I didn’t lie to Sanya. I would not deliberately let myself be struck by a ghost, nor would I leave him undefended. I did, however, let myself stray nearer to him in the center of the fray, getting close enough to use my sword on occasion. (Not often. Whenever I did, Sanya managed to find time in the midst of his flurry of strikes to roll his eyes at me).

Two more days passed without incident except for Sanya once catching me trying to inhale the mist as a ghost faded away. Admittedly, that was a stupid idea. Nothing happened. I just got that rotten egg ghost smell stuck in my nose.

Before we ventured over the border in the mornings, he made me practice with my sword. That was a bit insulting, I thought; after all, I’d been practicing since I was a child, same as him (not really. I’m sure he’d held a sword from the moment he could make a fist, and my mother had not been particularly strident when it came to my martial education). I was good. His only response was that I could be better.

And he was right, as he always was, and perhaps his training made me feel more confident that third day, or perhaps I was just getting careless.

I was back-to-back with Sanya, having dived into the thick of the skirmish when a ghost closed on him from behind, and I didn’t think I could hit it with myortva without hitting him, too. I got that one, but more closed in, so I was stuck there with the sword, trying not to catch Sanya’s backswing. I had just cut into one when the ghost next to it lurched forward, lashing out as though trying to catch itself, and wrapped its long tendril around my neck.

It was so cold it stopped my breath, like my whole throat had frozen through. My first instinct was to reach up to yank it off, but before I could move there was a flash over my shoulder and Sanya’s sword skewered its dark core.

The tendril went limp and fell away, dissolving. I didn’t even try to grab it. My neck was still so cold I couldn’t breathe, but I heard myself gasping. My hand went to my throat, and I couldn’t feel my own touch, but there was another ghost coming from the side. I dropped my sword and hit it with a wave of myortva that made its remains ripple like a stone thrown into a pond.

“That was too much,” Sanya said, sheathing his sword. “Let me see.”

My breath came back, weak. I kept my hand where it was, at first just covering the wound, but then trying to feel through it.

“Let me see,” he repeated, and when I didn’t let go, his fingers closed around my wrist. “I know what to do,” he said.

Before I let him pull my hand away, I grabbed his wrist with my other hand, tangling us up like a spider web. “Let me try,” I said, my voice raspy.

“It will spread.” His brow creased.

“You didn’t treat yours until you got back to camp.”

He stared hard at me. We hung there in the stillness for a moment until we heard underbrush crunching in the distance. We both turned toward it, then he looked back at me and nodded. He dropped my wrist and went to destroy the bait talismans.

I closed my eyes to try to focus, to keep my heart rate down so its vibrations didn’t distract me. The energy felt wrong, somehow. Rotten. Sluggish and thick, syrupy, coagulated. But it was there. I drew it up to the surface. Pulling it through my skin was like pulling honey from the comb, and it was so sticky I was sure I was missing some, that there would be lingering stains around my windpipe. Would they spread, even if I couldn’t feel them?

The cold receded as I drew the gnila out. I thought it would be like tar in my hand, but it was soft, springy. Delicate, and so cold. I could feel it disintegrating even as I held it. It was getting away.

Before I knew what I was doing, I sucked it in. Through my fingers and my palm. The ice surged up my arm before ebbing back, pooling in my hand and wrist. My hand felt heavy.

Sanya was back before I ever heard him coming.

He saw me looking at my clenched fist, but he tipped my chin back first.

“Hmm.”

I stared up at the gray sky (always gray) while he closed his hand around my throat. I felt the blisters forming as he pulled the last of those sticky bits of cold honey through my skin.

His fingers pulled away, and he shook his hand. Tiny black tears evaporated before they even hit the ground.

I was suddenly scared to show him—scared to look. I held my hand up between us and uncurled my fingers. You could barely see it under the skin, a slightly shifting mass like a gray egg.

He inhaled sharply.

