"You traded your life for hers." For mine, she thought. And for mine.

"She couldn't've been more than two. I couldn't stand there and let him… Christ." He had to gather strength just to breathe. "Your head's bleeding."

"It's only—"

"A scratch. Yeah, yeah. Got a few of my own." He bore down, fought to clear his vision so he could see her better. "Baby, I'm pretty messed up here."

"I will get you to a healer."

"Kadra." He wanted to take her hand, but couldn't lift his arm. "Bastard kissed me. It works faster here, the change. We can't be sure how fast."

"You will not change. You will not." Tears ran down her cheeks unchecked. "I will take you back, through the portal. To Rhee, the sorceress."

"I'm going under. I can feel it." He was cold, cold to the bone. Losing, he knew, the warmth of his own humanity. "We can't take the chance. You know what you have to do."

"No." She gripped his face with desperate hands. "No."

"I dropped the gun. Get it for me, let me do it myself."

"No." She pressed his face to her breast and rocked. "No, no, no."

The smell of her flesh brought comfort, but under it, creeping under it, was an ugly, alien hunger that horrified him. "Don't let me change. If you love me, end it. Let me die human." He pressed his lips to her heart. "I love you. Let that be the last thing we both remember from this. I love you."

He went limp. Panic filled her, a wild weeping as she shook him, slapped him, called to him. But he was in the changing sleep, a kind of living death, and could not be reached.

"No. You will not take him." She leaped up, whirled to where Sorak had died. All that was left was her sword, still in the stone, and the globe the demon king had stolen. She scooped up the globe, then with a piercing battle cry, wrenched her sword free.

Tears streamed down her stony face as she dropped down beside Harper again, wrapped her arms around him.

But when the portal opened and the light burst over them, it took them to a world she had never seen.

The room was white. Through a wall of glass were trees of crimson and sapphire against a pale gold sky. Framed by it, robed in white, stood Rhee.

"Help him." Kadra laid Harper between them, stretched out her arms in pleading. "Save him."

"I cannot."

"You have power."

"So do we all. Child—"

"Do not call me child." Furious, primed for battle, Kadra leaped to her feet. "Some are saved from the changing sleep through sorcery. I have heard the tales."

"It is beyond my means to save him."

"You say we share blood, but you refuse the one thing I have ever asked of you. You sent me to him."

"Not I, but destiny."

"Destiny," Kadra spat out. "Who weaves a destiny that asks a man to fight what is not his war, to risk his life in a battle not his own? This he did. He fought with me, and for me. He destroyed the Bok king when I failed. He laid down his life for a child who was not his own. And for this courage, for this valor, he is repaid by becoming what he fought against. Who asks such a sacrifice?"