My breathing eases.
My mind is returning to me, slow, but I’m still limp on the hood of the car.
Arms splayed, I feel the touch of the inhaler still pressed against my lips, but the fae does nothing to add more into me, he doesn’t press down on the other end a fourth time. He just looksdown at me, cold, before he turns his cheek at the sound of the other dark warrior speaking in that strange, thick sound again.
I slide my warped stare to Bee.
The distortion of my sight is clearing.
Stars dying in the canvas of my vision, and I can make out that’s she’s on the road… bound in something like a rope.
Her arms are pinned to her body, and she’s sprawled at the boots of the dark-haired warrior with an angry scar running down his face.
Dare.
That’s the name she used over the CB.
When he was only a distant threat, one to light a fire under our asses, but one we thought we had a chance at escaping.
Now, he speaks in his language, then he firms his grip on Bee’s restraints—and he hoists her up from the road.
The flare of panic in her grey eyes reaches me through the dusty light, through the blur, but she turns her terrified stare on the cold warrior—and she growls out something I don’t understand.
The cold one tosses the inhaler aside.
It lands on the chest of my parka.
Whatever Bee is saying to him in that otherworldly snarl, it feathers a muscle in his jaw, it does something to him.
A shudder ripples through the muscles beneath his leathers, and I justfeelit, the danger lifting up around me like a thick mist of frost—and the cold of it somehow snakes between my parted lips, reaching down to my lungs.
That icy breath is a mere second of reprieve.
But the cold warrior holds Bee’s stare as he seizes the hilt of the knife burrowed in my shoulder—
My heart stops.
A sharp breath cuts through me, an almost protest, words that don’t have the time to conjure, a shout that is quick to mutate into a strangled scream.
He rips out the blade.
I lift with it, my back arching off the car, and a scream is torn out of me.
My hollow cry splits the air—and I hardly hear the background shouts from Bee.
The warrior stands over me, his cheek to me, and the bloody blade in his fist.
The sight of it is the only clear thing in my vision as everything else blurs around me, and stars ignite all over.
My spine flattens to the car again, muffled by the backpack, and I’m writhing against the searing hot pain bleeding at my shoulder.
I touch my hand to the wet heat of the wound.
Bee’s shout is a distant echo, a background noise to the moans ribboning out of me, “The CB, the CB!”
I hold onto the sword in the mist. Her voice.
“One, two! One, two!”
