Anne’s voice was muffled. “Why do you think?” She paused a second then turned back, eyes still red but set in concentration. She touched her hand to my forehead, chest, stomach, and I felt the stir of magic against my bare skin as she spoke under her breath. “Brain activity is okay, respiration is okay, blood pressure . . .” She chewed her lip. “Still low . . . Do you think you can manage drinking?”

Now that I thought about it, I was really thirsty. “Yeah.”

“Just a little,” Anne warned me as she held a straw to my lips. I sucked it down greedily and was disappointed when she pulled it away.

“Hey,” I said weakly.

“I don’t want to test the mend to your stomach,” Anne said. “I wouldn’t give you anything at all unless I had to . . . You can have some more in an hour.”

I lay quietly for a little while. I wasn’t wearing anything except my underwear and the bedclothes had been drawn back to expose my chest, but that didn’t really feel all that important right now. “We’re in Arachne’s cave, right?”

Anne nodded.

“Who else is here?”

“Luna’s sleeping through there.” Anne nodded at a solid wall. She smiled slightly, wiping away the last traces of tears. “She’s going to be angry she wasn’t here to see you wake up. She stayed up all night while I was working.”

“All night?” I glanced at the cave. “How long was I out?”

“Sixteen hours,” Anne said. “I could have woken you earlier, but you needed the rest.” She looked out into the cavern. “Arachne’s in the cavern, and Variam and Sonder are getting supplies. I asked for some stuff from the flat and the market.”

“You’ve been up all night?” I asked. Casting spells for that long takes it out of you, especially on top of lack of sleep.

Anne shook her head. “There are biochemical processes that keep you awake. I can go a lot longer than this.”

I glanced at her clothes. “Uh, how did you get those bloodstains?”

Anne looked at me with eyebrows raised. “They’re yours.”

“Oh.”

I was quiet for a little while as Anne continued to check over me. “How close was I . . .” I said. I didn’t add to dying, but the words hung in the air.

Anne didn’t meet my eyes, but her hand tightened on my wrist for an instant before moving to the side of my neck. “You don’t want to know.”

“So remember when you told me that it felt like you didn’t need to worry about me so much? I guess I kind of screwed that up, didn’t I?”

Anne gave something between a laugh and a sob and dropped her head, her hair brushing my chest. “Don’t . . .” She drew a breath and looked up at me. “Don’t do anything like this again. Please.”