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She slumps, falling to the ground, limbs splayed.

“Yennes!” Dawsyn calls, squinting in the dark. In the faint glow of the torch light, Dawsyn can see her closed eyes, her parted lips.

“Igniss!” Dawsyn gasps desperately, using the conjured flame in her hand to better see. She bends over the woman, pressing her hand to Yennes’ chest, and then to her neck, feeling along her jawline for the fading pulse beneath. “Shit.”

Dawsyn’s light passes over one of Yennes’ hands, and it reflects back to her coated in brilliant, dripping blood. It flows freely from beneath the cuff of her cloak and collects in her palm.

Dawsyn rips back the sleeve. There. Two long gashes, cut precisely down the arm. Even in this dim light, Dawsyn knows they are deep. Deliberate.

“Baltisse!” Dawsyn shouts in a moment of sheer panic.Help,her mind screams.Get help.But Baltisse is long gone from here. The only mage power left in this Chasm resides in herself.

She presses her palms to the wounds and feels the blood seeping over the webbing of her fingers. She finds the spark in her mind and urges its expansion. “Lussia,”she tries, remembering the way Baltisse had used the spell to bind things back together. She imagines the skin stitching itself into clean lines, but looks to find the skin is barely rejoining, fighting against the tide of the blood. “Ishveet!”Dawsyn says, begging the wounds repair, to heal. “Ishveet… Lussia!” She says the words over and over, but it seems, for long moments, that they do nothing, that the wounds are too deep, the blood too fast. “Lussia!”Dawsyn cries, and finally, slowly the bleeding subsides. The gashes start to close, giving in to the will of mage light shining from Dawsyn’s palms.

She refuses to close her eyes as she works, despite the way the light stings them. She lets the tears course down her cheeks and her eyelids tremble, battling to remain open. Even as her magic wanes, she keeps her hands pressed to the wounds, until two, angry pink scars are all that remain of them, trapping life source beneath.

But the ground is wet with blood. So much of it. Dawsyn moves her stained fingers to Yennes’ neck to find the weakest of pulses still thudding intermittently, a slow prelude to its final beat.

“Shit,” Dawsyn heaves again. She looks at the woman’s face, scared, even in sleep.

Anyone that dies here in this hole, dies by your hand, Sabar,comes Nevrak’s voice once more, warning her from the darkest recesses of herself. It seems particularly true of Yennes.

If death has found her here, then Dawsyn will push it back. Yerdos has collected enough of their number, blanketed her burrow with enough of their remains.

Yennes will not be hers as well.

Dawsyn shouts into the air, something inhuman and unintelligible but most certainly a call to battle. She presses both hands to Yennes’ chest, feels the remnants of light coil tightly inside her, and shouts, “ISHVEET!”

She hears her name called, feels hands on her shoulders. But her focus remains on Yennes, whose chest rises from its middle, lifted by some invisible force.

The stretched magic reaches its limit and snaps.

The recoil throws Dawsyn back and she feels the impact push the breath from her lungs as she slams into something solid.

And everything around her disappears, but for Baltisse, who smirks at her quietly over the rim of a full glass, perfectly at home in the shadows.

CHAPTERNINETEEN

“Dawsyn!”

Hands pull aside her coat. They press firmly against her chest.

“Dawsyn.Wake up!”

“What happened to her?”

“Dawsyn!”

She blinks, the outline of a familiar face hovers above her. Rough hands hold her waist.

“Yennes?” Dawsyn asks Ryon. But it is not Ryon who answers.

“She’s fine,” Hector says from somewhere over Ryon’s shoulder.

Ryon’s answering growl, however, contradicts the wordfine. “What the fuck were you doing, Dawsyn?” he says, shaking her slightly.

Dawsyn sits. Pushes his hands away. She feels unsteady. Bleary. “Saving her.”

“Bleeding yourself dry,” Ryon corrects. “As surely as Yennes was.”