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He staggers back, just one step. Sucks in a halting breath. Blood drips to the sand below him.
Oh, no, no, no. No.
The beast rises from the debris, glaring at Pa.
I call to it, thrusting myself into the curse and pulling. The beast’s head—now just a single leonine one—swivels to me. I tell it:Come.
It pads forward, away from Pa.
Pa takes a stumbling turn to face me. His front is coated in shards, his white overdress spotted with red, as if flower petals have fallen on him.
I force my hands steady. It’s okay. He taught me a healing ikon. Two, actually. He must know hundreds. I blink back hot tears, focusing on the stormbeast. It opens its jaw, unhinging it like a serpent, lightning streaking down its throat.
Kneel.
It hesitates, and I sense its confusion. It recognizes something in me, some part of the Storm that it calls home, but it also sees that I’m a girl of flesh and blood, not cloud and lightning.
“Kneel,”I whisper.
It steps closer, close enough that it could take a single leap and wrap its teeth around my neck.
The ground under me rumbles, shaking me, testing my balance, and a stone wall rises between me and the beast.
Pa. He’s on all fours, charcoal gripped in his hand, a completed ikon on the ground before him.
I run to him, shock bleeding into terror.
“No,” he says as I drop to my knees beside him. “Don’t touch.”
Some dozen shards pierce his overdress. His skin glints like glassaround the shards, visible through rips in the cloth. I suck in a breath—it doesn’t look good. This is the kind of thing that trained healers are for.
“Pa...”
An ache spreads inside me. The Queen’s power calls to me, not in words but in tears, telling me that my tears are her tears, that all the tears in the city can be mine to drink, to drown in—before me, my shadow grows long, and it opens its mouth, whispering.
“Takes... more than that,” Pa says, rising to his knees. I get a good look at an inch-long shard in his forearm, the skin glassy around the point of impact. Drops of blood hang unspilt, like teardrop rubies.
“The glass—it’s stopping the bleeding,” I breathe. “Does that mean... you’ll be okay?”
Pa’s lips curl in something between a smile and a grimace. “I’ll be fine. You won’t get rid of me so soon.” He says it to make me laugh, to comfort me. But he’s not a good liar. His eyes say he can’t see me break down, not here, not like this.
“It’s just a scratch,” I say, trying to do the same for him. “Don’t be so dramatic.” I duck my head and scrub my eyes, once, quick, so he can’t see.
He gets to his feet, and I hover beside him, offering a hand that he never takes. His eyes are fixed on the jagged wall that encircles the beast. Already a wisp of smoke curls over the top edge. “You were doing something to it.”
“Yes,” I say. “I feel it, somehow, as though I can talk to it. Not with words but with something else.”
“The Queen’s curse,” Pa says, fixing his gray eyes on me, the eyes we share.
I nod.
He sighs, a deep, bone-rattling sigh. He tilts his head up, blinking at where the circle of sky would normally be, where now there’s only the Storm. His lashes are wet, and my eyes tear up again.
I follow his gaze up, and then I find Dalca. He sits hunched over, elbows on his knees, his head bowed. As if he feels my gaze, he looks up at me. There’s no triumph, no glee, no nothing on his face.
“Let’s try freeing it.”
I start, eyes wide.
