Page 43 of Unleashed

“Stay with her,” Aduun commanded. She felt the words rumbling through his chest.

Distantly, she felt her body moved, passed to someone else. She recognized Balir through the smooth texture of his scales against the few patches of skin on which she maintained some degree of feeling.

He sat down, drawing her onto his lap, and wrapped his arms and legs around her. Despite the warmth coming from him, she couldn’t stop shivering. She pressed her face against his neck, panting in shallow breaths. Each inhalation felt like the points of countless knives stabbing her throat and lungs.

“Do you hear me, Nina?” Balir asked.

“Y-yes,” she replied, eyelids too heavy to lift.

“I am s-staying w-with you.” His stammering reminded her that he was affected by the cold, too. Could it kill him like it was killing her? “Stay with me, too.”

She battled the exhaustion threatening to overtake her. She was so tired, but shecouldn’tsleep. Not now, not yet. She needed to stay awake for Balir.

“T-Tell m-m-me something about y-you b-before th-the change,” she said.

His hold on her tightened. Dimly, she sensed his internal struggle, sensed him reaching for something to say, combing over memories that were already old long before humans ever crashed on Sonhadra.

“I had the sharpest eyes of all our t-tribe,” he finally said.

Nina had known that, hadn’t she? She’d heard it somewhere…

“I was called upon f-for every hunt,” he continued, “because I c-could spot prey before anyone else. I was called upon often to w-watch, b-because I could notice danger before anyone else. I took great pride in my gift. M-My people were grateful for my contributions.”

She frowned. That had been taken from him. Kelsharn had taken his sight, had taken those eyes that had once been so sharp, so perceptive.

“But my true joy was n-not in the hunt. The others defined me by what I could see…but I was driven more by w-what I could not. Many times, before and after I-I w-was grown, I would visit the clan’srokahn. I begged her for stories. S-Stories of our people, stories of our lands, stories of Sonhadra. I w-would t-try to picture those stories in m-my mind, longing to see them with more clarity than with which I saw the w-world around me.

“At first, ther-rokahnmust’ve thought me a nuisance, but she always t-told me a story before she sent me away, and I have held th-those stories in my heart even after Kelsharn changed me. At the worst of times, I-I recall th-those tales and know that my p-people have struggled through much. That we have endured. We have known great hardship, we have made great s-sacrifices, but we will always endure.

“And so will you, Nina.” He lightly grazed the tips of his claws over her forehead and combed them through her hair. “Y-You are ours, and you will endure with us.”

Nina clutched at him with her numb, stiff fingers, and rested her head against his neck. “Y-You will h-h-have t-to tell me th-those s-stories.”

“I w-will tell you all of them, in time.”

He continued to speak to her, his voice preventing her from tumbling over the edge into unconsciousness, as Vortok and Aduun worked nearby. She only caught glimpses of them, occasionally heard their shouts to one another or saw sprays of snow and dirt in the air. What were they doing?

She was too tired to guess. The edges of her vision were dim; she couldn’t tell if it was because the sky was darkening further, or she was slipping away. She just needed some rest…

Balir’s strong hands brought her back to the moment, rubbing warmth into her arms and legs. His touch brought pain — the friction between his palms and her skin produced heat that felt like it would sear her flesh — but that pain heightened her awareness. She battled her uncooperative eyelids, fought to keep her head upright, and latched onto the underlying thoughts thrumming from her valos.

—to the fires with you, Kelsharn—

—will rip this world apart—

—Sonhadra will not take her—

Their combined rage was colder than normal, but it wasn’t because of the weather. It was tempered by their determination, by their mutual adoration of Nina, by their concern for her wellbeing and the sense of helplessness they each harbored.

Time seemed to have lost meaning. Every minute could have been an hour, every hour a lifetime; all she knew was that at some point Balir rose and picked her up. Many hands touched her, and despite her numbness, she knew them by feel; the long, graceful fingers of Balir, the strong, sure palms of Aduun, and the rough-skinned, gentle hands of Vortok.

Together, they moved her through an opening in the snow, entering some sort of shelter. The wailing wind immediately lost its strength and volume. It was an instant improvement for her chilled skin. She shifted her head, taking in her new surroundings. They’d dug into the dirt, creating a deep rut in the ground with a roof of packed snow over the top of it.

Someone carefully lifted the strap of her bag over her head, and the next thing she knew, she was being laid down on something soft. She lowered her hand to brush her stiff fingers over it, but her fingertips were too numb to discern any detail. It would only take a small amount of strength to turn her head and see what was beneath her.

Instead, her eyelids drifted shut. The valos spoke. Their voices swirled around her, sounding as though they came from a great distance away. She tried to lift her hand, to move her leg, to doanything, but her limbs were heavy and unresponsive.

It would only take a small amount of strength…

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