“If you’re that interested.” She sighed and put on a singsong tone. “In about a month, I’ll be dead. Six weeks at most. So if you’ve got some fantasy about you and me, I don’t know, becoming partners in crime out in the Splinter Kingdoms, you can give it up.”

“You’ll be … why?” Gyre’s eyes narrowed. “Is it the ghouls? They don’t want you to give up their secret—”

“They couldn’t care less. Maybe once upon a time they were worried the Order would find out they’re still alive, but after this long, who would believe me?”

“So who’s going to kill you?”

“Nobody. I’ll just … expire. Although, frankly, maybe it would be more poetic to find a cliff somewhere—”

“I don’t understand.” Gyre took a step closer. “You’re—”

“Oh, for Chosen’s sake.” Kit leaned over and grabbed his wrist, pulling him forward and pressing his palm against her chest. “Feel.”

After a moment, Gyre cleared his throat. “Your breasts may be a little on the small side, but that hardly seems fatal—”

“Not my lack of tits, moron.” She actually smiled, though her eyes were damp with tears. “My heartbeat.”

Gyre concentrated a moment on the gentle pulse under his hand. It sped up slightly, and in between the thumps, he felt something else, a soft buzz like there was an insect trapped under Kit’s breastbone.

“I told you when I was fifteen, I got some bad news,” she said. “I’d been having … spells. Dizziness, nausea. I went to an alchemist, and she told me it was my heart, that it was weak and getting weaker. Within a year or two, it would just … stop. And that would be that.” She shrugged. “I asked if there was anyone who could help me, and she told me that I needed a dhakim.”

“So you went looking for the Tomb,” Gyre said.

“I wasn’t looking for it, exactly. I wasn’t in a good place.” Kit took a deep breath, and her heart thumped harder against Gyre’s hand. “I figured either I’d find something that could save me, down in the dark places, or I’d die trying. The latter seemed more likely.”

“But the ghouls helped you.”

“Most of them wanted nothing to do with humans. Naumoriel helped me, after a fashion. He put a little bit of arcana in there”—she tapped the back of Gyre’s hand—“that keeps my heart going. But it needs fuel, and only a ghoul can fill it back up again.” She blinked and rubbed her eyes with the back of her hand. “By this time my heart is too weak to manage without it. So in a month or so, it runs out, and then … all done. No more Kitsraea.”

Gyre sat for a moment, trying to digest that.

“You can take your hand off my tit now,” Kit said.