The medicine failed at dawn.
Marron felt it happen—the last cold barrier in her chest cracking like ice under pressure, the warmth flooding through the fractures, and then the joy, incandescent and overwhelming, burning away everything that had been holding it back.
She'd been tied to a tree for three hours. Aldric had done the work while she was still lucid enough to cooperate, binding her wrists behind the trunk, securing her legs, adding extra rope around her torso. The Blade's box sat fifteen feet away, locked with chains Aldric had wrapped around it three times.
Not enough. None of it would be enough.
The joy hit like a physical blow, and Marron screamed.
Not pain—she wished it was pain. Pain she could fight. This was happiness so pure and complete it erased her. The Blade was singing, its sibling so close now, so desperately close, and reunion was everything, was the only thing that mattered, was—
Need to go need to move need to run need to reach it need to be COMPLETE—
