Page 20 of Bonded By Stone & Blood

"Grab it," I say in a flat and certain drone, which is impressive because my heart has exited my body entirely.

Vorgrym stares at me for a single fractured second, and then his free hand closes around the line.

The yank nearly tears my arms out of their sockets.

I hear something pop in my left shoulder and the pain is white and immediate, but I sit against it, lean back, brace everything I have into that root cluster and the tree behind me and I don’t let go. My fingers burn through the gloves. The leather bites into my palms.

Then the weight changes—Tovian's hands close over mine, and the pull disappears, and in one brutal heave Vorgrym is over the edge and on solid ground.

I fall butt-first in the frost.

Vorgrym looms above me, breathing hard in visible clouds of cold air. He looks at the line in his hands.

The great cavernis warmer than the woods, fire burning in the iron basins Tovian had the warriors restore, and the newly awakened gargoyles fill the chamber with low voices and the scrape of stone limbs. I'm half-frozen, my shoulder aching when Vorgrym steps into the firelight ahead of me.

He turns and faces me.

The assembled warriors go quiet.

He says my name—my actual name, not human or the female—and hearing it in his graveled voice is so unexpected that I forget to be cold for a moment. Then he reaches to his side and unhooks the blade.

Drakestone. Old. The hilt is wrapped in a dark and supple material that isn't leather, carved with markings that match the walls of the great cavern. He holds it out with both hands.

The salute is something I've never seen before, but I understand instinctively and I accept the blade with both hands to match.

He waitsuntil we're in the private chamber. I'll give him that much.

The door—if you can call a slab of carved stone a door—has barely ground shut before he turns on me and the fury coming off him is so concentrated it has a physical shape.

"You could have gone over with him."

"But I didn't."

"The line could have snapped?—"

"It didn't."

"Sabine."

"Tovian." I face him squarely, the drakestone blade still in my hand because I didn't think to put it down and now I'm glad I didn't—it feels like evidence. "Don't do that. Don't use my name like it's the end of a sentence."

"You are not a warrior." His voice drops low and dangerous. "You are not armored. You are not?—"

"I am the reason Vorgrym is alive right now." Each word is sharp and certain. "I am the reason we know the valley is already encircled, because I was the one paying attention to the tree line. I am standing here, useful, functional, and in one piece, and instead of acknowledging any of that you are furious at me for existing in this war at all."

"I am furious because you nearly died?—"

"I am not your possession, Tovian. I am not a prize or a fragile thing you get to cage to stop yourself from feeling afraid. I am in this war. I am fighting it beside you, and you can’t keep pretending I'm not."

He moves so fast I don't register it until my back is against the stone.

His hands land on the wall on either side of my head. His wings drop, closing around us, cutting off the torchlight until the world narrows down to the heat radiating off his chest and the ragged sound of his breathing and the gold of his eyes burning two inches from my face.

My own breathing has stopped.

His jaw is tight enough to crack. His knuckles, pressed to the stone beside my temples, are white.

The moment stretches—dangerous, electric, unbearable.