The small earth dragon on Aria's porch would not stop growling at the treeline. He was the size of a house cat, spined and mossy, and he had never been wrong. Aria set down her mortar and counted the beats between his growls. Four seconds. Then three. Something tainted was walking toward her refuge, and she had maybe a minute to decide what to do. Aria was a fae healer with small wings and dirty blonde hair she kept braided out of her way. For six months she had been trying to find a cure for the blight that hollowed her people and made them forget the faces they loved. Her mentor had died from it in a week. Before the end, her mentor had forgotten Aria's name, and had made Aria promise, three times, to always finish what you start. Aria had not finished anything yet. She grabbed the thorned restraint off its hook by the door. The metal bit her palm through the wrapping. She grabbed the carved rod too, the one she used to read a patient without touching skin. Then she stepped off the porch of the weathered healing house and into the wet grass. The hollowed fae came out from behind the ruined building across the clearing. It had been a woman once. Now its eyes tracked nothing. Its hands hung open. Its breathing came in short, dry pulls. Aria smelled it before it was close, wet bark after frost, the same smell she still refused to write down. The dragon planted himself between Aria and the thing and hissed. "Stay," Aria said. He stayed. She circled wide. The hollowed fae turned toward the sound of her wings and shuffled after her. Aria raised the restraint, thumbed the catch, and threw. The silver hoop opened in the air and closed around the thing's shoulders. Spring-jaws bit. It went down in the grass without a cry. Aria knelt three feet clear and held the rod out. The crystal at its tip flickered green, then a color she had no name for. She spoke the changes aloud so she would remember. Pupils fixed. Palms cold. Breath at nine per minute. The rod pulled toward the hollowed fae's mouth, hard, like a magnet finding iron. Aria watched it pull, and understood, with a sick drop in her stomach, that whatever carried the blight was moving on the breath. She scrambled back and covered her nose and mouth with her sleeve. Too late to know if it was too late. The dragon whined behind her. Aria dragged the restrained fae to the shed by the trap and barred the door. Her hands shook on the latch. She had contained one. She had also, maybe, just breathed in what killed her mentor. She went inside, found a clean page, and wrote it down. Wet bark after frost. Carried on the breath. Finish what you start.