I crashed into the river. Andiya’s grip slipped away, my fingers trailing down her warm skin until the current tore me away, leaving me with nothing but cold. As the world slowed around me, I sank.

Everything was black. There was a surface somewhere, had to be, but I couldn’t see it. I began to fade. I had nothing left to give, no more energy to keep myself alive. My mind filled with water; dark, impenetrable water, pulling me down into a quiet abyss.

The bond hummed, looking for me.

“I’m here,” I murmured to the bond. But I couldn’t remember what here was, why it was so important to be found. Alarm thrashed my mind, and a voice screamed at me. The words were drowned, filled with bubbles. But I knew what they were asking me.

“Where?”

My mind stroked along the bond, pulling it to me. The bond was so warm, as soothing as a campfire in a deep wood. I invited it in. I’m right here.

A rough hand wound in my hair and dragged me to the surface.

I broke into the night and dragged in a desperate breath. Instantly, my mind cleared enough to remind me what was going on. I’d almost drowned, and Andiya had saved us. Saved me.

She helped me to shore, and we collapsed on a small bank of sand and pebbles. Irina sat shivering in her nightdress slightly farther up, dripping, a cold rage in her eyes. I just went limp, struggling to regain my wits.

Beside me, Andiya lay heaving, her cheek in the sand. An arrow protruded from her stomach, another from her thigh. But I didn’t feel them.

“Magic,” Andiya panted. “I’m …” She coughed. “I’m blocking the pain. Can’t much longer.”

Wobbly, I pushed up to a sit. “Your Majesty,” I croaked. “You have the knife?”

Irina crawled over and slapped the wet metal into my hand.

I braced Andiya’s shoulder. Still, her skin was as hot as a summer’s day, even after being soaked in frigid water. The fire within her was stronger than anything nature could throw at us. “Breathe through it,” I told her. “Your Majesty, hold her other side.”

I delicately took the head end of the arrow. It was common for Elementals to hit my fellow soldiers with bolts of ice or wood. I’d never had the misfortune of going through it myself, but I’d heard enough screaming to know how this was going to go.

“We don’t have time to be delicate,” I said.

“Do it,” Andiya ground out.

With the serrated inner edge of the iron knife, I worked through the arrow’s shaft. One of the knife’s teeth caught. A bolt of agony punched me in the gut.

Andiya let out a small cry into the sand. “Hurry.” Her magic trembled, almost spent.

The one advantage to having a daemon patient was that Andiya could heal herself. I snapped the arrow’s shaft roughly and yanked it from her gut.

My vision went white as the pain hit us both. I slumped over Andiya, clenching my teeth so hard it felt like they would shatter. Then Andiya’s tired magic rushed to spare us, and the pain was chased away.

“One more,” I gasped.

Andiya rolled her thigh towards me. She panted against the sand.

I made short work of the second arrow’s shaft. I leaned on Andiya’s thigh, bracing myself. I tore the arrow out.

The last of Andiya’s magic went, and the full brunt of her injuries slammed into us.

There was nothing left in me but pain. I collapsed on the sand, agony ripping through my body from my stomach and my thigh. If I had to run again to save my life, I couldn’t.

Weak gratitude brushed my mind. Andiya’s head dropped beside mine, her chest heaving. I turned my head to her. The pain dulled as I met her eyes.

“You saved us,” I sent.

“And now you owe me.”

Irina huffed and sat down heavily beside me. “All right,” she huffed. “This is a minor setback.”

*

Irina helped Andiya and I crawl up the shore and into the tree cover. There was no telling how far we’d strayed from Seylas’s route, nor any way of knowing if the Crows would bother looking for us. I propped myself against a log and fought to maintain consciousness. The powerful throb of my and Andiya’s wounds was the only thing keeping me awake.

“They must have been tracking us,” Irina said, wringing out her hair. “To know exactly who among us controlled our daemons. You were likely on that list, Kain. Had you not been in my tent, you may have suffered the same fate. Did you see where Hadrion went? I didn’t see her among the dead.”

“Bear daemon, right?” answered Andiya. “Took a hit to the head and went down hard. Saw it on the way up.”

Irina took a long, steadying breath. “So all our Eons are dead or otherwise incapacitated. Kain is gravely injured. Of our party, I did not see Seylas, Lionel, nor Doctor Viscara. For the moment we may assume they either fled or were captured.”

“And if they were?” Andiya asked.

Quiet fell. If our party had been captured, then there was little we could do about it. We had no idea where they had gone, and no way to get to them even if we did. We had no equipment, no food, no shelter to make it through the night. If Andiya and I were in better condition, it would still be a near impossible undertaking to rescue them on our own. Assuming they were all still alive.

