The water had healed Gavriel's other bruises and cuts, but did nothing for the fatal one. She dragged him out of the steaming pool with a strength she absolutely did not have.
Water sloshed off both of them as she pulled him onto the patch of warm moss beside the spring, her arms screaming, her legs buckling, every muscle in her body staging a mutiny she overruled through sheer, stupid stubbornness.
She pressed her palm to his chest and flinched. His skin was burning even hotter than before. The kind of fever that meant his body was fighting something it was losing to. It radiated off him in waves, and every wave felt like a countdown she couldn't read.
Serena: We are trapped. Outnumbered. I don't have enough magic left to make a portal.
Who was she mindlinking? She had no idea. Maybe nothing was getting through. Maybe every word she sent was dying three inches from her wrist, swallowed by whatever interference this place generated like a hobby.
