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“Was that very hard to say?”

“Yes.”

We look at one another, the long day and longer night replaying between us. He raises a hand, acknowledging the scarred aklo at the helm of the approaching boat.

“Goodbye,” Quin says to me.

“Until next time, you mean.”

He raises a brow.

“I’ve surrendered to it.” I shuffle back to give him more space. “Something about us is fated.”

“You must’ve done something exceptionally good in your previous life.”

“Or exceptionally bad.”

Quin laughs, a rare, booming sound that lingers in the air. With a final, assessing look, he kicks off, his figure cutting through the dawn light as he soars into the sky.

The pier is teeming as we approach Frederica’s estate. Akilah and I say a harried goodbye to Azula and Coralus and scramble up the steep incline, using roots for leverage. On deflating breaths, we wend through throngs of dazed and bloodied people toward the house.

Akilah drags me inside. “You can’t help anyone more unless you rest first. Also... there’s a luminist here—headed that way.”

Someone who might expose me to my father, Akilah doesn’t say.

Too tired to think, I change into dry clothes and collapse onto the bed. I wake soon after to Akilah’s urgent cries. “You’re needed. Now.”

I stumble downstairs, my herbal bag slung over my shoulder. I find the courtyard abuzz with panic. A man cradles a bloodied child.

Two vitalians are racing in from the field tents—one familiar, a little rough around the edges given the circumstances but still elegantly dressed. Florentius Chiron. He summons a sparkling spell to his fingertips, but the father shields his girl. “She’s allergic,” he yells.

The vitalians rock on their heels. The older man next to Florentius grimaces. “Without magic, her chances aren’t good.”

I stare at those small limbs. The same size as my littlest niece. Magic is better—faster, more likely to succeed. Clean, accurate, instant.

But if it can’t be used?

Like with Akilah in the cells...

I pull to the front of the gathering crowd and kneel beside the father and his child. “Let me see.”

An outraged roar comes from the crowd and out steps my local luminist, ringing his stupid bell. “You’ll kill her.”

I clench my jaw and reach out to take the poor girl’s pulse. The father flinches.

“Please,” I murmur. “I only want to help her.”

“You’re par-linea!” the luminist cries.

The older man and Florentius turn. “Is that true?”

I wish to deny it.

Despite the drooping flutters in my chest, I raise my chin.

Their lips press together in wary apprehension.

Frederica raises her voice, parting the crowd with her presence. “If he can heal, he’s qualified.”