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“There’s a physic’s treasure-trove in there,” Akilah whispers as she sets the chest down with a puff. “Whoishe exactly?”

“Someone,” Quin drawls, “who could buy your master and make him my personal aklo.”

I pull out frostbloom and thornwort. “Save your money.”

“Trust me,” Akilah adds, pushing herself up against my shoulder, “this one is shameless. He’ll only get you into trouble.”

The mention of trouble has Master Hrafn tensing. I find his gaze and hold it.

He hesitates and steps back with a short nod of permission.

Akilah moves out into the yard—no doubt to play sentinel—and I kneel before Bjorn. The wound at his side weeps, the torn flesh sluggish to respond even as the spell takes hold. Blue light swirls at my fingertips, faint and unstable, and I grit my teeth. This spell demands focus, but the tight knot of unease in my chest only grows. The luminists can’t know I’m here, but my magic must be making the whole cottage thrum and glow.

“Will you finish anytime today?” Quin’s voice cuts through the tension. He’s still relaxed, but he watches me with an unsettling intensity, as if he’s cataloguing every movement.

“If you’ve got capacity to insult, you can make yourself useful,” I snap, not looking up. “Stand guard and make sure no one interrupts.”

“Apparently you seemeas your own personal aklo,” he replies, his voice dry. But to my surprise, he straightens, and canes towards the door.

“Thank you,” I mutter.

As the spell stabilises, Bjorn’s pulse improves under my fingers. Relief floods through me, but it’s not over yet. There’s another spell to go. First, though, my body needs to absorb enough of the idleflower nectar I just drank.

Master Hrafn stays at Bjorn’s side, holding his hand, murmuring to him softly. I leave him a moment of privacy, returning to the front chamber where Quin is stationed at a crack in the shuttered window.

He stands like a statue carved by a master’s hand, the flicker of lantern light glancing off his sharp angles and smooth lines. His gaze is rooted on the outside, but his expression is distant, as though he’s deep in troubled thoughts.

There’s a stillness about him that makes me want to lean in and prod him, see if he can still move. I don’t try. I watch, and the silence stretching between us feels taut and prickly.

“Something you want to say?” he asks, turning his head sharply.

I yank my eyes away from him to the shutters and then around the room in a frantic search for Akilah.

“Do you refuse to speak, or are you afraid?”

I snap my gaze to his. Afraid! “Thank you for your escort here, and for the frostbloom.”

“Don’t think this means I like you,” Quin says, his lips twisting wryly.

I laugh. “If this should turn to friendship, I’d have a lot to explain.”

Sound approaching the cottage pulls our gazes apart. Quin checks out the window, his sharp eyes narrowing.

The first chime of a luminist’s handbell freezes me in place. My blood chills.

Quin’s gaze moves between me and Hrafn as he comes into the room, eyes wide with panic.

The bell chimes again, closer this time, its steady rhythm like a funeral march. Possibly an omen of my own to come. Quin moves to the door, his cane snicking the floor at measured intervals. He pauses at the threshold, his broad frame blocking the view outside.

“Awaken Bjorn,” he commands.

“Not yet,” I hiss. “I just delivered the first spell. I’m still—”

“You don’t have time. Either he wakes, or the luminists will drag us all to the capital for judgement.”

The air thickens with fear as I bend over Bjorn, channelling the spell’s final layer, my hands trembling. I pull at every bit of idleflower nectar in my system and press it into him, willing the magic to hold, to be enough.

“Come on,” I whisper to Bjorn—and to myself. “Come on.”