It wasn’t a normal sort of knock. It wasn’t even the sort of knock she’d come to wince at the sound of these last few days—the sort that was hesitant and anxious not to further upset the poor, tragic baker.

  Hah. If only they knew the whole story.

  This was the knock of someone falling against the door, and not getting up.

  Runa frowned. Just for a moment, her eyes flicked to the corner where Bloodburster had sat propped all the weeks Severine had been living with her. It wasn’t there, but the fact she’d looked for it?

  …That was a bad sign, wasn’t it?

  Maybe Severine had made the right decision, leaving when she did.

  Guilt a stronger growl in her gut than fear, she picked up the lightstick, instead, shook it until the end glowed, and opened the door.

  “Greetings, shopkeep,” croaked a pile of rags from the ground. “Is this the place that does the best burned dwarf bread this side of the Breathing Sea?”

  “Severine?”

  “Hey, Runa.”

  The pile of rags shifted, and a stained hood fell back to reveal Severine’s dancing eyes. Except they weren’t dancing. They were ringed with shadows, and her face was mottled with dirt.

  Runa’s shoulders tensed. That wasn’t dirt, and any residual grouchiness she’d been holding onto at the way Severine left vanished. “You’re hurt.”

  “Oh, well, if you put it that way…”

  “What happened?” Runa scanned the street outside. There was nothing out of the ordinary in the sounds and scents of the night, but that didn’t mean there was nothing there.

  Should have picked up a breadknife after all. Her hand tightened around the lightstick, and heat pulsed up her arm.

  Severine waved a dismissive hand, then hissed in a sharp breath. “Don’t worry. No one followed me. I made sure of that, this time.”

  Runa knelt beside her. “Can you walk?”

  “I walked here, didn’t I?”

  “Did you?”

  Severine shot her a hurt look, and with a badly disguised grunt of effort, turned her exhausted pile-of-rags slump into something that almost passed for casual laying about. “I cut a way to outside the town wall. Kind of hoped that someone would take pity on me and carry me to safety, but I guess everyone has better things to do.”

  “Next time, cut your way inside. You don’t need to knock.”

  Severine sighed long-sufferingly. “And give up all my dreams of someone finding me in the snow and carrying my frail body to safety?”

  “It isn’t snowing.”

  “It what?” Severine lifted her head and peered around, blinking. “Are you sure?”

  “Tell me you’re joking.” Runa gently took hold of Severine’s chin and tilted her head back.

  Severine winced away from the lightstick’s glow as Runa drew it close.

  “I didn’t hit my head, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

  “Mm.” Runa turned Severine’s head from side to side, trying to get a look at her pupils through the other woman’s increasingly hot glare.

  “You could whisk my frail body away to safety,” Severine pointed out, pointedly.

  “I’m getting there.” Satisfied, Runa withdrew the lightstick.

  “If I wanted someone to grouch at me and—aargh.” Severine tried to stand, and collapsed on the ground again. “I would have gone to Corvin first!”

  Runa sighed. Her heart was leaping around in her chest with relief that Severine was back, and worry that she was hurt, but Severine was being so… Severine.

  Which, knowing her, probably meant she was worse hurt than she was letting on.

  “Why didn’t you?” she asked. “Because you’re not badly hurt enough to want an apothecary—which clearly isn’t the case—or because you didn’t manage to hand off Bloodburster to someone else, so you didn’t have any choice but to come back to me?”

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  Severine’s eyes flew to hers. Something in them hardened—and something behind that hardness went brittle. Close to breaking.

  “You know it isn’t like that,” she said, her voice aiming for mock outrage and landing somewhere south of miserable.

  “Do I?” Runa was still holding her. She had to do something with her hands, so she gently explored Severine’s skull, checking for lumps. “You left without me because you didn’t trust me not to accept Bloodburster.”

  Severine’s eyes snapped cold. “That is not—ouch!”

  “What other option is there?”

  “I didn’t ask you to come because I knew you would! I couldn’t—” Severine winced and clutched her head. “No. The rest of you shut up, please.”

  “You set me up from the beginning, but you couldn’t let me help you when I would have chosen to do it?”

  “No!” A muscle in Severine’s cheek twitched. “That… didn’t come out right.”

  “How was it meant to come out?”

  “I… didn’t set you up. I took advantage of the situation that presented itself?” Severine looked woefully hopeful. Of course she did. She wanted Runa to pick up this side of the argument and follow it until she forgot the other half even existed. Because it was the side that hurt less.

  And, damn it, Runa couldn’t stop herself from playing along. “You took advantage of me.”

  “Yes, of you! And then I found out that even I have moral limits! Yes, I would happily swoon while you save me from monsters, yes I’ll eat your food and—”

  “Sleep in my bed?”

