Aliyah

She saw the flash of spell-light and braced herself for the impact: arms up to protect her face, dulling pain receptors, readying precursors for fresh cellular synthesis—

Maia yelled. Kionah bolstered her shield a fraction of a second too late.

The shower of arrows hissed against her skin, but didn’t punch through. They fizzled out and burning pinpricks erupted all over her arms: reddened marks, no blood, a light wash of pain. She concentrated on the itching ache of the faery-mark to drown out the rest of it as she searched for the source of the arrows—there, a glint of silver carapace, readying another volley.

“Run!” Kionah shouted, grabbing her roughly by the arm.

She felt herself being pushed down the alley and obeyed unthinkingly, started running.

“Faeries!” Maia shrieked. “Hells-fucking-hells—”

Another volley of arrows burst around them, some stinging, others missing. Superficial wounds. She focused on pouring magic into her muscles and joints, forcing herself to sprint faster to keep up with Kionah.

They careened down the suddenly claustrophobic alley, turned several corners and dashed down sets of steps. More arrows flanked them, bursting from the mouths of side-streets. She dodged a sphere of crackling spell-light that erupted from behind a tree. Her heart thundered in her chest. Her breath came in ragged, panicked gasps.

She glanced over her shoulder for a split second and saw flashing silver, the impression of a faery with shining, spiked pauldrons and pointy wings, possibly the shapes of even more faeries behind her. A bolt of fresh spellfire grazed her shoulder—blue this time, not white, and she didn’t know if it mattered because it still hurt just the same. She turned back ahead and healed the incision, legs pumping faster. She forced herself to shield, weak golden light flickering to life over her skin.

More arrows whistled past. Her shield was, of course, broken immediately.

A piercing point of spellfire lodged into her back, pain throbbing against her shoulderblade. She gave a cut-off scream, tamped down on the blood trickling out, ragged ends of flesh half-cauterized by the heat of the arrowhead itself. She stumbled, gathered up her magic and shoved it at the wound, purging it of contaminants and sealing it shut.

Arrows spat out of an alley to their right, moments before Maia could turn into it. Maia shrieked and cast something purple at the faery that emerged there.

“Stop! Stop it you bloody fae—Glister Hive’ll be onto this,” Maia yelled, and kept sprinting.

Next to her, Kionah was looking more and more visibly distressed.

“Not this way,” she gritted out, catching Aliyah’s eye. “Have to go left or it’s a dead end, I think—” She yelped as arrows crashed into her shields, a continuous stream of them. The spellwork shattered.

Aliyah caught one in the side and another in the calf—oh hells, it burnt. She hissed at the way the gouged-open wounds flexed as she ran, healed them, tried to cast another pathetic shield. Kionah’s shield flared back to life, larger this time, enough to cover both their backs. She gathered spellfire in her hands, lobbing it back over her shoulder to the archer-faeries in pursuit.

The path leftwards glowed, sharp and bright. Another faery appeared out of nowhere, blocking the way—dull-green and whorl-horned, brandishing a staff glowing so bright that it hurt to look at. He scythed through the air in a short burst of speed and cracked Kionah over the head with it.

Kionah’s shield shattered and she dropped; Maia shrieked. The faery turned to face Maia. She shrieked again, and pulled out a knife.

Kionah lay, unmoving, on the cobblestones.

Oh stars, Aliyah thought frantically. That was a concussion, at the very least. Oh hells, hellgods—she couldn’t fix brain injury stuff. Too complicated, too delicate. Chemicals and metabolites. Come on Zahir, where was this part of the lesson plan? Oh hells, oh hells, can’t just do nothing and let her die—

She dropped to her knees and placed a hand onto Kionah’s shoulder. Kionah was breathing and not dead, which was good. Her eyes were half-open but a little glazed over, her glasses slightly cracked in both lenses.

Then she moved her hand to Kionah’s forehead. Going near the brain always made her feel queasy, but now wasn’t the time to dwell on that. She took a breath, and reached in, skimming over the skull with the senses supplied by her magic. Just assessing, checking for fractures. She was deeply, uncomfortably aware of the lump of fat and neurons that formed all of Kionah’s personhood lurking just beneath; how potentially fragile it was despite the bodily equilibirum, how the wrong touch might spell disaster.

