Paris didn't think she'd find comfort in the sight of the dark branches and the brittle thorns. She had never been more wrong.

Her shoulders only slumped in relief the moment the horse cleared Maldegrad through the line of fog separating civilization and the Woods. "Hey, Vivian," Paris prodded the woman slumped against her chest. "Guess where we are."

There was no answer. Not a rustle to show discomfort. Not a sigh.

Not a breath.

Cold fear dropped in Paris's gut. "Vivian?" she called. Still nothing.

Paris yanked at the reins, forcing the horse to neigh to a stop. She climbed down its flank and gripped Vivian's arms before the woman toppled over the other side. The weight that slammed against her body the moment she extracted Vivian was like that of stone.

"Viv, come on," Paris dragged the woman towards the nearest trunk. "Don't pull a prank on me now."

Vivian answered with her head lolling to one side, showing Paris the thin line of blood dripping down the side of her mouth towards her neck and her chest. With heart pounding against her ribcage, Paris turned Vivian to the side. A gasp shocked her system.

The slash was deep, almost to the spine. Her torn tunic was stained with bright red blood. The torrent still hasn't stopped, draining more and more color from Vivian's skin. Her once-warm beige skin had now attained a sickly pallor.

Paris lowered her ears to Vivian's face, listening for any sound of her breaths. Nothing. She pressed two fingers against the woman's neck. No pulse.

Her throat constricted. No...

Vivian couldn't be dead.

Tears pricked the corners of her eyes. "Hey, Viv," she shook the woman's shoulders. Without her bow and the playful grin on her face, she looked just about like any girl in Stonedenn—bland and uninteresting. "Come on. Don't die on me."

Paris moved to deposit Vivian to the ground when her fingers brushed the wound. Vivian's face twitched ever so slightly. The tears halted. Alive. Vivian's still alive. There's still hope.

That word again. Hope.

Paris has to heal Vivian...but how? She looked at her skirts and began tearing through them. Stop the blood by applying pressure. Bind it. Bind it tight. And then...what? A wound like this required stitches. It could become infected if Paris messed something up.

Who knew what else that blade touched? Did it slice through her spine, her ribcage, her lungs? What else was wrong with Vivian Delavel?

Paris had no way of knowing. And when she didn't know what she was dealing with, she wouldn't be able to move. She patted herself down, going as far as trudging back to the horse who waited patiently next to a patch of dried grass which it began munching. She eyed the saddle, the bridle, the empty sacks attached to the saddle. She ran her hands down her body, wishing for nonexistent pockets to appear.

Then, her skin warmed against the pendant still stuck inside her bodice—an irreverent place for an item of its caliber to be found. She plucked it out and turned it against the scant forest light. If there was one thing she didn't miss in this hellhole, it was the lack of bright beams from the sky.

The same glint caught her eye. She knitted her eyebrows and squinted, bringing the pendant closer to her face. When she turned the pendant a certain way, the glint shifted. Only it wasn't a glint. She did another test turn and it followed. It looked...

It looked like how water on a glass bottle would behave. Did that mean—

The blood of the Ancient ones contains magic. It could heal, destroy, and change reality.

Again, magic.

Paris glanced at Vivian's unforming form. She clenched her jaw. No other choice. She's got no other choice now.

With every second Paris spent hesitating, the more time Vivian spent dangling between the living realm and Death's door. She studied the pendant, noting how the carved festoons flanking the pendant's purple gem stopped on the spot with the bail. There, the chain looped through a small gap folded atop it. But the bail itself...

She gripped it with two fingers and tried to flick it open. Nothing happened. The metal fought her grip. How about...

She wrapped the chain around her knuckles, reducing it to a tight loop against the bail. Then, with the strength she used to haul hay into stable stalls, she pulled. The sound resembling a cork sliding out of a wine bottle's mouth popped. She looked down at her work and confirmed it. The pendant was a fucking canteen for demonic blood.

Joyce's voice speared into Paris's thoughts when she raised the pendant to her nose. Don't drink a demon's blood. You'll die. But, technically, it wasn't demonic blood. It was from an Ancient One who might have looked demonic. Those were different...right?

The pendant stopped halfway to her lips. Her heart hammered against her chest. She...she didn't want to do this. But then again...

One glance at Vivian told Paris enough. She would do it. For her.

Before she chickened out, Paris stuck the pendant's rim into her mouth. Then, she tilted her head back. The demon's blood slid down her throat like a traitorous snake.

A new kind of hell erupted inside Paris.