  Severine went scarlet, which was a better color on her than gray and the faded crust of old blood at her hairline. “Yes! And pretend like I didn’t have a horrible fate in store for you! I would do all of that! But I won’t give you that fate, and I won’t let you keep throwing yourself in front of every danger in the world and getting yourself hurt!”

  Runa stared at her.

  She wasn’t meant to say that.

  “You’re not meant to say that,” she said, too slow to stop her own mouth from echoing the shock emptying out her mind.

  Severine tipped her head back and fixed her with a determined look. “Why not? Are we all meant to just dance around the fact that you keep throwing yourself into danger?”

  “I don’t—”

  “Dragging the wizards back to camp—”

  “That was my job!”

  “What about dragging me off the mountain?”

  Runa opened her mouth to protest, but Severine didn’t give her the chance.

  “Or the thing with the spiders? And then I hear you got yourself knocked out by some curse and almost lost your arm the first week you were here?” Severine’s jaw worked. “There’s such a thing as being too good.”

  But I’m not good, Runa wanted to tell her.

  Anyway.

  She was right. And Runa was wrong. She’d thought Severine would dodge the awful, awkward revelation Junilla had forced on her, and let her be angry at her for not trusting she could handle Bloodburster. Not force her to acknowledge that every chance she got, she would put herself last.

  “You say that like it’s a bad thing,” she said at last.

  “It is when I’m trying to keep you alive!” Severine snapped. She winced and let her head fall back. “Are you going to believe me, or are you going to leave me out here in the not-snow?”

  “In the dirt?”

  “Oh, you’re right, that sounds just as pathetic. Let’s go with that. Leave me in the dirt.” She gave a long-suffering sigh.

  Runa stifled a growl. “I’m not going to leave you here.”

  And then, because there was no chance Severine was going to come inside on her own strength, and that long-suffering sigh had hidden a wince of actual pain, she wrapped her arms around her and picked her up.

  “I wouldn’t have left you out here even if I didn’t believe you,” Runa said, her voice somewhat muffled by Severine’s hair.

  Severine went limp against her. Her head fit perfectly under Runa’s chin. “See, that’s what makes you the perfect mark.”

  “Hah.”

  She brought her inside, where it was warm and not too dark, what with the fire and the few candles spotted around the place. The lightstick went out when she propped it by the oven.

  “I can hold onto that,” Severine offered, and Runa snorted.

  “And add burns to whatever else is wrong with you? I’ll take my chances with candlelight.” She pushed Severine gently into the chair and brought some of the wide, stubby candles over.

  “Burns?” Severine asked vaguely.

  “Trust me.” Runa went into the scullery and brought out the selection of salves and potions Corvin had left with her, back when she first arrived in Pothollow.

  “How come it doesn’t burn you?”

  “Trying to distract me?” Runa knelt in front of her and undid her cloak. Severine had been favouring one arm, and was still hunched over in a way that suggested she didn’t want to breathe too deeply.

  Severine blinked as Runa peeled her cloak back over her shoulders and began to push her sleeves up her arms. “Are you trying to distract me? Because it’s—ow. Ow!”

  “I’m trying to see how broken you get yourself when you run off on your own. This is only sprained, I think. Corvin gave me something for that. Hold on.”

  She sorted through the little jars and bottles.

  “Corvin gave you those?” Severine asked.

  “Reckon he thinks that if he hands them out, he won’t have to deal with patients face to face.”

  “Well, you know, he isn’t a healer. So I hear.”

  “He hit you with that one too, huh?” Runa slathered a light green ointment on Severine’s wrist, where it was angry red and swollen. “You know I don’t want to see you hurt, either? You think it’s fair to me, saying you want to protect me and not letting me do the same thing?”

  “I—” Severine’s gaze slid away sideways. “I’m not the one who ended up unconscious multiple times. What would I have done if you’d done that on one of my missions? You can carry me around easily enough, but I promise you, the opposite would not be true.”

  “I’m not saying I would have stood behind you with Bloodburster over my shoulder. But having someone with a big, unmagical weapon around couldn’t hurt your chances of carrying out your duty without getting hurt.”

  “I’m a priestess of the blade. My faith protects me.”

  Runa stared at her sprained wrist.

  “Maybe not this time, but every other time—”

  Runa wordlessly rolled up Severine’s other sleeve, revealing the long, gnarled scar she put so much effort into never letting anyone see. “I’d do a better job than your faith,” she said quietly.

  Severine seemed to lose the ability to speak. When she finally remembered how to get her tongue around words, she agreed that the next time one of the swords told her to hare off somewhere, she’d let Runa know beforehand.

  “Promise?” Runa asked.

  Severine slipped her hand into Runa’s. “Promise.”