Somewhere behind her, Maia yelled. Then came the whistling of more arrows. She forced a shielding spell to life around herself, tuned out the sound, and did another quick sweep of Kionah’s skull—undamaged, as far as she could tell. The beginnings of swelling in the flesh, but otherwise probably-mostly fine, thanks to her shield absorbing most of the blow.

“Aliyah?” Kionah asked, her voice slurred. She squinted, and then yelled: “behind you!”

Her shield shattered in warning. She whirled around just in time to catch a spell to the face. It opened up cuts in her skin, shallow—but there were so many, bursting open over her cheeks and chin. One missed her left eyeball by a hair.

She healed the cuts, smoothed out the skin on her face, and rounded on the faery—the silver one, standing a good six feet away.

“What the hells!?” she screamed, surprised by the loudness of her own voice. “Why are you—what do you want? I haven’t done anything to you!”

The silver faery didn’t answer. She didn’t even move; her face was unreadable. She had solid compound eyes, like Luxon’s, but they were a dull, dead-looking blue. She held a bow in one hand and a shining, white spell-arrow ready in the other. Aliyah’s focus locked onto the arrow. Had this been the one that had shot her, back down in the tunnels?

She forced a wave of numbness through her body, centered on the most susceptible targets—her trunk and extremities.

The faery started moving, slowly, deliberately. Nocked her bow and aimed.

Aliyah brought up her arms to protect her face and cast a panicked shield, knowing it would be useless. The arrow sheared right through and sank into her outstretched arm. She pulled it out, healing it as it went. Then she lunged, and Silver Faery flew upwards and away, dodging her outstretched hand.

Behind her, Maia screamed.

“A little help, if you would!?”

She whirled around. The green faery had gotten the upper hand. He was flinging darts of red spell-light at her from a distance, out of reach of her knife and splashes of green spellfire.

Aliyah ran towards her. Kionah stumbled to her feet, fingertips glowing with a ready spell, and got there first.

Green Faery brought up a shield, dissipating Kionah’s spell. Kionah leaped in front of Maia and brought up a shield of her own.

Green Faery raised his staff and shot a red hoop of spell-light—to the side. Not at Kionah; at her.

Aliyah dodged clumsily and it bit into her shoulder. A wave of blisters broke open on her skin, stinging through the lingering numbness she’d cast. It felt—bad. And familiar. Tunnels, she thought distantly. Then she remembered the nausea-keys in her pocket and fished them out as the faery raised his staff again—

Maia sprang to her feet, sprinted forwards, and tackled him.

Aliyah applied more numbing and healed her blisters. The shadow of a headache pressed at her temples and the faery-mark was still itching on her forearm. She couldn’t numb those.

Something hit her from behind; more glowing white spell-arrows, piercing shots that lodged in her flesh. The pain was too distracting. She numbed those wounds too, pushed a wave of un-sensation through most of her body for good measure, leaving just enough to be able to move and react. Her heart hammered hard in her chest, beating against the back of her sternum; she could feel her pulse in her throat.

She turned around and saw Silver Faery hovering in the air once more, flanked by two others—one blue, one beige.

She thrust the nausea-keys out at them and saw them twitch, heard the blue one grunt with pain. But none of them doubled over in the air to vomit. Instead, Silver looked away to load her bow once more, and the others copied her. She saw a flash of spell-light glinting over their eyes, runes for shielding and nullification. Either they’d had help, or they’d learned fast.

She gave up, shoved the keys back into her pocket, and ran even as they peppered her back with arrows. She reached Kionah’s shield with a manageable number of injuries; the golden shield wavered at her touch, letting her through.

“Now what?” she asked, voice cracking with panic.

“I don’t know. Shield isn’t the greatest. And I think—down there’s a dead end.” Kionah looked as if she were swaying on her feet. “Stand our ground. Have to. Bet my fucking teeth there’s a trap waiting down that way.” She took a half-step forward and almost toppled over.

Oh, Aliyah thought as she moved to hold her up by the arm. Concussion. Of course.

Green Faery flung Maia back with a blast of red spell-light. She arced through the air in too-slow motion, aided by an invisible spell, and landed softly on her feet beside them. Kionah made a sound of frustration and widened her dome-shield to cover her.

“Kion, what the hells?” Maia asked. Blood was starting to trickle out of her nose. She clicked her fingers and bright green spellfire sprouted in her palms. She sent it forth in short plumes; the faery arrows fizzled out as they came into contact with it. “Get it together! What now?”

