My fingers twitched. No hand shook back against them.
I’d lost Dax in the chaos.
“Dax?” I asked desperately through the cold darkness.
“We’re not dying here,” Dax announced.
A relieved shudder coursed through me. He was so close, his erratic breaths heated the small layer of snow separating us–they also drained the scraps of air the icy tomb had allowed us.
“We will die if you don’t calm down,” I whispered, numb hands already scratching at the heavy snow above me.
How deep were we buried?
No shred of light passed through.
Would the cold kill us or would we suffocate with our own panic?
I scratched harder.
Through the ice, I heard Sylvester’s screech.
“Over here!” I bellowed.
I expected my ribs to scream at the effort, but I must have catastrophized the injury. Only a sharp sting pricked at them.
Heavy steps thundered toward us.
“Here!” Dax screamed, louder than I could, voice cracking.
The ice shuffled above us, a hurried voice barking commands.
I relaxed back into the snow.
Vylkor had found us–and I might have been hallucinating, but he actually sighed in relief as he wiped the last of the snow away and saw me blink against the sudden light.
“Thank the gods,” he muttered.
Dax gulped up air as if it were gold as he helped me shuffle out. “I knew you liked us, at least a little bit.”
“Survivors?” I asked, shaking the snow off my hair.
My body still burned, but it could move without kneeling me again.
“We lost seventeen souls before the avalanche.” Vylkor’s eyes narrowed on the forest. If any Northern soldier had survived, they would face his wrath. “None after.”
The warriors yelled in triumph as we emerged from the ice, shaky on our feet and greedily inhaling precious, precious air. Sylvester settled himself on my shoulder, almost unbalancing me.
He must have sensed my weakness, because he caressed my cheek with his head once and cawed right in my ear before launching back into the air.
Dax and I barely had time to exchange a shocked laugh at surviving the unsurvivable before we snapped back into action.
As we quickly helped our wounded into the sleds and sent them to the city, the strange energy vanished from me so suddenly, I swayed on my feet.
I bowed forward, hands on my knees, veins blazing harder.
But I could stand.
I didn’t know if it had been another one of the crater’s mercies or my own power trying to save me, but I was alive.
