“Mara!”

“Mama?”

“Mara! Nick!”

“Mama, wake up.” A small, blunt finger poked her hard in the cheek and she startled awake, rapping her forehead against something hard and rough.

“Gah!” she gasped, clapping a hand to her forehead.

“Nicky! Mara!”

She stilled, trying to pull her surroundings into a semblance of sense. Rolling her head to the left, she saw her pack. Her knife. A patchwork of wood and moss that curved overhead and ended where her pack began, their joining a crease of dim light. Also, was she still wearing her boots?

Between one breath and the next, the previous day’s memories came back, and it was only then that she finally realized someone was calling her, from the far side of her pack. Someone familiar.

“Mara?” Urgency teetered on the edge of outright panic.

“Eli?” she called back, pushing her pack aside.

“Mara!”

All she could see was his legs as he swiveled around to face her. Then he dropped into a crouch and his face was six strides from hers, eyes wide and frantic. They met hers for several startled heartbeats, and then his head fell forward as if his spine had deflated. “Thank the gods,” he breathed, running a hand down his face.

Nick chose that moment to emerge from under the blankets wearing the most blinding grin Mara had ever seen.

“Lili!’ he exclaimed, wiggling free of the blankets and her arms before she could think to stop him, and she scrambled to disentangle herself and follow. He slammed into Eli hard enough the man had to drop to one knee and put a hand down to keep from toppling.

“I’m sorry,” Mara mumbled, crawling on all fours until she was out from under the covering and then sitting back on her heels. But Eli’s arm had closed around Nick’s shoulders, and he cradled the boy’s head against his chest with his other hand. Face lowered, eyes closed, he simply held Nick and breathed as if he’d just summited a mountain. Except she’d seen him summit mountains, and he hadn’t been near this undone by the exertion. When he looked up, his eyes were red-rimmed.

“I thought you were dead,” he breathed.

Mara was struck with a sudden clang of realization. This man actually cared about them. Not as an obligation or a duty, or because he cared about Davy. Not because it gave him the opportunity to perform the endless acts of selfless heroism for which he was so predisposed. He cared about them in a way that hurt–a hurt that Nick’s joyful hug clearly soothed.

Mara was then struck by a second sudden clang of realization. She actually cared about him. Not out of gratitude or admiration, or because he cared about Davy. Not because she needed someone else to carry Nick when her arms got tired. She cared about him in a way that, at the sight of him holding her son, bubbled up in a fizz of joy–joy that painted itself across her face in the form of a giddy, gleeful smile.

She pushed to her feet and Eli stood as well, Nick sitting comfortably in the loop of his arm.

“Hey,” she said, because she didn’t really know what to say in these circumstances. Last time she thought a man was dead, he really was. So she was a little lost this time around, when the man she thought was dead had found his way to stand here, breathing, before her.

Eli only shook his head. “Your footprint was gone. I followed it all the way here and then…” He shook his head again, bloodshot eyes fixed on hers. “You were gone. Couldn’t see you, couldn’t sense you. I thought you must have…must’ve…” He trailed off, staring listlessly at the hollow beneath the tree and her rumpled blankets. “That wasn’t there before. You weren’t there.”

“I’m pretty sure we were,” she said dubiously, reaching out and slowly extracting Nick from his grip. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” he said, taking a shambling step back, attention swinging from the remnants of their camp to Mara and Nick, back and forth, back and forth. As she studied him more closely, the mottled shadows on his clothing revealed themselves to be dark stains, and his gaze was bright, almost feverish.

“Eli,” she said gently. “Are you sure you know what that word means?”

His eyes slid back to hers, and she made a show of scanning his body. He followed as if in a daze and stood for a moment, staring down at himself before declaring, “It’s not mine,” which would have been more reassuring were the words not born forth on a wave of bemused, philosophical uncertainty. Still, this didn’t seem like blood loss.

“Did you expend a lot of magic?” When he looked back up at her, she repeated herself. “Did you expand a lot of magic, Eli?”

He nodded–a single dip of his chin that wilted there in the middle and left him standing in the vague manner of a scolded child.

“Okay. That’s okay. Why don’t you come sit down for a minute.” She backed up and tipped her head toward the vacated chaos of blankets beneath the overhang. “Take off your pack. I’ll get you something to drink.”

Mara hadn’t had much occasion in her life to treat magical burnout. Innate magic users were vanishingly rare outside the Order’s ranks, and her services weren’t legal within them. But she knew the basic stages, and had seen the first in Davy a few times–a slight headache and fatigue.

From what she recalled, this was stage three at least, when the vacuum left by the magic began to leach energy from the body, wreaking slow, progressive havoc. It started with largely cognitive effects–malaise, confusion, blurred vision–and progressed to observable signs, like diminished blood flow to the extremities, dilated pupils, excessive sweating, and nausea. She couldn’t remember which symptoms fell into which stage, but that didn’t matter. The treatment was the same–rest, replenishment, and rejuvenatives.

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Eli shrugged his pack off and set it on the ground by hers, and then stood staring at it like it had asked him a riddle.

“Eli?” Mara said, setting Nick down and gesturing to the ground beside the pack. “Sit down, okay?”

He obeyed, bracing his back against one of the trees and sliding down to sit with his legs bent, arms draped over his knees. He dropped his head back and studied the leaves. “I thought you were dead.”

