Eventually the red mist began to fade, and she saw an opening against Kol, swung low, her blade catching him in the ankles, and then he was falling, Riv ready to step in and put her blade to his throat, but he did not end up on the ground, instead with a pulse of his wings he was rising, turning in the air, suddenly behind her as she stepped forwards, off balance. His sword blade pressed against her throat, his other hand about her waist, body pressed tight against her back.

‘I win,’ he whispered in her ear, so close Riv wasn’t sure if it was the touch of his breath or lips upon her neck. Whichever one it was it made her skin gooseflesh, a shudder of warmth rippling through her body. Then Kol was stepping away, leaving her standing there, breathing heavily, heart thumping in her head like a drum.

She became aware of the Ben-Elim ringed around her, fifty, sixty of them, maybe more, recognized many of them as those that Kol had taken with him on the mission to Oriens. They all stared at her, their bodies and wings blotting out the rest of the field.

A figure pushed through them, smaller, dark-haired. Aphra.

Riv took a step towards her sister, felt dizzy, a sequence of pains shuddering through her body. In her belly, lower, but overwhelming them all a sudden pain stabbing in her back, between her shoulder blades, as if Kol had pierced her with his sword. She grunted, and then she was falling, the ground rushing up to meet her.

Voices, blurred, as if heard through water.

‘. . . so worried about her, I cannot think,’ someone said.

Aphra?

‘She has her blood, is becoming a woman, and she has a fever. She will recover.’

‘It’s not just a fever, Mam, is it? What about her back?!’

Water, Riv said, or tried to, unsure whether the word actually left her lips.

She was lying face-down, the pillow beneath her face wet, which was uncomfortable. She tasted salt.

My own sweat, she realized, which was strange, as she was so cold.

Freezing! Why don’t they put a blanket on me? She tried to move, to speak, but didn’t think even a finger or toe twitched. A pain, deep in her belly, feeling like her insides were falling out, and her back . . .

Dear Elyon, the pain.

Perhaps she gasped, for there was a hand upon her back, a wet cloth, feeling like heaven.

‘What’s happening to her?’ Aphra said, and Riv felt a tugging sensation across her back, like when she had sat out too long in the sun and a few days later was peeling strips of sunburned skin from her shoulders and arms.

Footsteps, a shadow, Riv’s eye open a crack. Her mam stood before her. Behind her a stone wall, not her barrack room.

Where am I?