Unbidden memories resurfaced. Digging, digging, spit flying from between her teeth, the muscles in her arms screaming but refusing to stop. Her fingers had plunged deeper into the soft, churned earth. Deeper than she’d thought was possible. And then deeper still. Until she had stabbed into something horrifically soft.

She turned aside, feeling like she was on the verge of being sick.

Kant waited, silent, his expression inscrutable. Score marks from her fingers ran across the bridge of his nose and his forehead. Those would heal. He wouldn’t get his eye back.

She struggled for words of any kind. “I’m so sorry.”

“What for?” One of his large hands flicked up, as though to brush her apology aside, then dropped back to his lap.

“Your…your eye.”

“Yes,” he said. “I lost my eye. I kept my life. That seems like a small price, considering.”

His voice was raspy. He’d inhaled soil particles, Dr. Maynard had said. That, too, he could recover from.

“You look like hell,” Kant said, and the words were softer than she’d expected. “Sit a moment. Andrew, can you get her something to drink? Something hot?”

“Yeah, can do.” Andrew pushed off the wall and crossed to the door. Before leaving, he pressed Kant’s shoulder, a familiar, tender touch.

Kant waited until the door was closed, then leaned back against the wall, exhaling heavily. “Have you gotten any sleep yet?”

“No.” She pulled up a chair from the desk and positioned it opposite Kant, then sank into it, relieved to take the pressure off her feet.

“You should. This bout of the curse shouldn’t be able to continue after last night, but you should still be prepared.” At her look, he continued, “The curse wears itself out. It gets worse, building like a storm cloud, but it can only sustain so much before breaking.”

Margot felt cracks in her lip form as a genuine smile emerged. “I can’t believe you’re so sanguine.”

He inhaled heavily, and a rasping cough formed as he let the breath out. He wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. Most of the dirt had been washed off his skin, but it still clung in his wrinkles and around his fingers. “You have to figure out how to be a bit sanguine, living here. And I’ve been waiting for the ground to take me for a while now. An eye is not much to lose, all considered.”

Margot leaned forward in her seat. “Last night…this morning…you said something about that. About how you didn’t go on soft ground.”