POV: Auren Blackthorn
Smoke clings to my tongue as Kai and I haul Rena through the archway, boots slamming stone, shouts ricocheting down the corridor. Her weight in our arms feels wrong—too light, too limp—and the sight of her left arm makes my stomach flip. Black veining crawls from wrist to elbow like spilled ink hunting her shoulder. She tries to tuck it against her body as if she can hide it from us, from herself.
“Easy,” I say, voice shredded. “We’ve got you.”
“I can walk,” she breathes, lying, knees buckling even as she says it.
Kai’s grip tightens under her knees. “Don’t.” His tone leaves no room. “Save your strength.”
She angles her face toward his, lashes clumped with sweat, mouth cracking a wobbly smile. “Had worse,” she jokes, barely air.
Silence answers. I hear myself laugh once—harsh, humorless—because anything else is a scream. “Not funny, Rena.”
“Wasn’t trying to be.” Her gaze slides to me, searching. “Just… buying you both a breath.”
We hit the inner hall. Guards split, pressing backs to stone to clear our path. Eloise appears like a knife stepping out of a sheath, already moving, already reading the color of Rena’s skin, the crawl of that poison. She doesn’t waste words; she spins and leads, pace brutal, braid whipping her shoulders.
Kai’s jaw grinds. “Infirmary.”
“Not enough,” Eloise fires over her shoulder. “Luminous burn first, then bonesetting, then prayer.”
“Pray later,” I snap. “Tell us what to do now.”
“Keep her awake.” Eloise doesn’t look back. “Keep her heart steady. Keep your fear off her.”
Rena shifts against our grip, breath hitching. “Impossible order,” she whispers. “Have you met them?”
“Quiet,” I say, and my hand shakes where it cups her shoulder. I force it still. “Save your jokes for when I can laugh.”
We shoulder into a small chamber off the main hall—runes etched into the doorframe, clean table, clean sheets, clean bowls that don’t matter if we can’t stop a river already inside her. Kai sets Rena down as if glass finally learned how to bleed. I catch her shoulders as he eases her, then slide my palm under her neck, lifting, helping, pretending I can carry pain with my hands.
Her head lolls a fraction. She stares at the ceiling and whispers, “My arm feels far away.”
“Don’t look at it,” I tell her, even as my eyes won’t stop. The black runs have climbed her forearm to the soft inside of her elbow, staining veins, webbing under skin that should be lit gold. Cold sweats slick her temple. Her lips go gray at the edges.
Kai kneels at her side, both palms bracketing her face like he’s trying to hold her soul still. “I can’t lose you,” he says, voice raw enough to cut. “I will not.”
“Then don’t let me become a monster,” she answers, so softly I almost miss it. “If it takes me… don’t let me hurt anyone.”
“Stop.” The word tears out of me. “You’re not going anywhere.” I lift her ruined hand as carefully as I would lift a newborn’s head, bring it to my mouth, press my lips to knuckles that feel too cold. “I’ll cut off my own arm before I let this kill you. Do you hear me?”
Her lashes flutter. Her eyes blister with tears that won’t fall. “Don’t you dare,” she whispers, trying a smile again. “You need both to swing that sword.”
“Then I’ll learn to swing with my teeth,” I say, and the room shakes with how much I mean it.
Eloise crowds in, a small bowl in one hand, a clutch of chalk in the other. She scatters powder along Rena’s chest in swift sigils, lines arcing over collarbones and sternum, the shapes so old they smell like thunder. “Pull your light in,” she orders without looking up. “No shining. No sharing. Hoard it. Become a vault.”
Rena’s brow tightens. “I tried.”
“Try again,” Eloise says, tone like flint. “This time with me.”
Kai leans closer, his thumbs sweeping Rena’s cheekbones like he’s smoothing a crumpled page. “Breathe with my count,” he murmurs. “In—two—three—hold—two—out—two—three—four—”
“I’m trying,” Rena whispers, voice fraying. “It feels like it learned my name.”
“Don’t answer it,” I say. My free hand finds her shoulder, presses, anchors. “Answer me. Tell me something only you say.”
Her gaze drags to mine, unfocused. “You still put too much sugar in your tea,” she mumbles.
“Lies,” I mutter. “I put the right amount and you’re wrong.”
“Both of you,” Kai says without looking at me, “shut up.” His mouth softens. “Keep talking.”
I huff out something like a laugh and keep going, anything to keep her here. “Remember when you tripped me on the track and blamed the wind?”
Blue glints in her smile. “You were slow.”
“I was humoring you.”
“You were flirting.”
“Always.” My throat burns. “Always.”
Eloise’s chalk races, circles closing, symbols locking teeth. She dumps the last of the powder over Rena’s heart and claps once. The room shivers. A low hum builds—not sweet, not gentle—a pressure you feel behind eyes and knees. “Now,” Eloise says, palms hovering over Rena’s sternum. “Rena—pull.”
“I—” Rena gasps. Her back arches a fraction, then drops. Sweat beads along her hairline. “It’s cold.”
