Lysara’s hands flew up, fingers flinging outward. Threads—fine, black and shining—unspooled from her palms and sliced across the air. The strands braided themselves around the nearest figure and, impossibly, began to unravel it: shadow into string, string into dust. The thing came apart like a tapestry undone mid-stitch, a dry whisper of cloth and ash where flesh should have been. Two more followed, threads wrapping, tightening, then unspooling until nothing remained but motes on the wind.
She turned to Santiago, eyes wild with something fiercer than fear. “Santi!” she cried.
He lay twisted in the moss, one hand still clamped where the arrow was buried, the other clawing at his throat, panic making his eyes balloon. Blood ran between his fingers and slid down his chin.
Malachi’s voice cut through the chaos, flat and fast. “Pull it. Now.”
Lysara hesitated only for the beat it took to breathe, then kneltby Santiago’s side. She peeled his fingers away, palms pressing to the wound.
“Can you—if we pull it, can you mend it?” Malachi demanded.
Santiago blinked, shock painting his face white, and nodded once, hard. He swallowed, trying to force sound past the pain. Malachi gripped the arrow low, bracing Santiago’s shoulder with his other hand. With one hard snap he broke the shaft, the crack loud as bone. The jagged end rolled free into the moss. Then, quick and merciless, he drove the rest through, pulling the point clean out the back. Blood spattered hot across the ground, the iron tang clinging to the air, thick enough to taste.
My mouth watered.
Santiago gasped, blood pouring from his throat. He pressed both palms hard to the wound, a guttural sound tearing from him. But something was wrong—no light shimmered beneath his hands, no glow rose to seal the rent. Fear flickered across his face. One hand clung to his neck, the other lifted weakly, smearing a bloody handprint across Lysara’s cheek.
“You will not quit, Santiago,” Lysara hissed, tears cutting hot trails down her face.
Her fingers danced. Heat-threads stitched flesh as she murmured something old and fragile-soft. The wound cinched, trembling at the edges, then knit, ragged, raw, but whole. Santiago’s breath stuttered.
With a curse sharp enough to make the air hum, Malachi let me go, tore linen from his pack, and cinched a clean wrap tight over Lysara’s seal, binding what her magic had closed. His eyes cut to mine, fierce and unrelenting, then back to Santiago, his jaw set.
The clearing had shifted. The things Lysara had unraveled were ash, but the opposite treeline was alive with a darker intent.The trunks had gone too still, their bark shadowed as though watching.
I forced myself upright, knees trembling, and scanned the trees. “Gabriel?” I called.
No answer.
Then—a whisper that didn’t stir the leaves, curling in marrow instead.Gabriel.
I whipped around as the mist thinned.
He stood in the open.
“Gabriel!” My voice cracked as I lurched toward him.
He didn’t answer. He just kept walking, like each step belonged to someone else. His arm lifted, reaching.
“No—no, no, no,” Lysara choked, scrambling up beside me, her voice raw. “He’s walking toward it.”
His arm extended toward the place the arrow had flown from. Toward something none of us could see.
And she stepped through.
Veils of midnight clung to her, folding without wind. Skin like obsidian, lit from within by distant stars. Runes winked and vanished along fine chains at her brow. A key hung at her throat, swaying as if it had been waiting.
Her eyes?—
Not eyes. A depth like the night between stars, pinpricked with fixed light, as if constellations had been pressed into glass.
The air shivered. She didn’t speak. She didn’t have to. Gabriel knew her name.
“Eryndis.”
44
Malachi