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Emelda wasn’t moving …

Aeris’s broken voice was the one to cut through the silence. “Oh, Gods. Please—no.”

The human’s eyes flew open. She tensed, every muscle in her body going rigid as she noticed the three of them standing there. Her eyes snapped to her lap, widening for a heartbeat as if realizing how this looked—

“Wait—”

The shadows skittered, and then Aeris was before the human. Every nerve in Ikarus’s body electrified as his shadow eclipsed her face. And he hadn’t realized that he’d taken a step forward himself until Malakai had a hand on his forearm and was pulling him back. “Easy, mate. Think it through.”

But there was no room in his head to think. Time stilled.

One moment Aeris was pulling his hand back, the limb transforming into pure writhing smoke from elbow to fingertip, ready to punch right through the human’s chest—

Then he was on the other side of the bathroom, and the entire room trembled as he slammed into the rough stone wall and slid to the floor, stone and sand coming loose all around him.

But it wasn’t Ikarus who’d sent him there. It was Golla.

“Stop,” the tiny creature said, hands raised to hold two large stones he’d pulled from the floor and was currently using to pin the Ethereal on the other side of the room.

Aeris could just phase away, of course, but he seemed to have forgotten how.

All eyes were fixed on the golem as it opened its lipless mouth and said to Aeris, “Human no hurt.”

Stepping forward, Malakai seethed. “What did you say?”

Golla puffed up his little chest. “Emelda sick. She come here to do last healing session and start coughing blood. Lot of it. Human save her. No hurt.”

The words registered in Ikarus’s head, but he couldn’t hear them. Couldn’t comprehend anything other than the lifeless body lying on the bathroom floor. Emelda was so still. If she was alive, surely she should’ve been moving …

The human laid a hand on her back, running soothing lines up and down her exposed spine, as though she’d done this a thousand times before. “It’s okay, Golla. You can let him go.”

Golla did, but instead of leaving, he disappeared into the floor, eyeing Aeris the entire time, and reappeared by the human’s side, the stones in the wall behind him vibrating softly, completely at his command.

Aeris pushed onto his hands and knees. “I don’t understand.” His voice trembled slightly. “How did you save her?”

“She was in here earlier and started coughing up blood,” the human explained, carefully watching Aeris for any sign he might lash out. “It was only a little at first, but it got worse fast. She collapsed, and then she started coughing up thick chunks of blood and I was worried she was going to choke on them, so I dug them out of her throat.”

All color and anger leeched from Aeris’s face. “When you say chunks of blood …”

The human cut her chin to the floor beneath the sink, to a pile of crimson towels and torn bedding and blood-covered chunks of jelly-like flesh the size of large grapes. Small on their own, yes, but a cluster that size could easily get lodged in a person’s throat. Choke them.

Cold terror washed over his spine. If the human hadn’t been here … If she hadn’t had the instinct to dig those things out of Emelda’s throat …

The human shifted on the bathroom floor, the water still spraying. “She was so cold after I got all the pieces out, so I dragged her under the shower to clean her off and stayed here. Figured it was the best place to keep her warm.”

“Why?” Aeris seethed. That one word, small as it was, was too big for the bathroom. The start of so many possibilities.

The human seemed to realize that too. Ikarus watched her take a deep breath, watched her take that word, flip it between her fingers.

She met Ikarus’s eyes across the room. Because she hadn’t done anything to me. She didn’t say it, but they were there, written across every fleck of green in her eyes. She’d had another perfect opportunity to take a life, and she hadn’t.

Because she wasn’t the monster Ramapheal said she was. Not really. Not all the time, at least.

Not to those who didn’t deserve it.

Could he say the same about himself?

As if the Gods were listening, Emelda stirred. She coughed, a dry, hacking sort of sound that twisted deep in Ikarus’s chest before falling silent once more.