Gian held out a hemp tunic and trousers. “Let’s get her dressed.”

“Where are we going?”

“Nirata is opening a gate,” Gian said. “It’s a faster way to get to the camp. The people following will overtake us if we try to walk out.”

“A… gate?” Lilia remembered the field of poppies and the tears between the worlds. She remembered the amber sky. Why did they want to take her back if bringing her here was supposed to save her? “You won’t be going?”

Gian did not look at her. “No.”

“Gian knows the price,” Nirata said. “Let me help you dress, child.”

“All right,” Lilia said, because she could barely raise her left arm to stuff it into the tunic.

Nirata dressed her. They led Lilia outside, into a cold, brilliant morning. Lilia smelled mountain everpine. The living stick-and-vine shelter behind them was just an outbuilding next to the proper house, a soaring construction built into the bubbling bark of a massive weeping tree so large, they stood on the broad back of just one of its roots jutting out from the mountain.

As they walked into the light, Lilia saw Nirata gaze up toward the larger house, as if they had an audience. Lilia saw nothing at the windows. She felt a deep unease.

“Stand here,” Nirata said, and released Lilia.

Lilia tottered. She grabbed at a broad, broken branch behind her for balance.

“Are you ready?” Nirata asked Gian.

Gian came forward. She knelt in front of Nirata.

Lilia saw movement from the house. A small child, maybe five or six, stood in the now open doorway.

Nirata drew a blade from her hip, a simple dagger meant for eating and chores. But the blade was freshly sharpened, shiny. She tilted Gian’s head back.

Lilia realized what was going to happen. She remembered her mother’s bloody dress, and the dead riders, and the tear in the world. Was it the blood that opened the way between the worlds? Blood witch.

“Gian, don’t–” Lilia said.

Nirata drew the blade across Gian’s neck. Blood gushed.

Lilia’s stomach heaved. “No, no, no,” Lilia said. “I saved you, Gian. I saved you!”

“Gran?” the little girl called from the house.

The girl ran toward them. Gian’s body jerked and trembled in the pooling blood.

“Go back inside!” Nirata called. She had dropped the dagger. She held Gian’s body in her arms. Blood stained her hands and arms to the elbow.

“Is she all right?” The little girl hesitated, not a dozen feet from them.

Lilia gripped the karoi beak that dangled against her chest. Nirata’s arms were full.

The girl came forward. “Let me help!”

A price, Lilia thought. There was always a price. Gian chose death to get Lilia to the other side.

But Lilia, too, had a choice.