“Eterran has a bit of magic left.” His gaze turned to the dead beast. “Enough to get that into the water before someone sees it.”

As though in response to his words, the distant sound of sirens echoed through the night.

“Get him home,” Ezra told me. “Warm him up. Feed him once he’s ready to eat.”

I nodded weakly.

“I’ll contact you soon.”

“But Ezra, did you find—”

“Go!” As the sound of sirens grew louder, he pivoted to face the īnkav corpse and straightened a steel-plated glove. Crimson burned across his fingers.

Amalia tugged on me. “Let’s get out of here.”

Letting her support me, I limped away from the demon mage. As we moved across the pathway that spanned the water, I pushed my legs a little faster. Urgency pounded in my head. I needed to get Zylas home. I needed to warm him up.

I couldn’t lose him now.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

I sat on the edge of the tub, one shoulder braced against the wall. My leg was stretched out, my ankle splinted with two rulers and a tensor bandage, and my arm throbbed where Saul’s spell had cut me, gauze taped over the wound. There was no point in seeking medical attention when Zylas could erase my injuries faster than any healer—once he’d recovered.

He lay in the tub behind me, water cascading over him. Steam swirled through the bathroom and I’d opened the door to let fresh air in.

Amalia leaned across the jamb. “Hey.”

I smiled weakly. “How’re you feeling?”

“Bruised and hurting and exhausted.” She limped onto the linoleum and passed me a glass of water and a bottle of painkillers. “Pop those pills, then get some rest. I put three cans of soup in the slow-cooker to warm for when Zylas is awake.”

“Thanks.”

“Sure.” She searched my face. “You all right?”

“I’ll be better once Zylas wakes up.”

As I unscrewed the cap on the pill bottle, her gaze drifted to Zylas.

“He came back for me,” she murmured, her expression softening. She refocused on me. “Get some sleep, okay?”

With a final worried glance at us, she retreated from the bathroom. I put two fat gel caplets in my mouth and washed them down with water. Grunting as I stretched my arm out, the motion triggering all sorts of twinges and aches, I slid the glass and bottle onto the bathroom counter.

The shower poured down, but it wasn’t enough to drown out the memories of that fight. The sorcerers’ shouts. Saul roaring as his head was engulfed in flame. Jaden screaming as Zylas ripped out his heart. The īnkav’s horrific screech.

The crunch of Zylas’s shattering armor. His tearing cry of agony as the creature’s jaws crushed him.

I turned my hands up, staring at my pale fingers. Remembering the crimson magic flowing over them. Remembering Jaden’s blue blade in my grasp. Had I really plunged a magical sword into the īnkav’s skull?

Shivering, I twisted toward Zylas. His head was slumped against the back wall of the shower, face slack.

I could see him crouched beside the portal, reaching toward the starry sky of his home.

My heart twisted, ached, the cracks of grief splitting wider. I slid along the tub’s edge, careful to keep weight off my ankle, and reached down. Taking his hand, I pulled it into my lap and held it tight. For a long time, I sat there, holding on to him in the only way I could right now.

His fingers twitched, startling me from a pain-filled doze. I looked down.

His eyes cracked open. Dark irises stared at me.

“Sahvē,” I murmured, using the same demonic greeting he’d once given me, weeks ago on another occasion when he’d been recovering under the hot water.

“Sahvē.” He blinked slowly. “I am not dead.”

“Ezra arrived right as …” I couldn’t bring myself to reference Zylas’s near death. “Eterran healed you.”

He frowned. “Saved by a Dh’irath? I do not like it.”

His chest moving with slow breaths, he closed his eyes. I squeezed his hand, worried that his skin felt cool despite the hot water splashing over him.

I inhaled deeply. “Zylas … tell me about Ivaknen.”

“Ivaknen? Why?”

Zylas crouched at the portal’s edge. Reaching for it. About to leave me.

“Because I want to know.”

“Now?”

“Why not now?”

Grumbling, he straightened his legs as much as he could in the tub. “When a Dīnen is summoned, his vīsh … the power of Dīnen, it thinks he is dead. It goes to the next Dīnen. If he returns home, the vīsh will not come back to him. He cannot be Dīnen again, but he cannot swear to new Dīnen.”

My mouth quirked down.

His dark eyes slitted open. “Ivaknen are older than Dīnen. They have respect, because they survived. They have had victory over the hh’ainun. To be Ivaknen is to have pride and power.”

“That … doesn’t sound so bad,” I suggested, struggling to interpret his grim tone.

He tilted his head toward the spray of water, letting the hot droplets run down his face. “Ivaknen have respect, but they have nothing else. No place to be, no House, no purpose.”

The word sparked in my mind, as though I should understand something about the way his husky voice ground through the syllables.

“Some Ivaknen find a purpose. They have sons or give advice to new Dīnen. But other Ivaknen wander. They wander and wander, nowhere to go, nothing to do.”

My hand curled around his forearm. “But you still want to go home? Even though you’ll no longer have a House?”

“Var.”

“Why?”

His dark gaze slid to me. “What else can I do?”

My breath caught. I could see my neat handwriting on a notebook page, a translation of Myrrine’s journal entry: He looked at me with sadness, with a resigned heart, and asked, What else is there?

I forced myself to breathe. Ignoring my crumbling heart, I pressed his hand between mine. “If you want to go home, I’ll make it happen. If those sorcerers could open a portal, so can I.”

“Their vīsh did not work properly. It tore the īnkav and then it broke.”

“Something wasn’t working right,” I agreed. “But we’ll figure it out.”