest. He was close to the other side of the iron bars, now.

“It’s fine,” Felun lied, taking a careful step back.

“Oh come on, now,” the Healer scoffed. “It’s as you say, I can’t do any magic. Can’t I indulge in a bit of old-fashioned nosiness? How did breaking my keys affect you? They were quite a working, you know. Took me four whole days to prove I was worthy of a set. You have no idea how deathly boring it is, sitting here for hours. My brain is practically withering from a lack of puzzling around.”

Felun frowned down at his bandages. “Trust me, you don’t want to see it.”

The Healer snorted. “Really? Healers—we’re a morbid sort, we put up with a lot. I have colleagues who flock to illness like dread-moths to blood. Are you not charged with keeping me sane?”

“Yeah, but that doesn’t include getting within punching distance, thanks.”

“Punching? Mm. How uncouth. Wouldn’t dream of it. You’ve already said you were a dungeonrunner for some time.”

Felun scowled. “Not that kind of dungeonrunner.”

The Healer shrugged and made a placating, palms-up gesture with his hands. “Ah, but regardless. You’ve got me at quite the disadvantage. I’d have thought you’d like some advice before those blisters break into lesions.”

Felun glanced down at his bandaged hands and scowled harder.

In that moment of distraction, the Healer moved.

Blur of motion, a stripe of something red whipping through the air—it caught him round the back of his neck as he jerked away. There was a brief, confusing struggle. The back of his head whacked against iron bars; pain blossomed across his skull.

Something tightened across his throat. He couldn’t breathe; his hands scrabbled at the thing pressing on his throat like a garrote and found no purchase—fabric? Slippery. Garrote. Why did he remember what a garrote was, when he was busy being choked to death? Blasted dungeon trivia…panic crashed over him in a drowning deluge, bringing useless detritus with it. Black spots pulsed at the edges of his vision, spreading like wet ink blotches over paper.

Then, just as he thought that he was going to pass out, the pressure lifted. Not enough to escape, or even enough to breathe properly—but enough that he didn’t feel like he was being murdered anymore.

“Did you kill her?” the Healer asked from over his shoulder. He didn’t sound conversational any more.

“What,” he said, or tried to. It came out as more of a strangled gasp.

“You broke my keys,” the Healer snarled, a throaty rasp against the shell of his ear. “Aliyah had my keys. Did you kill my apprentice, you little son of a bitch?”

“No,” he choked out. “No, I—she’s—she got away.”

 “I suppose I’ll find out if that’s true. Now break these restraints, if you would.”

“C-can’t…”

“Try. Do you require more convincing?”

The cloth tightened. His fingers scratched uselessly. His head swam as the black spots pulsed to life once more. His limbs were leaden and he could feel his whole body going limp, worsening the pressure at his throat. His thoughts jittered with panic, yet seemed to move at the speed of honey falling off a spoon. One useful idea made it through, before he blacked out entirely: call for help, you idiot.

He shot a spell into the wall.

Nothing useful, or impressive—he wasn’t even entirely sure of what it was. Probably a weak, mangled, mashed-together thing of cutting and shielding that wouldn’t actually have worked. But he didn’t need it to work—he just needed it to alert someone. He hoped that Iolite hadn’t been lying, when she’d said he wasn’t alone.

The band around his throat tightened further, and for several long moments, he thought: this is how it ends. What a stupid way to die.

Winterbird dropped from the ceiling in a flurry of blue-white flakes.

She hardly finished hitting the ground before leaping forwards in a shivery flutter of icy wingbeats, hand outstretched. Her fingers latched round the cloth at his throat, point-tipped carapace-claws tearing and wedging into the seam between fabric and skin. She pulled, then swung with the other arm, unleashing a spell from her palm.

It sailed past him, through a gap in the iron bars—the Healer shouted, and the cloth at Felun’s throat came loose. Air, merciful air, rushed into his lungs. He fell to his knees and half-stumbled, half-crawled away from the iron-barred door. His breaths came in wheezing gasps.

Winterbird staggered back. One of her knees crumpled and she fell into a half-crouch, arm shooting out to catch herself. She said something sharp and trilling in the faerie language. It was one of the few words he recognised: an expletive.

Felun brought his hand to his neck and winced as he massaged it. Blood beaded up from a shallow scratch, where Winterbird’s fingers had snagged on the skin in getting him free.

