My hand sprung open of its own accord, but the key didn’t fall; it’d been seared into my palm. I shook my hand wildly without thinking. The key clattered to the ground, taking the first layer of my skin with it and leaving behind a key-shaped burst of angry red and white over the scar tissue of my palm.

Somewhere in the back of my mind, I was distantly aware of Kiva screaming and Ericen yelling, of someone laughing and my own sanity slowly slipping, and behind that, something else. Something I couldn’t process.

Suddenly, Kiva was beside me, and I wondered when I’d fallen to my knees. My right hand clutched the forearm of my left, my eyes pinned on the key-shaped design, my breath refusing to come. Pain ripped through my hand and wrist like a thousand shards of glass tearing through my veins.

I stared at the burns, distantly registering that Kiva’s hands were free, that Razel must have unlocked her shackles, that the key I’d pulled from the flames hadn’t been for her restraints at all.

A shadow fell over me, and from far, far away, Razel’s voice reached me. “Next time I see you, wear your gloves.”

Then something shifted inside me. My vision blurred, then went black.

Twenty-Seven

I woke in the healer’s quarters, the room heavy with the sweet scent of the murkwood root used in pain tonics.

At first, I didn’t move, didn’t even open my eyes. Something was wrong. For some time, I lay there, letting my mind slowly remind me what it was.

I’d been burned. Badly.

The memory came back gradually at first, then all at once. Razel’s laughter, Kiva’s screams, the fire, the key, my hand—I squeezed my eyes shut tighter, desperate to block out the image of the key clinging to my seared skin.

I gave myself another moment and then forced my eyes open.

My hand had a loose bandage on it from my fingers to my wrist. It’d been propped on a pillow, and there were several jars of herbs and ointments on the table beside me. I recognized the murkwood vial, which explained the thick and heavy feel of my head.

Asleep in a chair on the other side, her mouth open and emitting snores, sat Kiva. The mark below her collarbone had stopped bleeding.

The bed I lay in was small but comfortable and warm, a single sona lamp burning dimly. No one else was around.

I looked again at my hand, and panic rose inside me, as white-hot and raw as the burns themselves. I gasped, hot tears threatening at my eyes. Kiva bolted upright at the sound, blinking rapidly, then sprang to her feet. “Thia!”