I push to my feet and stumble the few steps it takes to reach the pebbled sand at the bank of the creek. I drop to my knees. Stones jab my skin, but I barely feel them as I plunge my hands into the icy water. The shock of cold makes my breath catch, but the icy prickling quickly sets into numbness.

My distorted reflection stares up at me. My face is filthy with smoke and dust. But that’s not what stands out. At first, I don’t understand what I’m seeing.

My eyes, which should be gray, are an impossible crystalline amber.

I drag in short, stuttering breaths as my arms sink deeper into the chilly water, my sleeves soaking through. Those unfamiliar eyes remain, bearing the jewel-bright irises of a shaman. That’s not me. It can’t be. The sounds of the creek grow muffled. The world tilts.

Hands grip my shoulders and yank me away from the water’s edge. “Sirscha—”

“I’m fine,” I breathe, rolling onto my back. Frigid droplets spatter my face as I throw my arms over my head. Feeling returns to my fingers in near-painful tingles.

“Yeah,” she whispers. “I’m fine, too.”

We remain there for some time, me on the bank with pebbles stabbing my back and Saengo sitting beside me, boots burrowing into the loose sand. We don’t speak. My mind remains blank, refusing to process what’s happened. I listen to the water swirl and rush by. The leaves shake at me, green satin with shimmering silver undersides.

Finally, when I can’t bear the silence any longer, I reach out and touch Saengo’s wrist. She laces our fingers together.

Despair catapults into me, flung from the connection of our joined hands. I wrench my hand back and stare uncomprehendingly at my palm.

“Sirscha?” Saengo asks, looking first at her fingers and then at me. Had she felt it too?

Shaking my head, I can only repeat, “I’m … fine.”

I am, in fact, the opposite of fine, but I don’t know how to fix it.

“You were defending yourself,” she says.

I marvel that after what happened to her, she still thinks to comfort me. I trained with Kendara for four years. The Shadow is a spy and an assassin. I would have taken a life eventually. I know I should be more disturbed by how easily I killed that shaman, but how can I when Saengo was dead? She was dead, and now she’s not, and I don’t know what to do with that. Or with any of what’s happened.

“I’m sorry.” My throat still hurts from all the smoke. “I should have protected you better.”

Saengo shifts so that she’s on her knees, facing me with a fierce glint in her eyes. It’s a welcome alternative to the haunted way she was looking at me before.