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It had to be her. Taly.

He’d felt this before—this eerie, weightless moment where the world hesitated, then snapped back into focus. She’d rewound them.

Ramming his sword in deep, he twisted the blade, pulling the shade close enough to rip the crystal from its chest.

Something had happened. He knew it.

In his bones—through the bond—he couldfeelit.

Not fury.

Loss.

A towering skeleton in rusted iron mail lurched forward, reaching for him. Skye shuffled back. Its jaws opened in a scream, but he drove his sword down into its bony maw to the softly pulsing shadow crystal in its chest.

Air and fire blasted outward. The crystal sparked as it shattered. The reverberation sent a jolt up his arm and into his shoulder.

Noise swallowed everything. Boots pounded mud, and blades scraped armor. The shades pushed from the forest, cutting into the line of mages. Skye fought through it, kept swinging, slicing—

“Wait!” The word was a croak scraped from rotting vocal cords, barely coherent.

Skye’s blade flashed like quicksilver. Heads kept rolling.

“I said wa—”

Swift as the wind, Skye plunged his sword into the next monster’s neck.

“Will youplease—”

Then the next.

Rolling, he picked up a shield, ripping it away from the corpse it was still strapped to. He twisted back up to his feet—

“Wait!” This time, the shade held up its hands. Skye’s sword halted. “I need to speak with you,” it croaked, its mouth working to form the words around a bloated tongue. “It’s about—”

Plumes of ice and fire rocketed from behind him, throwing up dirt and debris into the air and leaving nothing but a smoldering hole where the shade had been.

“It’s about the time mage.”

Skye spun, lifting his shield. “Bill, I presume?”

Another shade shuffled out of the midst of battle. “That name really is catching on, isn’t it?”

Skye plunged his sword into the shade’s belly.

“It occurred to me that we’ve never really spoken privately.”

With a shout and a flare of aether, Skye whirled, but Aneirin had possessed a shadow mage this time. Geoff was fair-haired and skinny, too young to be on the frontline.

Skye lifted his sword, but he saw the truth in Aneirin’s eyes. The knowledge that he would never be able to strike.

“I need some advice,” Aneirin said. “Man-to-man, so to speak.” He ran a hand over his borrowed body. “It’s about your mate.”

Skye growled, “If you’ve hurt her—”

Aneirin barked a laugh. “Me? Hurther? If anything,I’mthe one that needs protection. And on that note, I was justwondering what, hypothetically, you might suggest to someone who, maybe, wanted to, uh, I don’t know… calm her down?”

Skye blinked. “What?”