“You reacted to the shamans’ threat exactly the way I expected you to,” she says. I frown, but she’s not done yet. “When you fight, you … you don’t hesitate. You react. Danger—it makes you deadly. Seeing you fight those shamans, and Jonyah—”

Her mention of Jonyah surprises me. She must have been watching through the flames when he attacked me.

“It made me realize what Kendara saw all those years ago when she took you on as her pupil.”

My capacity for violence? I want to ask.

“I’m not …” Her brows twitch together. “I’m not like that. For all my training, when those shamans meant to kill us, I froze. I should have been more help.”

“You’re alive. That’s all that matters.” I clear my throat, wincing at the soreness. “How, though?” My question is a whisper; I’m afraid anything louder will make it untrue again.

Her smile becomes a grimace before wilting. Shrinking back into herself, she touches her chest, directly over her heart where the dagger struck her. I brush her fingers aside. There’s a tear in her shirt, the edges dark with dried blood. Slowly, I slide two fingers through the tear and touch the center of her chest. She’s whole. Nothing but the slight ridge of a scar, as if the wound were an old one.

I pull away and look down at my palm. I remember the blazing heat that tore through me before I passed out. And now my eyes … I couldn’t have done this. It’s not possible.

Years ago, we’d promised each other that when we died, we would sing the other’s lifestory to the Sisters. The song is how the Sisters know to open the gates to the spirit realm for those who’ve passed. I’d also made a promise to myself: that the day I sang Saengo’s lifestory would be a distant one. Last night, I’d nearly broken that promise.

My fist slams into the dirt. “The shaman who did this. He got away. We have to find him.”

“The magistrate will have sent a falcon to the Grand Offices by now,” Saengo says. She sounds much too reasonable for someone with every right to be raving at the sky. Or at me. Part of me wishes she would. “They’ll have sent soldiers to the teahouse. If they haven’t caught him already, they will soon.”

I dearly hope so, but if the authorities are focusing their search on a shaman, not two wayward wyverns, then we need to take advantage of that.

Saengo bites her bottom lip. “Did you know?”