Seraphis coughed, and another warm spray erupted from her throat. The sound she made was not a sob nor a scream but a ragged animal noise between both, the sound of a throat that had known too much.
Eleyn reached for her, hands steady despite the way her fingers trembled, clutching Seraphis's shoulders and pulling her up so she did not fall face-first into a puddle of her own making. Mina had just disappeared, but the three people fighting Eleyn were all dead.
"Stay with me," Eleyn said, voice strangled. It was more a command than a begging, one woman holding another to a sliver of sense.
Seraphis blinked at her. Her eyes were glazed, red-rimmed, and yet they burned with the small, precise hunger of someone who had a need. "She…" Seraphis rasped. The words were thin, barely there. "She—"
"There, you see?' Mina suddenly reappeared, prompting Eleyn to be on guard. "That is what truth looks like. It spills out of you and stains you. It comes back."
