Sylvie reaches out beneath me. She’s paralyzed, her body paralyzed somehow though her mind has awoken, but her magic is there.
And I can feel what she’s going to do the moment before she does it.
Sylvie reaches out with her shadows, invisible in the darkness until they reach the candle, and she snuffs it out.
The candle’s effects don’t vanish immediately, but they don’t need to. I can’t see what’s happening, but I can feel it as Sylvie turns the shadows with alarming speed. I hear Zara fly back through the open door as she screams.
I lower Sylvie to the ground, fumbling to place the blood bag on the table. Sylvie is trying to hold Zara, but she can’t see her from her position. I draw my sword just as Zara feels an opening in the shadows that bind her. She bursts free, dagger in hand, lunging forward…
But she can’t see what she’s aiming for. She stabs blindly, striking Sylvie as my sword, guided by feel, plunges into Zara’s gut.
I toss Zara back, hobbling to the ground to help Sylvie. I feel the blood rush out of her leg when I touch her skin, but the candle’s effects linger. I can’t heal her. The wound won’t close.
“Quinn!” I shout. “Quinn, get back here!”
“Just a minute,” she calls from down the hall. There are muffled cries coming from behind a door. I can’t sense howmany people are there from this distance and with my magic as weak as it is, but it’s a lot.
“NOW!”
“Fuck!” she yells. “Taran!”
And then I hear her footsteps tearing down the hall. I smell the smoke and sweat on her as she steps over Zara and into the room, a flame in her palm.
“Is that the Guild Mistress?”
“Heal Sylvie,” I demand. In the flickering light of Quinn’s flame, I see just how much blood is pouring from her, and it flips my stomach upside down.
“What? Oh, shit.” Quinn kneels down to Sylvie and presses the flame to the wound in the leg.
Sylvie doesn’t cry out. I don’t think she can feel much of the pain, at least.
“I’m sorry,” I murmur to her, rocking her motionless body. “I’ll fix it as soon as I can.”
Quinn’s flame stops the bleeding, thank the gods, but it leaves a terrible mark of burnt flesh on Sylvie’s thigh. She’s so weak, and I have no fucking idea what to do about whatever is keeping her from moving.
It chills me to the bone. It reminds me of losing my mother, how her body went before her mind. It was just after my magic settled, just after I’d begun to feel her and others. I felt her trapped in there for days, unable to move or speak. And then I felt her mind slip away too.
It was horrible. I can’t bear it again.
“I’m going to fix this,” I promise Sylvie. “I don’t know how, but I’m going to.”
“What the fuck happened? Where’s your magic?” asks Quinn.
“Don’t light the candle,” I say as she gets near it. “It’s poison. That’s what has been affecting my magic. Did you find the shadow-born?”
“Yeah, and about twenty alchemists guarding them. More than half of them fled once the fighting really got going. Are you alright here? I should make sure more of them haven’t shown up.”
Quinn’s fire won’t be able to heal my ankle; I’m going to need to wait until I can heal myself to be able to walk, if that even works. Sylvie needs help, but not the kind that fire can provide. “If any of the alchemists are alive, send them here to heal her. A nature-born, if they have one.”
“You got it,” she says. “What about her?” she asks as she nudges Zara’s stilling body with her foot.
Her feelings are fading. Maybe there was a chance for her, but it passed long ago.
If I’m honest with myself, it passed the moment she touched Sylvie.
“It’s too late for her,” I say. “Go.”
Chapter Thirty-Four
