I open my eyes, but I can’t comprehend what I’m seeing or feeling. My brain spins up, knits images together bit by bit:
I am alive.
The fox is on top of me.
My face is not between its teeth, because its jaws hang slack.
Its front two legs are limp in the dirt on either side of my body.
My left arm is a mess of green ooze. It runs in thick rivers down my skin and into the grass.
My right shoulder is twisted painfully. Because my fist and forearm have disappeared up to the elbow inside the fox’s chest.
And that arm is covered in red flames.
There are screams. Mine.
My vision swims. I yank my hand back, but something catches my wrist—a sharp-ended broken rib. Vomit rises, burns at the back of my throat. The screams start again. I’m wailing as I try to extract my fist from another creature’s body. Green, viscous ichor spills down its stomach. I pull too hard, and that’s worse. Its wound pours onto my chest, putrid and rotting, while its tongue lolls to the side.
Angry chittering, and a hellfox scream rends the air, but I’m on my back, and the dead demon on my chest is so very heavy. I watch upside down as another fox runs toward me with frightening speed. I push at the carcass, grunting and panting.
But before it can reach me, the sharp, pointy end of a black metal spear pierces its throat.
The fox makes a gurgling sound and hits the ground. Sel appears at its side and pulls the spear out, then uses all his strength to slam his weapon through the creature’s skull. It stops moving. Sel leans heavily on the end of the staff, breathing hard.
My eyes burn. The carcass is steaming aether now. A raspy groan escapes me, and Sel’s head jerks up. He’s at my side in half a second, his hands going to the creature’s shoulders.
“The other one—” I say, searching frantically.
“Dead. Hold on.” His dark eyebrows draw together as he assesses the dead fox and me. “It can’t dust with something living inside it. I need to pull it off you.”
My eyes are watering now, and I can’t tell if it’s from the aether or tears. I think it’s both. I have to cough twice before I can speak, and even then my voice is hoarse from screaming. “I can’t get my hand out… I can’t…”
He kneels low until his head is level with mine, pushing up at the shoulder so he can see where I’m connected to the fox. This close I can see he’s bleeding from a deep bite to his collarbone, barely visible under the black T-shirt now sticking to the wound. His magic—cinnamon-whiskey-smoke—flows over my face. I am so thankful for his scent that I moan, inhaling again so that it masks the hellfox’s stench.
“The hole is the exact size of your fist. You’ve got to close your hand,” Sel murmurs. He heaves upward until the creature’s chest lifts off me, and I gasp at the immediate relief. “Close your hand.”
I don’t move. I want to, but I just… don’t. I whimper and shake my head.
Sel’s golden eyes find mine. “Close your hand, Bree.” His voice is shockingly soft. “I’ll do the rest.”
I hold his gaze for a moment. Whether it’s because of his oddly kind tone or the fact that he called me “Bree” for the first time, I nod and close my right hand, crying out as my fingernails scrape past the still-warm heart. Sel stands and pulls the fox by the shoulders until my flaming fist emerges from the steaming hole between its ribs. When my hand comes free, there’s a wet, sucking sound and a fresh blob of dark green ichor falls down between my legs. I crabwalk backward, bringing my shaking left hand to my mouth.
Sel drops the carcass, and a second after it hits the ground, it explodes with a ripping sound into a fox-shaped cloud of green dust. Behind me, the other fox explodes too, like the aether has torn it open from the inside out.
The world is shaking again, and again I realize it’s me. Just me. I’m trembling uncontrollably. My pulse won’t slow down. My chest feels like it’s going to explode right along with the foxes.
I wrench over onto my hands and knees and vomit, heaving until burning bile eats at my throat and tongue.
Sel drops to his knees beside me. “You’re okay. They’re gone.”
They’re gone.
But I’m not okay.
I crawl away from the sick until I can twist to a seated position, resting my arms on bent knees. While I wipe my mouth with a clean bit of T-shirt, I watch Sel watching me.
His eyes trail over my head, my shoulders, my arms. “It’s fading.” I look down, and he’s right. The crimson light on my forearm and fist are dimming. The ichor caked on my knuckles breaks apart, cracking and crumbling between my fingers. After a moment, only a few black specks remain. “It… it’s acting like a shield,” Sel begins, his voice more filled with wonder than I’ve ever heard before. “Burning off the hellfox blood.”
He’s right. When the red glow goes, so does the rest of the liquid. I shake my head, disbelieving everything, everything that just happened to me.
Sel is in much the same boat, it seems. He stands up, his expression too confused to be accusatory. “What are you?” We stare at each other until we hear the shouts.
“Bree!”
“Sel!”
“Bree! Sel!”
I recognize the voices. Evan. Tor. “I found them!” Evan shouts.
I turn from my seated position to see the Squire jump over the wall and jog over to where we’re huddled together. A blond-haired figure streaks past him faster than the eye can track, and suddenly Tor is standing beside us.
Sel notices her speed too. “Are you—?”
“Awakened?” Evan finishes. “Yep. Tor went down about an hour ago. We took her back to the Lodge and called everyone in, but you two never showed up.”
“And you’re up and running already?”
“Accelerated metabolism, William thinks.” Tor grins, but then she notices what’s on the ground around us, sees me sitting there. “What the hell happened here?”
Evan notices the fading green piles too. “Is that Shadowborn dust?”
A new voice shouts to us from beyond the wall. “Did you find them?”
At the sound of Nick’s voice, Sel takes a step back, retreating. My eyes follow the movement, and Sel and I lock gazes. I watch his face shutter in real time from wonder and something I can only interpret as concern, to the grim neutrality of a soldier at war. And just like that, the Selwyn Kane from a few moments ago is buried under stone like a secret gone to the grave.
“Hey!” Nick jumps the wall and runs toward us, relief for both me and Sel plain on his face. Sarah follows close behind him. “Are you both okay? We didn’t know where the hell you were. Then Tor was Called, and—” Nick slows when he sees my bloodied arm. “No…” He’s at my side in a heartbeat. He reaches with gentle fingers for my left hand. When he rotates it, he hisses at the sight. The cuts are long and deep, running from elbow to wrist, and dirt and pebbles are sticking where my arm had pressed into the earth. I hadn’t noticed.
Tor curses under her breath, and she and Sarah share a brief look. I move to stand, but my knees aren’t cooperating. My entire body feels slow, heavy.
“I’m okay,” I rasp. Nick’s hand goes to my brow, his fingers pressing against my forehead, trailing down my neck and shoulder like touching me will give him the answers I can’t say out loud.