“First, we survive until morning,” said Irina. “Andiya, we require a fire. Kain and I won’t last long in these wet clothes.”

“I don’t have any magic left. And any that does come back would be better spent making sure Rozin stays with us.”

“I’ll be fine,” I mumbled, though not very convincingly from my position propped on a rotten log. My heart was firing abnormally fast from the blood loss, and Andiya would know that.

“You will, thanks to me.”

“If I’ve heard right, Andiya,” said Irina. “You mean to say your magic has the power to heal?”

“Not in the sense you’re thinking of. I’d just be giving Rozin’s body the strength to bounce back faster. She’d be doing the healing. I don’t have the precision necessary for restoration.”

“But as a High Order, you have access to magic beyond a single element.”

I had to admire Irina’s sharpness in our situation. Freezing, half drowned, lost in the woods, and still paying attention. Though, she wasn’t the one with a bottle’s worth of blood missing. My contribution to the conversation would have to remain the occasional nod to show I was not dead yet.

“I can do more than make a few fires,” Andiya replied, but gave us nothing more.

Irina pulled a cord necklace from her collar. At the end dangled a survivor’s ring: a loop of leather threaded through miniature tools. She slipped off a small flint and striker and prepared dry twigs and a ring of stones.

It was when the fire’s warmth washed over me that I realised that even though I was freezing, I hadn’t been shivering. Maybe my body simply hadn’t seen the point.

“We can thank Seylas, wherever he is,” Irina said. “He was the one who forced me to wear the ring. In case of the worst, he told me.”

“You really trust him?” said Andiya.

“I do. Seylas had been in my father’s service for nearly thirty years. I grew up with him in the palace; he was there when my mother died, he taught me about daemons, he was the first person to teach me how to hold a blade. While my father was busy leading the Canavar, oftentimes Seylas was the closest thing I had to parent.”

“And you don’t have an issue with his being a torturer.”

I was too exhausted to stop Andiya’s question, too drained to step in.

“I do not. I only regret that such actions are necessary, to keep my kingdom safe.”

“Was my torture for the good of the kingdom, then?”

“It was. You were an unknown; and you remain one now. We cannot have the unknown threatening the peace we have held for hundreds of years. If your pain was all that stood between my people and war, then I would choose it every time.”

“I disagree. Savagery only leads to more—”

“I disagree, Your Majesty. Do not forget who you are speaking with, Andiya. I will not accept this tone.”

Andiya’s fist tightened. I felt a small sting where her nails dug into her palm.

“Rozin needs to sleep, Your Majesty,” Andiya said through her teeth. “I’ll keep watch. In the morning, we should retrace our steps to the Korongorod.”

“It’s long gone by now.”

“Gone? You didn’t make it wait for us?”

“It should be near the Canine Sea by now. That was our scheduled route—and I’m supposed to be in my rooms, remember. They aren’t coming back for us. Only my brother even knows I’m gone. He is keeping up the illusion for us.”

“And you have no way of getting him a message?”

“Short of revealing myself and attracting every opportunistic assassin on the continent? No.”

Speaking was too much effort. “Rafiq.”

Andiya’s head whipped to me. “What about Rafiq?”

“He has Khalid. He can fly. They can get a message to Prince Maxsim.”

“But we don’t know if he was even with Shokarov’s group. Or what the hell even happened to them, for us to be wide open for an attack.”

“Worth a try. Better than starving in the woods.”

“You raise a fair point.”

Irina waved. “Bother to fill me in?”

“We’re going after Shokarov’s group,” Andiya replied.

“And that’s the official decision, then? Minus the approval of your regent?”

“It is.”

Irina raised a brow, but didn’t seem upset. “Some bonded you’ve got, Kain.”

“Lucky me,” I mumbled.

Andiya turned to me, hiding her face from the princess, and gave me a coy wink. My poor heart shuddered.

*

I woke to a paling sky, the first signs of approaching dawn. A sharp pain in my stomach and thighs had dragged me back from oblivion.

“My fault.” Andiya was sat beside a sleeping Irina, my jacket laid out by the fire beside her. I couldn’t remember taking it off. “I overstretched. Fire was dying, and the log was heavy. Arrow holes didn’t like it.”

“Sure.” I squeezed my eyes shut, desperate for more sleep. Losing that much blood would put me out of commission for weeks—assuming I even had the strength to make it back to civilization. My head spun like I was drunk, my thoughts swirling around no matter how still I kept.

But the pain was too great. Bitterly, I resigned myself to staring into the fire, hoping its motion could lull me. When it didn’t, and I had to clench my teeth against waves of pain, I decided to distract myself.

“You can fly?”

