The world inverted into an ear-splitting howl of wind. Kassar’s boots scraped air as the shale ledge dropped out beneath him. The shadow-snare cut deep into his wrist, dragging his heavy plate into open space. Above, the rim of the fissure shrank to a razor-thin slit of grey daylight. He had died once before on a shattered ledge, but back then he was abandoned; now, Danira's dive chased his plunge through the dark. He slashed his free forearm against the tether, scraping skin on shadow-wire to no avail.
Then, a streak of white.
A streak of white sliced past. Danira. She had streamlined her frame into an arrow, cutting the gale with a crack of displaced air. Her jaw was set, teeth bared, her pupils locked on the black crags rushing upward rather than on him. Rime coated her boots as she accelerated her dive.
His mind, racing with the fall, struggled to process. How? Why?
Her armored forearm locked around his ribs with rib-cracking force, matching their velocity. She hauled him against her chest, turning them into a single hurtling mass.
“Hold on, you stubborn fool,” she barked into his ear, voice raspy over the gale. Her gauntlet clamped into his breastplate seam. Frost bloomed outward from her sternum, bleeding sub-zero mist across his visor.
The canyon's sheer western wall loomed out of the murk. He braced for pulverized granite. Instead, Danira's beast-frost sprayed against the stone in a gleaming, mirror-smooth arc.
It wasn’t a static creation. It was alive, a liquid-smooth ribbon that flowed out from Danira, coating the sheer, vertical rock face of the Maw. It expanded, curved, and solidified in an instant, forming a massive, aerodynamic cushion, perfectly angled to the cavern wall. It was a slide. She was using the wall itself as a track.
They slammed onto the angled glaze with a bone-jarring scrape. Kassar’s teeth clicked together as they planed down the sheer surface, the friction vanishing into a blinding, spray-choked slide. The wild tumble was gone; they were banking across the cliff face on a frozen rail.
He opened his eyes, startled. Below them, the Maw yawned, a gaping, lightless maw of ancient rock. And then, he saw him.
Jelmeq. Still clinging to the shadow-snare, which was somehow taut between his wrist and Kassar’s, pulling him along, a furious, flailing appendage. The man’s mouth snarled around chipped teeth, his pupils dilated and locked on Kassar. He abandoned all attempts to catch a ledge, dangling by the cord like a deadweight hook.
“You don’t get to live!” Jelmeq screeched through the roar of their slide. He yanked the cord with both fists, attempting to drag Kassar off the frozen track even as granite spurs battered his ribs.
Danira clicked her tongue in sharp disgust. “Let go, you parasite.” She drove a fist into the chute, channeling an abrupt flare of beast-frost. The ice shelf flared outward into a hard wedge; the shadow-strand stretched taut over the razor margin and snapped like dry sinew.
Jelmeq whipped off into empty air, his silhouette swallowed by the lower chasm's dust.
The chute flattened into a horizontal ramp, dumping their speed before spitting them onto a broad shelf of pack-ice. They slid to a halt in a flurry of shaved frost. Danira went limp against his chest, mist smoking from her cracked knuckles.
Her ribs heaved, and grey pallor washed her cheekbones, but a crooked smirk pulled at her mouth. “Told you. Took less walking,” she muttered, her knees folding beneath her.
Kassar hooked his arm beneath her shoulders before she hit the gravel. His gauntlets vibrated from the shock of the slide. Above them rose three hundred paces of vertical stone. She slumped into his chest plate, breathing shallowly.
It was real. All of it. The aggression, the possessiveness, the lethal shortcuts, the relentless, terrifying devotion. It wasn’t a game, it wasn’t a trick. It was her, entirely.
Kassar's throat tightened. He locked his arms around her waist, anchoring her against his breastplate. She made no move to pull away, letting her forehead rest against his neck seal.
“Danira,” he murmured, the stoic mask dropping entirely as heat rushed to his cheeks. He leaned down and pressed his mouth to hers. Her lips were cold from the frost-drain, parting in brief shock before she leaned her weight into the touch.
Under the open sky, far from the echoes of the Maw, Danira lay stretched out on a sun-warmed patch of rock, her head nestled in Kassar’s lap. He stroked her hair, his gaze soft as she snored softly, truly at peace for the first time in what felt like forever.
“Still tired?” he asked, a gentle tease in his voice.
She mumbled, burrowing deeper. “Mmmph. Just five more minutes. Or I’ll freeze the whole damn canyon shut.”
He chuckled, the sound deep and content. No one dared to wake the Frost Weaver. Not now. Not ever again.