It feels like madness to even think it.

‘There! In the distance. Can you see?’ Hope swells through me, only to fall again as I realise it was Seiren’s voice rising over the howling wind. Half of what she says is fanciful, and I’ve never once held it against her – whatever’s happened to her, it’s not her fault – but this … this isn’t something I can cope with being another hallucination.

But then Grenda speaks too. ‘She’s right. Someone else is coming. Someone big.’

Llin’s hand clasps mine as we stare out into the mist at the blur growing ever closer to us.

‘They’re carrying someone,’ Benny says. ‘It’s not one person. It’s two. One’s being carried. But I’m not sure who.’

My heart thrums against my ribs with a pace fast enough to nearly choke me. ‘Is it him? Is it Jonas?’ My voice warbles as Benny’s eyes meet mine.

‘I can’t tell, Rose. I’m sorry. I can’t.’

My throat is tight as I skim the faces on the bank. There are only a few Rettlings who could carry Jonas any distance, and most of them are here around me. One isn’t though. Baylis. The guard. The first one who was called up to the vow. He’s not here. He could carry Jonas.

But as the blurred figures finally come into focus, my breath rushes out in a gasp of relief. Jonas isn’t the one being carried. He’s the one doing the carrying. He’s okay. But Kestria … Kestria lies in his arms. Unmoving.

‘I need a healer!’ His shout is muffled by distance and fog. ‘Someone get her a healer. Now!’

With my hands clenched into fists, I watch on, hope rising with every step he takes towards us. It’s not long now. Minutes at most. In minutes, he’ll be here, safe on the shingles with the rest of us. But just as the thought takes hold, his knees buckle. He catches himself, but his body hunches over.

‘Someone help her!’ he calls again. ‘Please!’

‘Fuck this,’ Benny mutters. A heartbeat later, he is rushing down the stony bank back onto the ice.

‘It’s okay. I’m coming. I’ve got her.’

My chest is pounding as I watch on. Benny takes the Dorain Rettling out of Jonas’s arms, at which point Jonas drops entirely, his knees and hands flat against the ice.

‘We need a healer!’ Benny calls again with Kestria in his arms. He strides back towards us, somehow keeping himself upright as his feet slide on the ice. What will happen if he doesn’t make it now? He already completed the trial, but if the ice cracks and he and Kestria go under, then what? He’s out of it? That can’t be right.

My worry flicks from Benny to Jonas as I notice that the latter still hasn’t moved. While Benny and Kestria are nearly at the shingle beach, Jonas is still out there. Still on all fours. He’s head down, staring at the ice.

‘What’s he doing?’ I whisper. ‘Why isn’t he moving?’ My hands clench and unclench as I watch on, waiting for him to get back on his feet. With every second, my heart rate quickens, but nothing is happening. ‘Jonas! Get up! You’re nearly here! You’re nearly here!’

I shift further down the shingles towards the ice, my feet sliding on the stones as I go. But it’s no good. Either he can’t hear me or he’s not listening. Either way, he’s not moving. And staying still on the ice like that only ends one way. With a burst of clarity, I know I can’t wait any longer. Picking up my feet, I rush down the last stretch of the bank … only to be pulled back before I hit the ice.

‘What are you doing? You barely made it out of there yourself.’ Kyor’s blue eyes lock on mine with urgency. ‘Think rationally, Thorn. Think about what could happen.’

Rationally? My rational brain is telling me that my friend is fifty feet away, close enough for me to watch him die, and I’m not going to do it. I’m not. Surely Kyor’s seen enough death to know why I can’t do that.

But I quickly realise that’s not what Kyor’s saying. He’s afraid. Afraid of what would happen if anyone else saw it happen again. If that ice magic he’s so certain I used to kill Oke reappeared. We both know the answer. If it does, I’m as good as dead.

But Jonas wouldn’t leave me out there. He wouldn’t stand idly by and watch me die. So I can’t leave him.

‘I have to,’ I say, shaking off Kyor’s grip.

‘Fuck!’ he mutters.

‘Right beside you,’ Llinos tells me as we step onto the ice together.

We are barely two feet away from the bank when Benny passes us with Kestria, headed in the opposite direction. I don’t know why I turn to look at her, why I don’t just keep going straight for Jonas, but something causes me to slow. To look at the body in his arms.

My heart drops and a chilling dread fills my stomach as my hand flies to my mouth.

I know why Jonas isn’t moving. Why he’s staying there on the ice, even though it’s certain death. And why he felt he had to get Kestria to the end.

Kestria’s eyes are white, and from what I saw, the ghosts on the ice didn’t have the powers to do something like that. No, the only person I know with that power is Jonas.

Jonas blinded her.

‘Llin take her.’ Benny hands Kestria over to Llinos before turning back and heading with me to get Jonas.

‘Just make sure we keep a safe distance apart,’ Benny tells me as we approach. ‘The ice is patchy and thin here. If we put too much weight on one place, we’ll go under.’

‘I’ll follow your lead,’ I tell him, shifting further away.

My feet stumble as we reach Jonas, and it has nothing to do with the ice. His lips are tinged blue, and his fingers are taking on the same hue as he mutters to himself.

‘I didn’t mean to. I didn’t mean to …’ he stammers as Benny hooks one arm under his left side and I take his right. ‘I didn’t know. I didn’t know …’

‘It’s fine. It’s fine. She’ll be okay.’ Tears fill my eyes, the cold stinging as they blur my vision. Fissures form in my chest for Jonas and Kestria alike.

‘I don’t know why it wouldn’t stop. It always stops, but it didn’t. I didn’t know. I don’t know …’

‘It’s okay, Jonas. It’s okay. Come on, we’re nearly there. Let’s finish this thing,’ I soothe.

Together Benny and I drag him up the bank. His knees scrape the hard black stones, but he doesn’t so much as flinch.

No sooner have we reached the ridge than Mila raises her hand.

‘All the chosen have returned,’ she announces, a self-satisfied smile curving her lips and making me hate her just a little more.

My stomach drops. It’s over. Oke is dead, and I’m responsible. A corkscrewing feeling constricts my breathing, tightening around my chest. I don’t know what that Issen spirit did or how it’s even possible, but for that split moment I had magic flowing through me again. Utterly illegal magic.

I turn my head, hoping to catch Kyor’s eye, but before I can the snow disappears from beneath our feet.

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Chapter 50

As soon as we return to the High Hold we take Jonas and Kestria to the healers. They aren’t the only two who need help, but the others can all walk there themselves.

‘The healers don’t think they can get her sight back,’ Benny murmurs to Llin and me as we eat dinner that night. Not that any of us have much of an appetite. Thankfully, my dagger was where I left it when I disappeared, and it is now safely tucked in its sheath and secured to my person once more.

‘You went down there?’ Llin asks Benny in surprise.

‘I just … I needed to do something.’

I get it. Helplessness is a feeling I’m more used to than most. Nights spent in the slums when I couldn’t remember the last time I ate. When our bodies were so cold I was scared Kay or I might go to sleep and never wake up. I felt hopeless then, too.

The hall is all but empty, and the quiet is unnerving. We’re officially down to sixteen. Sixteen Rettlings will compete in the penultimate trial. Eighty percent of us are dead or at least assumed dead. Looking at the numbers like that, every minute longer I’m here feels like a miracle.