“Nope. Never tried it before, and don’t think I will again. It cleaned my magic out completely.” She scooted to sit beside me. “How did you do it?”

“Do what?”

“It was your idea, you know. You thought the only escape was to sprout wings.”

“Didn’t mean it literally.”

“Well, I wasn’t in any place to come up with anything else. That nightmare plant is powerful stuff.”

“What did you dream about?”

I felt a flash of discomfort before Andiya slammed the bond shut. “Not important. We both have some things we’d rather not discuss.”

“This is where I’m expected to force it out of you.”

“So try, drowned little rat,” Andiya bit.

“I won’t. That’s what I meant to say. I should, but I won’t.” I opened my eyes to see her watching me intently. I wished she wouldn’t. My mind was wide open, my thoughts too muddled to filter from her hearing. “It would feel …” I forced myself to tell her. She deserved that, after what she’d done today. “Wrong.”

Her eyes crinkled slightly into a gentle, true smile. I had never seen her smile before, never expected to. It lightened her face, softened her in a way that made me linger; I was reminded again of the first thought I had of Andiya. That she was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. And this beauty had a kindness that stole the air from my lungs.

Andiya glanced at the sleeping princess. “It’s supposed to feel wrong,” she murmured. “I would not have rescued someone who had a taste for injustice. You once asked me when we’d become familiar enough to play chess. It was when I heard your guilt. I thought if such a thing were possible, then we might be able to live with each other after all.”

“Technically, you also rescued yourself.”

“I would not have, if you were someone else. If you were Seylas, or even Irina. They would not have seen the smile that just dazed you.”

I made a wearied huff that barely passed for a laugh. I didn’t have the energy to close my mind. Andiya could read whatever she liked. “You seem to know a lot about me.”

“I know enough that I am willing to try.”

My gaze lifted to Andiya. The firelight flickered off her eyes, warming her, warming my face. “What if I wasn’t?”

“Oh, I could always wear you down. You know, I could make your life very difficult if I chose, Rozin.” At my incredulous squint, she amended, “More difficult.”

“Seems a bit impossible, from my correct position. Or did you mean worse than dying of blood loss in wet socks?”

“She’s got a sense of humour.”

“No. My socks are very wet.”

Andiya stood and limped over to my boots. She pulled them off and angled my feet towards the fire. She pulled a face at my soaked socks.

“I’m not touching those.”

Andiya worked on the fire, and I watched her. There was little otherworldly about her in that moment. She dropped a log into the flames and watched the sparks fly up to the darkness above, like I’d watched so many humans do before her.

“When I asked you how you did it,” Andiya said into my mind, where the princess could not overhear, “I meant how you controlled my magic.”

“I didn’t.”

“I’ve never been good at precision. Healing, summoning, alteration … all of them require a delicate hand. My father said I was closer to a fist. Strong but brutal. But you shaped those wings. You kept us in the air. Normally if I try summoning I just burn off all my magic trying to sustain the image.”

“That’s what I felt happening. But Jawahir taught me control. It’s how you create a bond. We use our own life force to draw it out, in absence of magic. But if you don’t tighten the flow, you exhaust yourself. With you … I only did the same thing I used to capture you—bond you.”

Andiya stiffened at my misstep. “Do not correct yourself. You captured me.”

“It’s not the word I am meant to use. We do not see bonding as a capture—but as a mercy.”

“And was it a mercy in my case, Rozin?”

My heart ached. Andiya’s eyes closed slowly, feeling it. “No,” I whispered aloud.

“I thought not. Now—even if you employed your training, how were you able to override me? Jawahir was explicit in that not being possible.”

“You didn’t feel present. I think the nightmare rose dampened you enough for me to take control.”

“Well, that’s a problem.” Andiya consciousness swelled, filling the bond and pushing against my mind. I felt a sudden hostility colouring her temper. “Rest assured, Rozin. The first time you decide to drug me to take control will also be your last.”

Her hostility didn’t waver even at my surprise. My first thought hadn’t been that I might have a way to tame Andiya—it was that others might realise what I had. That they could effectively neutralize the Canavar’s High Order with a few springs of a rare plant. We’d been at the Crows’ mercy tonight. For all her power, Andiya was vulnerable, and if the knowledge got out, I wouldn’t be able to stop anyone from hurting her.

But instead of admitting all this to Andiya, instead of admitting that I was afraid for her, that I cared if someone hurt her, I decided to push her away. I needed to. I didn’t trust myself.

“Don’t give me a reason to do it, then,” I bit. Brief hurt flashed across her face before I closed my eyes and turned my back.

“That I can feel your conscience does not absolve you of being a bitch, Rozin.”