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“No. You will not say goodbye to me.”

His mouth curves faintly, and the sight of it breaks something inside me.

“You never do listen.”

A sob tears out of me. Kylian’s hand closes around my wrist, not pulling me away, just steadying me before my magic can rip loose and take half the ship with it.

“Breathe,” he says.

“I can’t.” I panic.

“You have to.”

“I can save him,” I say, though the words sound desperate even to me. “I can, but I can’t while that is still inside him.”

Kylian’s face tightens, and Eagan looks away.

Arlo’s blood keeps spilling through my fingers. “Using that much power can kill you.” Kylian bites into his wrist, shoving me aside, and Eagan’s hands move to take the place of mine.

Kylian moves, his hand closing around the broken steel where it juts from Arlo’s body, and Eagan shifts beside him, his face pale, his gray-red eyes fixed on me in warning before he reaches for Arlo’s shoulders.

“We have to remove it,” Eagan says quietly.

My whole body goes cold.

“What?”

“The wound cannot be sealed around it,” Kylian says, his voice careful in a way that tells me he is trying not to frighten me more than I already am. “If he drinks, it has to be out.”

Arlo’s breathing turns shallow.

I grip his face harder. “Look at me, you look at me, and you stay here with me.”

His eyes find mine, and his hand lifts weakly to wrap around my wrist.

Kylian looks at Eagan, who nods once.

Then he pulls.

The sound is wet and awful, flesh tearing around splintered wood, blood rushing out in a sudden dark flood that spreads across Arlo’s shirt and pours over my hands before I can react.

Arlo screams.

His body jerks so violently that Eagan has to pin his shoulders while Kylian throws the blood-slick spar aside and shoves his torn wrist toward Arlo’s mouth.

“Drink,” Kylian orders. Arlo’s head turns away.

Blood pumps from the open wound, hot and fast, each pulse worse than the last, and I throw both hands over it as my magic bursts out of me in a blinding wash of gold.

“Arlo,” I sob, pressing down while light spills through my fingers and into his torn body, healing what I can, but the toll on me is immediate. Arlo isn’t a flower, and the hole in his side cannot be patched with molten steel. “Please.”

Arlo’s eyes stay on mine, glassy with pain but still stubborn, still him, still holding on to me even as blood slips from his mouth and gathers at the edge of his jaw before falling onto my wrist.

“Do it for Angie,” I beg, my voice tearing apart as I look from him to Kylian’s bleeding wrist and back again. “Please, Arlo, if you won’t do it for me, then do it for Angie, because she needs you, and your mother needs you. I need you.”

His lips part, and for one wild, impossible second, I think he might agree.

Then he shakes his head. “Angie needs her brother,” he whispers, his voice thick with blood and pain. “Not something wearing his face.”