her arms. "I can smell them at twenty feet, and there's always this." She lifted the black iron necklace with its dangling crosses. Rhoslyn shrank back. "Look at that other one when she wakes up, if she wakes up, and decide whether it's worth it to try again."
"To me she is not," Rhoslyn snarled. "But I do not rule."
Rhoslyn turned on the words and ran through the Gate, following the Sidhe with Aurilia. Blanche's eyes following her, widened as she saw the empty blackness. She wrenched one of the crosses from her necklace and threw it into the void. A moment later there was a violent flash. Plaster rained down from the wall and a blackened area of lathe showed behind it.
Blanche bit her lip. That those who wished ill to her princess could come through solid walls had not before occurred to her. The cross had solved the problem. She would need to have more made, larger and heavier, since she would not need to wear them, and she would need to put some kind of warning spell, possibly a warding spell too, on the wall. But it was no immediate problem. The demons would need time to lick their wounds. And meanwhile . . . Blanche went to kneel between Nyle and Gerrit and began to whisper the spell to wake them.

Denoriel was dying. He knew it. He was only dimly aware of Aleneil kneeling beside him, her hands on his chest, holding back the worst of the agony of burned-out channels of power. His whole body burned. He had been full when he confronted Vidal Dhu and his shields had been layer upon layer, the strongest he could build. But Vidal was strong, stronger than he thought—having assumed wrongly that the dark magics were weaker than the bright—and his shields had