Page 32 of Enslak

Healing, maybe.

The word floated through my fractured thoughts like debris in water.

Was I healing?

The pain came again. A spike through my shoulder where a bolt had struck.

Then my thigh. My chest.

Each wound announced itself in turn. A roll call of damage.

But the pain was... less. Duller.

Like it was happening to someone else.

I tried to focus on it. Tried to use it as an anchor to keep from drifting.

But it kept slipping away.

The darkness kept pulling me down.

And in the darkness, there was only her.

Her scent.

The sweetness that had cut through the stench of the cell. Through the rot of the sewers. Through the copper tang of blood.

It was the first thing that told me she wasn't Zarlak.

I remembered her voice.

Soft. Speaking words I could barely understand but that sounded like music.

Vaktaire words that touched something deep in my broken mind. Something that remembered what those sounds meant even if I couldn't quite grasp them.

She'd told me she was there to rescue me.

She'd told me to come with her.

And I had.

Something in her voice made me want to follow.

She'd looked like Zarlak. But underneath, she was different.

Her hands—so small.

When she'd reached out to me in that cell, when those tiny fingers closed around mine, I'd been shocked by how delicate they were.

How soft her skin was.

How careful I had to be not to hurt her with my claws.

I could have crushed her hand without effort. Could have broken every bone with the slightest pressure.

But I hadn't wanted to.

I'd wanted to hold her hand forever.