Her insides bubbled and boiled. Her throat itched and tore open. Her veins pulsed and attempted to break out of her skin. She fell to her knees, hacking her lungs out. Through her tunneling vision, she was vaguely aware of the cries and groans flitting out of her blistering lips. Something rusty coated her tongue. Her eyes welled up with the thickest tears she had ever shed. Only, they weren't tears. The warm liquid gushing out of her eyes was nothing other than blood.

Paris clutched her head when it began squeezing her brain in. Heat coated her whole body and showed no sign of letting go. She just burned. Burned and burned. At some point, she screamed, a futile effort to divert the pain and suffering elsewhere. She clawed at her prickling skin. Her fingernails scratched against her burning cheeks. Her muscles twisted. Her intestines formed new knots.

Joyce had been right. It was suicide to drink demon's blood.

A whimper reached Paris's ears. She opened her eyes. The Woods greeted her with its everlasting grayness. Wait. It shouldn't...

The pain. Where was the pain?

Never mind that. How's Vivian?

Everything else fell into line behind Paris's mind as she dragged herself to Vivian's side. The woman's eyes remained closed, her chest never rose and fell. Paris pressed her hands against Vivian's stomach.

Heal, she called. To whatever force now coursing through her bloodstream. To whoever owned the blood she had just drunk. Heal.

Paris gasped aloud, unable to tamp down the torrent of emotions building up in her chest. "HEAL!" she yelled.

Light filtered out of her fingertips and enveloped Vivian. It touched every corner of her body, stitching and patching up the broken parts. Paris closed her eyes and felt the energy probe each nook and niche in her mind. Then, she instructed it to probe Vivian, instead. In her mind's eye, she watched a wisp-like presence surge out from her and plunge into Vivian. Then, all of Vivian's injuries were laid bare.

Focus on those, Paris told the energy sharing space with the rest of her consciousness. Heal her.

The light obliged. Within seconds, Vivian's chest rose and fell once more. The gaping wound on her back was nothing more than a thin scar. Paris, herself, felt a little worse for wear. Her faulty brain remembered getting scratches on her arms and legs but when she checked, she found not even a faint line to signify her wounds had just once been there. Most importantly, had her skin gotten smoother, younger, and more plump?

What in Idis's name was going on?

And...shouldn't Paris be dead by now? She drank demon's blood or whatever it was. She felt the pain, thought it would be her end. But now...

Now, a stream of energy laced heavily around her own blood, as if the pendant's contents somehow fused with her own system. Now, that energy touched every corner of her and got pumped out by her own heart.

She glanced at Vivian whose eyes slowly opened. A light breath filtered out from the woman's lips. Just a few minutes ago, Vivian was at Idis's door. Now...

Paris had healed Vivian. She had saved the woman from certain doom. And she did it with the one thing she swore never existed just hours ago.

She healed Vivian with magic.

"Paris?" Vivian's voice sounded uncertain. Paris looked up from the ground, having been pulled out from her reverie. Vivian looked around, her head swiveling here and there, taking note of her surroundings. "Why are we back here? Had I fallen asleep? Had we not made it to the palace after all?"

Paris sidled closer to Vivian and brushed stray locks of tangled hair off her face. "How much do you remember?" she asked despite the obvious crack in her voice. So close. She had come to losing Vivian that close. "We're back in the Woods."

Vivian knitted her eyebrows, her eyes flitting left and right in fast oscillations. After a few seconds, she gasped. "The armory. The pendant," she whirled to Paris and gripped her shoulders. "We got the pendant, right?"

Paris bobbed her head and passed Vivian the item minus the chain. Then, Vivian frowned. "Wait, I remember being wounded," she twisted her torso around. Had it not been for Paris's magic, she wouldn't be able to do that without dissolving into a lump of pain. "I know it was serious, too. How come I'm not dead?"

Then, Vivian glanced at Paris. "Why do you look like shit?"

Raw laughter slipped out of Paris's lips. It should be just small peals which should be wearing off soon but it persisted. Instead, Paris's shoulders shook, tears drowned the crust of dried blood streaking down her cheeks. She collapsed against Vivian, hiding her face against the woman's neck. Then, her laughter turned into sobs. Relief washed over her in a torrent.

"I'm just glad you're back," Paris blubbered against Vivian's skin. The woman might smell like rancid sweat and stale blood, but it's Vivian. She's alive. They're alive. "I'll tell you everything once we get back to the colony."

Vivian's arms circled around Paris's shoulders and held her close. "You better, Par," Vivian whispered against Paris's hair. "It looks like I missed something important."

Paris raised her head from Vivian's neck and planted a brief kiss on her lips. "Of course," she said. "How much would it take for you to admit you missed me?"

They both knew that wasn't Vivian meant but the way she kissed Paris back told Paris she didn't care.