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“Em?” Taly said, her voice breathy and thin. Her face was streaked with dirt, wet with snow and tears. “I’m fine. It doesn’t hurt that much.” A lie. There was pain in her eyes. “Just take me home.”

“No, this cut is too deep.” Skye wiped at his eyes, smearing blood across his brow. “I… I don’t know if I should move you.”

“Em—”

“Just give me a minute,” he snapped, his panic getting the better of him.

“Wait.” Skye began to circle the scene. “I remember this.”

Hands clasped behind her back, Taly leaned over, grimacing as she inspected the wound on her younger self’s leg. “I’m surprised you forgot.”

“I have an idea.” Skye tore off his skates. “Stay here,” he said as he began to run barefoot through the snow, back to where they’d left their packs on the other side of the pond. His aether flared, like violet mist in the cold winter air.

He was there and back in seconds, digging through his pack as he skidded to his knees beside her.

“What are you doing?” Taly’s breath came in stuttered gasps, and she looked pale—far, far too pale beneath the dirt on her face.

Skye produced a silver dagger, and without bothering to explain, he sliced open his palm.

“How did you know to do this?” Taly asked.

Skye shrugged. “I just… I was panicking, and you were bleeding, and… I figured that if my aether healed me, it could also heal you.”

Crouching, he peered into his younger’s self’s face, noting the intense look of concentration.

Blood dripped from his hand into the gash on Taly’s leg, indistinguishable from her own human blood. And when the wound closed, he ran the dagger along his palm again, numb to the pain.

Again and again. More and more blood—aether. He needed to give her aether.

Taking a breath, he began to channel his magic, feeling for that little piece of himself that was slowly draining away, out of him and into her.

He felt it as it trickled between the dirt and pebbles embedded in her flesh.

As it bound to cell and sinew, nerve and bone.

He gave it a single command: heal.

Mend what was broken.

Make it new.

Skye remembered now—the strangeness of the thing he had cast that day.Not wrong, but… strange. So much of shadow magic was just pulling and pushing, moving aether from here to there. It didn’t matter if it was something as subtle as sharpening his eyesight or commonplace as forcing aether through a crystal—it was all the same in the end.

But that day… that day he had felt something inside him begin to spark. Spark and transform and change into something new.

The edges of the gash began to reach for one another, the flesh threading back together. The bleeding slowly ebbed.

“It’s working!” Skye exclaimed, grinning widely.

“Em, that hurts.”

“Just a little bit more.”

“Stop!” a new voice called. The tang of aether filled the air, and then Ivain was in front of them, a flurry of snow hanging in his wake. Those stark blue eyes were wide and filled with panic, and hegrabbed Skye’s wrists, wrenching him away. “What were you doing, boy?”

When Skye only stared, too stunned to speak, Ivain gave him a rough shake. “Tell me!” he demanded. “Where did you learn that spell?”

Skye’s mouth opened and closed. He looked to Taly, but her face was still scrunched up in pain. “She was hurt,” he said feebly. “She’sstillhurt.”