“Asha!” The Vandawolf grips the sides of the stretcher, attempting to rise, but he barely makes it an inch upward.
Ignoring everyone else, I press a hand to his shoulder, just above the location of his heart.
“I’m here,” I say, leaning over him, my tears dripping down onto his chest, onto the metal, where he won’t feel them. “You’re not alone.”
His left hand wraps around my wrist, but his hold is weak.
“What kind of hell is this?” he asks, his sightless eyes somehow finding me. “How is there so much snow?”
Snow?
I reconsider him, but I shouldn’t be surprised by the sickly color of his skin or the way his voice has become a mumble.
I exhale my acceptance of his deteriorating condition.
He must be delirious.
He won’t know what he’s saying anymore.
“I have to get you out,” he says, still struggling to rise, his hand tightening around my wrist. “Your fingers are blue. You won’t survive the night. I’m supposed to hate you, but I can’t leave you here. I can’t let you freeze to death…”
The breath rattles from his chest, his voice trails off, and his head drops back to the stretcher.
I think he’s fallen unconscious again, but then his lips move. A barely audible murmur.
“I’m tired, Asha.”
His speech slows, and I have to lean closer to catch his voice.
“I’m tired of digging in the snow. Let me sit beside you, where it’s peaceful. Let it end here with you and me. In the pure… snow…”
He closes his eyes and now, he falls silent.
I swipe at the tears dripping down my cheeks.
I don’t know what he was talking about. I don’t know why he thought snow was falling, but somehow, I feel his words in my bones.
Let it end here with you and me.
“Thaden,” I say, choking back my sob. “You can help me now.”
“Anything,” he says, in a low rumble.
“I need you to bring my toolbox.”
There’s a pause and I sense Thaden’s wariness. When I look up, I find him poised on his front foot and his forehead creased.
“Why?” he asks.
“Because I need the medallion in it.”
He still doesn’t move, although the tension in his shoulders increases. “But that medallion is dangerous.”
It’s the medallion that Thaden used when he helped me forge the weapons for the city wall. He wrapped it around his right palm, which could withstand its power. In that way, he enabled its power to pass into the iron that he hammered into shape.
In doing so, unknown to us at the time, he also filled the medallion with the dragon’s rage.
When I accidentally came into contact with the medallion afterward, the fury in the metal nearly tore me apart.
