I need to get up—
“Etta!” Nicholas said. “Etta! Wake up! Etta!”
She took in a deep breath, still trembling with pain.
You’re fine, he’s fine, you’re fine, he’s fine.… They could catch up with Sophia and the Thorns, ride hard until they could take the astrolabe back.
“Henrietta!” he barked. “Miss Spencer! Damn you, if you don’t wake up this instant—”
She heard the snap of a whip, the grumbling of the camels. Etta didn’t have to look to know that they were leading Daisy away, and whatever Nicholas had ridden in on. They were really stranding them, the bastards.
“Etta—” It was the desperate, pleading note in his voice that made Etta push herself upright, so suddenly that Nicholas let out a noise of surprise.
“Are you all right?” she said, her throat aching.
“I’ll live, but…” he said, looking away. “Damn it all—I’m sorry, I’m so very sorry, we rode as hard as we could—”
“We?” Etta said, testing the fabric tied around her wrists. The Thorn had managed a knot all right, but he’d been too rushed to make sure it was totally secure. She worked her right hand free, sliding it out of the silk binding with a relieved sigh. “Is Hasan here?”
“He came with me, but his horse lamed itself and he had to turn back to Kurietain,” Nicholas said. “I’m so bloody sorry. I swear, this isn’t the end. We’ll get back to Damascus—” His words were edged with fire, but he couldn’t bring himself to look at her. “I’ll walk the whole of Nassau if it means finding the passage you came through—”
“You would do that?” Etta asked.
He finally looked up. “You cannot fathom the distance I would travel for you.”
Despite the pain, despite everything, a small smile broke over her face. “With me.”
“Come here,” he breathed out, eyes reverent. “Come here…come here.…”
Etta didn’t trust her legs enough to stand quite yet, but she managed to crawl the short distance. A small burst of happiness lit the center of her chest and he tilted his face up, kissing her.
“Untie me, damn it,” he said. Etta snorted and reached around behind him. He leaned forward as she worked, burying his face in her neck.
The man had done a better job of binding his hands. The knot swam before her as black began to cloud the edges of her vision. She blinked, leaning back at the feeling of sudden, wet warmth down her front.
Bright blood had soaked through the front of Nicholas’s shirt. Her heartbeat throbbed in her ears. “You tore…you tore your stitches open…careful.…”
His eyes widened in alarm, going from her face to her shoulder. She looked down, raising an unsteady hand to the place where she felt a second, white-hot pulse.
Shot, she thought, dazed. When did that…
“Etta!”
There was a spark of electricity at the base of her spine, scorching through her center, ripping her apart. Air cracked and hissed against her skin, and—
IN THAT FIRST MOMENT AFTER Etta disappeared, dissolving into a million grains of glittering dust, every last trace of blood seemed to leave his body.
It was impossible to breathe.
It was impossible to move.
Perhaps…if he only remained still enough, the moment would…Etta would…
His skin was still warm from where it had touched hers, even as the blood was cooling on his shirt. He felt the imprint of her lips against his as if they were still there. The rattling heat the air had taken on seemed to shrink the skin around his bones, to snap against his chest—and she—
She is gone.
The one clear thought his mind could scrape together from a flood of the senseless.
She is gone.
Disappeared so completely, as if she’d been dashed into nothing, as if…
God, no—God, please, no—
Nicholas slid along the plaster, unable to keep himself upright when his spine had turned to water. Some part of him was aware of the fact that he was shaking, as his shoulder collided with the stone. He choked on the sand and dirt, the disbelief. And the sound that emerged from that dark, shattered place was a thing of anguish and fury, inhuman.
Dead. He squeezed his eyes shut, his fingers curled tightly into fists behind him. She’s dead.
Sophia had taken the astrolabe, and then—
Etta is dead.
She was—holy God, it was just as it had been with Julian, from the way the light had broken her apart from the inside out, shattering her, to the thundering, rolling crack of power he felt as the passage in Damascus collapsed from the surge of her loss—