“Necessity.” His claws sink into my forearm.

I swear and jerk back. Iisak holds fast, and I drag him with me. I try to swing at him with my free hand, but despite his size, he’s lighter and quicker than I expect, especially when he uses my forearm as leverage and swings around to kick me in the throat.

I go down on my back, momentum shoving me through the dirt and rocks of our campsite and tearing open the wounds on my back. Pain explodes through my body. I need to think, to find the sword, to scream for help. He must have severed muscle and tendon because I can no longer move my fingers. Blood streams down my arm, but my eyes see stars and darkness.

“Focus, Your Highness.” He’s kneeling on my chest. One hand still grips my arm, holding it up. Three long slashes run the length of my forearm. Blood seems to be everywhere. I can taste it.

“Focus,” he says again.

I squeeze my eyes shut, then open. I can’t breathe. Dirt and leaves grind into my back. This pain is a living, biting thing, pulling noises from my throat. Voices are yelling, wild shouts that I can’t make sense of.

Iisak leans down close, until I see nothing but his eyes.

“You’ve done it before,” he says, his voice more of a growl than a whisper. I feel frost on my skin where his breath touches. “Do it again.”

My thoughts twist and spiral loose as more stars fill my vision. Everyone is shouting. Someone is dragging at me, but Iisak growls and holds fast, his claws buried in my arm. I can’t think. I can’t see. My throat is burning, my lungs screaming for oxygen, but the pain is so absolute that I can’t remember how to breathe.

An eternity at Prince Rhen’s side, surviving his monster, surviving Lilith, surviving as a guardsman, and I’m going to die in the leaves beside a campfire because I was stupid.

Suddenly everyone is silent. Soft fingers touch my face. “Grey.” Lia Mara’s voice. Her breath is sweet and warm on my cheek. She must be kneeling in the leaves. “You survived what Prince Rhen did to you. You can survive this.”

My body feels weightless, as if it’s not tethered to earth. Stars aren’t just in my vision. They fill my veins and flare with every beat of my heart. Each pulse steals a bit of agony, until I feel as though I must be dead, because there was so much pain, and now there’s none.

Lia Mara’s voice seems to come from a great distance. “Grey … breathe. You need to breathe.” She sounds breathless herself.

“You feel the magic now,” says Iisak, and he sounds triumphant.

I inhale, and those stars scatter, flickering down to almost nothing. But they’re there, tiny points of light throughout my body.

“Open your eyes,” says Lia Mara.

I blink and find her right above me. Her eyes are wide, gold in the firelight, her hair a shining curtain that hangs down over her shoulder.

Iisak still kneels on my chest, and he draws my arm into my vision. “As you see, Your Highness.”

The blood is gone. The wound is gone. All that remains is the scar that existed before.

“Necessity,” says Iisak.

Behind him are Tycho, Noah, and Jacob, all wide-eyed, their expressions frozen between panic and anger and relief.

I look at the smooth skin of my arm, then at Iisak. I can’t find my voice.

Then I realize my back doesn’t hurt either.

“What just happened?” says Jacob. “What the hell is this thing?” His hand twitches, and I realize he’s clutching the sword.

Iisak growls, and his wings flare slightly. Jacob lifts the weapon.

“No,” I say, my voice a rough croak, like I’ve been screaming. Now that I’m aware of the stars in my bloodstream, they seem to flicker everywhere. I look up at Iisak. “Let me go.”

He withdraws, moving to my side to watch the others more warily.

I sit up gingerly, expecting my body to protest each movement, but it does not. Any ache and burn from the wounds on my back are gone. So is the pain in my thigh.

I take a long breath and look at my forearm again.

Blood speckles the leaves at my feet. My blood.

“Jacob,” I say slowly, “this is Iisak.”

“Iisak,” echoes Noah.

“A friend,” says Lia Mara.

Iisak straightens. “I have earned a place with you then?”

I flex my knee, then touch a hand to my lower back carefully. I feel no pain.

“Yes,” I say, and I can’t help the wonder in my voice. “Yes, you have.”

After a day with nothing but stream water, the roasted goose tastes better than anything I’ve ever eaten. I all but tear the meat apart with my fingers. If Jodi could see me now, she’d make no comparison to noblemen. Tycho offers a piece to Iisak, but the creature makes a face, then says, “I will bring more.”

His wings beat and catch the air, and then he’s lost to the darkness.

Across the fire, Noah pulls meat from a bone and glances up. “Just when I think I have a handle on this place, something drops out of the sky to turn that on its head.”

I give a humorless laugh.

“Everything feels fully healed?” he says.

I nod and pick every last morsel from my own bone.

“May I see?” I go still, and he adds, “You had stitches. If the skin healed over them …”

I nod, and he moves around the fire to kneel behind me. I lift my shirt, and a moment later, his cool fingers touch my back.

“The stitches are gone,” he says, his tone thoughtful. “This looks like six weeks of healing.” He hesitates.

I crane my head around to look at him. “What?”

“I don’t know how your magic works”—he says magic like it’s profane—“but it didn’t undo what he did. The lash marks left scars.”

When I say nothing, Noah tugs the shirt down and shifts to face me. “I can help you feel the worst of them, if you want to.”

I don’t want to. I toss the stripped bones from my meal into the fire. “I have seen the back of a beaten man.”

We aren’t speaking loudly, but the rest of our camping party has grown quiet, and I know their attention has fallen on me. I was already a spectacle in the courtyard. I do not like the thought of being one again. Especially not for this.

Noah must sense this, because he eases away, returning to his spot beside Jacob.

Without fanfare, another dead goose flops into the dirt, scattering leaves and making the fire flutter. Iisak descends more slowly, but he keeps his distance from the fire.

Tycho moves to take the goose again, but I wave him back to his food and take the carcass myself. I need action.

My fingers begin plucking, a long-forgotten skill that returns to my hands without effort. I focus on the sparks that seem to flow under my skin. Jacob was right—Rhen has nothing to fear from me. I do not want his throne. I do not want to harm him.

But for the first time, I feel capable of offering something more than pain and torment and fear. “I can use this magic to heal Tycho?” I say to Iisak.

“Yes.”

“Show me.”

“You wish me to lay his arm open to the bone?”

Across the fire, Tycho goes still. I can’t tell if Iisak is teasing, but his fingers flex, which makes me think he might not be. “No,” I say.