He rose to his feet and glanced down at the makeshift garotte, flung aside into the dust: a ragged strip of red cloth, heavily knotted at each end. Torn from the Healer’s own robes, he realised, and hidden up a sleeve. He kicked it off to the side and glanced up, at where Winterbird had emerged—had that hole in the ceiling been there before? Then he looked over to the Healer. The Healer knelt clutching at his own arm, forehead furrowed in pain.

“Lucky little Zhao,” Winterbird grunted, straightening up. She seemed to be favouring one leg over the other. She winced, and her spines flattened themselves against her forehead. “I think I may have overexerted myself, a little.”

“Sorry,” Felun managed. “I didn’t think he could—”

“You must be more careful, Zhao. I think Iolite would have one of us fed to the Archives if you had come to harm.”

“Right. Uh, sorry. Really sorry. Thank you.”

Winterbird rolled her shoulders back, wings sparking with indecipherable signs. She glanced over at the Healer, crouched statue-still within his cell. Her un-patched eye gleamed coldly.

“This is unacceptable. You hear that, human?”

The Healer’s eyes moved. The rest of him didn’t.

Winterbird hissed, a rustling trill on the edge of hearing. Magic whorled through the air, sinking into the walls. Felun blinked his Breaker sense open, the urge reflexive. He tracked the way the magic dissipated, weak but far-wandering. The room seemed to quiver. Winterbird spat blood and looked him square in the eye.

“How badly do you want him hurt, Breaker Zhao?”

He swallowed against the shadow of a bruise. “…I thought you needed him for something?”

“We do,” said a voice behind him.

He whirled around, but it was only Curlew. Somewhere out in the darkness, writhing through the tunnels, came wingbeats. He glanced back at Winterbird and thought her magic over. Had she called for everyone?

“But Iolite said he was a fleshcrafter, didn’t she?” Curlew continued idly. “They can come back from anything.”

“Not anything,” the Healer whispered.

A new hiss echoed in the distance, the sound tinged gold. Suria crashed through the hole in the ceiling and launched upright to curl her hand around Winterbird’s shoulder. “What is it now?”

Winterbird explained in the faery tongue. Felun watched the Healer as the two conversed, saw the way his eyes darted like minnows. The conversation trickled into silence. Other faces peering in through the corridor: Thorn and Ezphorza, but no sign of Iolite.

“You don’t wish to dissuade the fleshcrafter personally?” Suria asked, addressing him.

A vein throbbed in his neck, one he hadn’t ever noticed before. “I…I don’t know. No. Can’t you keep him somewhere else?”

“How sensitive,” she said, sounding as if she were on the edge of sneering. She pulled liquid chitin from her arm, forming a dagger. Magic crackled on her tongue; the air grew as thick as glue. “I see all the work falls to me. Stay still, fleshcrafter. You may fix yourself and you may scream, but no more.”

She unlocked the door. Felun backed away, right into Winterbird’s outstretched hand.

“Stay, Breaker Zhao.”

“Safe now,” Curlew added. “The fleshcrafter is locked still.”

And so he was. He didn’t move, not even when Suria started to slice. He did scream. Pressure pulsed through the air like a pale noose tightening.

Felun sensed flesh and veins looped round wrists and neck, their ghosts spearing into nerve and muscle. He let his eyes glaze over and sank deeper into the Breaker-sense, flooding his focus with more important things. Suria was sun-fire, syrup in her veins, a coil wound too tight. Winterbird resembled oak bark rotting under a shield of frost. Curlew rattled like a chariot falling to pieces. He heard garbled syllables, sounds that might’ve been words.

He didn’t want to hear them, much less understand, so he sank into a place where sounds had less meaning. Staring into the pure, painful flow of magic was preferable to whatever was happening back in the realm of knife and noise. Iolite’s labyrinth fanned out before him. It moved like eels writhing in too-shallow water. If he preoccupied himself tracing their spines to a horizon that looped back round, then perhaps he wouldn’t notice the magic spurting like a torn artery not six feet away. Maybe he wouldn’t think too much about the blood-flecked words, the gasping choke with each surge of stoppered magic, the screaming that stopped and started but followed no rhythm.

Silence had fallen by the time he started drifting back into his body. Suria was pushing chitin back into her arm, spitting watery blood. The faeries trickled past him and out the corridor. The air was dry. His throat ached sullenly.

“Please,” a voice wheezed.

Felun stared down the tangle of red knitting itself together and turned away.