The Friday 56 is hosted by Freda’s Voice. The rules are simple – turn to page 56 in your current read (or 56% in your e-reader) and post a few non-spoilery sentences.

This week’s quote is from The Warrior Moon, the third book in K. Arsenault Rivera’s Their Bright Ascendancy trilogy. (The first two are The Tiger’s Daughter and The Phoenix Empress.) I’ll be doing a combination review for the entire trilogy as soon as I finish this (650 page!) book.

Shefali and Barsalai are two names for the same person.

Two more li they travel, Barsalai clutching at the arrow in her chest the whole way. Dismounting is simple enough – all the excitement has granted her the energy to do so with little trouble.

It is the healing that will be the issue.

She slumps against a tree. Her blood drips onto the earth and she curses. Trees may be eternal symbols of everything the Qorin dislike, but that is no reason to poison them. When she is done, she will see if the kumaq can cleanse it.

But there is the matter of the arrows first. She snaps the shafts between her fingers. Shoddy craftsmanship, to start. Fletching with sparrow feathers is always bad luck. That the arrows are bone tipped and not metal should make this a little easier – they’re narrower. If she focuses, she can feel its shape.

Another deep breath.

Shefali stares at the arrow in her chest, at the wound around the base of the shaft, and wills the laceration to expand. Shifting her form like this takes focus – but it is easiest when she can stare down at the thing she wants to change. Holding the image in her mind is the integral part, after all.