Maggie's white fire spread outward from her boots in a widening ring, licking up through every crack in the basalt.
I lay where I had landed, flat on my back in the grey dust, and my snapped collarbone ground against itself every time I breathed. Ilse stood over me with her obsidian horns lowered and white-hot fire dripping from her talons. Neither of us moved. Neither of us had to.
'Okay. I'm alive. Somehow.'
The Dragon of Thorns had stopped as well. All three colossal heads hung back from the small figure in the torn black habit, their clusters of red eyes fixed on her, while the raw red meat along their necks twitched and knit.
Maggie didn't look back at me. Her silver chain slid off her forearm and pooled in the dust beside her boots, and she turned her raised palm toward the beast.
The bottom dropped out of my spirit well. Almost everything I had left ripped out of my core at once, feeding a miracle of that size into the physical world.