“I don’t know,” Kionah said faintly through what looked like a mouthful of blood. She spat onto the ground, where it glistened wetly over the cobblestones. “Should’ve run to Koriannon’s house instead, but someone was blocking the way.”

“Is—isn’t there anyone else around?” Aliyah asked desperately.

Maia gave her a disgusted look, even as she battled with the onslaught of arrows. “In these parts? They’ll be huddling in their fucking basements. Any help from you?” she asked, with a mocking twist of her mouth. Then, not waiting for an answer, she turned back to the flurry of arrows, taking a step forwards to press right up against the inner surface of the shield.

Aliyah opened her mouth to say something, to offer to fix the strings of blisters visible on her forearms—but then Kionah grabbed her by the wrist and squeezed, hard.

‘Don’t,’ she mouthed, a warning in her dazed eyes.

A shiver ran down Aliyah’s spine as she remembered her words—not to your advantage. Then she glanced back up, through the shield and the smoke. Was it just her imagination, or were the arrows getting closer now, larger and brighter? Kionah was panting for breath, blood beading up at the corners of her mouth. Blood dripped down Maia’s chin. The cascade of arrows wasn’t stopping.

“What, then?” she whispered back frantically.

Kionah let go of her wrist. She reached into her waistband and pulled out a pistol. The faeries faltered in their advance.

“What?” Aliyah hissed, then flinched as Kionah made to hand it to her. Her thoughts flashed back to how it had felt under the tunnels, the arrow in her guts, spellfire blazing.

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“I can’t do it,” Kionah spluttered through the blood dripping over her lips. “Not from this fucking distance. C-can’t see properly. Also. Busy shielding.”

She stared down at the pistol in horror, unsure of whether to take it or push it away. “What? No, I can’t—I don’t even know how—”

“Flick off safety. Aim. Pull this part—there’s a kick. Reloads by itself—modification here.” She was referring to a cluster of crystalline-looking plates that looked as they had been cobbled onto the handle-part and bits of the barrel.

Maia looked over her shoulder and made a sharp noise of annoyance. “Give it to me, then,” she snapped.

“Break it, and I’ll wring your neck,” Kionah said hoarsely.

The air thickened around them. Aliyah’s ears popped.

A figure dropped down onto the cobblestones, with his back to them. He sank into a low crouch before rising to his feet, smooth as river water.

Aliyah screamed. Maia did, too, and her puffs of green spellfire faltered, clearing the view. Kionah made an indistinct noise of surprise.

The Magician didn’t so much as twitch.

Like a corpse in a flower field, Aliyah thought dizzily. How? Why here? They’ve found us? They’ve followed us, all the way from Shadowsong?

The Magician took a spell-slip from the depths of his cloak. Her heartbeat threatened to drown out all other sound—but he held the slip out, aiming it away from them, towards the faeries.

Streams of white fire arced upwards.

Silver Faery and her companions dodged and started firing immediately, a dozen arrows at once. They pattered harmlessly off the Magician’s thick cloak as he advanced, not bothering to weave out of the way. Blue and Beige darted off to the side to aim for the exposed back of his head, but their arrows bounced off too—Aliyah sharpened her eyesight and squinted. She could make out the barest shimmer surrounding his head and hands, some sort of Magician-specific protection from the mask, perhaps.

He took out another spell-slip—a large one this time, a strip of paper the length of his forearm. The faeries stopped firing and froze.

Green Faery turned on his heel and launched himself into the sky, up and away. And just like that, the three others followed suit and darted off into the distance. The Magician stowed his spell-slip away and watched them go. Then he turned to face them.

Next to her, Kionah inhaled sharply. Throughout the entire fight, she’d only seen the back of the Magician’s head: short, dark hair, peeking up over the blue swath of his cloak. Now, she shivered at the blankness of the mask—a crudely stylised desert owl.

Ah, she thought dully. Now’s the part where he tries to kill us. She gathered vasodilation in her hands, even as she wondered if she’d even be able to get close enough to touch him, whether her magic would be able to pierce his cloak…whether something more aggressive might be needed.

She saw movement out of the corner of her eye, turned to look, and then backed up a step. Kionah had raised the pistol and was aiming it unsteadily, both hands white-knuckled around the handle.

“Stay back,” Kionah called. The golden dome-shield around them wavered, but held, for now.

