Tatterdemalion

remembered the girl, her halo of dawn-red hair and her eyes like gems. For a moment, he’d thought she

could be saved. But things moved on, and she was gone.

And he remembered his failure. He remembered the stink of his own entrails and the smell of snow,

the slurry of blood and earth under his knees. A small voice calling for him. Things undone.

“I have him now,” a woman said.

Somewhere, an animal was howling in pain.

“Can you shut him up?”

“Patience, Ezqel. He’s barely here.”

“He shouldn’t be wasting his energy, then.”

The pain was receding, taking the shape of a body, flesh wrapped around a soul. It dwindled to a pain

Dane could know and understand and enfold, putting it away inside him. When the animal fell silent, he

knew the voice had been his.

“You need to be still.” A woman’s small hands pressed his flesh and he realized that he must have

been trying to get up. All his impulses were still trying to drive him to his feet, to stop the dog.

Jonas. Hate seared his synapses, branding his mind with the reflex. He tried to speak, but nothing came out.

“He wants the dog. Jonas is gone, Dane. I have judged him as I saw fit.”

Dane cast about for the source of the voice, but could see nothing. It was so dark. Clawing at his eyes

left his fingers wet.

“Your sight will be the last to return,” the woman said, dragging his hands away. “And it will take

longer if you put out your eyes. I need you to breathe. Try to breathe for me.” She pressed her hands

against his chest, once, twice, again, and then her mouth was on his like a kiss, forcing her breath into him.

His body stuttered and he gagged. Something under his ribs was struggling. “Relax,” she said.

Dane felt panic surge through him as his body came to understand that it wasn’t living. The silence in

his ears was deafening. No pulse. No heartbeat. No rise and fall of breath. He was full of Ezqel’s magic,

and the woman’s, but no life. The woman breathed for him again and he heard the creak of his ribs swelling

outward. Her breath was green, like a tree, and full of life that he drew in greedily.

“Come on,” she said softly. “Come back.” He felt her hands on his chest, passing into him, through

muscle and bone. Her magic filled him up and his body drank it in. He felt her shaking as the black in his

vision turned to gray. “You have to want this,” she whispered.

“He’s been trying to die for years,” Ezqel said flatly. “I thought he had some use left, but…”

When the woman breathed into him again, Dane took her breath from her, tore it from her lungs, tore

Ezqel’s magic from him by every thread his will could gather. Rage drove him to take what he wanted, to

pillage both of them without consideration for what it might do to them. The woman fell away from him,

but still, Dane was not sated.

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Tatterdemalion

“Enough.” Ezqel’s hand falling sharply across his face cleared his sight and broke his hold on their

power. Dane sucked in cool air and his pulse stuttered frantically in his ears. He breathed again and his heart spasmed before falling back into its old rhythm. Above him, the snow fell on the curved glass roof of a conservatory.

“I won’t have you striking my patient.” The woman’s voice was cold. Dane turned his head to look

for her. He felt a surge of guilt at taking from her so violently. She was a plain woman, unremarkable, and pale as though she had been bled. “Thank you for your help, though,” she said to Ezqel.

“He knows little so well as being angry.” Ezqel’s eyes were fixed on Dane, his jaw set. His hair

glowed like a beacon against the greenery in the conservatory, the greenery that was nowhere near as green

as his eyes. “I knew you’d come back, if only to spite me.”

Dane’s mouth still wouldn’t work, and what he’d say, he knew would only make things worse. You

were the one who wanted me back. His mouth was too dry to spit. Rage made his heart stagger and ache.

“You’re welcome,” Ezqel said archly, to both of them. “Put him in the guest room when you’re done

patching his holes, Izia. I believe Taniel is looking for me.” He drew his hood up over his hair. The sound of hinges and a snake of cold air marked his departure.

Dane tried to ask where Lindsay was. He didn’t trust Ezqel not to have dragged Dane back alone to

prove a point, leaving Lindsay to Jonas. The words came out mangled, in various languages scraped up out

of his memory.

“If you’re asking about your friend, he’s well enough. Worry about yourself.” Izia pried his mouth

open with her strong, cold fingers, and laid something green-tasting and leafy on his tongue. She closed his mouth on it with her palm under his jaw. “Keep that in your mouth. It’ll make your heart beat evenly.

You’re all over the place, and you’re still bleeding. I’m going to cover your wounds. It may take another

day to heal you.”

Once, he would never have died. The curse had followed him beyond that threshold, into the black

and the pain. Had he really been dead? When the woman returned, he tried to question her with his eyes.

“I wasn’t sure we’d get you back,” she said quietly. “You’re very determined. I can see why you

frustrate him so.”

Dane rolled his eyes at that. Ezqel deserved all the frustration Dane could cause, except that going to

the trouble would bind him even closer to the mage. Now, he risked being beholden to Ezqel for his life. He could hardly work out the meanings of it all. Everything went dark for a moment while he was turning

things over in his head, and he forced his eyes open as fear spiked through him. He could still see. His eyes had just fallen shut.

“The herbs will make you sleepy.” Izia leaned over him and patted his cheek. “You need to rest.”

Dane didn’t want to sleep. The idea of going into the dark again so soon made tension ripple through

him.

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