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The uncomfortable silence returned. We lodged at wayside inns. In the common rooms, the guards spoke quietly among themselves. Brother Ramiel told me tales of my father, trying to raise my spirits. Raphael was silent, attended by his manservant.

Two days later, under Brother Ramiel's guidance, we turned off the main road onto a narrow dirt track. It was near dusk when we reached the nameless hamlet. Folk turned out to gape at our fine attire and the guards in their livery of Courcel blue, pointing the way to the woodcutter's cabin.

It sat on the verge of the Senescine Forest, a humble building of expertly hewn logs. There was a chill in the air and smoke curled from the chimney. My heart thundered in my chest.

Before Brother Ramiel could knock, a woman opened the door. She was work-worn but lovely, tears in her eyes. "You're here! Elua be thanked!"

"He lives?" I forced the words out.

She hesitated. "His breath yet clouds a mirror."

Raphael was already in motion, dismounting and unlashing the bag that carried his medical supplies. He met my eyes and there was no hostility in his gaze, only a healer's intense concentration. "Come with me."

The cabin was small and cramped, warmed only by a cooking stove. The woodcutter bowed as we entered. A slender figure kneeling beside a cot on the far side of the stove rose, golden hair glowing in the dim light. A mirror flashed in her hand.

On the cot lay my father.

He looked like a newly dead corpse, frail and bloodless. His skin was translucent and the beautiful bones of his face were too prominent, the hollows of his eyes sunken. He was utterly motionless, not even his hest rising and falling. An involuntary keening sound burst from my throat.

"Moirin." Raphael caught my wrist. "Be strong."

I nodded.

Raphael borrowed the girl's mirror and knelt, holding it to my father's lips. After an eternity, it clouded faintly. "How long has he been this way?"

"Two days, messire." Her voice was low and steady despite the threat of tears in it. "I done give him all the medicaments and poultices that the physician the good Brother Ramiel sent gave us, but he only done worsened and worsened."

"You did very well," he said soothingly. "The infection in his lungs had taken too deep a grip."

I waited in an agony of suspense while Raphael examined my father, taking his pulses and listening to his chest, rubbing his hands together and hovering them over his body. The woodcutter's daughter eyed me with wonder.

"You're his daughter," she said in awe. "The Queen's witch." Aye.

"I never seen anyone like you," she said simply. "He kept asking for his daughter. Seemed to give him comfort when I tended to him. Can't think how he'd mistake us."

I spared her a glance. She was truly a rustic beauty, golden-haired and blue-eyed, clad in a homespun gown. "You tended to him with a daughter's loving care. I daresay that was what he sensed, and I'm grateful for it."

She flushed. "I done my best."

"Moirin." Raphael lifted his tawny head, his expression grave. "There's no time to waste. Are you ready?"

Panic washed through me. I pushed it away and sank to my knees beside him. I forced myself to cycle through the Five Styles of Breathing, drawing energy from the earth below me, the memory of the ocean, the trees around us, the embers glowing in the stove, and the very air itself.

Raphael rubbed his hands together, his gift rising and calling to mine. He splayed his hands over my father's chest.

"Now!"

I placed my hands over his and summoned the twilight, breathing it out.

I poured my energy into Raphael.

More.

More.

More.

We were three entities and we were one, conjoined. The water-wheel of my spirit's energy turned. I spilled into Raphael; he spilled into my father. Pushing, pushing at the thick congestion that clogged his lungs. Coaxing at the spark of life that lingered. The wheel turned and turned. I emptied myself heedlessly, turn after turn of the wheel. Golden warmth spilled from Raphael's hands. In a distant part of myself, I wondered what would happen when the stream ran