Page 24 of Held

Briar dropped her hand fast. She didn’t want to be solved. She wanted to be safe and warm and full of life’s other comforts, but she drew the line at being known.

Even Marigold, her oldest friend, didn’t know her very well. Briar wasn’t about to let a Skullstalker see her,trulysee her, just because he kept saying things that softened her tough heart.

She bent down to grab her pack. “Come on. We should get up in the air again.”

Wick paused. He shifted his wings behind him, a pained expression flickering across his face.

Briar frowned. She had assumed he was lying about his wings hurting.

“Wick? Am I working you too hard?”

“I do not usually fly for this long,” he admitted. “I will be fine.”

He sniffed the air with a concerned expression.

Briar sighed. “What now?”

He pointed. Briar turned to see dark clouds massing on the horizon. The spring air was filled with the barest chill, barely noticeable under the warm breeze.

Briar snorted. “That storm is ages away. We can get some good flying time before it hits.”

Eight

The storm wailed and crashed, icy water drilling against Wick’s aching wings.

“Well,” said Briar over the roaring rain. “At least, we havesomeshelter.”

Wick nodded in agreement. His chin brushed the top of her head, an unavoidable circumstance of closing his wings around them both.

They had found a cave in the depths of the forest. But it was shallow, offering little shelter from the howling wind and rain. Wick had pulled her into his lap and closed his wings around her. Then he had ducked down into the haven he had made, shielding them from the elements.

Shieldingher, anyhow. His face and most of his inner body were safe. But his back and his outer wings were still pelted with rain, cold and stinging as it rushed into the cave.

Briar peered up at him worriedly. Based on her squint, she could barely see him in the dim light.

“You really don’t have to do this,” she said.

“Mortals are fragile,” he replied. “It takes more than a storm to harm a Skullstalker.”

Briar rolled her eyes. “Fragile. You know how many storms I’ve been in?”

“You are shivering,” he pointed out.

Briar tensed, as if she could beat her body’s reactions with sheer stubbornness. The cold won, another shiver running through her small frame.

He rubbed her arms cautiously, as he had seen her do when the cold wind started. According to Briar, they were maybe three days of flying away from her witch’s cottage.

I’m guessing,she had said through chattering teeth.Never flown before you. Don’t quite know how much time it takes to get anywhere on wings.

Briar eyed his hands on her arms so closely he wondered if he had forgotten to retract his claws.

Then she smiled, small and warped, like she was trying to hold it back.

“Thanks, sweet thing,” she said. “But you’re almost as cold as the rain.”

Wick let go of her arms and leaned back as much as he could. But she was in his lap, and there was only so far he could go before he started breaking the sealed cocoon of his wings, and he didn’t want to let any rain in.

“How quickly do mortals die from cold?” he asked.

---