What damage could be rendered?
My ears were so clogged I did not hear the grating stone, but I felt the crushing weights on my limbs lift free, followed by a sudden onslaught of pain. I cried out.
“Nina!” A voice graveled, choked by dust. “Thank God. Thank God.”
Theo—his arms winding behind my shoulders and knees. He pulled me against his chest and I screamed. I pulled my damaged arm into the cradle of my body.
I was surprised to look up and see that the sky still existed, still bogged in fat gray clouds. Cries not my own rent the air; they intensified when I pulled my ear away from Theo’s shoulder.
“Are you hurt?”
All over, I thought. “My arm.”
“You’re bleeding.”
I could feel that, too. The warm, slow drip from jaw to collarbone. Blood flowing from a cut on my cheek. I thought my