“Who the hells is that?” Maia asked. “Kion, give that here—you can hardly hold it straight.”

“Fuck off, Maia. I’ve had worse.”

“You were going to give it to me a second ago!”

“I’ve changed my mind.”

The Magician raised both of his hands in a placating gesture. “I’m not here to hurt you,” he said. He sounded shockingly young—around their age, and with a touch of some indefinite accent about his words.

“So you say,” Kionah called out. Her arms shook visibly.

“I’m here to assist in furtherance against the faeries,” he said. “I’ve been looking since you went missing from the battle. They took you away, correct?”

“What?” Aliyah said, furrowing her brow. “That’s not—”

Kionah glanced at her and shook her head meaningfully, a call for silence. “Who are you?” she called.

“That is not for you to know,” he said. “I’m not here in, I suppose you’d say, an official capacity. But I am here to provide help.”

Kionah glanced over at her suspiciously. “Do you know this guy?”

Aliyah sharpened her eyesight a little more and scanned him, up and down. He was dressed like any other Magician, with the cloak and the mask. The dark hair showing at the back of his mask was in an unremarkable style. His hands were wrapped in strips of cloth, but parts of his fingers were visible, as were the tips of his ears. The skin there was an unusual, golden-tan colour—a fair few shades lighter than most ethnic Songians. That would narrow the possibilities on who he could be, to someone who knew a bunch of Magicians. But that was the trouble—she hardly knew any Magicians by name. He wasn’t Cardainne and he wasn’t Karim, and that was all she could say for sure.

“No,” she said. “I don’t know him.”

“What have you gotten yourself into this time, Kion?” Maia muttered.

Kionah shot her a murderous look. Aliyah wanted to back away from the two of them, but that would mean stepping out of the dome-shield.

The Magician shook his head. “I assumed that you wouldn’t,” he said. “I was sent by…a friend.”

She froze, and her thoughts raced. Rana? She thought wildly, hope alighting in her chest. Was Rana okay? She must be okay, surely—but why would she send a Magician, when it had been the Magicians who had posed the most risk? She remembered the pulses of blood-red light over the raging battlefield, and felt sick.

“Really,” Kionah said, and looked at her again, frowning. “Is that plausible, do you think?” And then, louder, so the Magician could hear her clearly: “Or is he leading us to an ambush?”

“If I wished to ambush you, I would've waited until the faeries broke through your shields and besieged you then,” he said, sounding cross. He folded his arms. “Or I would have brought my…colleagues, with me in the first place. This location is…secluded enough. There is no point to hiding in wait.”

Aliyah pinched the bridge of her nose and took a deep breath. There were two clear possibilities here: one, the Magician was playing some kind of elaborate ruse. To what end? To extract a confession of guilt, perhaps? But why would he need that, when the Songian courts were already so flush with bribery, and so deeply predetermined? She frowned. That took her to a second possibility: that Rana had really sent him and that he really was here to help.

“Who sent you?” she called.

“Uh,” he said. “I…don’t know.”

“What do you mean, ‘you don’t know’?” A spike of suspicion lodged itself in her chest. Surely Rana would have sent some clue, some assurance that she was safe.

Beside her, Kionah readjusted her grip on the pistol.

“Well, you know how it is,” he said, shrugging helplessly.

She didn’t, in fact, know how it was. She opened her mouth to ask for specifics, but Kionah beat her to it.

“Oh?” Kionah challenged. “How is it? Do explain.”

“I didn’t get the message directly. A colleague called in a favour. I suppose someone else had…connections.”

“Who’s your colleague?” Aliyah asked. If it was Karim, then—

“I, uh, I can’t tell you that,” the Magician said. “Safety reasons. I was given very little information about you as well, you know. The message consisted of, um. Foundationally, I was told to find you and make sure you were alright, because there were faeries after you.”

“Uh huh,” Kionah said. “Real convincing.”

“I’m not going to harm any of you,” he said quickly. “You have the advantage here; three against one and you’re pointing a gun at me. I just want to talk, enough to return and convince your original, err, benefactor, that you’re secure. Alright?”

“What do you think?” Kionah whispered out of the corner of her mouth. “Is it because of your friend’s Magician cousin?”

She blinked, startled at Kionah’s memory, that she’d managed to connect those points together. “I don’t know,” she murmured. “I guess, maybe.”

