“No. Tell Henry to call him. He and Jim should finish their patrol.” I wanted him so badly, but if he was my Lieutenant and nothing else, that meant he shouldn’t come running when I was injured. So I wouldn’t ask him to.

Raphael gave me a questioning look, but nodded.

“I really messed up. Henry doesn’t feel bad, does he?”

Raphael unbuckled my leather holster and slid it off my arm, pausing every few moments to allow me to catch my breath. “He is unhappy you got in the way of his bolt. He is happy it didn’t kill you.”

“Me too.”

“He still wants to know why. He said it looked like you were protecting a Mazikin.”

Her face flashed in my mind. Her eyes. My eyes. Lela, she said. Ven conmigo.

I sighed, exhaling shards of pain that cut me to ribbons from the inside out. My mom, I tried to say, but nothing came out. Mom mommommommom.

It capsized me. Thirteen years of buried longing crashed over my body, crushing me. All those years, all those wishes, those fantasies that she’d come get me, that she would rescue me. Only to find out that she was trapped in oblivion, a place I couldn’t find on any map.

And now she was trapped somewhere else, just as unreachable.

Raphael bent over me, and from him flowed a golden sheet of light, radiating outward, spreading around us. Wings. Arching over me, shielding me while I cried and cried and cried, tossed by the waves in my mind. Within our shimmering shelter, he bowed his head and put his hand on my forehead.

“I’m sorry,” I gasped. “I can’t stop.”

“Take as long as you need,” he murmured. “I’ll wait for you.”

He sat motionless, eyes closed, anchoring me to now so that my memories couldn’t trap me then. His golden wings covered us, glittering diamond-bright, so beautiful it hurt, until I cried myself dry. And when my last sob fell silent, the glow around us retreated, rolling back into his body and fading away. He opened his eyes and looked into mine. “I’m going to let you sleep now, because I have to heal your body.”

I nodded, and he lifted the world from my shoulders.

My body was like a stranger’s. A warrior’s. Strong but scarred. My wet hair dripped rivers down my back as I let the towel fall to the ground and stared into the mirror. A starburst pink-silver scar marked my chest, hovering below my collarbone. My stomach was lined with Sil’s claw marks, silver-white. My dead best friend’s face was etched onto my forearm.

The marks of battle.