Fairy inhaled sharply. She didn’t dare to slap her free hand over it with Hana right there behind her, but Fairy could feel the blood beginning to trickle down her neck and onto her collar.

“Hana—”

“My name is Virtuoso!”

“No, you’re always going to be that tenderfoot I knew before you were ever given a taiga name. You’re Hana, who loved her sister and loved the Society. I know who you are deep inside, and Spirit does, too.”

Hana was silent behind Fairy. Was she going to strike her again? Or was she considering it?

“Tell me we have a deal,” Fairy said, trying again. At the same time, she tucked herself into a ball and somersaulted between two pear trees, getting away from Hana.

But when Fairy rolled and sprang to her feet, there was no one there with her.

“Where did you—?”

The wind rustled through the orchard. A few seconds later, the giant buzzard from earlier swooped down, paused as if picking up a passenger, then flew away.

Hana was gone. Fairy wasn’t sure what that meant, but what she did know was that Hana could very easily have killed her, but she hadn’t. That was . . . something.

For now, though, Fairy needed to tend to these wounds. She had a powder made of dried thistledoon leaves that acted as a coagulant. But it wasn’t in the little satchel she kept on her belt; it was in one of the bags on Wolf’s harness. If she could find him, maybe she could stop both their bleeding.

Fairy held on to her side and the back of her neck and slowly rose to her knees.

“Wolf!” she shouted. “Where are you?” The effort sent searing pain through her rib cage.

He didn’t answer. But how far could he have gone? He’d probably crashed soon after she and Menagerie hit the ground.

“Wolf!”

Please be all right. Gods dammit, everyone was going down. Maybe they were fools for thinking they could fight the ryuu, for believing they had a chance against the Dragon Prince.

“Wolf!” Fairy sucked in a sob as the knife shifted inside her. The slice in the back of her neck didn’t seem too bad, but her side was in bad shape. She could pull out the knife, but then there’d be nothing to stop the bleeding. Her tunic and the left side of her trousers were already soaked as it was.

A short distance away in the orchard, in the opposite direction from where the buzzard had retrieved Hana, there was a weak howl.

“He’s alive,” Fairy whispered, barely holding it together as she started to run. She pressed her side, wincing as the blade stabbed her insides with every bouncing stride, but she didn’t slow down. Not until she reached Wolf, collapsed at the base of a pear tree in a puddle of blood.