I open my eyes. "Stop what?"
Hrolf grunts. "That spiral you're in. I can hear it from here."
"You don't know what I'm thinking."
"I've been around long enough to recognize the sound of someone tearing themselves apart from the inside." The dwarf shifts, chains rattling. "You can't remember what happened, so you're filling in the blanks with the worst possible version of events."
I hear her heartbeat, distant and labored. Thirty-five beats per minute.
It's been dropping steadily since they took her from me. Every hour it slows a little more. Fear strikes me to the bone every time there's a pause that lasts a fraction too long.
Please keep fighting. I whisper to her through the impossible distance. Please don't give up now. Not after everything you've survived.
Everything else fades. The sword in my chest becomes distant, the flooded prison, Hrolf's occasional comments. All of it recedes until there's only that soft thumping from the healing house. It's the only thing keeping my sanity intact. The only proof that I haven't lost everything yet.
The sound of footsteps in the corridor pulls me from my vigil. I recognize the gait before I see him.
Red.
He appears at my cell door in his crimson cloak, dressed in plain clothes rather than armor. His face is drawn, exhausted.
"Still alive, I see," he says, looking up at me pinned to the wall.
Unfortunately.
"I came so you wouldn't worry when you suddenly can't sense her." He produces the prison keys from his belt. "They're transferring her to Southern Fort."
Panic spikes through me. "Why? If they move her in her condition—"
"The healing springs there are stronger. Crystal-fed with Malachite, it has more blessings than what we have here." He unlocks my cell door and steps inside, water sloshing around his boots. "The healers think it's her best chance."
"When?"
"Within the hour. I wanted you to know before her heartbeat disappeared from your range. I didn't want you thinking..." He swallows the next words.
He didn't want me thinking she'd died.
"Thank you," I manage.
Red goes still for just a moment. He wasn't expecting that. Frankly, neither was I.
He approaches carefully, eyeing the sword embedded in my chest and the wall behind me. "We need to get you down from there."
"It's fine."
"We're doing this." He grabs the sword hilt, testing it. The blade doesn't budge. It's lodged deep in the stone. "Hrolf, can you help?"
"Finally, someone with sense," the dwarf mutters from his cell. "Get me out of these chains and I'll help. I can't move easily with the damned thing."
Red hesitates for a moment, looking between us. Then he moves to unlock Hrolf's cell and free him from his irons. The dwarf emerges, rubbing his wrists where the shackles had been. He splashes through the water to examine the sword up close.
"You boys have no respect for dwarven steel," Hrolf mutters, running his hand along the blade. "This is masterwork. Forged in the deep fires of Darvan."
"Can you get it out?" Red asks.
"Of course I can get it out. Question is whether the vampire wants it out."
They both look at me.
