With a snap of her teeth, she snags his finger and bites.
Hard.
Rekk roars, trying to yank his hand free. The remaining soldiers bellow, charging toward their growling prisoner while she gnaws through the knobbly knuckle with the fervor of a famished beast.
It pops free, the severed tip dropping into her mouth.
Rekk stumbles back and lifts his trembling hand to his face, blood streaking down his arm. Onto the ground.
Drip.
Drip.
She spits the tip, boasting a smile that’s all teeth and blood.
Rekk blinks, stark eyes focusing on the gory stub before he tips his head and roars with laughter, abusing the sound until it’s bruised and weary.
The Other’s smile falls.
Rekk locks eyes with her again, crunches his bloody, disfigured hand into a ball, pulls his arm back, and swings his fist at her face.
A blinding explosion of pain before darkness consumes her.
It’s freezing on the outskirts of Netheryn, but for a Moonplume egg to incubate, it must stay right here in the cold until it starts to rock. Then I must pack clumps of ice around it and wait for the hatchling to free itself from the shell.
I must do all this on my own because Haedeon can’t. Because I found him sleeping at the bottom of a crevice, cuddling his stolen Moonplume egg, unable to move his legs.
I shook him awake. Told him I’d get Mahmi and Pahpi. He said I’d die if I took the sleigh home myself. That his egg would die, too.
That really worried me.
The sleigh can’t make it up this far, so I built a snow hut to keep Haedeon safe and warm while he sleeps himself better. Then I made three trips to the hatching hut on my own and moved all our things.
I shook Haedeon awake again and told him I’ll try really, really hard to drag him out into the cold when his Moonplume starts to hatch so he can bond with it. He touched my face, told me he loves me and that he’s glad I snuck onto his sleigh, then fell back into a really deep sleep.
He’s doing lots of sleeping. I’m starting to worry he won’t wake. That his chest will suddenly stop moving.
The thought makes my own chest hurt. Makes me want to cry.
I won’t. I refuse. I have to be strong for Haedeon because he can’t be strong for himself.
But if he doesn’t wake, I’ve decided I’m not going home. I can’t get him on a sleigh, and I won’t leave him here in the cold and the dark on his own. He hates being alone, and he really hates the dark.
I miss Mahmi and Pahpi.
I’m immersed in an icy sleep that’s soft like a wispy tail bound around my body, drifting within the tide of nothingness.
Beautiful, hypnotic nothingness.
Until something snaps close to my ear, ripping me to the surface and dumping me into the aching scream of reality.
Hot, hurting, heavy reality.
My ankles are shackled, and all my weight hangs from my wrists that are tied together, stretched skyward, my shoulders threatening to pop from their sockets. The right one’s pinned with a piercing hurt that makes me certain I’ve been stabbed or poked with something still lodged in the bone.
The pain is a drip in the barrel of aches tormenting every muscle in my body, like I’ve been wrung at all angles then shaken out like a washcloth. Even my jaw and gums ache like I’ve been gnawing on something dense and chewy while my consciousness was huddled somewhere far away from the Essi-sized ache in my heart.
Running my tongue across my teeth, I feel a stringy piece of … something wedged in the hairline gap between my sharp canine and the tooth right next to it.
Shivering, I decide I’d rather not know what that is.
I’m only able to pry one of my lids upward, the other a swell of pain, my eyeball throbbing.
I groan, taking in my smudged surroundings through bloody ropes of hair. My leather sheaths and bandolier are lumped on the floor in a pile not too far away, most of my weapons missing.
Fuck.
My attention lifts to the plain stone walls garnished with a few lit sconces. There’s a wooden door directly ahead, from which a trail of ruddy gore leads right here … to where I’m hanging …
My gaze drops to my skinsuit—previously tan, now drenched red.
Blood red.
My heart plummets.
Whatever happened during my otherwise peaceful blackout landed me trussed up in this unfamiliar room, covered in blood, with a stringy piece of something stuck between my teeth and a likely fractured eye socket.
This is not looking good.
I peer internally, dropping toward my lake, jolting at the sight—the usually smooth, frosted expanse now a litter of ice shards and upturned burgs spearing skyward.