“It feels heavy,” I said. “Myortva hasn’t ever felt heavy before.”

“Hasn’t it?” He was looking at it with the same expression he always had, but his voice sounded almost wistful.

“Should I see if I can do anything with it?”

He nodded, and I was glad. Having it in me made me nervous. I kept hearing him say, “It will spread.”

“You’re not worried about wasting it?” I said, trying to muster a jocular tone.

“No.”

I put my hand out in front of me and tried to throw the gnila egg out.

All that came out was regular myortva. I winced. “Sorry, Sanya. I didn’t mean to.”

He once again seized my wrist. With his other hand, he pressed across my palm, and I felt the heat again. Something tugged inside my hand, like a fish hook was in there, pulling on me, and my instinct was to pull back, but I resisted and relaxed my muscles, breathing in through my nose and out through my mouth. The egg loosened and, slowly at first, then all at once, popped out of my hand like an eyetooth coming out of a jaw. And like blood followed a lost tooth, something followed the egg.

I gasped and shut my fist, as though that could keep my energy in.

Sanya snatched his hand back like it burned him, something gray dripping off his fingers. Disappearing. His mouth opened, but no sound came out. He looked down at his palm.

My vision sparkled and my head felt light. “I think I need to sit down,” I heard myself saying, and then Sanya’s arms were under mine, lowering me to the ground. “Can’t sit here,” I said, my head lolling back.

“Get on my back.” Sanya’s voice barely penetrated my skull, like I was hearing him from underwater. His back pressed against my chest, and I guess my arms wrapped over his shoulders. His hands tucked up under my thighs and he hoisted me up.

*

I came back to myself maybe halfway back to camp, but I let him carry me for a while longer.

He’d pulled something out of me, or pulled out a stopper and it had just flowed out. It wasn’t the myortva pooled in my chest. That was still there; I could almost feel it sloshing around. So, what was it? What did he let out?

I picked my chin up off his shoulder and slapped his chest for him to let me down.

He shook his head and wouldn’t put me down until we were back at camp. Once he did, I started to go check the talismans, but he made me sit down and drink water. Once I’d drained the waterskin, I tried to ask what happened, though I doubted he knew any more than I did. He didn’t answer. So I started building up the fire, and he was too busy going to get more water to stop me. When he could not find more tasks to distract himself with, he crouched across from me and started fiddling with the fire again.

“Sanya,” I said, putting my hand out as though I were close enough to stop him from doing anything. “What happened?”

He didn’t look up from the fire.

“Sanya. I know being a man of few words is part of your charm, but right now, your meaningful silence is neither meaningful nor helpful. Talk to me. I feel weird.”

“It’s still in me,” he said abruptly. “What came out of you.”

“What was it? What happened? How is it in you?” Even with the fire between us, I could see he looked sick. “Why do you look sick? I’m the injured party here! Are you trying to say that whatever you took out of me made you sick? Are you saying that I made you sick?”

“Iyu…”

“What is it? What did you take out of me?”

“I think…” He trailed off, looking as though he might throw up. I’d never seen him unsure before.

“Was it my energy? My own living, breathing energy? Because it feels like it. It feels like there’s something missing.”

He blanched, which should have been hard to see in the firelight but was entirely obvious.

“Sanya, it’s okay; I know you didn’t mean to do it. You didn’t mean to, right?”

“No.” He didn’t look any better, even if he sounded firmer.

“Okay, well, you can just put it back. If you took it out, you can put it back in. I put the gnila in me, so you can put my living energy back, too.”

“You’re not supposed to do that.”

“Yes, but I did it. So it can be done.”

I moved to sit next to him and held out my hand.

He looked down at it but did not move. “We should tell Yelena Artyomovich.”

“What? Why? So we can spend another night on the spire? If you want to spend the night with me, there are better ways to ask.” I was trying to get a rise out of him, because his ashen face was wrong-footing me—scaring me—and I wanted stern, solid Sanya back.

