He moves like Samick does sometimes.
In a blur of frost and mist, and it’s less time than a blink before he’s crouched by the side of the car, Mika limp in his arms.
He caught her midfall.
Her head lolls back from his arm, and the sight of her—
A sickly tendril runs down my throat.
There’s a slackness on her face, letting her jaw hang to the side, like she’s dead.
But she’s not there yet.
A dark slime trails from her parted lips over her sweaty cheek. The sign of life is in her lashes, fluttering. But her eyes are rolled back, and so all the light catches on are the whites of her eyes.
Arwyn hugs her closer to him.
His face is pinched with worry as he looks her over, a whitish intensity flaring his eyes. He searches for injury in all the blood stains of her leathers.
And the realisation comes out of me before I can stop it, “Her gut.”
Arwyn swerves his blizzard eyes to me.
Samick looks down at me. There’s a silent question in the furrow of his brow.
“She was holding her stomach,” I say, quieter. “I thought she was just sore—and tired from the powder. Or nauseas. But she didn’t look good. I thought…” I swerve my gaze between the two winter warriors. “I thought you knew.”
Arwyn’s jaw tightens for a beat before he drapes Mika’s unconscious body over the car bonnet.
Her arms get caught under the small of her back, like a dropped puppet.
Arwyn runs his hand over her stomach.
In the same moment, Samick folds the map, clips the compass to it, then packs it away into one of the outer pockets of his satchel. Then he’s grabbing the rope bound to my cuff.
He moves for Mika and Arwyn, his steps urgent, and the torchlight bounces with us.
White wisps cascade over her inky leathers—and highlight the black blood that comes away with Arwyn’s hand.
He extracts a small blade from a holster, then hurried, he cuts into the leathers shielding her midsection.
The moment the leathers peel apart, a burn of sick tickles my throat.
I turn my cheek to it.
I can’t look at the gnarly green and black lines spearing out from a festering wound.
A knife wound, no doubt about it.
I’ve seen so many of them since the blackout hit that I’ve lost count at the top of my head. I would need to sit and think through every fight, every attack I’ve seen through binoculars, and up-close, consider the bodies I’ve stepped over in the dark, the ones I’ve left behind…
I’ve seen so many that I would recognise a knife wound anywhere.
Like every other time I see a fresh one, I can’t look. I just… can’t.
And Mika’s is more than a slit that gapes and oozes blood. Her’s festers. Like it’s infected.
But it can’t be.
