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Pain floods my torso from throat to gut. I sputter a breath.
My legs buckle as if they’ve come detached from the rest of me, and I slump down the column to the floor.
My chin lands in a sticky pool. Blood—my blood. Coursing out over the floor with every lurching thud of my heart.
My lips part, but the next breath I strain to suck in feels like pure fire. I think the blade that’s stabbed me has punctured my lung.
I try to lift my head, to look to see who launched the attack, but at the same moment a blow shoves the knife deeper into my back.
My whole body convulses. Fresh agony lances through my chest.
The puddle beneath me spreads. I can’t tell whether the metallic flavor filling my mouth is from within or without.
With another shock of pain, the blade yanks free. Something hard—the hilt of the knife?—smacks into the back of my head.
My temple knocks against the floor, and my thoughts spin away from me.
Ivy!Julita yells.Ivy! Call for help! Make some noise! Stab this asshole with one of your knives! Dosomething.
I can’t, though. My brain is rattling through my skull and my innards are in pieces.
I can already feel the blood loss leaching the strength from my limbs. My fingers twitch, miles from any of my weapons.
My lungs can barely drag in any air at all. I struggle to push a sound from my throat and only spew liquid that tastes unnervingly fleshy.
There’s no one around to see. That’s why I picked this route.
I can’t tell if my attacker is still there. My awareness is dwindling to the boundaries of my body—to the pain… and the flash of frantic magic whipping through it.
My power wriggles through me, tugging at me, pleading.
It could seal the wound; it could set me right. The pain would go away.
But my dimming mind keeps just enough conviction to refuse.
My eyelids droop, and I see Ma shivering in her bed as her body failed. Her skin stretched pale and thin over her hollowed cheeks. The glimmer of life fading from her glazed eyes.
I felt the same call then. I felt the surge of power thrumming through my veins, and IknewI could save her.
So of course I did.
I placed my small hands on my mother’s clammy arm and called the magic up through my soul—the soul I didn’t know was broken yet. I welcomed the power into me and from me to her.
Yes, remember that. Remember, even as the magic nags at me now.
Remember the rush of joy when her shivers stopped and her eyes cleared. Remember the healthy flush returning to her cheeks, the first steady breath in days that she dragged into her lungs.
Remember the thump that reverberated through the air from behind me.
I see that too—the image that met me when I whipped my seven-year-old frame around.
Linzi, slumped to the floor with her wooden doll fallen from her slack fingers. My little sister, as still and empty as that fucking doll.
I killed her. I stole the life right out of her.
I should have known better. Magic doesn’t come from nothing. There’s always a sacrifice.
And the riven sacrifice again and again and again.
