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Mal dropped bonelessly, and terror lit through her, but something burst out of the soil before he could hit it, breaking his fall.

Heart in her mouth, she scrambled back to earth, her legs nearly folding under her, heedless of the solshant.

“Mal!” She stumbled over to him, collapsing to her knees, her body clumsy with exhaustion.

He was alive. Unconscious but breathing, lying on top of a young sapling peach.

Its main stem had snapped under the weight of impact.

“Thank you,” she whispered to it, touching one of its floppy new-green leaves. She had absolutely no clue what had happened there, but she was grateful for it nonetheless. Maybe Skymallow had managed to reach this far to help?

Where was the solshant? Had she frightened it off? Please let it be frightened off. Hastily, she scanned the canopy, eyes struggling to focus. Tiredness dragged her down, but the solshant’s snarl jerked her back to attention. There! Its golden carapace glimmered in the shadows, approaching.

“Now would be a very helpful time for you to wake up,” she told Mal, tugging at him. He remained unresponsive, even when she put her hands under his armpits and attempted to drag him away from the creature.

It was a futile effort. The solshant gave a contemptuous click of its beak, and the deep conviction that everything was pointless and she ought to stop moving right now came over her so strongly that it was hard not to lie down next to Mal and await the inevitable.

“You’re not going to snare me again,” she told it, gritting her teeth. “You’re much less seductive than you think.”

Still, she did stop trying to haul Mal away because that was clearly not going to work. Instead, she retrieved the carving knife and brandished it at the creature. The aftereffects of her chaotic magic were catching up with her, and it was an effort to keep her arm raised.

The solshant was, outrageously, not intimidated by her wobbling blade. The creature rubbed serrated forelegs together as it drew closer, making a terrible juddering sound as it stalked towards them with terrifying slowness, giving her plenty of time to run.

“You don’t belong here,” she told it, trying to hold the knife steady. “Get out or I’ll stab you.” False bravado was all she had left, her mind running in panicked circles, desperately searching for escape.

The solshant’s carapace glittered. It hadn’t liked what she’d done to its webs.

Could she use the same trick again? But there wasn’t any energy left in her; whatever she’d done before had sucked her dry.

She couldn’t leave Mal; they were both going to die, and she still couldn’t leave him.

It was all so stupidly pointless, and she was furious with Mal, the solshant, and herself, in that order.

The creature leapt, and she threw up her hands, trying to fend it off while desperately scrabbling for the power she didn’t understand.

It was like trying to drink from an empty glass.

Her fingers pressed against the cold metal of the solshant and shoved, her magic fizzling weakly in reaction.

There was simply no more magic left in her.

Just as Mal had run through his own magic after feeding it all into the wards.

The wards!

He’d pulled magic from her, before—could she do the same in reverse?

The bond went both ways, after all. There was no time for second-guessing.

She put one hand on Mal’s shoulder and threw her mind back to how it had felt, back when they’d done the ritual with the comb, just as the thing’s sharp beak descended.

The bond expanded, until it wasn’t Mal’s heartbeat beating in time with hers but something much larger, much older, much stranger.

It was Skymallow, every beam and board of the house, the endless corridors carved from painstaking years of solitude and love.

The roots of the house went deep, the earthy flavour of the gardens strong on the back of her tongue.

A torrent of golden fire burst from the dry well inside her, bringing ghostly images of trees growing at rapid speed. The creature shrieked. Everything went abruptly dark.

Right. Either that was good news, or she was dead.

Probably not dead. Dead wouldn’t ache this much. She swayed and fell into a graceless heap next to Mal. Maybe she would just stay here for a while.

She lay there, panting, her eyes slowly adjusting to the extreme change in light levels.

Her mind took even longer to process what she was seeing once the fire-blindness wore off.

There had been a horrible creature of metal, and now there was…

a horrible dead creature of metal, twisted between gnarled and warped spikes of wood.

She’d done that. She was glad that she had done that, because the alternative was that the solshant would still be alive and intent on eating Mal and her both. It was still awful.

And something inside her had altered fundamentally, in some way she was far too tired to pinpoint. She could still feel Skymallow’s deep roots as a strange extension of her own body.

Something warm and soft rubbed against her arm. She jerked, but it was only Zingiber.

Better get up, the cat said. All his fur was bristling. Bad dead thing nearby.

“Yes,” she agreed shakily, sitting up.

Zingiber trotted over to Mal and licked his face. Wake up , he told Mal, sounding as worried as the cat ever did.

“Mal,” Gisele murmured, shaking him. “Mal, wake up.”

He groaned but remained entirely unhelpful.

Was he injured? The gloom beneath the trees was still too thick to see colour properly, so she couldn’t be sure he wasn’t bleeding.

