He pivots and drives back toward the house, hitting the cluster at the wall with enough force to scatter them, tearing throughthe closest and dragging others away before they can gain purchase. He breathes fire into the ones still pressing forward, forcing them back just enough to give the house a moment. A moment is all he can give it before more take their place.
His movements grow heavier. Each strike takes more than the last. Each breath pulls harder against the cold. The fire comes slower each time he reaches for it, costing more than it did an hour ago, and he is aware in a way he does not want to be aware that this is not sustainable, that the sheer number of what is out here does not work in his favor no matter how long he holds.
Something tears across the sky above the snow.
He looks up.
The sky darkens further and then something drops, hitting beyond the outer edge of the swarm and tearing through the dead with a violence that breaks their lines apart, bodies coming apart in pieces rather than blows. It moves once, twice, cutting a path through them, then vanishes into the whiteout as quickly as it appeared.
A Morrak.
He does not follow it. He does not trust it. He does not trust anything that moves through this place without explanation, anything that arrives at the right moment, anything that carries even the faint suggestion of Sevrin’s hand behind it.
He turns back to the dead and keeps moving, tearing through another cluster and then another, his body working on instinct now, each action following the last without pause. Time stretches in a way that makes it impossible to measure. His breath pulls harder against the cold with every pass and the firetakes longer to come each time he reaches for it, every burst smaller and more costly than the one before.
The house remains behind him. He checks it when he can, and each time it still stands, and each time it looks closer to not standing, the walls shuddering under the weight of what presses against them, the sound of it carrying even over the wind.
Her voice reaches him again, faint and carried through distance and everything between them, and he does not know what it means. He does not know what is happening on the other side of those walls. He knows only the sound of her, and what it costs him each time he forces himself to keep moving away from it, and so he does not let himself think about it, because thinking about it will not keep her alive.
Keeping them back will.
He keeps moving.
CHAPTER 44
The Corner
The air is warmer below, but it does not reach far. The ceiling sits low enough that movement has to be careful and intentional. A small fire burns in one corner, its heat barely pushing back the cold that followed us down. There is another level beneath this one, the women had told me when we first descended, a proper room with a bed, better for what is coming.
I did not make it that far.
The pain came too quickly, too often, and by the time we reached the bottom of the stair my body had already made the decision for me. I am in the corner now, on a pile of blankets the younger woman pulled together without being asked, the wall at my back and the fire close enough to matter.
The pain does not leave. It tears across my abdomen again, low and deep, dragging through my pelvis with a force that pulls me forward over myself, my hands pressing into the blankets beneath me as I try to hold through it.
"Stay with it," one of the women says.
I do not answer.
Another wave follows too quickly, building before the last has fully passed, leaving no space to recover, no room to think beyond what my body is already forcing me to do. My hand moves to my side. The fabric is soaked. There is no room for that now either.
"She is losing blood," the younger one says, her voice tighter than before.
"She will," the older one replies. "That is not what will kill her. Stay with her."
Something slams above us. The sound carries through the floor, dull and heavy, followed by another and then another, the structure taking the force of it in ways that feel too close to breaking.
I try to push myself up, but the pain hits again and forces me back before I make it halfway.
"Do not," the older woman says, pressing me back with one hand. "You will not help him by breaking yourself now."
I breathe through it, or try to. My focus pulls in too many directions at once, the pain, the sound above, the weight of everything pressing in at the same time.
Another impact, closer than the last.
Then something breaks, the sound of it carrying down the stair, and the women freeze for half a second before they move.
"They are through," the younger one says.
