glass of the vow burning against the skin beneath his shirt, felt a spurt of adrenaline shove him the last short space between them as a roar built in his throat.
He threw himself at Karen, the roar escaping. A roar of denial, of hatred, of anger and fury and determination.
A moment before he struck her, before his arms wrapped around her and pulled her down, he saw a tendril from one of the Shadows lash out, saw it connect, felt its bitter coldness as it passed over his shoulder.
Then he and Karen were rolling, his roar choked off as they struck the ground. Pain tore through his shoulder and he gasped, but he held Karen tight, tried to protect her as they tumbled, arms flailing wildly. They struck the wheel of the wagon. Wood cracked, and Colin’s shoulder twisted even more, pain shooting down his back, his entire arm going numb, tingling viciously, but he ignored it all, not even crying out. He struggled with Karen’s body, with the limp arms tangled with his own, with the folds of her dress. Rolling onto his back, his shoulders propped against the broken wheel, legs straight before him, her body over his, he shifted her toward him, fumbled for her face.
“Karen,” he gasped, and tasted blood on his lips, felt where he’d bitten the inside of his mouth. “Karen! It’s all right. It’s all right. I couldn’t save your father, but-”
His hands found her face, touched the skin there. Skin still slick with sweat but cold, so very cold. Like ice.
His breath caught, and something squeezed his chest hard, tightened like iron, like the slats of the penance locks. Tightened and wouldn’t let go. Beneath, something hard and bitter and fluid began to build, began to press outward, constrained by the locks.
He tried to swallow and couldn’t. His mouth was suddenly full of saliva, the back of his throat thick with phlegm, with the taste of blood, and still he couldn’t swallow, his throat working, a strange heat seething up his neck and into his face, burning in the skin beneath his eyes, prickling in his hair. He shoved the sensations away, shoved down hard on the pressure in his chest. His hand brushed Karen’s hair away from her brow, and he moved, so that her face rolled toward him, the motions careful, gentle.
“Karen?” he choked out, the name barely audible, almost lost in the pounding of blood in his ears, in his head. He reached for Karen’s cheek, his hand trembling, reached to touch her forehead above her dusky dead eyes, reached for the freckles that brushed her skin, even though he could feel the Shadows closing in around him, around them both. He traced the contours of her nose, touched the corner of her mouth, her too pale lips.
And then the pressure inside became too much. The penance locks broke.
He screamed and clutched her body close, felt the vow’s pendant crushed between them, felt its heat burning into his skin. He screamed into the blackness of the Shadows that loomed before him, the sunlight bright around them-a sunlight far, far too bright for the death taking place all around him, far, far too golden. He screamed into the face of the sukrael as the pain inside him surged outward, as it coursed along his arms and through his body, as it shuddered through his chest in waves. He shoved the hatred and grief away, toward the closest Shadow, the one reaching toward him with a tendril of darkest night, glistening with flecks of gold. A tendril that bled cold, that bled death.
And the Shadow hesitated.
Colin’s scream grew ragged and then broke.
He stared up at the Shadow before him-at the sukrael-stared up into its cold, considering darkness And then he pulled Karen’s limp body even closer, leaned forward over it, his head bowed down over hers, her face hidden in his shoulder. He could smell her hair, like freshly cut hay, like sunlight, like a breeze from the sea.
“I should have run faster,” he whispered into Karen’s ear, her hair tickling his face, catching in his mouth. “I should never have let go.” His face twisted into a soundless sob, and he squeezed his eyes shut, tears slick against his skin, tasting of salt.
The Shadows hesitated, then closed in. But not in a frenzy. He felt the first tendril slide through his arm, touching, tasting, testing. For what, he didn’t know, but they did not swarm over him as they had the others. They’d already fed. They needed him for something else. He shuddered, the ice of its touch sinking deep, the entire limb tingling, frigid, then going mercifully numb. He pulled Karen closer still with his other arm, buried his face in her shoulder, and felt one of the tendrils slide smoothly into his twisted shoulder, flicker deeper into his chest, sampling him. He gasped as the cold touched his lungs, as air froze deep inside him, and he felt the Shadows respond with an ecstatic shiver. They savored his grief, savored his pain, reveled in his soul, in his life, in his warmth. The gold against their black forms shifted in patterns, as if they were speaking to each other, arguing, coming to a decision.
Without looking, he felt them rear above him, felt them tense to smother him, their ethereal forms blocking out the sun.
But the Shadows halted. Another shiver passed through them. Gold glistened in hatred and contempt and rage.
And then they withdrew.
Colin lifted his head from Karen’s shoulder, his face smeared with tears, with snot. It required more effort than he thought it would, because where the Shadows had tasted him, the coldness had sunk in deep. But in the space between the forest and the circled wagons, all of the Shadows were fleeing, slipping back into the forest, back beneath the trees, leaving dozens of bodies behind in the grass. He could see where Sam had fallen, could see Lissa’s crumpled form beside that of her brother beneath one of the wagons, could see the bodies of the horses, still trapped in their harnesses.
None of the bodies were moving. Except for the faint roar of battle from the dwarren somewhere farther out on the plains, there was no sound. Here, near the wagons, it was unnaturally silent, unnaturally still.
The last of the Shadows vanished beneath the trees. A wisp of darkness in the sunlight, and then nothing.
Colin sat, quiet and motionless. The pressure in his chest was gone, leaving behind a vast, empty hollowness, as if he were a shell, scoured clean. Tears streamed down his face, and his chest burned with cold, part of it numbed by the Shadow’s touch, that numbness seeping inward, spreading. He couldn’t feel his arm or shoulder at all.
He stared out over the bodies, over the trampled grass, a few upright stalks shuddering in a breeze he couldn’t feel. He stared at the trembling stalks, tears dripping from his chin. He breathed in the scent of hay, of upturned earth, and the acridness of pine.
He decided he’d sit there until the numbness claimed him completely.
Lights appeared in the forest. They flickered between the trees, pale at first, hidden within the shadows. But then they burst out into the sunlight, burning a harsh white, a dozen of them, perhaps more. He couldn’t keep track of them. They flared out over the bodies, spun above them, circled the wagons and the dead horses, paused over Lyda and her swollen belly, over the children. They ducked between the wagons, beneath them, found Lissa and her brother and the other boy that had hidden with them. They checked inside the wagons as well.
And they spoke. Like the rustle of leaves in a gust of wind. Soft and ephemeral, yet tense with indignation, with horror, with despair.
… too late, too late…
… sooner, should have come sooner…
… we didn’t know, didn’t know…
… all dead, all dead…
Colin let his head fall back against the wagon wheel with a thump. He couldn’t hold it up any longer, didn’t want to. The coldness from the Shadows had penetrated deeper into his chest, into the muscles on one side of his neck. He could feel it touching his heart, could feel it seeping into his other lung, reaching for his throat. His breath became shallow. He struggled to draw in air as he stared up into the pale blue sky, at the wisps of clouds that drifted by.
One of the white lights flared into view above him, its light so harsh he squinted.
… one still lives!…
The light was joined by another, and another. They dove closer, and he turned his head away, closed his eyes.
… barely, barely… he’s been touched by the others, but not killed… why?… why was he touched, not killed?…
