Winter, White and Wicked - Shannon Dittemore Page 0,94

hands, the ache in my back and thighs from so many hours on the road—none of it compares to what Kyn’s blood shares with mine. He’s in pain, the peaceful look on his face a façade. Death is fighting for him, rejoicing at the blood draining from his veins.

Strange how like Winter Death can be.

Kyn gasps and takes in a mouthful of air. And we all breathe with him. Relief.

Hyla sobs. I’m quieter, my mind churning over the emotions flooding my own veins. It’s not just me sharing blood with Kyn; it’s Kyn sharing his blood with me. I have no idea if it’s Winter’s doing or if it’s the kol Mars swears races through my veins, or even if there’s something of magic in Kyn’s own blood, but the connection I’d been avoiding, the connection I knew was building between him and me, it’s different than I thought, but stronger too. I recognize emotions as they flood me. The pain he experiences is nothing new; it’s similar to the pain he experienced when the wolves attacked. The healing he feels is also familiar; it’s identical to the sensations that flooded him when our bloody forms collided just after.

HE’LL EXPECT IT FOREVER NOW, Winter says. THE HEALING, YOUR TOUCH. HE’LL CLAIM IT AS RIGHTFULLY HIS.

It’s a terrifying thought and my hands come up and away. I lean back, suddenly afraid of what I’ve done, afraid of what I’ve started.

“Is he? Is it . . . finished?” Hyla asks.

There’s too much blood to know, his and mine—mostly his.

“It’s not finished,” Mars says, something haunting in his voice. “But it’s enough.”

I stand and back away from the scene before me. My hands are hot and still dripping blood. But I’m relieved. I am. I don’t want Kyn to die. The very idea makes me ill.

I feel it then. How much a part of me he already is. How much a part of each other our mutual wounds have made us. He needs me—my very presence—to survive. And I wonder, now, as I stumble out into the blinding white of Winter, do I need him?

What parts of me would die if Kyn were gone?

I have no answers, but Winter does—she never, ever stops talking.

Her answer tangles my boots, trips me, forces me onto my knees.

NOTHING, she says, NOTHING YOU CAN’T LIVE WITHOUT.

My hands turn her snow red.

CHAPTER 23

It’s a grind to get the Dragon back into working order. The lookout is entirely dismantled and reassembled—a task Hyla assumes, bad shoulder and all. She’d started on the repair while I was gone, but when Kyn’s wounds began to reopen, she’d abandoned everything to help him. The simplicity of her devotion shames me into silence.

Both Hyla and Mars stay well away from me until my hands heal over. The bleeding is minimal now, but my palms are tender and raw, so I wrap them in old shop rags. A couple hours later, while reattaching the hatch that had so perfectly hidden the bike’s chassis, the rags become more hindrance than help, snagging on screws and hinges and generally preventing me from moving as I’d like. So, tucked between the cab and the trailer, I crouch and unravel the grease-stained scraps.

No scabs. No scars. Nothing to indicate I’d done anything spectacular at all. If I was a different kind of person, if I was Lenore, I’d linger over my hands and the baffling miracle of it all, and I’d genuinely try to decide if Mars was right about my blood or if Winter was just having a good laugh. I’d wonder how I could go all seventeen Rymes of my life and not fully realize what my body could do. But there’s been quite enough thinking and not nearly enough trucking. I drop the rags to the dirt and heft the hatch back in place.

Off to my left, Kyn leans against the rocky wall. It’s taken him just under two hours to right himself. The drab lighting, the blood smeared in gigantic brush strokes across his chest, his trousers black with it—it’s not a pretty picture he makes. He looks half dead with his chin rolling against his chest and his hands opening and closing on his lap.

I wish I didn’t know what he was feeling. I wish I could separate his angst from mine, but it’s just there, in my chest, a wad so thick and clingy I have visions of spitting it against the ground and sorting through the gunk with the toe of