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It didn’t come. Instead, that yanking remained relentless and, once the haze started to clear with the breeze, the revealed bunker stood unbroken, only the minor damage of divots in the roof to mark where it had been hit.

Uncle Iyrinder glanced at her, grimaced, and shouted over her shoulder. “We need another run. The bunker is not destroyed.”

“I don’t think those bombs are big enough to take out that particular bunker.” Adry ground the words out, sweat trickling down her forehead from fighting the drain on her magic.

The aeroplane looped in the sky before diving again, this time with its nose pointed toward them. If her eyes hadn’t been watering so much, she might have been able to pick out Merrik in the cockpit.

“He says to give the machine what it wants.” Ithronel’s shout barely carried over the ringing in Adry’s ears. “That is what Laesornysh did to overpower the machines before.”

He didn’t clarify if he was talking about her dacha or Fieran. Not that it mattered. It applied to both.

After giving herself one last glimpse of the oncoming aeroplane to sear into her memory, Adry squeezed her eyes shut, dug deep within herself, and stopped holding back. She unleashed her magic, letting it blast outward in all its powerful fury.

She wasn’t sure what happened first. The explosion that pummeled her ears and shook the ground or the one that snapped backward through her magic. If she hadn’t already been lying prone on the ground, she would have been flung backward.

But she was free. She gulped in a deep breath before coughing on the dust and smoke in the air.

“Are you all right?” Uncle Iyrinder’s voice barely pierced the high-pitched ringing in her ears.

“I’m fine. That worked.” She pushed onto her hands and knees, gathering herself and her magic. Both her limbs and her magic felt shaky, her grip on her magic tenuous and tired. Somehow, she managed to climb to her feet, her vision still hazy, her brain swirling.

She tried to get a shield back up. Her magic was just so worn. So drained. She’d never felt this way before. Tired and woozy, her magic as sluggish as her brain. All she knew was that she needed to get that shield up before anyone got hurt.

A few crackling bolts of magic twined around her. Not enough. Not nearly enough.

Something blazed through her magic and whizzed past her arm, so close the breeze of it tugged at her sleeve.

“Adry!” Uncle Iyrinder was a blurry shape as he lunged for her.

But before he reached her, something punched through her magic and slammed into her middle. Three hits in quick succession that sent her stumbling back.

When she looked down and pressed a hand to her middle, three spots of red appeared on her fighting leathers as blood coated her fingers.

She’d been shot. Actually shot. It had never occurred to her that she—a Laesornysh—could be shot.

Then Uncle Iyrinder was there, hauling her backward until the two of them were tucked behind the remains of the first bunker she’d destroyed. She sank into a sitting position with her back to the concrete, pain tearing through her. Gasping in ragged breaths, she pressed both hands to her stomach.

The other guard members scrambled into the cover next to them, with Yralissa pulling out her rifle.

Uncle Iyrinder ripped a pouch off his belt and yanked out a wad of gauze. Nudging her fingers aside, he shoved it through the holes in her fighting leather and against her wounds.

She groaned, barely resisting the urge to shove him away. “You carry around medical supplies?”

Uncle Iyrinder flashed her a flat, unamused look before he returned his focus to staunching the blood. “I do not follow your dacha around for mere decoration. I am here for when things go wrong. Even if your dacha has a bad habit of leaving me behind.”

That last sentence held a hint of frustration. Given that her dacha had run off—alone—to rescue Fieran, gone off with just Fieran when the Wall was taken out, and currently was off nearly by himself inside Mongavaria, Uncle Iyrinder might have a valid point.

A point she would consider further when she wasn’t in pain and bleeding out.

She dared a glance down, catching sight of Uncle Iyrinder’s hands now covered in blood. More blood soaked her fighting leathers and dripped onto the ground. Her mind whirled, and she tore her gaze away, sucking a breath between her teeth. “How bad?”

There was a long, far too weighty pause before Uncle Iyrinder spoke. “We need to get you to the hospital.”

That bad then. Adry squeezed her eyes shut and drew on her magic, still slippery and tired in her grip, letting it sizzle through her veins as best she could.

Uncle Iyrinder didn’t have to say it. Getting her to the hospital was nearly impossible right now.

She could die. A chill swept through her, a bitter taste filling her mouth. It had never occurred to her that she could die in this war.