I let my head loll to the side and see Zoric asleep sitting up in a chair by my cot. I can’t have been out long, because the bruises on his face haven’t turned black yet. I sit up slowly and look around to see that save for Zoric I am alone in the small, single room. There are no medicae staff. No Sisters Hospitaller. Nor is there any sign of Yumia, or Efrayl. There’s no machine.

No Sofika.

My heart starts thundering and I lurch upright and out of the cot. The instant my bare feet hit the cold deck my head starts spinning and shooting pains lance up and down my body from the wound in my side. I lose my balance, falling against the bank of monitron readers and the equipment trays, sending needles and cutting blades to the floor with a clatter. Zoric wakes with a start at the sound of it. He gets up and out of his chair and grabs hold of me by the arm to keep me from falling.

‘Throne,’ he says. ‘Are you mad?’

He tries to get me to sit back down, but I fight him.

‘Where is she?’ I ask. ‘Where is Sofika?’

‘She’s safe,’ he says, holding onto my shoulders. ‘She’s all right.’

I stop my fighting and search Zoric’s face. He doesn’t look as though he’s lying, but then again, they never do. Not in dreams. I reach up and take hold of the pendant around my neck.

‘It’s true,’ Zoric says. ‘You’re not dreaming, lord.’

I ignore him, tightening my grip around the iron-pointed skull until it breaks the skin. Until it hurts. I look down at my hand as I uncurl my fingers and my heart slows to normal at the sight of the ten points of blood in my palm.

‘Seems not,’ I say absently.

‘It’s getting harder for you to tell the difference, isn’t it?’

I ignore the question. ‘Tell me where she is.’

‘Not far from here,’ he says. ‘The hospitallers brought her up from the lowdecks, machine and all. They are watching over her now in Efrayl’s place.’

My hand aches as I let it fall by my side, and I am surprised when my heart does too. Just a little.

‘He’s dead, then,’ I say.

Zoric nods. ‘He’s dead.’

I sit back down on the edge of the cot slowly. ‘And Yumia?’

Zoric drops into the folding chair. He looks exhausted. Wounded, in a way that isn’t just physical.

‘Salting her wounds, if I had to guess. She helped me carry you up here, and then she vanished.’

‘She didn’t say anything?’

He shakes his head. ‘Not a word.’

‘She’s angry.’

Zoric fixes me with his pale, bloodshot eyes. ‘So am I,’ he says. ‘Yumia and I would have protected Sofika too, you know, if you’d let us.’