He didn’t react.

“Sanya! We don’t need to tell Yelena Artyomovich anything if we fix it now. Just…” I shook my hand in front of him.

“Iyu. I don’t know how I pulled zhiva from you. If I tried to put it back into you, I’m worried it could hurt you. We need to tell Yelena Artyomovich.”

“Okay. Well, you pulled it out of me. Why don’t I try pulling it back out of you?”

“No. You don’t know what you’re doing.”

“Neither do you!”

“And that’s why we’re going to tell Yelena Artyomovich.”

“Will Yelena Artyomovich know what she’s doing? Does anyone know what they’re doing with something like this? Anyway, we really don’t need to tell her. I feel fine now, really. So it’s not even important. Not worth mentioning to her.”

“Do you feel fine?”

“Yes!” I said. “And when you think about it, isn’t this exciting? You took—maybe—some of my zhiva. What can you do with it? Can you use it like myortva?”

“Iyu…”

“Before you do that, let me…” I flicked my fingers and sent little sparks out at the fire. “Yes, I can still use myortva. Try it! See what you can do with my zhiva!”

“Iyu Aksanevich.” He sat up straighter, and some of the angry color came back to his face.

“Yes, I know my name. And that was barely any myortva at all; don’t start lecturing me about wasting energy. Don’t you want to try it? Aren’t you curious?”

He held my gaze for a moment. Slow exhale through his nose. “We have three days left. We’ll finish the hunt. When we go back, we’ll talk to Yelena Artyomovich.”

“But can you use myortva without using my zhiva? What if it comes out when you’re fighting ghosts? Would you even know? Can you feel it? Is it different, like that gnila egg was in me?”

He nodded. “I can tell. It feels different. I don’t know if I can separate it.”

“Then if you use it, you use it. And we’ll know.”

He shook his head.

“What do you mean?” I mimicked his head shake. “What does that mean?”

“I won’t use energy. I’ll just use my sword.”

“What are you talking about? You won’t use energy? What are you talking about? You’ll get killed. If you can’t even use myortva to make yourself faster or stronger, you’ll get killed.”

“I won’t. I can handle it.”

“Sanya! I’m injured. Sick! I can’t protect you. I won’t let you go and get yourself hurt. If you won’t use myortva, we just won’t go. I’ll keep you here.”

“You said you felt fine.”

“I do, but who knows? What if it turns out I… pass out again in the middle of a hunt? And you not using energy?”

“If that happens, I will use energy.”

“What if it’s too late?”

“Then it would be too late even if I had used energy.”

“My point is that you should be using your energy before it becomes an emergency. In case anything goes wrong. You don’t want your first time trying to use zhiva to be in a life-or-death situation.”

That was a good point, and he knew it. His eyes roamed back to the fire. “We should go back tomorrow, then. Tomorrow morning, I’ll send up the signal so they can come get us.”

“The signal! Sanya, no! If we quit and tell Yelena Artyomovich you drew zhiva out of me, she’ll… well, maybe she will cut off our hands.”

He gave me a sharp glance.

“Okay, she wouldn’t, but I know you don’t want to do that. Taking someone’s living energy is really bad, really not allowed. She’d be so disappointed, and we already disappointed her last time. She’ll think we can’t do anything right, and she’ll tell Aksana, too. And if Yelena Artyomovich won’t cut off our hands, Aksana will! She’ll beat me within an inch of my life, and I wasn’t even the one who took the zhiva—”

“I did it to help you,” Sanya said, and I felt better because he didn’t look ashen at all now. “I wouldn’t have had to if you didn’t—”

“I know, I know. But we can get through it. Just three more days. You can just use up the zhiva and no one will know. Please, Sanya.” I clasped my hands together.

He regarded me with suspicion. Then he stood up and turned away.

“What are you doing? Are you—”

“Go to bed, Iyu.”