Page 74 of Down Comes the Night

And then she felt a tug at the center of her chest, like a rope gone taut. Somewhere over the wind, a voice called to her.

“Wren.”

Right.Thatwas her name. She imagined responding, but her whole body was so heavy. Her lungs would not expand. Her mouth would not open.

“Wren!”

I’m here,she thought.Right here.

In the distance, a shadow emerged from the solid white of the blizzard, blooming like ink dripped onto parchment. It came closer, morphing until it became a man blink by blink. He crouched beside her, and Wren squinted up at him. Raven-dark hair and eyes the color of a lightless lake. Snow dusted the sharp lines of his jacket, clung to his eyelashes. He looked star-scattered. Beautiful.

Wren wanted to touch his face. She wanted to knot her hands in his hair and kiss him, even though she knew she shouldn’t for reasons she couldn’t exactly recall.

His arm slipped around her waist and he hoisted her to her feet. Her thoughts twinkled like ice crystals catching the sunlight, and she let herself lay her palm flat against his cheek. No warmth radiated from his skin, and he recoiled with a look of singular concern.

“I know you,” she said.

“Yes. It’s me.” His voice was rough as he pulled her to his side. “Can you walk?”

“Mm-hm.”

The world was still spinning. At the center of it washim.

“Hal,” she found herself saying. His name unlocked something in her. Tears burned her dry eyes. “Oh, Hal. I messed up.”

“We’ll discuss it later.” Discomfort clipped each word short. “Walk.”

They stumbled over each other, dragging and clinging, as they waded through the snow. Hal’s rasping breaths were a metronome that kept her on course, and as movement flushed blood through her, she regained her wits enough to push magic into her head. With every pulse, her thoughts cleared enough for her to quit worrying about her skull. She needed to save her strength to treat their imminent hypothermia.

Wren couldn’t be sure how long they walked before she saw the glow of a town in the valley below. They slid and staggered down the mountainside, and with the last of her energy, Wren urged them onward until they reached the inn at the heart of town. The sign above it readTHE GUIDING LIGHT INN. That beatific depiction of the Goddess glowed like a remote star, lit by her eerie electrical light.

How ridiculous, she thought, that they should end up here all the same.

But as they passed through the door, all she could focus on was the roaring fire in the lobby. It stung her skin with heat. She sobbed noiselessly, gasping in her first lungful of warm air.Alive.Somehow, they were alive.

“You made it back?” The innkeeper whistled admiringly at Hal. “I was about to send someone to look for you.”

Of all the self-loathing, foolish things he could do.

He came back for her.

Upstairs, Wren stripped off her wet clothes and tugged on the spare tunic the innkeeper had left for her. She was too far gone to care about propriety as she helped Hal undress. None of their limbs worked quite right, and she fumbled with every button until his clothes lay in a sopping pile on the floor. The flow of her magic had abated some of her symptoms, but Hal still shivered violently.

She guided him onto the floor beside the fireplace and threw a blanket over him. His lips were tinted blue, and he was so pale, it was as if frost crept like lace beneath his skin. Wren laid her hands on his chest. He wasfreezing,his heartbeat weak. Nearly dead because he had saved her miserable life.

“This is all my fault,” she whispered. “I’m such an idiot. A selfish, reckless idiot.”

His eyelids drooped. “I understand.”

Heunderstood? There were so many things to say, to ask, to scold him for, but right now, she needed him alive. “You’re clearly not of sound mind. You need to stay awake.”

“I am awake,” he protested.

Then his eyes fell shut.

Wren swore and set to work immediately, pouring what little magic she had left into him to speed his metabolism. Once he was stable and flushed, she collapsed beside him, her magic entirely spent. Although she wanted to stay awake, wanted to make sure he’d last the night without her, the comforting heat of the fire and the reassuring warmth of his body put her to sleep in seconds.

When her eyes peeled open again, the first thing Wren saw was fire. Behind the mesh curtaining the hearth, orange veins glimmered beneath the crackled, ashy skin of the logs. The fire exhaled a plume of sparks, warming her face.