Aran didn’t fight us anymore. He barely moved.
Will kicked open the stable door, and we hauled Aran inside. The air hit damp and sour. A row of horses stood in their stalls, heads rising as we stumbled in. They shifted, their hooves clunking againstthe floor, and as one let out a sharp snort, another tossed its head with a restless huff.
“Shhh,” I whispered. “It’s okay.”
They didn’t believe me. Neither did I.
“Help me tie him down.” Will didn’t even look up as he said it. He dropped to Aran’s feet, already pulling at his boot laces, knotting them tight. He threw a coil of rope toward me without warning.
“Kera,” he snapped. “Now.”
I dropped beside Aran, knees hitting the hay-scattered floor, and started fumbling with the rope, my fingers stiff and trembling, trying to tie it around his wrists. The horses shuffled behind us, restless in their stalls. Their breath steamed in the cold air, nostrils flaring, heads bobbing over the stall doors.
Once Aran was secure, Will sat back and leaned over him. He peeled back the burnt fabric clinging to his chest, and I saw his throat tighten as he took it in. The burns were worse than I thought. Angry, red, still weeping, and the smell of burned flesh curled into my nose, sickly sweet andwrong.
I pressed a hand over my mouth.
Will looked up, and when his eyes met mine, something inside me cracked.
“Now, heal him,” he said.
My chest caved. “I… I don’t know if I can.”
“If you don’t, he’s going to die.”
I looked down at Aran, his face twisted in agony. I didn’t know what was worse — that I had burned him, or that a part of me wasn’t sure I wanted to fix it.
“I don’t know how,” I said. “The fire... I didn’t mean— I didn’t—”
“You don’t have a choice,” Will demanded. “You did this. You fix it.”
I flinched. I thoughthewanted Aran dead more than I did. Maybe that’s just something people say.
“You’ve healed before,” he said. “You can do it again.”
The horses shuffled again behind us, one letting out a loud breath through flared nostrils.
I looked at Aran, at his blistered and broken skin, at blood pooling at the edges of burns that were still weeping heat.
And I could still feel it, lurking under my skin. The fire. Thatthinginside me that hurt him.
I didn’t want to touch him. Gods, I didn’t.
But my hands moved anyway. I pressed my palms to his chest and closed my eyes.
Please. Please.
Something stirred at my fingertips, faint and soft. Not fire. Just light. Hope. And then it was gone. Snuffed out before it could become anything real.
“No.” My voice cracked. “No, no, no—please.”
I pressed harder. Nothing. The wounds wouldn’t close. The skin stayed split and blistered and charred.
Aran had let Einar die in my arms. And now he was going to die the same way. Is that what they call poetic justice? It didn’t feel just.
“I can’t do it,” I cried. “I can’t—”
Will’s head snapped toward me. “Try again.”
