Her flashlight swings toward the sound of my voice. “If we have no choice, then the war you started was based on a lie. That’s what your stupid rebellion was all about, wasn’t it? Choices?” The cone of her light grows brighter. A loose stone crunches under her shoe. “Amber made a choice when she broke my sister’s neck. You made one when you stole her magic for yourself.”

“I didn’t do it for myself. I did it to save my friends. Whatever Doug told you, it wasn’t the whole story.”

“Part of the story is better than none of it.” Her light snaps off, the sudden darkness disorienting.

“I know you’re angry,” I call out. “And you have every right to be. I’m not proud of what happened.”

“Then you should have no problems giving it back.”

“Giving what back? What do you mean?”

“My sister’s magic.” Her voice is close, but I can’t tell where it’s coming from. “I came here for Ruby, and I’m not leaving without her.”

“You can’t take the smaze. It’s mine. It’s part of me.”

“And my sister was part of me.”

The tunnel goes deathly quiet, the silence only broken by my rasping breaths and the soft spatter of blood dripping from my arm.

A fist slams into my leg. Pain explodes through my thigh as Kai jams the head of an arrow into the skin. Her breath is hot against my face as she pushes it deeper.

“Call it!” she says, grabbing me by the hair as I scream. “Call my sister’s smaze. Make it come to you!” She knees me in the ribs. I double over, unable to breathe. With a ruthless jerk, Kai tears the arrow from my shoulder. A roar of pain rips through me. She knots her fingers in the front of my shirt, slamming me backward into the wall. “Do it!”

“I can’t!” I gasp. “I don’t know how—”

“It came for you before!”

I can’t think. In the pitch blackness, all I see is the mountain in Cuernavaca, the blinding pain as I tumbled over ledges, her arrows buried in my back. All I taste is blood and dirt. All I hear is the thwack of her bowstring releasing and the ice cracking, the roar of bloody water in my ears as the lake swallows me.

Cold. Suddenly, I’m cold all over.

A draft stirs the air between us and Kai goes still, her breath heavy with condensation as the temperature in the tunnel plummets.

My smaze. It’s here.

Kai eases her grip. I feel her retreat a step. Hear the rustle of her arrows in their quiver as her head whips around, searching for the smaze.