The Saint Asne rumbled and shook, every line vibrating and every timber creaking as it hurtled through the Bittergale. Isabelle had locked them into a stable eddy in the lee of the quondam escort, which towed them along in its wake. The storm raged outside their bubble of relative calm. Only the lightest debris, sleet, and pea-sized hail got bent enough in the escort’s vortex to spray across their hull. The ship’s lanterns turned the racing slurry into a smear of gray tinged with green and red.

Down in the surgeon’s bay, the wails and moans of injured men rose above the hammering of the storm. Rebecca hovered in the doorway, her eyes still wide and wild with shock. Isabelle stood with teeth clenched and knuckles white with helpless fear as the surgeon and his loblolly boys dumped Major Bitterlich on the cutting table. He’d already lost so much blood.

The surgeon took one look at his perforated shell and said, “I can’t cut through that. He needs to change.”

“Can’t,” Bitterlich muttered, his voice withered. “Bullets.”

“Get him off the table for someone I can help,” the surgeon said.

“No,” Isabelle commanded. His wounds were deep and sore, but a mature Seelenjäger had more than one body to draw on. He could disperse the wounds. Plus he had a healing form. Her talons could cut his shell, or …

“Rebecca!” Isabelle shouted over the storm. “Turn into a wyrm.”

Rebecca looked at Isabelle through eyes brimming with tears. “Wh-Why?”

“Burn him with your ghostfire. It’ll make the metal fall out of him.” She’d seen the ghostfire wash over living men without hurting them. It only burned things like stone and metal.

Rebecca took several rapid breaths, closed her eyes, and stretched out into her wyrm form, a sinewy ribbon of blue-green scales and mother-of-pearl horns.

She whipped up into an s shape and spat green fire, sweeping Bitterlich from one end to the other. Isabelle clutched her hand to her chest and prayed for the Builder’s mercy. Bitterlich gasped once, and the now-ghostly grapeshot dropped out of him, falling like hailstones through his flesh, through the table, and through the deck.

“Perfect!” Isabelle shouted to Rebecca. She bent over Bitterlich and urged him, “The metal’s out. Change into a healing form.”

But his eyes were staring sightless and his breath came only in hiccups.

“Bitterlich!” Isabelle cried, taking his face in her hand. “We got the metal out. You can change! Please! Please. Oh saints. Don’t go.” Tears streamed down her face and she shook him. “No. No. No.”

“Ssmme,” he mumbled.

Isabelle took what felt like the first breath of her whole life. “Bitterlich?”

“Kiss me,” he muttered.