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“No!” I roared.

Swallowing my panic, I carried her underneath the rock ledge I’d seen near the top of the boulder cluster. If I hadn’t felt her chest faintly rising and falling, I would have thought she was already lost to this world.

I dropped to my knees to set her down and clasped her hand in mine, feeling for the sparks in my blood like my grandmother once taught me.You have healing magic in your blood, mychild, she’d told me when I was old enough to understand.It is a rare gift to be able to transfer your magic to another.

When I pulled my hand back, the cut on Raven’s skin had faded, but she didn’t open her eyes.

“Raven,” I pleaded, gently wiping the rain from her face. “Wake up.”

My healing magic clearly couldn’t save her from this. I glanced up at Kah, feeling desperate.

“The poison must still be in her blood.” He nudged her softly with his nose. “Let’s get her warm. The scratch wasn’t deep. She might be able to come through this.”

Together, Kah and I used the light of the moonspar to search for materials to build a fire, but there was nothing except bramble, stretching out like spiny black cobwebs into the darkness. Cutting or burning the bramble wasn’t an option—that would only make this worse.

When I returned to Raven, she was shivering, still unconscious. Without another way to keep her warm, I had to improvise. I removed both our wet cloaks and leather armor, laying them out to dry as best I could under the rock ledge. In seconds, I was shivering from the cold, too, but I didn’t care. I climbed over Raven and lay down behind her, pulling her close to my chest. I piled both the blankets on top of us, and Kah curled up at our feet to block the cold wind.

“Raven,” I whispered into her ear, breathing in the scent of her skin. She smelled like soft rain and the ocean air at dawn. “Come back to me.”

Her blue-tinted lips parted like she was going to respond, but no words came.

For a moment, I couldn’t breathe. If she died, it suddenly felt like I would cease to exist without her.

I loved Lila, but …

Skies, I couldn’t think about that right now. There had to be another explanation for why I wanted to kiss the soft skin on Raven’s neck, letting my lips travel to her jaw, to her lips, to anywhere I could breathe life back into her.

Pushing all thoughts away, I buried my face into Raven’s hair, pressing my body up against hers until her shivering eased and the gooseflesh disappeared from her arms. When her breathing grew shallow, I held my palm against her ribs, feeling for her heartbeat. The soft rhythm was the only thing that kept me sane, kept me from being consumed by the dark voice deep inside that whispered:You did this.

31

Raven

My eyelids fluttered open.

The world had turned to black. There was no sun. No moon. No stars. No sound.

Is this the shadowlands?

I blinked.

Something wasn’t right. I didn’t feel warm or cold. Pained or relaxed. I was numb. All I could feel was my heart beating somewhere in the darkness, the slow pulses each a mile apart.

Thump. Thump. Thump.

Then I heard a sound. Breathing. Close to my ear.

Jeddak. He was with me. His slow and steady breathing tethering me to this life, this body.

I tried to turn toward him, but I was too tired to move. The blackness was disorienting. The exhaustion debilitating. Time didn’t move forward or turn back; it trickled to a halt like a frozen stream in the dead of winter.

I closed my eyes again, falling deeper into the dark.

When I awoke again,I saw a faint glow in the distance.

Slowly, the light moved closer, its edges tracing the outline of a figure in the darkness. I watched the person approach with curious detachment as if it were a shadow, harmless and ephemeral.

The figure knelt in front of me.