Aery felt hands, more hands. Why wouldn't they just leave her to the blackness that was eating her mind? Just leave her and this scar on the earth would be destroyed. And then suffering in hell she might be able to start to atone for the deaths she'd caused.
Hands. More blankets. A flask of water pressed to her lips. She gasped, turned her head away. Tiny hands lifted her face, poured the water down her throat. She forced her eyes open to see Silly's deep green ones, overflowing with tears, looming over her.
I have to live. She gasped, her mouth formed Silly's name.
"I'm here, Aery, I'm here. Rowan's coming soon. You'll be okay, Aery. You're going to be okay."
Aery shook her head. "A-Aiden?" she asked, desperately wishing she'd not.
Silly stiffened, shook her head. On one of her wrong turns she'd found the room where Aiden's butchered corpse was, Aiden and a whole bunch of the others from Aery's chain gang. "D-dead. Anton got out, though. Anton from River's Edge?"
Aery nodded weakly, sighed in relief. She'd not caused all the street boys to die, then. The blackness fuzzed closer and she relaxed her neck, letting her head loll around.
"No, Aery, don't close your eyes." Silly propped her head up. "You stay with me, Aery. Stay. You promised, remember?" Sobbing in terror by this point, still babbling. "You promised me that we'd stay together. Don't you give up on us, Aerienna Rosilyth Silverheart-Havilliard-Galathynius. You really have to shorten your name when we get back to the real world, Aery. I can't even say it in one breath."
A breathless chuckle. I have to live. If nothing else, for Silly and Ame.
AME
Ame, walking along the road with Ansel, tilted her head slightly. Was Ansel... Muttering? to herself?
"Ansel...?" She asked. She stopped, turned towards the woman. Her power gathered around her fingertips. "Ansel? Who are you talking to?"
She sighed, already chasing the line of Ansel's power to find her apparition talking to Shadow.
"Oh, for the gods' sake! You again?!" she shouted through her magic, appearing to both the Ansel-apparition and Shadow as a pale purple "ghost" of herself. "I never should have trusted you, Ansel! I never should have trusted you! You traitor! You traitor! You promised! You promised you would help us! And now you two and you're plotting to kill Aery and Celaena, and I NEVER should have trusted you!" Both real-Ame and apparition-Ame were crying by now. Ame did something she vowed never to do again, dipping into Celaena's memories for ones about Ansel. Ame was so angry that she shouted at Ansel. "Celaena should have let that arrow fly, and ended all of our problems."
She yanked her power back, casting a spell on herself to render her magic invisible to Ansel and Shadow, in addition to her physical body.
Sprinting up the road again, for by this time they weren't all that far from Endovier.