I convey the message without taking my eyes offmysnow leopard. Shock and disbelief infuse the mutterings behind me.
I understand how they feel.
A snow leopard is talking to me inside my mind.
And he understands what I say to him in return.
My arm suddenly feels wet. I look down to see blood seeping into my sleeve from the cat’s flank.
“Elianna! Help me! He’s injured!”
“Healing a wild animal is not in my—”
“Heal him or else,” I snap, cutting her off. “He says he’s mine to protect. Until we learn who sent him, do you really want to take any chances with his life?”
The Air Touched grumbles, then steps around me to the leopard’s other side, kneels down, and hesitantly touches his hip with one finger. When he doesn’t move, Elianna puts her hands over the still-bleeding wound.
“It looks like a spear did that,” Kaelen says, crouching next to me. “Could have been worse. No intestines showing. But—”
INTESTINES ARE GOOD EATING.
“Let’s agree to disagree on that one.” I try not to gag.
“Who would attack one of these mythical creatures?” Chitai stalks over to stand next to Elianna, her knives held at the ready in case she needs to protect the sorcerer.
“Sheathe your knives,” I demand, but Chitai ignores me.
“I’ve read of this,” Kaelen says. “The bond is ancient magic. Hasn’t happened in centuries, since long before the Zhagarn killed all the snow leopards.”
“Clearly, they didnotkill them all. There’s you, for example, Prince Kaelen,” Andras says behind me. No doubt he has an arrow nocked, a sword drawn, or knives in hand.
SYLVANS ALWAYS DID LIKETO STATE THE OBVIOUS.
I slap my hand over the laugh trying to escape at his wry tone. Ithink Andras might have met his match in haughty arrogance.
The cat lifts his head and bares deadly fangs.
ANDRAS AL’SYLVAN? WE KNOW THIS NAME.
Kaelen’s hand on my shoulder is tight with tension.
“It’s okay,” I insist, based on pretty much zero quantifiable evidence. “I trust my—the snow leopard.”
WISE BEYOND YOUR YEARS, SOLI.
“You know my name. What is yours?”
He closes one eye and makes a rumbling sound, and then he …puts an image directly into my mind. I catch my breath at the beauty of the clear stream burbling over polished stones, with a gentle breeze playing in the grasses on the banks. I can actually smell the clean, bright winter’s day and hear the stream.
YES. IN YOUR LANGUAGE, MY NAME IS BREEZE THAT FLOWS OVER THE STREAM TO MAKE MUSIC IN THE SUNLIGHT ON THE MOUNTAIN IN WINTER.
“That’s … a lot of name.”
I glance at Elianna meaningfully, trying to convey that I’m distracting the snow leopard so she can hurry up and heal him before one of us gets bitten.
Elianna presses her lips together but closes her eyes and murmurs in a language I don’t recognize. A pale golden glow surrounds her hands, then spreads onto and around the wound. The snow leopard whips his head around and snaps at Elianna. But I think it’s just a warning. If he’d wanted to get his teeth into the sorcerer, he would have. Still, it’s scary, and Elianna falls back onto her bottom, trying to get away.
“No! She’s trying to help you,” I tell the cat.
