The men talked for a time. She stayed wedged up against the door. It was slightly spongy, like the floor. Was everything made of some organic shit? She found she could not look at Khatijah’s ruined body. Her bug was spent. There was no chance of bringing her back, even if Rhys was ten times better at being a magician than he actually was, or if he’d even help her. What the fuck was he doing here?

She gingerly touched her jaw where she’d been hit. It could have been worse.

Nyx looked around for a way out. The whole room was dark. A line of the blue bioluminescent lighting ran along the upper edge of the cell, but that was all. No windows. No openings. Where did the air come from? When she pressed her cheek to the wall and felt it breathe beneath her, she remembered. It was a living thing. Like being trapped inside some porous lung.

The voices outside finally ceased. She heard the squelch of boots across the floor. The sucking sound of a door closing. Silence.

Nyx hated prison.

She made herself look at Khatijah’s body. Maybe dying really was the only way out. She brought them to this. It was time to let go. It was time to throw the fight again—hers, this time. It wouldn’t take too long to convince them to kill her. She always managed to find the perfect way to piss people off.

When she decided to die, it was almost a relief. Water in the desert.

She heard something outside again. Footsteps.

“Nyx?” Rhys’s voice.

Nyx stood.

The door opened.

She let out her breath. Rhys reached forward and cut her bound hands.

She tried to think of something grimly optimistic to say.

Rhys embraced her.

It was sudden, and wholly unexpected. Nyx found herself gripping him tightly. He was thinner than she remembered, less muscular. The last time she’d held him this way they were both mostly naked, hiding atop a desk in a ruined Ras Tiegan church, trying not to get eaten by mutant red sand. It had been a long time since she thought about that day, clinging to him amid all that death. If she thought about it all, it was painful, just like every other fucking thing from her bloody fucking past.

He released her.

“So you came for me after all,” Rhys said.

She shook her head. “Sorry. Not me. I had no idea what happened to you. You made me swear not to look for you, remember?”

Something dark passed over his face, like disappointment. “Yes. You’re right. I did. You took a blood oath. But then… Why are you here? You and…I’m sorry about her.”

“We’re here to bring Raine back to Nasheen.”

“Raine.” He hesitated. Then, “Yes. I’d thought he was dead.”

“People don’t stay dead in Nasheen.”