Winter, White and Wicked - Shannon Dittemore Page 0,37

from above, blocking my path and clipping my shoulder. Kyn cries out behind me, and I turn once more. But he’s not injured. He’s turned back, limping, wincing as he goes—he’s going back for the girl.

Crysel stands in the light of Winter, her arms wrapped fiercely around the frozen elder. “Great Father,” she cries. “Great Father!”

She’s small but Kyn won’t be able to heft her. Not with his ribs broken. Not for any distance.

I could flee. I could leave this cave and probably make it back to the road before anyone here could recover enough to come after me.

And then a voice in my ears. A hand on my arm. “You could stop this.”

Shyne, muddy, kol-streaked tears smearing the milk-white stone on his face.

“You could tell Winter to leave. You. Daughter of the Kerce queen.”

“You’re insane.”

I shake him off and step toward the mouth of the cave—step toward freedom—rocks falling all around me.

“Little Fox, you must run!”

The agony in Shyne’s voice turns me around. His face is tipped to the crumbling ceiling over the heads of Crysel and the treasured elder. And I’m running at Kyn. Running at Crysel as the roof hanging over her head sags and trembles. A rock breaks free and falls. It hits the frozen man and his already shattered arm is sheared off at the shoulder.

Crysel is hit too. Grazed, I think as I pick up my pace. She’s just been grazed. She falls back, hard, on her backside, her arm cradled, her cries echoing.

Kyn reaches her first, wraps her in his arms. He lifts her kicking, screaming form into his chest.

“Give her to me,” I say. “My ribs aren’t broken.”

Kyn glares down at me. “I was cut from stone, yeah? I can carry the girl.”

For a moment we’re locked that way, in a battle I don’t quite understand. And then another rock falls, slamming between us.

“GO!” Kyn yells. “GO!”

I do. I sprint toward the rapidly shrinking opening, yelling for others to do the same. Very few heed my cry, but some stand and brave the falling stones, fighting their way outside.

I burst onto the thin trail with such speed, I tumble over the edge. Fumbling, spinning, I reach for something, anything. My fingers find purchase in a tangle of twyl branches. The roots hold and my body slams hard against the stone wall. Shiv bodies tumble past me. They reach for salvation but find only air, their screams swallowed by more of the same. I don’t know how to help. I don’t know how—

PULL, Winter tells me. PULL.

My strength is waning, but I obey, pulling myself hand over hand toward the ledge above me. My fingers find the edge and I swing my legs up and onto the trail, the snow muddied and crowded with Shiv. I press myself between their scrambling legs up against the wall and I try to catch my breath.

Kyn is there too, the girl thrashing in his arms. “You’re OK,” he says, touching the toe of his boot to mine. “Holy Begynd, you’re OK. I thought . . .”

“We need to go,” I say, pushing to a stand.

“I’ll put you down,” he tells Crysel. “But not here. The mountain is coming down.”

Her cries are hoarse now, her body trembling. Around us, pressed up against the twyl are twelve, maybe thirteen Shiv. They cling to the climbers along the cliff face as more of their kin emerge from the cave.

“We can’t stay here,” I say. “If the mountain skitters again—”

And then it does. The path to the right of the cave opening lifts and cracks and falls away in heaps of colored rock and snow. The Shiv standing there are thrust into the air, kicking, flailing.

I reach, but it’s just a reflex. They’re far beyond my help now, sliding down the mountain, the avalanche growing as it nears the Desolation far below.

“This way,” Kyn calls over the roaring wind. “Sylvi. This way!”

I follow, a cluster of Shiv in my wake, but it’s not easy passage. The climb is steep and narrow and the mountain far from steady. Behind me, misery is loud. Fatigue and desperation. Grief. How many died in that cave? How many of their mothers and fathers, children? How many?

NOT NEARLY ENOUGH, Winter says.

She’s vulgar and blustering and I keep my face ducked against her. I look up only to see how Kyn fares. If the Sylver Dragon has taken any damage in the storm and skitter, in the skirmish with the Shiv earlier, I’ll need him to