There were fine scorch marks at his wrists, and her mind was so sluggish that it took her a moment to work out that she must have made them when she’d destroyed the golden web holding him.

“Apfela,” she called through the trees. “The wards are gone, I think. Please come and help me.”

There was no response, and she wondered tiredly how bad it would be to simply lie down next to Mal again and sleep.

Except that would also mean lying down next to the gruesome corpse of the solshant, and the shuddering revulsion of that thought got her back on her feet.

She put her hands under Mal’s shoulders, attempting to pull him up with her.

He gave a long groan, but his eyes finally opened. The usual alchemical flame of his eyes was barely embers, and he stared blankly at her face. Slow recognition dawned.

“Gisele,” he croaked.

“Mal! We need to get back to the house. Can you walk?” But he’d already lapsed back into unconsciousness.

“What a tiresome man he is,” Apfela said next to her.

Gisele jerked in surprise. She hadn’t seen or heard the woman approach.

Apfela prodded the solshant’s corpse with one boot. Its hard shell gave way with the fragility of rusted metal, freeing the stained leaves of a young sapling growing through its body. She grunted. “You’ll need to cleanse the earth here.”

“Do you know what’s wrong with Mal?”

“Extreme magical drain, most likely,” Apfela said. She scowled down at him. “You take one arm and I’ll take the other.”

“Thank you,” Gisele said before she remembered not to. Or maybe thanks were appropriate in this scenario? Bother fairy culture right now. “I suppose I’ll owe you a favour for this.”

A peculiar expression crossed Apfela’s face. “No,” she said gently. “You’ve done enough.”

Together they hauled Mal back to the house, Zingiber following. He slipped in and out of unconsciousness but remained, largely, a dead weight. Thank the Lady that Apfela was much stronger than she looked, so much stronger in fact that Gisele suspected her own ‘help’ was mostly decorative.

They got him into the kitchen and propped up in a chair. Zingiber climbed into his lap and curled up there, a grim ball of still-bristling fur.

“Milkvetch is what you want, for magical syphoning. Get a tea kettle started while I fetch it.” Apfela disappeared back outside while Gisele tiredly lit the stove.

Skymallow was far less responsive than usual, though she could feel the house’s desire to help, a knot of tired anxiety at the back of her mind.

“It’s all right; we’re all tired. You did enough,” she told the house, pressing one hand flat against the bench.

Apfela returned with the milkvetch roots, using them to make tea. Getting the tea into Mal was a process of much prodding and holding his head, but after the first few sips, he surfaced to consciousness again.

“Gisele?” His pupils were pinpricks, his whole demeanour confused fear.

“Drink this; it’ll help.” She pressed the cup to his lips.

His eyes fixed on her face, painfully trusting without understanding, and he swallowed the rest of it down.

Apfela was shaking her head, looking between them with disgust. “Like that, is it?”

“Like what?” Gisele narrowed her eyes.

Apfela held up her hands in surrender. “Never mind.”

The milkvetch did seem to be helping. Mal remained disoriented, but he was at least staying conscious.

“Can you walk? We need to get you back to your room,” Gisele explained. “Zingiber, you need to get off for a moment.”

The cat’s eyes narrowed, but he grudgingly removed himself from Mal’s lap.

“Mal?” Gisele prompted.

He stared at her blankly for a few long moments and then slowly nodded. His first attempt at standing would have sent him sprawling on the kitchen floor, but she and Apfela caught him.

“Idiot man,” Apfela said ruefully, but there was no bite to it.

It was marginally easier with Mal conscious, but it was still a slow, shuffling progress to get him to his room.

The ominous red feylights had returned to their usual yellow, but there were much fewer of them than usual, only every third one or so flaring to life sluggishly, as if Skymallow were struggling to summon the energy.

Was it only that which made the house seem so much darker than usual, lacking its usual glitter of gold?

He collapsed onto his bed and feebly got his head on a pillow.

Zingiber leapt up beside him and settled down with a strong air of woe betide anyone who tried to move him again.

Gisele pulled the blanket over Mal and turned to leave, but his hand shot out and grabbed her wrist. His eyes remained wide and frightened, but some of their usual intensity had returned.

“Gisele,” he said again, like a prayer. “Don’t leave. Please?”

Apfela watched from the door, one eyebrow raised.

Gisele ignored her silent question and its corresponding judgement. “You can leave us,” she told her.

Apfela rolled her eyes but thankfully didn’t say anything more as she closed the door.

Gisele blew out a long sigh. Mal didn’t react to Apfela’s exit at all, just continued to watch her with all the woebegone plea of a lost kitten in his expression, and she could no more have denied him than kicked said kitten.

“I’ll stay,” she told him.