“Well, you were wrong.” Crouching beside him, Mara turned one of his hands over, frowning at the blanched skin of his palms. In contrast, his face was flushed and burned hot against the backs of her fingers. She pulled the flask from his pack and turned to Nick, who sat on the blankets, watching Eli with somber, thoughtful eyes. “Nicky, can you get the snacks out of Mama’s pack?”

He nodded and crawled over to tug at the straps of the pack, and she waited to see that he was suitably occupied before turning back to Eli. “Hey.” She waved her hand in front of his face, and he blinked and lifted his head, eyes taking a moment to find and focus on her. She pressed the flask against the backs of his fingers, untwisting the cap when he accepted it. “Drink. Slowly. And don’t go to sleep.”

She left him there to his slow drinking and not sleeping, and turned to join Nick at their packs. She helped him loosen the second strap and pulled the satchel with their food from its place at the top, handing it to Nick. “Get out the dried apples and the crackers, okay?”

He nodded and began rummaging determinedly through the contents as Mara pulled out her physik’s kit and flipped down the first flap to reveal the little vials, held in place by loops of softened leather. She tugged one out and slipped it into her pocket before replacing the kit in her bag and shuffling back to Eli, who sat with the flask held aloft by the suggestion of a grip, his fingers loose around the neck.

“I’ll take that,” she said, unstoppering the vial and swapping it out with the flask. “Drink that for me. One swallow.”

He lifted the vial and stared at it like he could divine what it contained just by studying the play of the light against the plain brown glass.

“Rejuvenative,” she said, nudging his wrist. “Drink.” Though she didn’t possess persuasive magic, she put a push of authority into her tone.

Magic or not, he tipped the contents of the vial into his mouth, dropping his head back as he swallowed.

“Gods,” he breathed, eyes slipping shut. “I thought you were gone.”

I thought you were, too, she wanted to say, and probably would have if Nick wasn’t right there listening.

“We’re fine. We’re right here,” she said instead, taking the empty vial and handing back the water. “Drink this. Small sips.”

For the next ten minutes she waited for the rejuvenative to take effect, offering dried apple and crackers and reminders about the water until his body had finally accrued enough fuel to relight the fire that had gone out inside him. It happened between one breath and the next, and Mara slumped back with a relieved sigh as he frowned and blinked his way back into his faculties.

He lifted his head, looking first to Mara, who sat beside him, and then at Nick perched on her lap, silent and watchful.

He cleared his throat and swallowed with a wince. Opened his mouth and then shut it. Dropped his head back once more and stared moodily at the canopy.

“Hello,” Mara said, graciously opening the conversation for him. “How are you feeling?” The kinder act would have been to pretend the last ten minutes hadn’t happened, but good physiking often required sacrificing what was kind for what was necessary.

Eli looked down at his hands, flexed them a few times, and shook his head. “I’m sorry. That’s never happened to me before.”

“That’s interesting, but it doesn’t answer my question,” she said, wrapping her arms around her son and resting her chin atop his head. “I asked, ‘how are you feeling?’” She raised the volume on the question and enunciated the words as if speaking to someone hard of hearing. Not because hearing loss was a symptom of burnout, though. Purely to annoy him. He deserved it. He had worried her.

Finally, he met her eyes, and she was relieved to see the sharp edge to his appraisal. “I’m glad your attitude is still intact,” he grumbled. “I feel better, thank you.”

“Mm, that’s not good enough. Nick, love, can you fetch the rabbit jerky for us?”

Eli sighed. “I don’t need–”

But Nick had already toddled off to dig through her pack. They’d eaten the last of the rabbit jerky yesterday, but she wanted him occupied for at least a couple of minutes.

“How are you feeling?” she repeated, removing any trace of compromise from her tone. “With details, this time.”

“Mara,” Eli groaned, scrubbing at his eyebrow with the back of his hand. “I’m fine. Honestly.”

She reached out and snagged his wrist, turning his hand over and pressing her thumb to the center of his palm, still waxy pale and cold to the touch. “Pins and needles, or completely numb?”

Jaw clenched, he squeezed his hand into a fist and then released it. “Pins and needles. It’s getting better.”

She held three fingers up. “How many fingers?”

“There’s nothing wrong with my–”

“How many fingers, Eli?”

“Three,” he said through his teeth.

“Headache?”

“Mild.”

“Nausea?”

“Not anymore. The food helped.”

“Dizziness?”

He swallowed and fixed his gaze to the canopy. “A little. But–”

“Do you have any open wounds I should know about?”

“No.”

“Broken bones?”

“No.”

“Did you suffer any blows to the head?”

“No.”

“Can you tell me what day of the week it is?”

He raised an eyebrow. “Can you tell me what day of the week it is?”

Mara stroked her chin, making a show of appraising him. “I think you’ll be okay.”

“One might even say I’m fine.”

“I still don’t think you know the meaning of that word,” she argued. “But you did a really good job, answering all of those scary questions. I usually keep sweets for my clients who are frightened of the physik, but I’m afraid all I have is dried apples. Would you like another, as a reward for being so brave?”

She held out the waxpaper envelope, and he scowled at it, then at her. But in the end he did take a slice, shoving it grudgingly into his mouth. “I should have left you in the river.”

“Chew first, then talk.”

He chewed and swallowed, irritation sliding off his expression. When he spoke again, his tone was low and earnest. “Thank you.”

Mara shrugged. “It’s no trouble.”

His smile tried very hard to be a grimace. Or perhaps it was the other way around. “It’s some trouble.”

“Nope. None at all. Now are you going to tell me what happened, or do I need to brew up another truth serum?”