The approaching footfalls grew louder.

Red light flared across his extremities. He dissolved into power that streaked into the infernus. The pendant buzzed against my chest, then went still. I stared at Zora, blood shining on the concrete around her, as my vision blurred with tears.

The combat team arrived, their ruckus surrounding me. Someone yelled Zora’s name. Mythics surrounded her.

“She’s alive!” someone shouted.

My head came up.

“Sin, dose her, quickly! Bryce, get the nearest healer over here!”

I blinked my vision clear. A woman with a kit of potions was pouring liquid over Zora’s wounds, colored steam rising as it touched her. Another was holding her wrist to count her pulse while a third elevated her legs. More mythics rushed around. Dark shapes. Blurred shapes.

“Robin? Robin?”

The voice penetrated my daze, and I realized a woman was crouched beside me, squeezing my shoulder. She seemed familiar. They were all familiar, but I couldn’t remember a single name.

“Robin,” the woman asked, “are you hurt?”

Hurt? No, I was fine. Bruised and aching and totally fine. I wasn’t the one lying in a pool of blood, my life slipping away while a crowd of my friends desperately tried to keep me alive.

Tears spilled down my face, and I crumpled forward, shaking with sobs.

Chapter Eleven

Sitting on my bed with my knees pulled up, I watched Zylas. Spirals of magic patterned the floor all around him, and he stiffened with pain as crimson power pooled in the gouge in his shoulder. He’d been healing his injuries for ten minutes now, the dark slashes disappearing one by one.

Before beginning, he’d spent over an hour in the shower, soaking up the heat so he’d have enough magic. I’d fed him three bowls of steaming soup while he’d been in there, one after another. It probably hadn’t helped compared to the steady warmth from the shower, but I hadn’t been able to do anything else.

The crimson glow faded and Zylas sat up. His naked torso, uninterrupted by his armor, was pristine again, showing no sign of the slices that had crisscrossed his body. Standing, he trudged to the bed and slumped onto his stomach beside me. As he pillowed his head on his folded arms, I rubbed at the tears building in my eyes.

How were we supposed to defeat Claude, get the stolen grimoire pages back, and avenge my parents if we couldn’t defeat Nazhivēr?

“You cannot kill all enemies.” Zylas’s voice was a husky murmur. “How much you hate them does not make you stronger or them weaker.”

The leaden weight in my chest pressed on my lungs. “You don’t think we can defeat Nazhivēr?”

“Not without dh’ērrenith.”

A hopeless silence fell between us. Zylas stretched out his legs, sighing as he tried to get comfortable. I stared absently at his bare torso, then uncurled from my miserable ball. Shifting to his side, I pressed my hands to his back.

He twitched in surprise, then settled again. I ran my hands up to his shoulders, found the tightest muscles, and began to knead them.

“What about that sorcerer?” I asked. “He knew Nazhivēr, so he must know Claude too.” I thought back to the old photo in Tori’s folder as I dug my thumbs into a knot below his shoulder blade. “Is that man even human?”

“He smells like a hh’ainun.”

“Why hasn’t he aged, then? And his sorcery is … I’ve never seen anything like that. It was so fast.” I shifted to Zylas’s other shoulder, firmly tracing his tight muscles. “I’ll see if I can find that case Tori was referencing. Someone took his photo, so maybe the MagiPol database has information on him or why he was under investigation twenty years ago.”

“Hnn.”

I leaned sideways to see his face. His eyes were closed, his breathing slow. A faint smile touched my lips. The last—and only—time I’d massaged his stiff muscles after a healing, he’d snarled and complained and tried to shove me off. We’d come a long way.

But some things hadn’t changed—like him suffering terrible injuries while protecting me.

“Zylas?” My voice trembled on his name. “You almost died, didn’t you?”

He cracked an eye open. “Nazhivēr was not trying to kill me.”

“He wasn’t?”

“If he wanted to kill me, I would be dead.”

My hand was on the back of his neck, but I didn’t remember putting it there. My fingers sank into his tangled hair, gripping tight. “I couldn’t hear you. We couldn’t combine our magic when it might’ve stopped Nazhivēr. Please, Zylas, tell me how to hear your mind.”

He turned his head, one softly glowing eye gazing at me.

“You ask for everything like it is nothing.”

As confusion buzzed through me, a thud sounded from the main room—the front door closing. Amalia was home.

I scooched off the bed. “I’ll be right back. Just—just hold that thought, okay?”

His forehead wrinkled at the idiom. Leaving him to puzzle over it, I hurried into the main room.

Amalia was unzipping her tall boots, her blond hair hanging limply around her shoulders. As I rushed into sight, she shrugged off her coat and tossed it onto the shelf in the front closet.

“Zora is alive,” she said.

A painful knot in my chest eased. “She’s going to be okay?”

“Too soon to tell.” Passing me, Amalia dropped heavily onto the sofa. “The healers stabilized her, but she’s still in critical condition.”

“Zylas can’t heal her.” I pressed a hand against my stomach to quell my anxiety. “Even if we could get him over there to do it without anyone noticing, how would we explain how her injuries vanished?”

Amalia shook her head. “I’m not sure his fancy demon healing could make those injuries disappear. She has internal ruptures and … stuff where it isn’t supposed to be. I don’t think any magic can prevent sepsis.”

My knees went weak and I sat on the coffee table before they buckled.

“The healers’ place was a zoo. That didn’t go wrong for just you guys. Loads of guild members were injured, some pretty badly.” She let her head fall back. “It would’ve been worse if the three of you hadn’t taken out those golems.”