Winter, White and Wicked - Shannon Dittemore Page 0,52
drop to the snow, belly up, and let her land on me, my fist tight around the bone handle of my blade.
“Mars!” I scream, slicing a straight line with my dagger. “Now!”
The wreath falls from the wolf’s neck. Her teeth close on my arm and I gasp. But she doesn’t clamp down. I see her confusion. Feel it in my chest.
I kick out at her and yank my arm from her jaws, but she’s already crawling off me. I scrabble away, toward Kyn. I can hear him struggling with the sapphire-eyed wolf, but I don’t dare take my eyes off Ruby. She ducks her head, eyes on either side of that white snout, roiling and hot as a chimney. Her lip curls and I think I’ve miscalculated.
And then she whimpers. Her face turns toward Mars. I follow suit and I see his Kerce lips moving, see the kol crusting in the corners of his mouth.
He’s whispering, speaking softly into the wind. I have no idea what he’s saying, but it bothers Winter. Her displeasure is like hot coals in my gut. Uncomfortable and inescapable.
Hyla is covered in scrapes and gashes, but she steps in front of Mars, brandishing her handguns, firing them when the wolves get too close. She’s keeping the beasts off him while he works his magic.
Mars sends words skimming across the air into the pricked ears of one of her favorites. He’s speaking to Ruby. No, that’s not it. He’s forcing Winter to speak to her. The hairs on the wolf’s back bristle and then she tips her snout to the sky and howls.
The remaining wolves stop, crank their heads toward her. Their eyes are wrong. Unfocused. A glossy patina covers the jewels there like hoarfrost. She’s the alpha now. And Mars has her ear.
A simple command and Ruby leaps onto her own brother, onto the wolf straddling Kyn. They tumble into a snowdrift, a mass of fur and claws and gemstone eyes. But they’ve left behind a splotch of red snow.
I scrabble toward Kyn, my heart thudding.
There’s a lot of blood.
More than—
He’s not going to make it.
No one could survive this much blood loss.
Some of it is mine, I realize. I’m bleeding from somewhere. My arm, maybe. The skin stings, up my biceps, down to my wrist. I’m not weak though—my muscles are strong. I sheath my knife, vaguely aware that its twin is buried somewhere beneath the wolves and the storm. There’s no time to fetch it though, no time to waste. I wrap my arms around Kyn’s chest and pull him backward toward the Sylver Dragon.
The rig is a ways off now. The battle’s pulled us from her, but I can make it. I can get Kyn to the rig. To the kol Mars certainly has in the trailer. Because that’s what it has to be. Refined kol.
No one had to say a thing—it was the weight that gave it away. Light as air once it’s been processed and useful for all sorts of nefarious rebel activities. If it were a trailer full of Paradyian wares we were hauling, it’s unlikely I would have been able to keep the Dragon from jackknifing earlier.
I can mix the processed kol with the snow. Dilute it. Press it into Kyn’s wounds, and it should help some. It’s what Lenore did to treat Drypp’s injuries. The kol made him loopy, but it quieted his cries, dulled the pain. And Kyn’s in a lot of pain. Every movement I make sends his mouth gasping for air and his fingers fighting for purchase on my arms.
He does it once. Grabs on. Flips me to the snow. I can’t tell where his blood ends and mine begins anymore. But the energy it took to tackle me was all he had left and his head falls back, his eyes shut, his breathing negligible. I right myself and wrap him up again, pulling, pulling until I have no strength left.
I vaguely hear Mars in the distance. Winter’s gusts are less powerful here, less deafening, and the Kerce words Mars directs toward the wolves find their way back to me somehow.
He’s telling them to attack, turning the wolves back on their masters.
I don’t hate him for it. I can’t. Not while looking down at Kyn’s neck and chest, shredded and gaping. There’s a murmur in the back of my mind that insists we could have avoided this if we’d left when I suggested it. When I begged. When I was overruled.