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“Back here.” He threw an arm over her shoulder, leaning on her between hopped steps of his right foot.
They struggled toward the rear of the building.
“Almost there.” Roe tightened his grip on her shoulders, his words gritted through gasps of pain.
Torrie yanked up suddenly, her feet freezing. “No. No. No.”
He looked down at her. “What? No?” He glanced forward then back to her, panic in his voice. “Don’t leave me, Tor. Stay. Stay right here with me.”
She started to drift, drift away from him again, his words sinking muffled into the smoke around them. She could see the window Roe wanted to crash through. It ran from the floor to the ceiling, glass inset symmetrically into small rectangular wooden panes. Easy enough, except the floor in front of it was on fire.
A wall of fire between them and the glass and the air outside.
Fire.
Her head shook, her feet backing up and sending him stumbling for balance. “I can’t do it.”
“You can.”
“I can’t.” She looked to him. “I can’t. Not again. You need to get through there without me, Roe. I can’t do it. Not again.” The last words she squeezed out with what little was left of her breath. Of her life.
Her body swayed, near to crumpling once more. To retreating. To letting the flames finally have her.
“Stop. Stop this nonsense.” His scream was thunder in her ears. “Look—look down, Tor.”
Her left arm was jerking unnaturally in front of her and she looked down. A leather strap—the scabbard that had hung low across his waist—now wrapped around her wrist…wrapped around Roe’s wrist.
While she was turning numb, he’d been lashing their wrists together. He’d tied their left arms together.
He jerked their arms up between them. “You want me to live? You need to come with me. I’m not going without you.”
“Roe—”
“We do this now, Tor—there’s no choice. This fire doesn’t break you—you break the fire.” He grabbed the back of her head with his right hand, pulling her face tight to his. “If you die. I die with you. And you don’t want me to die, do you?”
She shook her head.
No.
No, she would give anything for him to live.
Into hell.
Into hell for this man.
She looked up at him, her words gaining strength she didn’t know she had. “Let’s go.”
A smile twisted his swollen lips and he jumped to turn forward, his left arm going over her head and resting on her shoulder again. Her left wrist went up to his arm where they were lashed together—the leather binding her grip to him more easily than how she’d tried to grip his blood-soaked wrist.
“Go.”
He barked the order and she ran, every other step of his sending the bulk of his weight onto her shoulder, driving her down into the floor. Her legs held. For once, they held, not wavering at the weight, at what was demanded of them.
Into the fire.
At the second she threw her right arm up to protect her face from the fire and the glass, Roe spun in front of her. Wrapping her in his arms, his backside took the brunt of the fire and the shattering glass and splintering wood.
Into the air…air…air.
