The Broken Kingdoms

The instant I moved my head, nausea struck with stunning speed and force. I had enough time to open my mouth and drag in a loud, wheezing breath before the heaves came. I vomited a thin stream of bile, but nothing more. I must not have eaten for some time.

My stomach seemed determined to dry heave nevertheless, regardless of my lungs’ need for air. I fought the urge, my eyes watering and head pounding and ears ringing, until at last I managed to draw in a quick half breath. That helped. The heaving slowed; I breathed more. At last the clenching in my gut ceased—though only for the moment. I could still feel the muscles there trembling, ready to resume their onslaught.

Finally able to think, I lifted my head, trying to figure out where I was and what had happened. The ringing in my ears—which I had mistaken for screaming—was loud and incessant, maddening. The last thing I recalled was… I frowned, though this made the pain worse. Falling. Yes. I had leapt from a window of the House of the Risen Sun, determined to escape or die trying. Shiny had caught me, and—

I caught my breath. Shiny.

Beneath me.

I scrambled off him, or tried to. The instant I moved my right arm, I screamed, which touched off another spate of stomach heaves. I fought through the pain and the retching, dragging myself off him with my left arm, which was still sore from infection and whatever the Lights had inserted to draw my blood. Still, the pain in that arm was nothing compared to the agony in my right, and the clenching of my belly, and the shooting pains in my ribs, and the roiling grinding hell of my head. For a few moments I could do nothing but lie where I was, whimpering and helpless with misery.

At last the pain faded enough for me to function. When I finally struggled to a half-upright position, I tried again to assess my surroundings. My right arm would not work at all. I reached out with my left. “Shiny?”

He was there. Alive, breathing. I brushed his eyes, which were open. They blinked, the lashes tickling my fingertips. I wondered if he had decided to stop speaking to me again.

That was when I realized my knees and the hip I sat on were soaking wet. Confused, I felt the ground. Brick cobbles, greasy and thick with dirt. Cold dampness that grew warmer, closer to Shiny’s body. As warm as—

Dearest gods.

He was alive. His magic had saved us—not completely, but enough to soften our fall. Enough that when he had turned us in the air, orienting so that he would hit the ground first, we had both survived. But if I was this injured…

My fingers found the back of his head, and I gasped, jerking my hand back. Gods, gods, gods.

Where the hells were we? How long had we been lying here? Did I dare call for help? I looked around, listened. The air felt cool and misty with deep night. Fat drops of water touched my skin now and again with the intermittent gentleness that was rain in Shadow. I could hear it, a light drizzle all around us, but in the immediate vicinity, I heard nothing, no one. I could smell a great deal, though—garbage and fermented urine and rusting metal. Another alley? No, the space around us felt more open. Wherever we were, it was isolated; if anyone had seen us land, sheer curiosity should’ve brought them to find us.

Shiny had begun to gasp irregularly. I put my hand on his bare chest—he had removed his shirt in the House—and almost drew it back, repelled by the unnatural flatness of his torso. Yet his heart still beat steadily, in contrast to the bubbling, jerky breaths that he was struggling to draw in. At this rate, his natural death might take an agonizingly long time.

I had to kill him.

Panic gripped me, though that might have been queasiness, too. I knew it was foolish. It wasn’t as though he would stay dead, and when he returned to life, he would be whole. It was, as Lil had concluded, the easiest way to “heal” him. It wouldn’t even be the first time I’d done it.

But it was one thing to kill in the heat of anger. Doing it in cold-blooded calculation was a whole other matter.

I wasn’t even certain I could kill him. My right arm was useless, dislocated or broken, though thankfully it seemed to be going numb. Everything else hurt. I might’ve survived the fall better than him, but that didn’t make me whole. At the very least, I would need two working arms to break his neck.

All at once it hit me: I was lost in some part of Shadow, helpless, with a companion as good as dead. It was only a matter of time before the Lights came looking. They knew Shiny, at least, would come back to life. I was sick, injured, weak. Terrified. And, damn it all, blind.

“Why the hells is everything so hard with you?” I demanded of Shiny, blinking away tears of frustration. “Hurry up and die!”