Kai’s eyes go knife-bright. “What do you need?”
“Heat,” Eloise answers. “Hands on her. Both of you. Give her what the poison stole.”
I’m already moving, sliding my palm from her shoulder to her upper chest, above the chalked sigils, careful not to smear. Kai moves, too, dropping one wide palm to her ribs, the other cupping her jaw again like he can order breath into her lungs with his thumb.
“Too much,” she whispers, flinching. “Everything… too loud.”
“Then listen to us,” I say. “Not it. Us.”
Eloise closes her eyes. Her voice turns low, rhythmic. “Light roots in light. Call it home. Call it small. Call it yours.”
Rena’s lips part. A sound slips out that isn’t a word—more a keening memory, the way a violin string cries when fingers press too hard and still, somehow, music comes. The black under her skin jerks, then slithers higher, knotting at the inside of her elbow. I feel a tremor run through her body, a shiver she can’t control.
“Rena,” I whisper, bending close until my forehead touches hers. “If you can’t pull it, let me take it.” The sentence leaves me before I can find the sense to stop it. “Give it to me.”
“No,” she breathes, so fierce it scares me. “I won’t lose you, too.”
Kai’s hand slides to the back of my neck, a grip that’s almost a warning, almost a thank-you. “Offer again and I break your jaw,” he says, voice steady and thin. “I’m trying to love you by not murdering you.”
“Try harder,” I mutter, throat tight.
Eloise flicks me a look that says shut up and be useful. I shut up. I pour heat through my palm—imagined heat, memory heat, every summer I ever survived—into Rena’s skin. It moves like a prayer and feels like nothing, and still she flinches less. Kai counts again. In. Hold. Out. Her breath stutters, then finds half the rhythm. Not enough. Better than nothing.
“Listen to me, Rena.” Eloise’s tone sharpens. “If this poison reaches your heart, it will flip a switch you cannot unflip. You’ll lose control—and become a weapon.”
Rena’s eyes flit to mine, then to Kai’s, panic lightning the dark. “Then don’t let it.”
“Trying,” I say, too fast.
“Winning,” Kai corrects, lying on purpose. “We are winning.”
A guard skids into the doorway, panting. Riven leans past him, blood on his cheek, urgency a halo. “The line holds,” he reports, eyes flicking to Rena, failing to hide how seeing her like this rattles him. “Aric’s spear bleeds, but he bleeds too. We bought you minutes.”
“Buy more,” Eloise says without turning. “We’re running out of woman.”
“On it,” Riven snaps, vanishing back into noise.
Rena swallows. Her face crumples; she fights the expression, then lets it break. “Auren,” she whispers, tilting toward my voice. “If I… if it gets bad—promise me—”
“Don’t.” My fingers dig into the sheet to keep from shaking her. “I’m not promising anything that ends with you gone.”
“Promise you won’t let me hurt him,” she says, meaning Kai, meaning everyone, meaning the world. “Promise you’ll stop me.”
Kai’s mouth hardens. “We stop the poison. Not you.”
“I can’t—” She tries to lift her ruined arm. It flops, useless. Pain flashes through her eyes—bright, hot, humiliating. “I hate this.”
“I know,” I say, hating it with her. “Hurt me instead.”
“You’re both idiots,” she murmurs, a thread of fondness even now. “My favorite idiots.”
Eloise presses two fingers to the chalk over Rena’s heart. “Again. Pull.”
Rena clenches her jaw. Muscles jump along her throat. Gold flares faintly under the chalk, then flickers out like a match in wind. Sweat slides into her ear. She shudders. “It won’t come,” she gasps. “It’s running from me.”
“Chase it,” Kai says, voice gentle, savage. “Bite it. Make it yours.”
“I’m trying,” she cries, frustrated tears finally breaking loose. “It’s so cold—”
“I’ve got you,” I whisper, rubbing slow circles over her shoulder with my thumb. “Stay with me. Stay with us.”
Movement catches my eye—black lines sliding again. I follow the crawl in horror as the poison threads creep past the inside of her elbow, up the bicep, sinking under the tender skin near the armpit, questing like roots groping for water that is a heart.
“Eloise,” I say, breath gone. “It’s moving.”
“I see it,” she snaps, chalking a new rune at Rena’s clavicle so fast the powder leaves a comet tail.
Rena arches, a sound ripping out of her that makes my bones want to break so they won’t have to bear hearing it. “It burns,” she moans. “It—oh gods—it burns—”
“Eyes on me,” Kai demands, dragging her gaze back to his, holding it like a lifeline. “Breathe. Steal from my lungs if you have to.”
She tries. She fails. She tries again.
Warmth leaves her fingers in my hand. Cold climbs my wrist like a drowning man. I squeeze tighter, as if pressure is a leash I can snap on death.
A shadow crawls across her upper chest beneath the skin—slow, deliberate, inevitable.
The poison spreads to her collarbone as Rena moans in pain.