Chapter 23
TWENTY-THREE
KASTER
Her breathing stops between one heartbeat and the next.
One moment her hand is on my wrist, fingers curled around my pulse like an anchor. The next, that grip goes slack. Her head lolls against my shoulder. The shallow rise and fall of her ribs—barely perceptible even before—ceases entirely.
She said yes. I carry that with me.
No.
The creature is again tearing through the ice barrier behind us. I hear it—the wet sound of flesh reforming, limbs punching through frozen stone, the chorus of voices that have been screaming for her blood since this nightmare began.
I lay her down. Press my ear to her lips.
Nothing.
I press two fingers to her throat.
Thump.
Weak. Irregular. But present.
Her heart is still fighting even though her lungs have surrendered. The poison has progressed to her respiratory system—diaphragm paralyzed, her body too busy dying to remember how to live.
I have minutes. Maybe less.
The abomination breaks through.
Ice explodes. The creature forces itself through the gap we used for shelter, its bulk compressed into a narrower configuration than before.
Pieces of it are missing—chunks I tore away during the canyon fight that it couldn’t regenerate fast enough.
But the core remains. The overlapping faces.
The reaching limbs. The relentless purpose that has driven it across miles of frozen territory to kill one specific woman.
I don’t think.
I rise and meet it with fire.
Strategy has failed.
Every strategy I’ve used against this creature has been learned, countered, adapted. It’s built countermeasures from my own attacks—reinforced the joints I targeted, thickened the hide where I burned it, developed new limb configurations to replace the ones I destroyed.
So I stop being strategic.
I stop being careful.
I become what I was before I learned control.
Dragonfire erupts from every wound on my body.
Not controlled bursts. Not focused streams. Raw power bleeding from damaged flesh, pouring from my hands and mouth and the gash across my back that hasn’t stopped seeping.
The narrow passage fills with flames so intense, the ice walls vaporize into steam, filling the space with scalding haze that sears exposed skin.
The creature staggers. Tries to adapt.
I don’t give it time.
I drive into its mass with claws extended.
No precision. No targeting specific vulnerabilities.
I tear through everything—reinforced sections and soft tissue alike, ripping chunks free faster than it can track my movements.
My hands close around pulsing organs and rip them loose.
My teeth find the connections between stitched segments and bite through.
The abomination strikes back. Talons rake across my already-broken ribs. An arm wraps around my torso and squeezes until bones grind against each other. I absorb new damage layered over old, my body accumulating injury faster than my body can repair.
I don’t care.
Another blow catches my shoulder. Dislocates it. I feel the joint separate, the pop of bone leaving the socket, and use the momentum to spin inside its guard. My good arm punches through the creature’s thorax. Finds the knot of tissue where three different monster segments converge. Tears it apart.
The abomination howls. Tries to close around me, to crush me inside its reforming bulk.
I drag myself deeper. Find the dense point I’d touched in the first canyon fight—the concentrated seat of it, where the creature’s wrongness gathered and its regeneration drew its power. My hand closes around it.
The abomination screams.
I tear the core free.
The creature convulses. Tries to reform around the wound.
I don’t let it.
Fire and claws and the mindless brutality of a predator that has stopped thinking and started destroying. I rip the thing apart piece by piece, burning each section before it can reattach, scattering ash across the steam-filled passage until there’s nothing left to regenerate.
The last piece falls.
Twitches once.
Goes still.
I collapse onto my knees in a pool of ichor and melted ice.
My body is finished. Not individual wounds—the cumulative damage. Blood loss that won’t stop. Broken bones grinding against each other with every breath. Muscles shredded beyond functional capacity. I ought to be dead three engagements ago.
I stay upright through willpower and nothing else.
Soreia.
I force myself to standing. My legs barely hold. I cross the distance to where she lies crumpled against the frozen stone.
She’s not breathing.
I knew this. Have known it since I left her to fight the creature. But seeing it confirmed—watching her ribs remain still, her lips turning blue, her skin going gray—drives the reality home with surgical precision.
The poison is winning.
I press my fingers to her throat again.
Thump.
Longer pause.
Thump.
Her heart hasn’t given up. Even with her lungs paralyzed and her magic dead and her organs failing systematically, that stubborn muscle keeps contracting. Fighting for time she doesn’t have.
I drop to my knees beside her. My hands shake—exhaustion, blood loss, an emotion I refuse to name.
Time is running out.
And I’m in no condition to save her.
The dragonfire cave is three miles north.
I found it decades ago during a long hunt—a natural cavern above a geothermal vent. Over the years, I’ve filled it with dragonfire until the stone itself retained heat, radiating energy that keeps the space habitable even in the depths of winter.
Monsters avoid it. The concentration of dragon power creates a threshold they hesitate to cross. Not a barrier—I’ve never been able to create true barriers—but a warning strong enough that most creatures seek easier prey.
Three miles.
With her not breathing. With her heart slowing. With my body barely functional.
Move.
I gather her into my arms.