“What’s going on?” Maia broke in. “Kion, explain.”

“Is he wearing an illusion?” Kionah whispered.

“Kion—”

“Well? Is he?”

Maia scowled and squinted at the Magician. A brief, pale pink shimmer flashed across her eyes.

“Not that I can tell.”

“Please,” said the Magician. “How about we…perambulate elsewhere. A…park, perhaps? I think it’d benefit all of us; the faeries might return with reinforcements, after all.”

Aliyah felt the itch of the tracker-mark against her arm and bit her lip. Would they still risk attacking her in public?

“A park?” Kionah asked sourly. “No, no. Too secluded. How about a coffeehouse? That way I can still shoot you under the table.”

“You couldn’t,” Maia said, sounding appalled.

“I will, if he tries anything funny.”

“You’ll bring the whole Watch down on us, waving that thing around in broad daylight.”

“Us?” Kionah asked sharply. “Who said you were coming?”

Maia sniffed imperiously. “Kion, you look burnt through, and your little companion was as useful as a dead fish back there. But oh, here I was, thinking that you could possibly need my help.”

Aliyah bit back a reply. Maia doesn’t need to know anything, she reminded herself. Maia can think whatever she wants to. Don’t get distracted from the real problem here, the thing you have deal with right now: the Magician.

“…Perhaps I’ll let you, if you illusion my pistol away,” Kionah said. “Come and spy on us, report back to Twilight Mermaid and tell them how you abandoned your post. What do I care so long as you’re helpful? Know any coffee shops nearby?”

Maia frowned. “There’s a decent one on Cloven Corner. Ten minutes walk? Back the way we came and then—”

“Pistol,” Kionah said.

Maia rolled her eyes and waved her hand; the pistol in Kionah’s grip wavered and warped, turning into a bunch of bell-shaped flowers, violet-white and trussed up with a shiny black ribbon.

The Magician made a small noise of surprise as Aliyah bit back an exclamation of her own. She considered the illusion itself, the mechanism of action; the pistol was surely still a pistol—only the appearance had changed. Was Maia’s magic rooting around in her brain at this very moment? It was an unsettling thought—maybe that was why it was an unpopular art.

“There,” Maia said with a prim little smile. “To anyone but you or I, you are carrying a bouquet of thorn-apple blossoms. They mean ‘disguise’ in the flower language, you know.”

“People make drugs from those,” Kionah said flatly. “I’m not carrying that around. You might think it’s poetic, but it’ll draw unnecessary attention. Change it.”

A niggling thought crept into Aliyah’s mind: a similar floral diagram, in one of Zahir’s old herbiaries, and words about the blocking of neurotransmitters from binding.

“Aren’t those poisonous, as well?” she added quietly.

“The poison makes the dose,” Maia said, shooting her a dirty look.

“Change it,” Kionah insisted.

Maia waved her hand once more. “Fine,” she said as the illusion rippled, altering itself into an image of crinkled yellow blossoms. “Carnations, if you want to be boring. And yellow, since…it’s your favourite colour.”

“Your attempts at winning back my favour are both transparent and pathetic,” Kionah muttered.

“Sorry, what was that?” Maia asked sharply. “I swear I could have heard a ‘thank you’ in there somewhere, but perhaps I was mistaken.”

“I said thank you,” Kionah spat, as if the words were rotting in her mouth. “Magician, you start on ahead. We’ll tell you where to go.”

“Of course,” the Magician said. He turned and started walking with more confidence than Aliyah had expected from a man turning his back on a loaded pistol.

Kionah dropped her shield-dome with a shudder. They started following him at what felt like a half-safe distance.

“Maia,” Kionah murmured, “Check him again?”

Maia scowled. “I told you, he’s not illusioned. Not that it matters; he’s covered in that cloak. What do you want me to look for, wings and a tail?”

“His hands would have shown up if he were a faery, correct?”

“Yes, they bloody well would have,” she hissed, and a glimmer of spell-light flashed across her irises once more. “Fine. There you go. I can tell you now that his hands really are human, and probably the rest of him as well. Happy now?”

“Nothing else out of the ordinary?”

“No—” Maia said, and then frowned. “Well, there’s something at the back of his cloak, but I can’t be sure what it is.”

Kionah tensed. “Could it be a weapon?”

