I turn. I can barely see her. She is a smudge of brown and gray, five feet away.
Betty.
I know her name. It is a good sound. It is the cool, crisp water in my mind.
She is shivering. A violent, bone-rattling shake that I can see even through the white. She stumbles, her small, fur-wrapped feet catching in the new, deep snow. Her face, the snow-skin I know, is not her color. It is a bad white. A dead white. Her lips are blue.
A new feeling. It is not the red haze. It is not hate.
It is cold. A cold fear that spreads from my chest, colder than the wind.
The wind is the enemy. The cold is the blade at her throat.
She will die.
She will stop. She will freeze. She will leave me.
The rage comes back. Not the dark magic. A deeper rage. A clean rage. It is my ferocity. It is rage against the storm. Against the world that is trying to steal her from me.
I sniff the air. The wind steals the scent, tears it from my nose. It burns.
I try again. Deeper.
There.
Worgs. The hot, musk-stink of them. They are hunting in the storm. They are far. Miles. Downwind.
They are not the threat. Not now.
The threat is the air. The threat is time.
Betty stumbles again. She falls to her knees. She is weak. Fragile.
No.
I move. I grab her.
She makes a small, high sound of fear as my claws—my killing claws—wrap around her. I am gentle. I am so gentle it hurts. But I am fast.
I lift her.
She is nothing. She is a leaf. A bundle of furs and fear.
I pull her against my chest. The wound in my chest aches in protest. I shield her with my arm. My body is a wall against the screaming white.
She is so small. Her head tucks under my chin.
I can feel her shivering against me. Good. She is alive.
Now, move.
I am blind. The world around me has disappeared.
I close my eyes. Sight is a lie.
Suddenly, I smell something.
The elves hideout. I smell the rock. Granite. Iron. Cold stone. It is that way.
