unresisting as the weapon was removed from it. And then Syn looked into his cousin’s eyes as reality began to dawn, an ugly, unbelievable sunrise. “I think I did this, cousin.”
“Yes,” Balthazar said grimly. “You did.”
Syn stared at a severed hand that lay upon ground as a fallen soldier. “He was going to hurt her.”
“Hurt who?”
“It matters not.”
With focused effort, Syn managed to rise his tired bones from the pool of blood. As he weaved on his feet, he lurched toward the river, seeking out the cool, rushing waters. Wading into the current, he squatted down and cupped his hands, splashing his face over and over again. Then he drank of the stream, dousing the fire that ran down his throat and into his gut.
When he tried to stand up once more, he faltered and fell, catching himself upon slick rocks. Lifting his head, he found that his skull weighed as much as his entire body, and fast upon the heels of that reckoning came a wave of dizziness. Followed by a burst of heat that bore no relation to exertion.
“Balth . . . azar?”
His cousin hitched a hold under Syn’s arm and pulled him up and out of the water. “Oh, no, Syn . . .”
“What?”
Balthazar looked around frantically. “The change. You’re going through the change—”
“No, I’m not—”
“There is steam coming off your skin, you are boiling up.”
Syn looked in confusion at his arm, at his feet, at his ankles. Steam was in fact rising from his body, and he did feel a strange, certain heat. But . . .
All at once a vast incapacitation tackled him, sweeping his legs out from under him, taking him from the hold of his blooded kin. As he landed in a heap, the fire in his body trebled, and trebled again, and then his limbs began to hum.
“Dearest Virgin Scribe,” Balthazar groaned. “We need to get you shelter, and a blood source.”
“Nae,” Syn said through gritted teeth. “Leave me. It is well enough for me to go unto the Fade—”
As the bones in his legs strained, and his forearms felt like ropes being twisted, he lost the power of speech and laid his head down. Breathing shallowly, he recalled what he knew of the transition: Without the blood of a female, he was going to die, and he wondered how long it would take—
“I shall help him.”
At the sound of the words, Syn forced his eyes open. When he saw who it was, he shook his head. “No, no . . .”
It was the female, from the meadow. The one who had always been so good to him.
“Balthazar,” he said urgently. “Take her away, she mustnae see—”
The female walked forward. “I know what he did to protect me and my kin.” She kept her eyes down, as if she were deliberately not witnessing the damage he had wrought. “I know . . . and I would help him the now.”
Syn shook his head weakly. “No. No, I am unworthy . . .”
Unworthy?” Jo asked as she pulled into a parking space in front of her apartment building. “Unworthy of what?”
As she spoke, Syn did not seem to hear her. He was sitting stock-still in that passenger seat, hands on his knees, eyes staring straight out the front windshield like he was watching a TV. He seemed totally calm. Or . . . maybe he was dead? He wasn’t blinking.
“Syn?”
Well, one thing was certain. She was not about to touch him as she shut the car off—
Slowly, his head turned to her, and his expression was vacant, as if he were in a trance. But then he cleared his throat. “Sorry.”
“It’s okay.” Even though she didn’t know what exactly he was apologizing for or what precisely she was forgiving him of.
He nodded. Then contradicted himself. “No, it isn’t. None of it was.”
Jo glanced around him to the front of her apartment building. “Do you want to come in?”
Was it going to be yes, with a head shake? Or another no/nod combo? she wondered.
“Or should I take you home?” Wherever that was. “I can take you home.”
“I don’t want to go back there right now.”
Was he talking about where he was in his head? Or where he stayed?
Whatever the reply to that question might be, Jo didn’t want him to go. She wanted some answers. About what he thought he knew about her. About who he was and where he came from. About why the connection between them seemed so undeniable.