For ninety bone-chilling minutes, they stood back to back, unmoving, wordless, as they waited for the fog to transition from black to gray.

  Dyathne was still turned toward the Venemon, suspended in the fog as the cloud materialized around them in the light. The red orbs were dimming with each passing moment, fading from a bloody red to a pallid blush, barely perceptible. For his part, Math had his eyes locked on the fog above them, eagerly anticipating full daylight.

  Finally, “I have to piss.” Math sounded mildly embarrassed.

  “Can you hold it?” Dyathne asked. “I’m not sure they’re gone.”

  She thought she could still make out a faint pinkish glow where the Venemon had been, but it could have easily been an effect of her eyes adjusting to the light.

  “I’ve been holding it,” he gritted out, feeling very much like a child in that moment.

  “Go,” Dyathne let the rope out from her waist. Two meters in any direction and he’d be swallowed by the fog.

  She felt the line go taut. A moment later, the unmistakable sound of a man urinating onto the ground. The sound cut off. Then started again. Then stopped.

  “There’s something wrong,” his voice cut through the fog. “With my…”

  Oh, do not say it, Dyathne prayed silently. I do not want to know.

  “…my hand,” he finished.

  Math appeared quietly to her right, close, angled slightly toward her. He raised his shaking left hand to her face so she could focus on it.

  Black.

  His previously fair hand was the same black as the ground of the Sear.

  The same arcane black as hers.

  She stared, her wide eyes darting from his hand to his eyes and back again.

  “How old are you?” She demanded.

  Her question caught him off guard, but he replied. “Thirty-five. Why?”

  “Because you’re too old. One passes their Limnus at the edge of adulthood, not the middle of it.”

  Then, “Take off your jacket. And your shirt.”

  Math unbuttoned and pulled off the thick waterproof mantle he wore, unwinding the scarf wrapped around its collar. The thick, long-sleeved shirt underneath was stiff, greasy after weeks of wear. He hated touching it. It brushed past his vizard as he removed it and he got an unfortunate whiff of his own reek.

  As she suspected, Math’s newly formed Siron wasn’t confined to his hand. Like hers, it encased his entire arm. She pushed him forward gently, allowing herself to check the back of his arm and gasped.

  The blackness didn’t stop at his shoulder like hers, like Iphan’s had. No, a sharp streak of blackness had made it across his broad shoulder to the nape of his neck and into his hairline. She could even see the deep black under his shorter auburn hair there.

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  “I’m sorry,” she blurted out.

  “What? You didn’t do this!” Math rushed. “Right?” He tone shifted, hardened at the end. The accusation hung.

  Dyathne didn’t reply immediately, but she was pretty sure she had somehow done this.

  “I… I moved into are phase of the Rite of Ash. We were too far away from the Jaws of the Sear,” she tried to explain, as much to herself as to him, hands flailing as she grasped for reason. “I had to do something before they reached us. Reached me.”

  Math was pulling his shirt back down. Dyathne watched him without seeing, eyes unfocused.

  Any other time, any other place, she might have noted his strength, the masculine beauty of his form. Now she saw only the obsidian mark spread beneath his clothes.

  “Explain,” he bit out. “While we find camp.”

  Math shortened their line by half, coiling the rope against his own hip. He wasn’t about to lose her now. He watched his alien hand work the rope. It was almost reflective it was so black, like the feathers of a raven.

  Where should she start? Dyathne didn’t know how to begin to impart a lifetime of learning to this foreigner.

  “The Jaws… that’s where we Siro bring the Rite of Ash to its end. Where what we carry is pushed into the earth. It’s a day’s walk from here,” she worked the compass deftly with her left hand while the pair moved slowly toward where they thought camp was. “Give or take,” she amended, realizing they weren’t exactly where she thought they had been.

  “I thought we made it to a waypoint last night, one of the few places in the fog they cannot cross,” she tried to explain plainly but worried she was confusing him more. “I don’t think we did.”

  Math picked his steps carefully, each one a small negotiation with the cloud cover. The blackness of his arm a cold, numb reminder of what Dyathne had done.

  He fought the overwhelming urge to try to rub the blackness off, but was loath to touch it. What if it spread to his other hand?

  “You have to understand, I had no idea this would happen–could happen–to you. Or anyone!” She clicked the first ring into place as she spoke.

  “I need my pack,” he ignored her obvious entreaty for absolution. “Help me look.”

  Dyathne didn’t respond. It was as if she hadn’t even heard him. He glared, watching her fiddle with her compass instead of aiding him. She peered at the third ring, moving it ever so slightly, and gave the key a quarter turn.

  She watched the compass. Math’s eyes burned, his fury mounting silently, while his black hand strangled the line at his hip. He started to wind it again, diminishing the space between them.

  “Camp should be three meters… that way,” she said at last, pointing to their northeast.

  Math had shortened their line so much by then that they had no choice but to move in almost perfect sync. If Dyathne noticed the change in proximity, she didn’t let on. He loomed over her, seething just inches away, his left brushing her right side with each carefully placed step.

  The pads of the fingers on his left hand tingled. It was a familiar sensation, similar to diagnosing a patient when he homed in on the source of their suffering.

  But there was no patient in the Sear. Only the witch next to him that had somehow turned his arm to pitch.

  “Here!” Her foot had found one of their bedrolls.

  For a moment, Math forgot his rage and confusion. He slackened the line and crouched. It was his bedroll. His pack was still stuffed in the bottom.

  Relief from his fury and the sudden dump of adrenaline left him shaking as he untied it. He rummaged through the pack, a man possessed.

  Dyathne rolled her bedding and secured it to the bottom of her pack. She sipped from her water flask, waiting for him as patiently as she could while setting the compass around her neck with her left hand. The rings clicked as she squinted at the tool, focused on precision.

  “Goddamnit!” She yelped as a bolt of searing pain shot through her right arm from wrist to elbow. Her grip failed, sending her flask to the ground, shattering instantly.

  She cradled her throbbing right arm with her left.

  Math jerked his head up, regarding her from the ground. In his right hand, a familiar blue vial glinted in the nascent light.

  She realized with grim certainty that the molten agony moving through her Siron wasn’t hers; Math had tried to cleanse himself of his own mark with the intense antiseptic he’d used on her rope burns. Somehow, she was feeling the effects of the treatment as strongly as he was. Maybe even more strongly, from the deeply unbothered look of him.

  Keeping his eyes locked on hers, he only hesitated for a breath before dipping his fingers into the little pot of ointment and smearing it up his sable skin.