I lack the gusto to complain, my concentration spent on keeping Kyzari tucked close, keeping steady as I edge forward, hoping the boisterous fucker’s not herding me straight off a cliff.
“UNOOO!”
Something tugs at my pants.
I look down to find the little miskunn staring up at me, holding a tiny jar of captured moonlight that must’ve been tucked in one of her pockets. Her big pink eyes are luminous against our flurried surroundings, her lashes, fur, and tunic thick with matting snow and ice.
“Uno found the place!”she belts out. “Follow!”
“But—”I glance back, only to see the Fate Herder is no longer behind us. Like he bumped me with his head, then grew sick of the cold and deserted.
Bastard.
“Quicklys!”Uno throws out a hand, pointing.
I squint ahead. Spot a dark smudge in the distance, likely an outcrop protecting the hollow beneath from wind and gathering snow.
Shelter …
Again, Uno tugs my pants. She leads me forward in plowing increments, my gaze pinned to the luminous beacon caught in her fist.
I’m numb all the way to my knees by the time we step into the outcrop’s meager shelter, shards of stone and stripped bones crunching beneath my boots. All the evidence I need to assume we’re finding refuge in some carnivore’s lair.
No Runi. No mending tonics or tinctures.
Just stone, bones, and a scant reprieve from the storm.
Any bit of hope I had about Uno’s proclamation of saving Kyzari sputters like a doused flame.
If there’s anything worse than dying in a cell, it’s dying on layers of bones belonging to equally unfortunate beings.
I work my throat against the lump of grief clogging it and use the edge of my boot to shove some remains aside, creating a nestlike divot to gently lay Kyzari in, folding Uno’s shroud as a pillow for her head.
Teeth clashing, I ease the hood aside so I can see her face. And immediately regret it. Unable to bottle my sob at the sight of her blue lips and waxy features.
I’d believe she’s already passed, were it not for the way her eyes shift beneath her lids. Like she’s hunting the darkness for something.
She works through another crackling breath, and I tuck frosty hair back from her slit cheek, doing what I can to hide the bruise on her temple. Like a splat of ink that’s taken over a third of her beautiful face. “It’s okay,” I murmur—a blatant lie.
There’snothingokay about this.
It shouldn’t be me here right now, comforting Kyzari through her final breaths. It should be Raeve and Kaan and a pallet so warm it feels like a hug.
It should bethem.
A metallic jingle lures my attention to Uno, hunched over Kyzari’s shackle as she works through the keys, testing them. Seeking the right one. I take Kyzari’s hand in mine, appreciating Uno’s efforts to make her more comfortable.
The lock clunks open.
The storm loses all its breath, the last of the snowflakes drifting down to dust the mountainside, then …nothing. Just a silence so stiff that every shift of my bodyclamors.
My skin prickles with the sense that we’re being watched, and I cut my gaze around the plateau beyond the sheltered ridge, finding no leering predators. I open myself to Bulder, but he’s equally silent. The sort of quiet he demonstrated before …
Before Slátra fell.
A sense of foreboding unfurls within me as I look up. See the heavy clouds now shredding apart, dissipating so fast I hardly believe it’s real. Moonlight floods the sheer mountainside, spilling off the graveyard of bundled Moonplumes clustered together, tangled with the middae aurora.
Uno tugs my sleeve.
