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Aurienne, facing Mordaunt, reached for the back of his neck and clasped him in a simple embrace. Her palm found his nape—warm skin notched with scar tissue, and ridged, now, with goose bumps. She felt the breath of wings against her cheek and of Mordaunt against her lips.

A hundred thousand eyes whirled above, below, through, around, within, without.

Aurienne awoke her tacn, and there, at the very rim of the world, in the light of another place, between the winged and the earthbound, between sea and sky, between dark and brightness beaming, she pushed her seith into Mordaunt.

He shuddered. The space between heaven and earth contracted; the sky became something they could touch. Her seith surged; the birds surged; the very air surged. The gannets in their infinities swept upwards, far beyond the lighthouse, far into the violet heavens.

The wind slipped into a murmur, said something too quiet to hear.

The window closed.

Aurienne pulled her hand from Mordaunt’s neck. They stood and stared at each other, breathless, suspended, astonished.

Mordaunt’s collar was crooked; his hair was disastrous. Aurienne felt herself in a similar state, and drained, too—swept up by the moment, she had poured her seith into him in quantities unwise.

Aurienne held her tacn to Mordaunt’s clavicle. Low seith or not, she had to know whether it had worked. She cast a live diagnostic.

His eyes were riveted to her. He still clasped her left hand. There was desperation in his intensity; his pulse raced; his lips formed an unvoicedplease.

The only sound now was the quiet breathing of the sea, as though some great creature had returned to slumber.

Aurienne’s diagnostic image glowed feeble white in the intermittent beam of the lighthouse. Her hands began to chap with her Cost; every second of the display was a drain on her already low seith.

Nothing in Mordaunt’s seith system had changed.

Aurienne shook her head.

“I really thought,” Aurienne began, at the same time as Mordaunt said, “But that felt—”

But no. They had thought and felt wrong.

“Fuck,” said Mordaunt.

Aurienne said nothing. Disappointment and relief roiled within her. Disappointment because she had felt so close—so close to an impossibility. Relief that she hadn’t managed, because she had always known that this was going to end in failure, and this confirmed that she was right, and—and beyond anything else, a Fyren didn’t deserve to be healed. And then the disappointment again, because she had wanted to succeed. And then the relief, because she hadn’t.

They were still holding hands.

The emotional roil was joined by the rise of nausea. That live diagnostic had pulled too much from Aurienne’s reserves. Black crept into her vision. Her hands stung; her knuckles split; her nails grew bloody.

“Fairhrim?” came Mordaunt’s voice.

“I need to sit down,” said Aurienne.

She grasped at the glass door.

Mordaunt opened it for her. His hand released hers and moved to her elbow. She pulled away; he kept his hold.

“I don’t need you to—” began Aurienne, and then one of her legs buckled.

Mordaunt helped her through the door. He didn’t sayDon’t be stupid, but she saw it in the annoyed tightening of his jaw.

Aurienne grasped the doorjamb as she passed it. No tunnel vision, no shakes—she would be fine. She had simply overdone it a bit.

“Seith drain?” asked Mordaunt.

“Yes.”

There was a soft intake of breath. He had noticed her hands. “Your Cost?”