Page 103 of All the Wandering Light

I can help. I have helped.

I let out a humorless laugh. “How? What have you done for me?”

Heal your familiar, fight the fiangul, the creature recited. Understand River. Take you to the emperor. All that you have asked, I have done. I can give you what you want.

I felt cold, as cold as Lusha. “How do you know what I want?”

You want to keep friends safe, Azar-at said. Friends are hurt. I will help, if you ask.

“You can’t.” Another tear slid down my face. I had thought my tears were exhausted. I felt as if I were arguing with the wind, with as little hope for success. “No one can. Not Tem. Not the star. No one.”

I will help, if you ask.

“Ask what?” I made a disbelieving sound. “To bring Lusha back?”

As I did before.

“With Ragtooth? He wasn’t dead.” It tasted like a word in another language. Dead. Lusha was dead.

I gazed at the creature. Its fur seemed more solid, somehow, than it had in the past, its paws larger. But then, that was Azar-at—the fire demon seemed to have no specific form, only a rough idea of one. But its eyes never changed, glowing like embers roused by the wind.

I remembered Tem’s words after Aimo’s death. Whatever it’s offering, it isn’t life. The star could bring people back too—but I had seen the result of that. They came back twisted and wrong.

“I would give anything,” I said, my voice uneven, “for Lusha. If it were possible. But it isn’t.”

My magic is beyond the star’s magic, Azar-at said. Beyond human magic. Your sister will be whole again.

I shook my head, wishing I could block out the creature’s words, which crawled through my thoughts like insects, burrowing ever deeper.

I will help, if you ask.

“Then do it.” The words were pushed out, desperate. It wouldn’t work—Azar-at was lying to me. Nothing could bring Lusha back. She was gone, and nothing and no one mattered beyond that fact. What would Father say? This would break him, and then I would have lost two people I loved.

Father’s face drifted across my vision. In the same moment, Lusha drew a gasping breath.

I leaped as if burned. The world seemed to right itself, leaving me breathless and dizzy.

“Lusha!” Tears spilled down my face.

Lusha’s eyelids fluttered, and she murmured something. She seemed disoriented, not quite fully awake.

Pain blossomed somewhere near my heart. It was an ominous pain, pointed and sharp, with a weight behind it that promised worse to come. I felt the star’s light flare again, and I instinctively drew on some of its strength, grasping at it as a drowning person grasps at a rope. I pushed back on the pain, and to my amazement, it lessened.

Azar-at made a strange sound I had never heard before, a guttural sort of growl.

“What are you doing?” I said.

You agreed, Kamzin, Azar-at said. You asked for my help.

Lusha muttered something. I squeezed her hand, which was warming against mine, no longer the temperature of the stone stairs.

Another stab of pain. It felt as if the pain was pulling at me, drawing me toward some dark place. “How much of my soul are you taking?”

The fire demon’s tail flicked back and forth. Everything.

“Everything?” Panic gripped me. “You never said—”

You did not ask.