Fi blinked at hazy surroundings, her thoughts the consistency of algae: dense and floating, even with solid ground beneath her again.
She eased herself onto aching elbows, every muscle in her tattered body gone numb. Cold. Prickling, like that sting of human flesh exposed to too much energy. But then, a foggy glimpse of familiar shiverpines. The rough boards of a porch beneath her fingers.
Herporch. Her cottage.
She spent the last of her strength on a haggard, disbelieving laugh. Home. She didn’t understand how, but she was home.
At the edge of her vision, a shadow shifted.
Fi’s thoughts sputtered as the daeyari from the Void paced the base of her stairs, inspecting the trees, the stars… then her. Persistent, for a hallucination. She had no strength to shudder, exhaustion urging her to collapse against the porch.
Another shadow appeared. This one, horse shaped. Aisinay approached on cautious hooves, ears lowered and nostrils flaring at the scent of the phantom. He held out a hand. She sniffed. When she swayed her finned tail in agreement, he stroked her muzzle.
Fi couldn’t stay here. Verne might still be nearby.
She snarled at the effort of sitting up. Pain spiked her shoulder, shredded flesh no longer in stasis, blood seeping into her coat. She clawed the closest beam for support, toppled down the stairs, caught herself against Aisinay’s scaled flank. The horse sniffed her hair, warm breath against Fi’s neck.
She hauled herself onto the creature’s bare back.
Black spotted her vision. Fi slumped against Aisinay, cheeks bruised by the fins down her neck, hoping her mount knew where to go after all the supplies she’d helped shuttle. As Fi tumbled toward unconsciousness, cold in her bones and pain drowning every thought, she cast one last look to her side.
Her parting sight was carnelian eyes. A tilted head and slow, swishing tail. A convincing hallucination. Perhaps too convincing.
Then, into black once more.
This black was less smothering than the last.
Fi drifted in and out, cotton-thick thoughts registering fragments of a horse’s gait beneath her. The cold of a Curtain. Another. Another. Warm hands. Worried voices. A throb in her shoulder then coarse blankets like a cocoon. She drifted again, deeper this time.
She woke slowly.
The world returned to her in pieces: pain in her shoulder, an itch against her skin, weight at her legs.
The pain of her bite wound, wrapped in gauze.
The itch of blankets, a simple bed and barren room in an abandoned mining outpost.
And the weight against her legs. Antal sat in a chair, head pillowed atop his arms at the foot of her bed, chest rising with the tempo of sleep.
Even taking all this in, Fi’s thoughts were sluggish puttingthe pieces together. She remembered teeth in her shoulder. She remembered running. Running from what?
A bed like this one. Blankets soaked in blood and—
“Antal?” His name slipped out like a plea. An anchor, as the world around Fi swirled too fast again.
He blinked awake. Crimson eyes darted over the room, surveying for danger. When they landed on her, the well of concern broke Fi like a hammer to the ribs.
“Fionamara.” Her name fell soft off his lips. The slightest catch against his teeth.
Fi sat up, but… by the merciless Void, her shoulderhurt. Bandages tugged her skin, warmed by an energy chip to fuel the healing, numbed by twilight sorel ointment. She gritted her teeth and forced herself still, trying not to strain the wound.
Antal watched every grimace, tail taut. “What happened?”
“I…” A haze of grief. Teeth. Blackness. And Boden. Her brother was—
Fi shoved the thought away, safe behind a hastily built wall, before it could shatter her all over again.
“You left,” Antal said. Then, harder, “Here one minute, then gone. Your horse brought you back like this.”
