She ran over to Arjun, who was clutching at his side with one hand and cradling Asees’s body with the other. Asees was still, but the blood kept coming. From her mouth and her stomach and by the spirits Karam didn’t know how to make it stop.

Arjun put a hand over Asees’s wound and closed his eyes, muttering desperately. Some kind of a spell, Karam assumed, and she felt a spark that maybe it was a healing spell and everything would be all right.

Arjun’s hands were shaking, alight in the gold magic of their people. His eyes were squeezed shut so tight that his nose wrinkled.

And then Karam turned, just as a man charged at them. His blackened eyes were like that of a wild animal and the mark of the Loj elixir was thick and gleaming on his neck.

He launched a shard of light at Karam and she leaped to avoid it, then swung her foot out and swept the man’s legs out from under him.

“We will be saved,” he said, pulling out a gun. “We must protect the magic.”

Karam did not hesitate.

She cut her knife clean across his neck, before he even had the chance to raise his weapon, pressing her lips together tightly so she didn’t have to taste the victory.

“Come on,” Arjun said.

He was still focused on Asees, his hands aglow and hovering over the hole in her stomach.

“This has to work,” he said. “Come on, Asees. Wake up.”

The magic flickered weakly under his palms, like a light trying to stay on in a storm. Only Asees didn’t move and the blood didn’t crawl from the sand and back into her still body.

Arjun sobbed, the cry of agony so sharp that Karam felt it stab into her heart.

He dropped his hands and the lights went out.

“Please wake up,” he said.

He buried his head in Asees’s shoulder.

“Arjun,” Karam said.

She knelt down beside him and looked at the gash on his side. The sand mingled with the blood, sprinkling across his wound like trick dust. She wondered if he would ever get that out, or if it would embed inside of him forever. Little pieces of the dead shores and their ghostly magic, waiting for the day they would return to this hallowed ground.

“Arjun,” Karam said again.

He looked up at her and shook his head. “She can’t do this,” he said. The tears dripped to his neck. “She can’t leave me like this. She can’t just go.”

Karam reached up an unsteady hand and placed it on his shoulder.

The world around them was so quiet.

“I’m here,” she said. “Arjun, it will be okay.”

“No.”

His voice was a breath in the night.

Arjun shook his head, his tears mixing with the blood on Asees’s hand.

“Nothing is okay. She’s gone, Karam.”