Simon brought the knife down. The bastard’s binding kept me frozen, unable even to close my eyes.
Kiran’s panicked shout turned to a ragged, agonized shriek as the silver blade tore through his stomach. All the lines on the floor blazed up so bright it was like staring into the sun. Just when I feared I’d be struck blind, the inferno of light abruptly dimmed. Simon had already pulled the knife out. Kiran’s blood was everywhere, black in the eerie light.
A violet flash outlined Kiran’s body in a deep, livid glow. Simon threw up an arm, stark surprise on his face.
Kiran screamed again, his voice raw. His body convulsed and arched off the stone so hard I thought he’d rip his limbs off. A great arc of blinding light snapped from his body to Simon’s. The lines in the floor flared up again, smaller arcs running from them to Kiran.
On my chest, the amulet burst into white-hot life, searing my skin through my shirt. A yell hung trapped in my throat as pain exploded in my head. The air in my lungs turned thick as molasses, my heart struggling against a tightening vise.
Simon screamed, a sound that filled me with savage joy. The arc between Simon and Kiran grew ever brighter until Simon seemed to be glowing from within, his bones a dark shadow beneath his flesh, his face a rictus of agony. The fire in my head mounted to skull-boiling intensity.
A soundless explosion swatted me backward into darkness.
Something heavy was crushing me. I groaned and struggled to push it away. My hands scraped against rock. Where was I, and why was everything dark?
Memory returned, and I froze. Then slowly, deliberately, moved my hands up to my face. Simon’s binding was gone, my body my own to command—but where was Simon? And oh gods, Kiran, with his gut slashed wide open...I stifled the urge to scrabble blindly against rock, and lay still, listening.
No sounds came to my ears other than the distant splashing of the stream. The darkness surrounding me wasn’t absolute, and as my eyes adjusted I began to make out shapes.
I was lying on my side, squeezed in a crevice beneath a jumble of rocks and the remains of Simon’s crates. Dim light filtered through the splintered wood of a shattered crate at the crevice’s end. I wriggled toward the light, praying the rocks would remain stable. Mother of maidens, but I didn’t want to die the terrible way Sethan had, my body crushed to a red ruin...
My chest scraped past a crate’s edge and I hissed and recoiled. My skin was blistered and raw where Kiran’s amulet had rested. No wonder—the damn thing had burned hotter than a live coal, before the cave fell on me. The amulet was cold and dull now, dragging over rock as I crawled. I tied a hasty knot in the chain to raise the amulet above my burn, and tucked it under the collar of my tattered and blackened shirt.
Aside from the burn, I had a host of bruises and a fierce headache, but nothing more. Not like Kiran. With a wound so terrible, was he already dead? Or if he yet lived, was he trapped in wreckage, his life bleeding away?
I struggled onward, ignoring scrapes and punctures from all the gods-damned metal rods and charms mixed with the debris. Most of the charms were strange to me, but I grabbed a few I recognized as useful. If Simon waited out there, I needed every advantage I could get.
Once free, I found myself near the mouth of the cave. Part of the cave ceiling had given way, creating the pile of rocks and splintered wood I’d just escaped from. The rockfall blocked my view of the interior. I edged around it, concern for Kiran warring with my fear of Simon.
But when I peered into the cave, I saw no trace of Simon—only Kiran, sprawled on his back amidst a scorched and darkened scrawl of silver lines. A few unmarred spirals on the cave’s far side still glowed like banked coals, enough to illuminate his slack face and shut eyes.
My gaze darted to his stomach—and I sucked in a sharp breath. The great wound Simon had inflicted was completely gone. Blood still blackened the waist of Kiran’s pants, and more lay in sticky dark pools beneath his torso. His manacles had vanished, though a few melted, misshapen slugs of silver glimmered on the stone where they’d been, and deep bruises shadowed his wrists