“What’s wrong?” he demanded, sliding back the blanket, searching for the source of the pain. Adare’s breath was gone. She had no words to tell him that it was not her body that ached.

“Fulton,” she managed finally, too horrified by the memory of the Well, of what had happened there, to care about Lehav’s hands running over her skin. “Birch. What happened? Did they . . .” She couldn’t bring herself to say it.

He paused, looked her in the eye, then, evidently satisfied that she wasn’t dying, tossed the cloth back up over her shoulders. He did not, however, retake his seat. Instead, he stood at the window, staring out into the storm, ignoring the gusting rain.

“What happened?” He shrugged. “Well, that very much depends on who you ask.”

“Are they alive?” Adare demanded. The words hurt as they left her, as though they were barbed hooks pulling free, ripping out ragged pieces of pink flesh.

He nodded. “Both of them. The lightning that hit you dead-on knocked them both out of the way—knocked a few dozen people out of the way—but those two landed far clear of the Well. A little stunned, but fine.”

“And you didn’t insist on . . . going through with it? Going through with the execution?”

Lehav frowned. “I’ve seen plenty of lightning,” he said finally. “Down in the Waist. Up north.” He shook his head. “There was something different about this. It was . . . brighter. Sharper. More than natural, somehow.”

Adare stared.

“And then people started to talk,” he went on. “About the lightning—Intarra’s lightning. About the fact that you were hit but not harmed. About those lines on your skin.” He shook his head once more. “Never seen lightning leave marks like that.”

It took a few moments for Adare to understand.

“A miracle,” she breathed finally.

“Their word,” he said. “Not mine.” Again he shrugged, but he’d turned away from the window, and there was something new in his eyes when he looked at her, something she couldn’t quite name. “I’m stubborn,” he went on after a pause, “but not stupid. It wasn’t the right moment to go throwing heretics into the Well.”

“They weren’t heretics,” Adare said, relief flooding her like liquor, sweet and sickening all at the same time.

“Maybe.”

Adare raised her head. She felt stronger now, though her skin still burned. “Where are they?” she asked.

He snorted. “Just because I’m not killing your friends doesn’t mean I’m letting them wander around. They’re alive. They’re well. That’s what you want to know, right? Congratulations.”