her long lavender hair spilled across the dark wooden floor. She must have driven the knife in deeply; red was rapidly flowering across the white bodice of the gown, then running across the floor.
“Raile!” I shouted. There was a ragged, desperate edge to my voice. I couldn’t lose her; her wide, luminous eyes were fixed on my face, her soft lips parting as she exhaled a breath that might have been her last. She still looked as if she wanted to say something.
I pressed my hand over the wound, trying to freeze it as I yelled for Raile and Duncan again. I was low on magic, though, and as icy cold swept through my veins and poured into her body, the world went dark at the edges. I focused on her face, pouring everything I had into freezing the wound, and the blood stopped flowing.
The door burst open. Raile was there first, then Duncan behind him.
Raile hurtled over the furniture between the door and us, already pushing me out of the way. He dropped beside Alisa, murmuring to her, “Hold on, Alisa.” Over his shoulder, he called, “Duncan. She needs your ugly healing magic. I don’t have the power right now.”
Duncan stared at me for a long second. For the first time, I realized I still gripped the bloody knife in my hand. It would look to anyone as if I’d tried to kill Alisa myself.
Then he ran to Alisa, though unlike Raile who had hurtled the furniture, Duncan went through it. He knocked over a table and a chair before he fell to his knees beside Alisa.
“This will hurt,” he warned, even as his magic poured into her, flaring red-hot around his hands.
But her face was slack and she wasn’t hearing his barbs anymore anyway. Her bright silver-gray eyes seemed to stare into mine even from here, although the light was fading behind them. I took a step forward, helplessly, and the world wobbled around me again.
For a second, Duncan’s mask dropped; when he saw she was dying, his face went taut with terror. His magic flared around his hands in a burst, too frantic. He’d be hurting her even as he healed her. But a moment’s misery didn’t matter as long as we got to keep her.
Silence hung in the room for a moment. Raile hovered over Alisa, his posture straight, his hands clutched behind his back. I had a feeling that calm demeanor was a mask, because his gaze was on her constantly.
Duncan swore as his magic poured into her, filling the air with light. The coppery scent of her blood hung in the air. “Please, Alisa. Please. Come on.”
His voice was raw.
She suddenly drew a ragged breath. Her eyes opened.
Relief flooded my chest.
Her gaze locked on mine from here. I couldn’t hide how I felt; I was so grateful to see she was alive that I could barely breathe. I’d thought she was dying right in front of me.
My relief was eclipsed the next second as Duncan hurtled toward me.
I danced to one side, but we knew each other’s tricks too well. He was already feinting to one side, trying to get me to avoid one fist and dance my way right into another. Still, even though he’d broken my ribs and my nose before—and I’d paid him similar favors when we were training—he’d never come at me the way he did now. Duncan’s eyes were narrow with fury.
First Azrael disappeared into the winter court, then he saw Alisa wounded on the ground and me with a bloody knife. They were the two people who mattered most to him in the universe.
“I didn’t,” I said. I still had the knife in my hand. but I’d never stab him with it; I closed my fingers around the hilt and used it to add power to my punch when I clocked him across the face. “I’d never hurt her!”
“Really?” His face was so close to mine, his icy blue eyes blazing. I grabbed his shoulders, about to bring him down, but even as I swept his leg, he crashed his forehead into mine. I felt my nose shatter.
The second gods-damned time he’d broken my nose.
This time when the world went red, though, I knew he wouldn’t stop. I was blinded for a second by the pain as the two of us slammed into the ground side-by-side. I was already rolling, trying to put some distance between the two of us. I let go of the knife, sending it