His sister was dying.

Everything else happening around Truss faded away into unimportant noise in light of this singular, terrible truth. Tress was laying on the floor, and she was covered in her own blood. She was gasping for breath, and bleeding out, and her eyes were unfocused and staring at nothing, drifting about and looking at the world around her without seeing any of it. Her hands were clutching her side where she’d been stabbed, and she kept blinking and gasping, her eyes fluttering open and her closed as she struggled in growing desperation and fading spirit to cling to life.

Behind him, Seahawk was shouting at someone. Truss didn’t listen to the words, but it sounded like she was demanding an explanation. Around him, sailors were running up and down the hall, yelling about a shadow that had run away, some mysterious assailant who had vanished from sight.

Did the shadow do this?

Someone was dead, Truss thought. People were talking about that too. And there was another person, who was injured. But that didn’t matter. None of that mattered. Only Tress mattered.

He fell to his knees beside her. His hands reached out, and as gently as he could, Truss pulled Tress’ own hands from her side. His stomach churned when he saw the wet, crimson stains on her clothes, felt the blood against his fingers. There was a hole in her shirt and a wound in her flesh, deep and red and gushing with blood. Clenching his jaw, Truss pressed his palms against the injury.

“What’s going on?” a deep voice was demanding from somewhere behind him. “What is that boy doing? What has happened on my ship?”

Truss closed his eyes. He reached into himself, reached for his connection to the divine, to the pledge that he swore to Elyran. He and his sister were both lightsworn. Tress held a connection to the domains of Air and Illusion. And Truss? Truss held Lightning.

And Truss held Life.

It was to that domain that he reached out now. Life Magic flowed through his body. It traveled down his veins, poured through his skin, filled his heart and warmed his chest. He felt the power of the magic surge through him, eager to get out, to heal and to empower, to bring life and to defy death.

He directed the magic down his arms, concentrated it into his hands and his palms. Truss pushed the Life Magic outward from his fingers and he poured it into Tress’ wound. The magic filled her, a soft golden glow wrapping itself around her broken, torn flesh. Slowly and steadily, the magic pushed its way into that bloody gap that a murderer’s knifeblade had left behind.

Once inside, the glow broke itself apart into a series of thin strands, tiny gossamer threads of light that connected themselves, one end and the other, to Tress’ flesh. Truss could feel each individual thread as though it were an extension of himself. He knew and directed the magic just as he knew and directed his own limbs and his own body.

The threads wove themselves through the slit flesh. They pulled tightly in on themselves, bringing together that which was separated on the knife’s edge. The magic surged, the threads merging with the flesh around them and accelerating the natural healing process of the body, and Tress’ wound began to knit itself closed.

It was delicate work, and it required Truss’ utmost concentration. His eyes remained closed tight and his focus remained centered solely on the magical threads. He no longer so much as noticed the speech or even the presence of the people around him. There was only the darkness of his own eyelids, the magic that he threaded through his sister, and the feel of her body against his palms.

The last thread pulled itself tight and merged into Tress’ flesh. With a gasp, Truss opened his eyes and slumped over her as a wave of exhaustion crashed down upon him.

“That was unpleasant,” Tress muttered. Her voice cracked. It was likely that she was dehydrated after losing so much blood and then experiencing magic-based healing.

“At least you’re alright,” said Truss. He turned his throbbing head to look at her.

Tress was as pale as death, but her eyes were open and focused. She moved slightly, and her face contorted into a grimace of pain as she did so. Truss pulled himself off of her, head swimming, and fought to maintain his balance as he made room for her to sit up.

“What happened?” he asked.

“That is exactly what I want to know!”

Both twins turned their attention to the speaker: a broad-shouldered man with wild and fiery red hair and scars running up and down his arms and neck and face. He wore a blue cat with a thin silver chain over his left shoulder, and he looked absolutely furious.

The coat and chain were important—they tickled at Truss’ mind, reminded him of something, though he could not pinpoint exactly what through the haze of exhaustion.

“Captain,” said Seahawk, addressing the red-haired man, “my companion was just attacked, nearly killed, and her brother just went through the taxing process of healing her. Please allow them a moment to recover.”

That was it. Captain. The coat and chain were the uniform of a ship captain in the Mariner’s Guild. Truss was glad that he was already thinking more clearly, that he could recall that information.

“No,” said Tress. She attempted to stand, wobbled a bit, and gave up. “No, we don’t have a moment.” Fixing her gaze on the red-haired man, she continued: “Captain, there is an assassin loose on your ship, and if we don’t catch her immediately then she will almost certainly kill again.”