2

The needle went beneath her skin, and the house disappeared.

Isolde was back in the courtyard at Caleryon. Darian held a wooden sword and pretended defeat mattered less to him than the mud on his boots. She was thirteen. Aelyn laughed from the steps; she had shouted a warning that Isolde remembered too late, as the sunlight above the towers went out.

The boy’s hand vanished. Varek stood before her, his dagger buried beneath her ribs. Isolde tried to pull away and found Darian’s fingers closed around her wrist. The edge of the courtyard gave way toward the river.

“Breathe,” a rough voice said.

Isolde opened her eyes. She saw dark beams and a lamp hanging from a hook. She smelled alcohol, bitter root, and hot iron. The pain came all at once, with a clarity that tore the breath from her.

Kaoran worked on her left. He had washed the blood from his face and taken off his cloak, but dried mud still coated him to the knees. He held the needle with short forceps. The wound lay open beneath his hands.

“You said you were going to close it.”

“I’m keeping my word.”

“You’ve taken a lifetime.”

“A brief part of mine. Yours seems longer from this side of the table.”

Isolde tried to sit up. A broad strap crossed her hips. Another held her right shoulder in place. Anger caught before the fire did.

“Let me go.”

Kaoran set the needle on a clean cloth.

Kaoran undid both buckles. Isolde pushed the shoulder strap away with her right forearm; the other stayed beneath her hip, and she had to ask him to pull it out by the end. She waited until she could see both on the floor.

“You were moving in your sleep,” he said. “The needle was still inside. I should have explained when you woke.”

Isolde looked at the wider strap. The marks on her wrist were beginning to yellow. She could still feel the fingers that had kept her from reaching solid ground.

“If I move again, you stop.”

“I’ll stop the needle. I’ll need to keep pressure on the wound if you bleed.”

She searched for somewhere to fix her gaze and chose the crack in the lamp.

“How many more?”

“Four. The lower edge may need another.”

“Tell me before the last one.”

The needle returned.

Isolde fixed her eyes on the lamp. A crack in its glass split the light in two. She counted Kaoran’s movements. In. Press. Pull. Knot. Each stitch dragged fire through her ribs. At the fourth, the lower edge released a dark line.

Kaoran readied another length of thread.

“You told me four,” Isolde murmured.

Kaoran showed her the new thread without bringing it closer yet.

“The edge is still bleeding. This will be the fifth.”

She counted the branches of the crack in the glass. The room took a while to settle.

“Now,” she said.

The last knot lay near her back. Kaoran cleaned the wound and spread a cold paste around its edges. Then he covered her side with a bandage that wrapped twice beneath her breasts.

“There’s a fragment beside the rib,” he said. “It may be from the knife or the platform. I couldn’t get it out without opening you up farther.”

“Take it out.”

“When the swelling goes down, if your body hasn’t pushed it out.”

“Now.”

“You’d lose more blood now.”

Isolde turned her head. On a chair less than an arm’s length away, Kaoran had left the dark-handled knife. Its sheath lay beside it. He had also placed the broken pendant on the table, clean and wrapped in a square of cloth.

The bedroom door stood open.

A narrow staircase led down to a room with a fireplace. Beyond it, the door to the house stood ajar, letting in a strip of light.

Kaoran followed her gaze.

“You can leave when you can stay on your feet.”

“I can.”

“Then you won’t have to argue with me.”

Isolde propped herself on her right elbow. The room spun. Her stomach clenched, and sweat broke out on her forehead. Kaoran brought a basin closer but kept from touching her.

She vomited water and bile.

When she finished, the pillow seemed to float beneath her head.

Kaoran held the basin until the retching stopped. Isolde reached for the cloth, and he placed it in her fingers.

“I want to be alone now,” she said.

He looked at the door before gathering his instruments.

“I’ll be downstairs. I can hear the bed from the hearth if you try to get up.”

Kaoran gathered the stained cloths. Before going down, he filled a bowl with water and left it beside the knife.

“Drink a little at a time. Call if the shaking gets worse.”

“What if I don’t call?”

“I’ll come up anyway.”

The stairs creaked beneath his feet. Isolde heard him light the hearth, move a bench, and open a cupboard. Ordinary sounds. The house held a table, dry firewood, a bed, and a man tending to small tasks while the kingdom believed her beneath the river.

She looked for the pendant’s cord. Kaoran had put the piece she had worn around her neck inside the cloth, along with another fragment he had found among the roots.

Isolde brought the two edges together: the hawk’s wing became whole beneath her thumb.

