But she only backed away from the recessed stairwell, eyes still wide and panicked.
Wilder coughed yet again, spraying my sleeve with blood, and Yoslyn screamed. She turned and raced in the direction of the Panacea wing, toward the forms thundering toward us, footsteps heavy on the marble tiles.
Sobbing, I sank onto the second step and tried to pull Wilder up with me. To get his head above the creeping white cloud of whatever noxious fume the broken pots had released. I pulled as hard as I could, but I’d only tugged him over one tread by the time blurry forms knelt on the edge of my tear-fogged vision, distorted arms reaching for us.
Someone lifted me, and the movement triggered my own fit of coughing. I tasted blood, and my vision darkened.
When it cleared, I lay on my back in the atrium, on the cold marble tile. Someone knelt above me, shouting orders, and though I could not draw his face into focus, I recognized Dr. Winhoof’s voice.
I turned my head, ignoring the ministrations of a woman with one finger pressed to my pulse, and saw Wilder several feet away, being tended by two more Panacea staff members. He blinked at me slowly. Blood trickled from his mouth, but his lips turned upward in a grin I would never, for the rest of my days, forget.
Then his eyes lost focus. His chest stopped rising.
I screamed, despite the hands tending me—I screamed until the entire world went dark.
“She’s waking up.”
Yoslyn’s voice haunted me like a ghost, hovering just on the edge of comprehension, but it took me a couple of heartbeats to make sense of the words.
Iwas the one waking up. And she was there. Wherevertherewas.
“Amber. Open your eyes.”
Desmond. And surely that was his hand, warm on my arm. My cold, cold arm. All of me was cold, in fact. Utterly freezing.
“Amber.”His voice was sharp. Demanding.
My eyes opened—just a crack to let in the flicker of my candle. And I knew itwasmy candle by the clear, bright quality of the light, from the coating Past Amber had dipped her wicks in.
I blinked, and my eyes opened wider. My vision narrowed on the thin wooden planks lining the ceiling of my bedchamber. On the stacked-stone walls.
Shadows shifted, and Yoslyn’s face appeared over mine. “Thank all that is good in the universe,” she whispered. “She’s awake.”
A hand took mine from the opposite side of the bed, fingers warm and strong. “Amber.” Desmond’s voice was softer now. “Amber, look at me. How do you feel?”
I turned my head, and my neck crackled, as if I hadn’t moved it in ages. Desmond’s face came into focus, first his silhouette, broad but hunched, then his features, and I wondered if my eyes were out of practice, too.
“What happened?” My voice creaked like an old wooden chair. I tried to push myself upright, but the world spun.
Desmond helped me sit up slowly while Yoslyn fluffed my pillow, and when he leaned back to get a better look at me, I noticed that his eyes were red. “What do you remember?” he asked.
“I…” I shook my head.
A ring. A portrait. A staircase descending into the floor. Then…
“Wilder!” I sat up straight, and the room spun again.
“Get her some water,” Desmond ordered as he pressed gently on my shoulders, forcing me to recline against the pillow. I had no strength to resist. “You’ll have to go slow,” he said. “You’ve been unconscious for most of a day, and you spent the first several hours breathing viable air through a medical air bladder. We’ll get you some food shortly, but first…”
Yoslyn pressed a wooden cup of water into my hand, and I sipped from it. The water burned my throat, and Desmond tensed when I coughed. But then I sipped again without incident, and the tension in his form eased.
“Where’s Wilder?” I asked as I handed the cup back to Yoslyn.
She made a wounded sound deep in her throat, but it was Desmond’s face that told the story: the pained crease at the corners of his eyes and the firm, defensive press of his lips together, before he even opened his mouth.
“He didn’t make it.”
The room swam around me.
