Page 7 of Bonded By Stone & Blood

My predator's eye tracks her immediately. Small dark shape against gray rock, already sliding, gloves scrabbling at ice-slicked stone for purchase she will not find, and the slope drops sharply ten strides ahead of her into nothing.

I clear the fissure and snap my wings wide, and the storm tries to take me sideways. I let it. I angle into the gust and drop fast along the slope and she shrieks as her boots lose the slope entirely and she goes over.

I catch her before she drops two feet.

My arm wraps around her waist and my wings slam down and for one suspended, shrieking moment the storm tears atboth of us. I drag her body hard against my chest and tuck her in, and then my wings are folded around her and the howling drops to almost nothing.

She is shaking violently. Small, warm, and shaking, pressed against my chest where the stone in me gives way to the heat underneath. I can feel every terrified breath she pulls in because she is so close and so incredibly fragile and she nearly?—

She nearly?—

"You are going to be the death of us both." I say, and my voice is thick with fury because it is the only emotion I can afford right now.

She is still gripping my arm with both hands and I can feel her pulse thundering against my skin, hummingbird-fast.

I turn back to the cave. She fits against my chest, stilling the restless ache behind my ribs, and that quiet is the most dangerous thing I have encountered in my entire existence.

I carry her back into the dark.

5

SABINE

My stomach cramps again, sharp and mean, and I press my fist against it like that will help.

"You are shaking," Tovian says from behind me, his voice carrying a clipped precision.

"I'm cold."

"You haven’t eaten since the fall. That is two days."

"I know how long it's been." I finally look at him over my shoulder. He is crouched at the entrance of the smaller chamber, arms braced on his knees, watching me with those molten eyes narrowed. He does a lot of his thinking through irritation.

"What exactly did you expect? There's nothing down here but rock and dead air and your extremely charming company."

"You require food."

"Brilliant. Truly, the mind of a ruler."

He rises to his full height, and I take an involuntary step backward despite myself. Even after days of this, his size doesn't stop being shocking. Eight feet of obsidian stone and coiled violence filling the chamber doorway, and the worst part is he moves quietly for a creature so enormous.

"You will go to the settlement," he says. "Collect what you need. You have until the mist thins."

I blink. "You're letting me leave?"

"I am allowing you to not die of starvation." His tone suggests these are two very different things. "You will return."

Blackstone Valley lookswrong in the middle of the day.

Torches are burning along the market row, lit at noon like it's the dead of night. I can smell the fear before I reach the main road—woodsmoke, metal, and the sour edge of a community that hasn't slept properly in days. Old Shaela from the cooper's shop is standing in his doorway with a splitting axe across his lap. Two women I vaguely recognize from the tanner's row are walking in pairs with iron kitchen blades tucked into their belts.

I pull my coat tighter and keep my head down. I don't make it ten steps before a hand catches my arm.

"Sabine." Velka looks me up and down in a single sharp sweep, and whatever she sees makes her expression shift from relief to suspicion in about a half second. "Where the hell have you been? You look like you crawled out of a cave."

"Close enough." I try to keep walking. She falls into step beside me, which I should have expected. Velka doesn't take hints.

"The valley's been in a state," she says. "Elara's son swore he saw something perched on the north ridge three nights running. Wings, he said. Big ones."