Sound.

  Darkness and sound.

  The sound of wind playing through leaves and bending grass, the blades touching in light kisses. Water flowing. A man sobbing. Llew knew that voice. Alvaro.

  Her neck ached.

  A woman whimpered. Herself? She hadn’t felt herself make a noise, but she couldn’t feel anything beyond the burning ache through her neck. She needed to turn it. The crunch ripped through her ears. Pain fired up the back of her head, through her jaw and across her chest. She breathed and it hurt. Light blazed.

  “Do you want to die?”

  “No, I—”

  “Then get off the ground.”

  That voice. Flat and authoritative. She knew that one, too. Jonas.

  Llew lay, aches easing. The light turned to the pale grays, whites, and hints of blue above.

  “It was an accident, Llew. You gotta bring her back.” Al.

  “Give her a minute.”

  “But K doesn’t have a minute.” Alvaro’s voice was thick with withheld sobs.

  Llew breathed deeply. All her aches and pains were gone. And she remembered what had happened.

  “Can’t give back what I’ve taken. Besides, she’s Syakaran.” There. Simple. The woman who had helped kill her babies was dead and there was nothing Llew could do about it, even if she wanted to. She breathed again and turned her head enough to see Jonas and Alvaro standing near, only boot-covered feet and crutch tips touching the ground. She turned a little further to see the dead grass encircling her. Her hands were empty, clutching no flesh, resting in the grass. She raised them, placing them on her belly.

  “Check her,” Jonas said. “She got a pulse?”

  Alvaro crouched. “I think? I think— I don’t know. I haven’t done this before!”

  Llew sat up to see Alvaro crouched by Karlani, who lay on her back, her hands raised to her belly, too, and her head and bare neck separated from the bare ground by Alvaro’s coat. She was almost certain that would be at Jonas’s suggestion, saving Karlani. But why?

  “Please, Llew. You can’t let her go,” Alvaro said little above a whisper while their heads were close.

  Shifting both crutches under one arm, Jonas reached down, pressed fingertips beneath Karlani’s jaw.

  “Hold on, K,” Alvaro pleaded and moved back, giving Jonas space.

  “She’s alive.” Jonas stood.

  “What do you want me to do about it?” Llew held Jonas’s gaze, determinedly ignoring Alvaro. He’d kept his voice flat, but Llew was almost certain she’d caught a hint of relief.

  “She’s Syakaran.”

  “So?”

  Jonas pressed his lips together. Yes. Llew had made the same argument, such as it was, but things had changed rather dramatically.

  “Come on, Llew.” Alvaro placed himself between Llew and Jonas, as if that would make her listen to him. “It was supposed to be a joke. And after Cassidy …”

  “Don’t say I owe you.” She did look at Alvaro then. “It’s not you I owe. And I can never pay Cassidy back.”

  Jonas stepped in close to Alvaro. Despite his weakness and Alvaro’s added height, plus the attack moments earlier, he managed to don all his authority and a hint of menace. “You want her saved? Get her to the Ajnais. Llew can’t do nothin’ here.”

  Alvaro looked between Llew and Jonas, pained. “It was a mistake. I swear. A stupid joke. Let her live, Llew.”

  Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  “If that was a joke, it was the worst.” Llew pushed herself to stand as Alvaro crouched and gathered Karlani in his arms.

  “I know. I’m so sorry. I mean, we knew you’d live.”

  “And Jonas would be on the ground!” Llew’s anger heated her core and filled her with the urge to hit someone as a full accounting of the situation took shape, yet somehow Jonas found the situation funny as he hissed out a single laugh.

  “We train for years to face the Aenuk reflex. If you get the chance, remind Karlani she’s just a pup. She ain’t got no business messin’ with Aenuks, especially Llew. She’s lucky she’s alive.”

  Alvaro paled and swallowed. “We didn’t … I’m sorry. I don’t know what else to say.”

  “Then shut up and get her to the trees,” Jonas said. “We’ll follow.” When Alvaro was halfway to the first gate, Jonas turned to Llew. “He’s just a kid, Llew.”

  “He’s older than me.”

  “He hasn’t had to grow up like you did.” His lips twisted between a smile and a grimace. “I’m glad we didn’t meet when I was eighteen.” He re-positioned his crutches under each armpit.

  “Would I have survived that meeting?”

  Jonas paused a moment before responding, doing an accounting of his own training by the time he was eighteen. He would already have been in the Quaven army four years. And Llew would’ve been a rough-around-the-edges fourteen year old.

  “Unlikely.” Jonas’s usual darkness settled back in place, then he put his growing proficiency with the crutches and prosthetic on display, setting a decent rhythm and pace back down the hill.

  Llew followed, believing him, and still fuming. “I said once, and once only.”

  “You can still say that. You don’t have to save her.” Jonas glanced over his shoulder, his locomotion unaffected, though Llew caught the pinch of his features before he turned away again. His leg must’ve been aching. The real part he still possessed or the phantom missing part she couldn’t guess.

  “So, what did you go and stop her draining for?”

  Jonas stopped. Llew’s momentum took her a few strides past him. She turned to face him but didn’t close the space.

  “She’s Syakaran,” he said.

  Llew flung her hands in the air in an aggressive shrug: So? A Syakaran who had suddenly proven herself to be more hindrance than help.

  “I know she don’t deserve it. But if I got what I deserved, I’d be dead a hundred times over. I just wanted to give you the choice one more time before it’s gone. You said yourself—” He shifted his weight onto his remaining whole leg and crutches only. “I know how you feel about people as things, but sometimes we gotta use what, and who, we have. Karlani offered herself as a weapon to Aris once. We can ask the same of her. We’re still in the heart of Turhmos. We’ve still got a lot of enemies.”

  “Not least of which is Karlani herself.”

  Jonas acknowledged that with a wry nod. “I don’t think she’s picked a side, though. She’ll go wherever will take her on her terms.”

  “What about my terms? Everyone seems to think I bleed for fun! It’s not fun. The needles hurt! Yes, I heal, but I still feel. I do it for you because you’re you. I can’t do it for everybody. I’m not a—” Hot tears welled in her eyes and rolled down her cheeks. Her body remembered being strapped in a chair, mechanical spiders crawling on her, extracting blood, while she was forced to drain the lives of children just like her. “I’m not some sack of blood you Kara can just … just …” She lost the words as her mind caught up with the rest of her. She could remember the sensations, but the mental strain of what Braph had forced on her shut her down. She wasn’t ready to revisit the experience, but it was too close to what she had to do for Karlani; it crashed through her unbidden. “And it’s hardly a choice, is it? What kind of person would I be if …?” The so-called choice had been living in her head since the moment Karlani had turned up on the farm. It had never been a choice. Not really. Not for Llew.

  Jonas swung forward on his crutches, hooked them beneath one arm and brought his other around Llew, enveloping her in his strength. Strength he had because her blood coursed through his veins. Because needles. Because Ajnais. Because love.

  Love. The missing ingredient when it came to giving blood to Karlani, or anyone else.

  The smell of him and, yes, that strength calmed her. She breathed him in again and he squeezed her to him, seeming to sense that was what she needed.

  “She killed our babies,” she whispered into his shoulder and she tensed again on the urge to lash out at Jonas for forgetting.

  “I know.” Jonas’s voice cracked on the words. He hadn’t forgotten. “But she might be the only person who can save mine. I’m sorry.”

  Llew stood back from him, meeting his glistening gaze. “Joelin?”

  Jonas nodded.

  “You’ll get him back yourself. You will walk right in there, grab him, bring him home—” She splayed her hands to indicate the farm. “—and live happily ever after. That’s how his story goes. And yours.”