I slowly began to realize that I was out of the lines. Bis had found me and pulled me out. But I was raw. My soul was leaking. I had no aura to protect it. I was dying. But at least I was in the sun. I was in the sun? With Bis?

I tried to open my eyes a crack, seeing green tile and the soft movement of a white curtain. Bis had found me when no one else knew I was in danger. He was awake in the sun. And as I lay on the floor of the seaside patio, my heart seemed to break. He’d bonded with me, and now I was going to die. It was so unfair.

The air shifted, and the breath in me hissed over my teeth as the salt in it burned. My sweat had gone cold, and I shivered as Trent’s black slippers scuffed to a halt and he dropped to his knees before me, his hands outstretched but afraid to touch me. There was a bloody stick beside me, and horror trickled through me as I realized it was my arm. I wasn’t soaking in sweat but blood.

“Please make it stop hurting,” I whispered, then gasped when Trent turned me over and lifted me into his arms. The twin sensations of fire and ice flashed like a cracked whip over my skin, and I clenched my body, gasping as his aura—Trent’s aura, golden and hazy—came between me and the world.

The burning eased, and I looked up at him, lungs heaving. The air hurt, but I couldn’t get enough in me. Ku’Sox was going to win. I was going to die. I felt it.

“Is she going to be okay?” Bis said, and I smelled cinnamon and wine, warm from the sun. Trent’s aura wasn’t enough, and I felt bits of me flaking off, but it gave me enough relief so that I could breathe. “It’s better, right, Ms. Morgan?” the gargoyle asked, shifting from foot to foot just inside my narrow range of vision. His red eyes turned to Trent. “Can you fix her?”

“I don’t know.” The arms under me shifted, and a blissful coolness sifted over me like shaded sand. I hissed at the scraping sensation, my eyes closing. He smelled like hot wine, and all my muscles relaxed. I was leaking more than blood. My thoughts and memories were flaking from me every time the wind blew.

“But you have to,” Bis said, and I heard a bird crying far away. My eyes were burning, and the trails of tears were like fire on my cheeks. “You simply have to. That’s why I brought her here.”

Trent shifted, and I stifled a groan. “She’s lost a lot of it,” he said. “Mine can’t keep her alive until she starts to make her own again.”

It. He meant my aura, and I began shuddering in earnest, unable to stop. My muscles were seizing, and everything was going cold, even the fire licking what was left of my soul. My body was shutting down. I couldn’t stop it.