“I won’t be able to sleep, but there’s no reason you shouldn’t. Anyway, if anything does happen, I’d prefer you well-rested to sleep-deprived.”

Evidently, her logic wiggled its way into the right place in Sunny’s mind, because she nodded, kissed her on the cheek, and then lay down on the floor.

Time passed in drips and drabs, the room growing darker and darker until the space between the tremulous blobs of lantern light were ebony. Dark enough to hide secrets that would never be discovered unless someone mustered the courage to wade into their inky depths.

Night had fallen in earnest.

“How long does it usually take?” Soraya asked, her eyes meeting Seela’s, which shone white against the oily backdrop.

“Not long,” the woman said. “But I’m telling you, I feel different. Better. I think the godsblood is working. I think you saved me.”

Soraya almost laughed, not because of the notion that she was capable of saving someone—she already knew that to be true or Narcissi would’ve never made her a Guardian—but because of the irony that it was one of the failed, exiled Sightless—Sinna Marin of all people!—who’d given her the key to solving their problem. “You’re due for your next dose of godsblood. This is far more than anyone should normally consume in such a short period, but you’re tolerating it well, and you’re fighting against whatever that rat’s teeth injected you with, so I believe we can stay the course until it is certain the worst is behind us and you are—”

“Are you trying to persuade me or yourself?” Seela interrupted with a smile. “I’ll drink some more.”

“Sorry,” Soraya said. “I tend to chatter when I get nervous.”

“Don’t be nervous. Clearly it’s working, thank the gods.”

“Thank Narcissi,” Soraya corrected.

“Thank Narcissi,” Seela agreed. “And thank you for taking this risk. You almost stabbed me in the heart earlier, you know?”

“Did I? I don’t recall any such event.”

The women smiled at each other, both grateful for the moment of levity, which seemed to cut through the tension like an axe cleaving wood. Soraya helped Seela drink the next vial. As usual, the woman sighed in contentment as the contents slid down her throat and filled her with the Goddess of the Wood’s warmth and light. “It’s working,” Seela declared, her relief and jubilation plain for anyone to see on her expression. “It’s definitely work—”

She cut herself off mid-word, her expressing twisting in an instant to something foreign, something undeniably other. Her lips already looked thinner, darker, splitting open to reveal a pair of obscenely long teeth front and center in her mouth and growing longer by the second. “Oh no,” she said, but even those two words were spoken in a disfigurement of her voice, a chittering hiss that scraped between those too-long, too-big teeth.

Whether awakened by that hiss or an unshakeable bond between her and the woman she loved, Sunny was on her feet and alert, eyes flickering between Soraya and Seela. “It’s happening,” she said. “Oh gods, it’s happening again. You said it wouldn’t happen!”