When she eased the pressure, it came apart again.

Darian had given it to her when she was seventeen, after an argument that ended with both of them sitting on the library floor.

Isolde remembered the book laid across her knees and the poor excuse he had offered for staying.

The familiarity of that gesture made her wait for a sound on the other side of the bed.

The stairs stayed empty.

As an adult, she had often woken beside him. She knew the way he drew breath before speaking, the warmth of the hand that sought hers without his opening his eyes. Her body expected that closeness and tensed at the same time. Isolde laid the hawk on the cloth because holding it had begun to hurt.

The table tilted. Darian appeared beside the wall at Cendral with blood in his mouth. He held out his hand, demanding the dagger. Isolde tried to draw her wrist to her chest.

When the staircase came back into view, she grabbed the knife.

The house returned. The blade pointed toward the stairs. Her right arm shook so badly that the tip traced circles.

Kaoran appeared at the bottom. He looked at the weapon and set the bunch of herbs he carried on the kitchen table.

“The door is still open,” he said.

“Someone was here.”

“I checked the perimeter.”

“He was here.”

Kaoran climbed two steps. He stopped before the third.

“Darian?”

The name made Isolde tighten her grip.

“Don’t say it again.”

“All right.”

“Who told you about him?”

“The men in the ravine kept repeating his decree. You said his name when we changed the bandage.”

Isolde tried to piece together the journey from the mountain. She found water, roots, a mare’s back, and a voice asking for one thing at a time. The images had no edges. They might have happened, or they might belong to another night.

“How long has it been?”

“We arrived after noon. Nightfall is an hour away.”

“Where are we?”

“In my house.”

“I know that.”

“West of Nydel. This slope is in the foothills of the Obsidian Range. The main road is half a day’s walk for someone in good health.”

“Are there guards?”

“Two posts between us and Cendral. One on the mine road and another beside the bridge at Nydel. I closed the aqueduct passage.”

Isolde remembered the burning rope above the drop. She also remembered that Kaoran had asked her to keep within a limit and she had respected it.

She lowered the knife.

“Why are you helping me?”

“Because I found you alive.”

“That doesn’t answer it.”

“It’s the answer I have today.”

Kaoran went back downstairs. Soon the smell of boiling herbs filled the room. Isolde drank two sips of water. The third came back into her mouth tasting sour. She breathed until she could swallow it.

Night brought the cold.

Kaoran lit a brazier beside the bed and left the window a finger’s width open. The fever rose despite the air. The sheets clung to her skin. The wound throbbed in time with her heart, and each beat seemed to drive the fragment deeper.

“I need you to lower the fire,” Kaoran said.

Only then did Isolde see the red glow between her fingers.

Flame followed the seam of the blanket. The fabric had singed, though it wasn’t burning yet. Kaoran held an iron rod over the brazier. He had drawn a circle of ash around the bed.

“I’m not doing it.”

“Your core is.”

“Put it out yourself.”

“I can cut off the air in the room. The fever would worsen, and you’d breathe smoke. I want you to close it off from inside.”

Isolde searched for the place where she used to feel the fire. For years it had been a pressure beneath her breastbone, close and obedient. Now the heat spread through her wounded side, her shoulders, her tongue. Each part of her body seemed to hold a separate ember.

“I can’t find it.”

“Find the breath.”

“I know how to breathe.”

“Right now, you’re doing it as though you were running away.”

Kaoran sat on the floor outside the circle of ash. He rested both hands on his knees.

“Breathe in while I count to three. Hold it for one. Let it out for five.”

Isolde obeyed because the blanket was starting to smoke.

The first attempt ended in a cough. The second drove the bandage into her ribs. On the third, she managed to empty her lungs over the full five counts. The flame on her fingers grew shorter.

“Again,” Kaoran said.

They repeated it until the glow had shrunk to a line beneath her nails.

“What did you do?” she asked.

“Count.”

“To my fire.”

“Nothing. The stones in this house drain some of it into the ground. The rest belongs to you.”

Isolde looked at the wall. Reddish veins ran between the dark blocks, like roots arrested in place. She recognized confluence rock, though she had never seen it used in a house.

“Did you build here because of that?”

“The house was here when I came. I added the circle and learned where it cracks.”

“How many people have you locked in here?”

Kaoran looked up.

“No one.”

“You have straps ready.”

“I was a soldier. I’ve also stitched up miners, hunters, and three boys who thought it a good idea to drink before fighting a wild boar. The straps keep a needle from going through an organ.”