A towering shadow falls across her.
Sorn.
He is standing three feet away, holding a waterskin in one hand and a bone needle in the other. He is covered in shadowmaw blood, his chest heaving.
Trecia’s good eye is wide, tracking the seven-foot Drakav, his blood-soaked skin, the dangerous shape of him in the dim light.
Sorn takes a hesitant half-step forward. He extends his hand, offering the waterskin. The dim light catches the sharp glint of his thick claws instead.
Trecia flinches. Her scream pitches higher, shattering into a suffocating shriek. She scrambles backward, pressing herself so hard into the stone wall that I am terrified she will snap her own spine.
Sorn doesn’t just stop. He recoils.
His broad shoulders curl inward, his features warping with absolute distress. He takes a staggering step backward as if she physically struck him, and then he turns and disappears into the dark of the upper tunnel.
I drop to my knees in front of Trecia, purposefully blocking the space where Sorn had been standing. Kol drops into a crouch right behind me, his shoulder brushing mine, forming a silent, impenetrable guard against the rest of the cavern. I keep my hands low, visible, and still.
“Trecia,” I say, my voice soft. “It’s Erika. Look at me.”
She doesn’t. She stares right through me, her entire body shaking so hard the hide wrapping around her head is slipping.
“You’re safe.” I try to project absolute certainty into the empty void of her gaze. “He’s gone. The bad one is gone. You’re safe.”
I repeat the words. Over and over like a mantra. Slowly the continuous scream breaks into panicked sobbing. I reach out and wrap my hands around hers. They are ice-cold.
I sit there on the bloody stone, just holding her. This isn’t something that can be fixed with firebloom paste.
The screams stop. The silence that follows is thick with blood.
The dead shadowmaws are dragged out. Warriors are bandaged and tended to. The women need stability and to know tonight they’ll be safe. Water needs to be filtered, meat roasted, and the sick bay needs to be cleaned.
I don’t sit down. I don’t rest.
Neither does Kol.
He shouldn’t be walking. A wet, grinding sound rattles in his ribs with every breath he takes, the starfield having almost completely swallowed his golden skin now. But he does not rest either.
I grab a clean, damp scrap of hide from the supplies and scrub the worst of the gore off my own face, neck, and arms. Once my skin is raw but clean, I spin around and do the exact same to him.
He stands motionless while I wipe every trace of dried blood from his heavy jaw, his fracturing collarbones, and his chest. The deep, jagged claw gouges on his left shoulder are still wet with dark blood, and I press the hide against them as gently as I can. He doesn’t pull away when my shaking hands press too hard against his ruined ribs to clean his skin. He simply watches me with pitch-black, unblinking eyes, his heat a constant weight exactly two inches from my face.
I step toward the tunnel entrance and a huge arm bars my path. He plants his feet like stone pillars, physically cutting off my line of sight to the harsh daylight outside.
I spin on my heel.
“Kol.” I tilt my head back, glaring straight up into his face only to stop dead in my tracks. A lump rises in my throat as I look up into those pitch black eyes. He doesn’t blink. A warning growl vibrates continuously against my sternum.
“Sit down,” I demand. “You’re bleeding. Your bones are fracturing.”
He doesn’t speak. Instead, his sprawling hand snaps out, grabbing a thick fur discarded near the fire pit. He throws it over my shoulders, burying me under the pelt.
“I’m sweating,” I say, shoving at the dense fur. “And I’m not the one bleeding.”
His calloused hands clamp over my shoulders. He wrestles the fur in place, his thumbs swiping across my collarbones. The intense heat radiating off his skin sinks through the pelt, straight into my shaking bones.
“We have to check outside. There could be wounded warriors?—”
His black eyes track frantically over my face, as if searching for fresh violence. As if searching for Alex’s fate on my unbroken skin.
