“This one will hurt,” Agni says, her words muffled past the thick woven material bound around her head, keeping her warm.
She’s crouched beside one of Líri’s half-stretched wings, sketching a preliminary path of runes around a gaping hole in the largest panel of membrane—doused in the glow emitting off Líri’s hide.
She flicks me a dubious look. “It’s a tender spot, and the tear is—”
“Large.”
She nods. “There’s a lot of flesh to be remade with a single bind of runes, but I really didn’t want to have to repeat the process more than once in this spot. So … we’re going to try.”
I reach behind me for the hard, wiry tuft of ghorsi grass, cracking some of the stems to release the sedative stench and resting it against my thigh—right before Líri’s left nostril. Running my hand up between her eyes, I give Agni a tight nod.
She dips the sharp tip of her etching stick in a jar, gaze nipping at Líri before she tucks her head and begins carving the runes.
Líri’s lids pry open to slits, her upper lip lifting from a row of piercing sabers as her eyes narrow on Agni. The long muscles in her lanky neck bulge, tendons tightening, as though she’s deciding whether or not she wants to whip her head around and snap.
Agni pauses, stare set on the snarling creature.
“Hais te na veil de nel, Líri.” I crack more fronds of ghorsi grass, slicking my palms in the milky residue and rubbing it across her snout. “Hais te na veil … catkin de nei.”
Líri’s muscles soften, and her upper lip stops wobbling, nostrils flaring. She blows a cold plume of breath on me, and I give the signal to continue.
“You know how to speak in the southern tongue?” Agni asks, resuming her tedious task.
Still rubbing my hand across Líri’s snout, I look up. “Not that I’m aware.”
She peers at me. “That’s what you spoke right now. My mah used to be an emissary. She had to be familiar with the language because some folk south of the wall choose only to speak in the southern tongue. Especially in some of the communities south of Arithia.”
Huh.
I hadn’t considered the words that were coming out of my mouth—simply spoke them.
“Did I speak it fluently?”
Agni nods, pausing to dip her etching stick in her tincture again, passing me a gentle smile. “Like you’ve been speaking it for a long while. Have you spent much time in The Shade? That you can remember?”
That you can remember.
My thoughts sink down that coiled staircase beneath Kaan’s sleepsuite, into a cavern pregnant with a luminous, icy tombstone—the weight of which I can suddenly feel beneath my ribs.
Weighing me down.
I let the silence ruminate between us, cracking more ghorsi grass upon my hands to smooth over Líri’s nose. Agni clears her throat and continues etching her runes, her own lids appearing to grow just as heavy as her patient’s.
Hardly surprising. She’s been working nonstop since she got here almost an entire aurora cycle ago, during which neither of us have slept nor barely even eaten. The entire time, the storm has raged, clapping the sky into luminous shards, rumbling like a caged beast. Like Rayne is overflowing with teeth-gnashing anger—a similar storm churning within the confines of my chest cavity.
But I’m mindful.
Uncharacteristically, painfully patient.
A thud-umping boom rattles the cave. Rattles the very air we breathe as Agni completes the misshapen loop. She lifts her hands, and we both still as the hole’s tattered circumference illuminates—tightening.
New flesh spawning.
“Please be enough,” Agni mutters, etching stick poised as the hole shrinks in nail-biting increments. “Please …”
It seals shut.
Agni’s face contorts, like something just stabbed her through the gut.
“Are you oka—”
Her eyes roll into the back of her head, and she slumps sideways, glass shattering with the heavy thump of her head hitting the ground.
Fuck.
I unravel myself and dart around Líri’s crimping wing to where Agni is bunched in a shuddering heap. “Agni? Shit.” I crouch beside her, heaving her up against my chest.
Her lids flutter open. “I fainted, didn’t I?”
“Yes,” I grind out, brushing my hand across the lump on her forehead. “You need sleep.”
“I need sleep,” she mimics, allowing me to help her all the way to her feet.