If they were going to die, they’d do it now, together.

Now facing the looming figures that glowed bluish with their lantern, she tried again. “Hello?”

The sight was jarring. The shapes appeared to be nudging one another. It was a childish gesture, the elbows of jostling teenagers. The act disarmed her completely.

“We saw the ag’drurath and came to watch it hunt,” said a distinctly female voice.

“I’m sorry—we didn’t mean to spy. It’s just… It’s so rare to see a dragon, and…”

Amaris could not see the girl. She was hooded, her shape barely lit by the blue lantern. It was a youthful voice that seemed to carry the animation of someone several years younger than Amaris.

“I’m taking a course in draconology,” said another voice in the cadence of a young man.

“A course?” Amaris repeated dumbly. What was this?

“It’s technically a study of the bestiary, but I’m doing my focus in draconology. Seeing the ag’drurath was a blessing from the goddess.”

The girl who’d spoken seemed to be scolding him. There was a quiet eruption as if they argued amongst each other, but she couldn’t hear any of what was being said. Draconology? Course? She tried to force her mind to work as she looked at the dull gloom of the blue fae light.

Amaris was too numb from the cold, the fall, the forest to appreciate the information. Her brain worked around what they had shared.

“You’re students?”

They nudged each other again, and the hooded cloaks advanced. “We’re not supposed to be out here.” The female bravely approached and knelt near Nox and Gadriel, pulling back her hood. She looked to be barely sixteen. “We heard you singing while we were watching the ag’drurath hunt and wanted to come and see what was happening. But then when we saw you were with an ag’imni—”

The boy hushed her, his sound urgent and low.

It was too much. Amaris didn’t care if they were students or farmers or priestesses or the evil queen’s goddess-damned armed guardsmen. “Please,” she said. “My friend is hurt.”

“It—”

“Please help us” was all Amaris said.

They exchanged looks, barely daring to look at the ag’imni in her lap. Perhaps they’d taken the time to absorb the oddity of her circumstance while they had watched her sing, for they did not seem afraid.

The girl spoke again, her voice hushed with urgency as she said, “Wait here.”

And so she did.