“I can’t tell,” Maia whispered. “There’s a lot of power holding it together. Suspicious, yes, but it doesn’t look like it’s hiding a holster or anything of that sort. Give me a minute.”

“Magicians don’t carry around pistols,” Aliyah broke in.

“You’re not a Magician. How would you know?” Kionah muttered, and then, calling out to the Magician: “turn right at the next corner!”

“Why were you carrying one, anyway?” Aliyah ventured, glancing at the bouquet of not-carnations in Kionah’s hand. If she’d had it all this time—well, she’d started the morning knocking on the door to Aliyah’s room at the inn. That meant it would have been a conscious decision to take it with her, right? She shivered inwardly.

“To shoot you with,” Kionah answered flatly, and the corner of her lip twitched upwards as Aliyah flinched. “What? Isn’t that the reply you were expecting to hear?”

She swallowed. “I’m, uh, asking for a serious answer here.”

“Well, you’re partially right in your suspicion,” Kionah said. “I like to be prepared. On the off-chance you wanted to hurt me, I could’ve shot you. But the more boring answer is that Shasta was holding it for me while I was gone, and now I’m not gone anymore.”

“You…you always carry that thing with you?”

“What else would I do, put it in a display cabinet?” Kionah snorted. “The damned thing cost enough that I think it’d qualify. It’d be nice to not need it, but parts of Glister aren’t…safe, in general. I like to be sure of where I stand.”

Aliyah wondered how many people Kionah had shot. And then, fast-trailing on the tails of that thought, she wondered how many she’d killed. Zero? One? More than one? She’d said she wasn’t a murderer, hadn’t she? But words were just words.

“Right,” she said, swallowing. “And…it’ll work on the Magician, right? As in, it can pierce his cloak?”

Kionah frowned. “He seemed concerned enough I’d chance it. It’s a good pistol. Reliable, expensive.”

“You and that bloody pistol,” Maia muttered. “Shut up, you two. I need to concentrate.” She frowned, brow furrowing as her eyes flashed pink, then red. Then she shook her head, curling her lip with disgust. “Ugh, it’s not a weapon. It’s just something cosmetically incorrect with his cloak.”

Aliyah frowned. “Cosmetically incorrect?” she asked. “What’s wrong with it, specifically?”

Maia scowled, squinting as she dove deeper into her spell-working. “It just looks like a rip, or a tear, a hole or something. Sewn up, but whoever tried did a terrible job. Enough, I’m getting a headache.”

“A hole?” Kionah murmured. “Hmm…weak point. Careless of him.”

Aliyah had to agree. Not that the sewing circles ever got their hands on highborn garments, so what would she know, really, but she felt that there was something inherently weird about a Magician walking around with a torn cloak. It was almost…against Magician principles?

Highborns were always so fussy, people said. And from what she’d seen, it was true. Even Zahir, who couldn’t seem to find it within himself to care for courtly rules at the best of times, had kept spare Healer robes hanging on his coat hook, or slung over the back of his chair. It wasn’t even like he had to wear them every day, like the Magicians did with their uniforms. Judging by encounters back in Shadowsong, and how those faerie arrows had bounced off this Magician’s cloak, there was a good reason for that: the fabric doubled as armour.

So what did that imply about this mysterious Magician? She frowned, feeling her brow furrow. A Magician who would patch up his protective cloak with shoddy sewing and a disproportionately powerful bit of illusion rather than fixing it properly would be the sort of Magician who…what, exactly? He was someone with a cavalier attitude, perhaps. Maybe it came with how young he sounded. She wasn’t sure if that was reassuring or not. He seemed friendlier than the only other Magicians she’d spoken directly with—Cardainne and Karim—but then again, that had been years ago and a very different situation altogether.

While she was pondering that, they turned into a main street. A few people filtered by: people with gaudy clothing and an abundance of tall heels, click-clacking their way to more important places. She was oddly relieved to see such flashy outfits; the Magician didn’t stand out nearly as much as someone in a hat made of antlers, or someone else in a gown of a dozen different fabrics.

She did notice that Kionah was squinting and shielding her face with her spare hand, though. She thought it over, the light sensitivity and probable headache—but Kionah was still lucid and talking, right? She really should take a few days rest at least, but they couldn’t just leave, not right now.

What other choice did she have? The Magician was—or he could be, if he wasn’t lying—a tempting glimpse of Rana, and when it came to Rana, she simply had to know.