I open my mouth, but my lungs are unable to draw air. She’d been standing behind me when the windwender flung the dagger.

“S—Saengo,” I gasp as my body trembles with a sudden horror that cleaves through me like a storm. I forget everything: the pain, Jonyah, the shamans, becoming Shadow. There is only Saengo as I scrabble through the dirt and collapse at her side. My fingers search for a pulse, but there’s nothing.

The pain in my chest sharpens into a smoldering rock. It scorches through my ribs and then bursts outward, stealing what breath I have left and forcing it out of my mouth into a scream that echoes down the stretch of Keistra’s Flight until there is nothing but blinding white and agony and grief, and then blessedly, nothing at all.

FOUR

“Sirscha?”

Her voice sounds in the dark. I reach for it, sinking into the blackness where I might still find her, but her voice flits away. When I give chase, hands emerge from the abyss. They grasp my arms, my hair, my neck. Clammy fingers wrench open my mouth, worming inside, choking me. Jagged nails tear at my lips and my cheeks and gouge my eyes. I can’t breathe. I can’t move. I can’t—

“Sirscha.”

I shoot upright, gulping in air. Light spears my eyes, and I flinch at the remembered pain of fingers digging behind my lids.

Several things register at once. First, I’m outside. Grass prickles my palms and the scratchy wool of my blanket covers my legs. Second, it’s morning. Sunlight streams through the branches above my head, bright and bold.

Lastly, and most pressingly, Saengo is sitting beside me in the grass, blinking at me with an expression of stunned amazement. I can’t imagine why my waking up is so shocking when she’s the one who’d died.

I lick my dry lips and, uncertain, look around at the trees. The sound of water rushing over rock pulls my gaze to a creek burbling nearby. My clothes and hair smell strongly of smoke, and my legs still ache, so I doubt it, but… “Are we dead?”

Saengo’s astonishment transforms into confusion. “I don’t think so. But your ey—”

I throw my arms around her shoulders, which seem suddenly small. Her breath against my neck grows thin, hitches once. The memory of the knife in her chest makes me wince. “What happened?”

She pulls back, clasping her hands tightly in her lap. “I wasn’t sure what to do when I woke up. You were lying there and … and Jonyah and the shaman.” A tremor runs through her. “I panicked. So I took you and ran.”

The entire evening rushes back in a single nauseating wave. Sisters, save us. We left Jonyah to die. I killed a shaman. And Saengo …