"Mm-hm," Very well. Vial drips into cup. "Drink this."

Water laced with the familiar taste of magebane. He props the cup at her lips, fishes a rag for the spill.

He waits until it's done. Fingers lift — here I am, look and see — before lowering to forehead. Air tenses. The strings of something almost real wrap about spindled hand, and he reaches to draw the Veil over her eyes.

It's a little like sleeping. To Stephen's eye, it's nearer torpor. Consciousness recedes. Awareness does, gone heavy beneath the blanketing weight of stasis. Breath slows. Vessels narrow. The sparks between nerve and neuron jump less, ask less, demand less.

Maybe she finds the Fade, maybe she doesn't.

It finds her. Isaac's gaze drifts, searching a sense without proper name. This first part is the easiest. He doesn't own the words: Homeostasis, hypothalamus, pyrogen; can't describe the place where defense curls about to bite. Spells are shaped by understanding, and his is this — she's too warm. Flesh cuts a smothering weave, drawn too tight, without room to breathe. Without room to work. He digs a nail into the invisible space between. He pulls.

As he sets toward the infection, her temperature begins to drop.