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Its legs folded beneath it, and it rested its chin on its paws before closing its eyes. The brown animal settled nearby.

The wolf stayed on its feet.

It swayed slightly as it stared at me, and for a moment the red in its eyes weakened. Brown showed underneath.

The change lasted no more than a second, but it was enough.

There was fear in that brief glimpse of brown, and confusion, and awareness. Whatever the feral had become, something of the person inside it was still there.

Then the red returned.

The wolf lowered itself onto the sand beside the others, rested its head on its paws, and released a long, unsteady breath.

I walked past them and went to Silas.

He was still pressed against the wall, enormous and hunched, with his red eyes fixed on me. A growl rolled continuously through his chest, low enough that I could feel the vibration through the ground.

I didn't stop.

Still humming, I went all the way to him and placed my burned, bandaged hand against his chest, directly over his heart. I had done the same thing once before in this Pit, on this sand, with the whole island watching.

Pain tore through my palm so sharply that my vision blurred, but I kept my hand where it was.

Come back. I've got you. You can come back now.

For several seconds, nothing changed.

Then the narrow ring of brown in his eyes widened.

The red began to recede. Slowly, the brown returned until his eyes were his own again, and the rest of him followed. His shoulders narrowed. The dark fur withdrew. The heavy shape of the bear gave way to a man's body, battered and bleeding, until Silas stood in front of me with his face gray from exhaustion and sweat running down his skin.

His legs gave out.

He sank to his knees on the sand, and this time I went down with him.

I knelt there in Tamsin's green dress, its velvet laces torn and the silk darkened with both his blood and mine. Above us were the Wardens, the envoys, the Council men, Varga, Oda, and everyone else packed into the tiers.

Silas didn't seem to see any of them.

He lowered his head into my lap and wrapped his arms around my waist. His whole body shook as he tried to breathe through the sobs tearing out of him. I bent over him, wrapped my arms around his head, and rested my cheek against his cropped hair while I kept humming quietly.

"Quiet," he said into the green silk.

He said it again, so softly I almost missed it.

"It's quiet. It's quiet. You came. It's quiet."

"I know," I whispered. "I'm here."

I held him tighter.

"I'll come when you need me."

I don't know how long we stayed there. The torches had burned lower by the time the silence in the tiers began to break apart into murmurs and shifting feet as people tried to understand what they had just witnessed.

When I finally lifted my head, the first face I saw was Oda's. She stood at the rail with tears on her cheeks.

Then I saw Aldric Vance.