Page 40 of Salt Between the Wolves

"I'll check the pass."

One of the hunters rolled his eyes.

"Try not to get lost."

Riven answered without turning.

"Your faith in me is inspiring."

A few riders laughed as he urged his horse forward and began climbing toward the ridge.

The distance wasn't great—perhaps a few hundred yards—and the rest of the patrol slowed naturally while they waited.

Riven reached the crest first, disappearing beyond the rise while the rest of the patrol waited below. No one paid the delay much attention. A horse tossed its head nearby, scattering snow from its mane, while one of the hunters remarked that if Riven managed to lose himself on a single hill, they ought to leave him there and spare themselves the trouble of listening to excuses all the way home.

The comment earned a ripple of laughter.

A few moments later, Riven appeared again.

His horse emerged onto the ridge first, followed by the familiar silhouette in the saddle. Even from a distance, Eira could see the beginning of a grin forming on his face, as though he had already prepared some response to send back down the slope.

She never learned what it was.

Something struck him.

At first, her mind refused to understand what she was seeing. The smile vanished, and Riven's body jolted sharply before going strangely still in the saddle. Confusion crossed his face as his gaze dropped toward his chest, where an arrow now protruded from beneath his cloak.

For a heartbeat, he simply stared at it.

Then he looked back toward the patrol below with the bewildered expression of someone trying to make sense of an impossible thing.

Blood appeared at the corner of his mouth.

The hillside erupted almost immediately afterward.

Someone shouted. Horses reared. Wolves surged forward, reaching for weapons as orders collided across the snow. Yet even as movement exploded around her, Eira's attention remained fixed on the figure atop the ridge.

Riven was still looking down at the arrow.

As though he could not quite understand how it had gotten there.

Then he fell.

Eira never remembered dismounting.

One moment she was in the saddle, and the next she was running through snow that slipped beneath her boots as she climbed toward the ridge. Her pulse thundered in her ears so loudly that it drowned out almost everything else.

Riven hit the ground before she reached him.

The sound was horrible precisely because it wasn't dramatic. It was simply the weight of a body striking frozen earth, ordinary and final in a way that made her stomach lurch.

"No."

The word left her before she reached him.

"No."

She dropped to her knees beside him.