“I’m here.” Warm hands—too warm, everything is too warm—clamp down on my shoulders. “Shh, it’s okay. I’m here.”

He doesn’t sound like he’s dying. I crack an eye open, but everything is blurred. It’s hard to tell, but I think I’m in a candle-lit room, in an enormous bed. A fire crackles in the corner, warding off the early-autumn chill. Raze sits near my knees, making the mattress dip a little, and his face is a distant smudge surrounded by coppery red, but I’m pretty sure he’s looking down at me with concern.

I reach up, then pull my hand back, hissing with pain. Raze catches it gently in his, turning my palm up to inspect the wound. Someone bandaged it, but it still hurts, worse than when I first cut it.

“Where are we?” I ask. My voice sounds strange, whispery and raw. “The egg! I saw...the dragon...” I look around as quickly as I can, but the firedrake is nowhere to be found. Maybe I imagined it.

Raze pauses, and I think he leans back a little. Finally, after a silence long enough to be noticeably awkward, he says, “We’re safe, okay? I’ll explain later. Do you trust me?”

That should set off some kind of alarm, but I’m surprised to find that I do trust him. I would nod my head, but I don’t think I need my aching brain sloshing around up there with that kind of movement, so I just blink and hope he understands.

He seems to realize he’s still holding my hand between us and drops it as if it burned him. “How are you feeling?”

I wonder if he knows what an impossible question that is to answer.

On the one hand, the weight of Gossamer’s presence is gone, and I feel like I can breathe for the first time in days. I can feel my pulse in my ears and my head and my hand, electric with the faerie power still coursing through my veins. That feeling of invincibility still hasn’t worn off.

On the other hand, I’m so weak that I can’t get out of bed, in so much pain that I can hardly crack my eyes open, sweaty with fever, and my palm feels like there’s still a knife embedded in it.

“Like I tore a hole in the fabric of reality big enough for two people to jump through,” I say, eventually. I mean for it to sound light, but that’s hard with the scratchy rasp of my voice right now.

Raze chuckles anyway.

I can only remember things in quick bursts, which fade as fast as they come. I catch onto one thought before it can slip away, ignoring the nagging feeling that I’m forgetting something else. “Isolde...” I say. She was all I thought of when I created the portal’s direction. She should be here. Anxiety starts to rise in my chest. “Where...?”

“She’s safe,” Raze soothes. “You brought us back to them. Do you want me to go get her?”