Lilyana stifled a shriek of frustration and flung the dagger across the kitchen. It clattered off a wall and settled beside the hearth.

“It’s not working!” Head hung low, she planted her hands on the table. “Must have been a serrated blade. She’s all but torn apart. I can’t stop the bleeding.”

Josiri stared down at Sevaka. Her chest pulsed in arrhythmic, shallow breaths. Her eyelids twitched. Lilyana was right. He’d seen it before, in the stockade after Zanya. The Raven was calling her. Didn’t seem fair. She was barely older than Calenne. Had life worked out differently, the two would have been sisters.

Calenne. Had the Raven already taken her? His throat tightened with the sudden, irrational belief that to lose one was to lose both.

“Keep trying,” he said.

Lilyana wiped her brow, leaving behind a bloody smear. “I tell you, it’s no good. We can only ease her passage. Braxov, fetch the moonglove extract. I know you keep it for the horses.”

Josiri glared at her. “We don’t give up until she’s gone.”

“It’s cruel.”

“It’s life.” He shot a glance at Malachi but found hollow eyes and no support. Northwealders. Always the easy way out. “You don’t give up until it makes you.”

Lilyana’s fingers closed around Sevaka’s. “Braxov, please do as I ask.”

Josiri met the steward’s gaze. What if he demanded the steward refuse? Would loyalty-in-exile carry him that far? Had he any right to invite consequences on Braxov out of some weary, farcical notion that Calenne and Sevaka’s fates were entwined?

“I can help,” said a small voice.

“Sidara?” Malachi hurried to the door. His hands closed about his daughter’s shoulders and turned her about. “You shouldn’t be here.”

What a sight they must have seemed. A dying woman on the table. Lilyana bloody to the elbows, cowing three grown men with quiet fury. And yet Sidara didn’t blanch. She stood there in her nightdress, granite as the hearth.

“I can help her.” Certainty waxed in her tone. “I helped Father.”

Malachi shook his head. “This isn’t the same.”

Lilyana’s shoulders shook. “Sidara Reveque, you will go to your room, and you will do so this instant, do you understand me?”

To Josiri’s surprise, the girl ignored her parents and stared directly at him.

“Let her try,” he said.

Lilyana rounded on him. “Don’t encourage her fancies. She’s just a girl.”

So Lilyana knew after all? Or at least suspected. “And what if they’re not fancies?”

“What are you both talking about?” demanded Malachi.

Josiri kept his eyes on Lilyana. On the expressionless face that nevertheless spoke volumes. She knew. “Your daughter is blessed with light, Malachi.”

He blinked. “What? No . . .”

“Let her try.”

Malachi blinked as a man waking from a dream . . . but he let go of Sidara’s shoulders.