Colours burst. At any moment now, the walls will crumble to Fade; the spirit in this skin will bandy its pitch. Doesn't he know that the way out is up?

But she doesn't rise. But magic springs between her shoulders, swollen with stretched light, and Gwenaëlle sits a dead thing before it. Slit open a dragonfly and you'll spy three tiny hearts. Her own, perilously human, must pound for the strain of dispassion. That it can't still the wings —

Isaac steps aside, to better regard the place where chitin slips into skin. New lines of muscle bunch, transposed strange, too-small. Us, comes the distant register. Everyone but us,

Later, he'll have names.

"I didn't see them yesterday," I just want to be sure that it’s stopped. "But if you allow me to touch your back, I might confirm."

His own words hang dull. Hand hovers. Granitefell does, and if she turns him down he might simply walk away. This is the sort of thing that people get killed for. Assessment swallows dread, traces the wide branch of membrane, rendered vascular by human scale. Removal would be complex, blood loss a certainty.

But the body ever winds to shape. If this truly healed in place, it will do so again.