"Faster. I don't care what it costs the horse, I don't care what it costs me, faster, she's losing, Dain, I can feel her losing."
We tore east through the dark and I rode with my eyes half shut, split in two, one half of me on a dying horse and the other half forty miles ahead in a cradle, and both halves were screaming.
Fenna was strong. That was the terrible part. If she had been an ordinary pup the weight would have killed her in a breath and it would have been mercy. But she was doubled dire-line, the strongest blood in four hundred years, and so she did not die fast. She held. She held the way I held things, past reason, past strength, and the holding was killing her slowly instead of fast, and through the bond I felt her small self starting to blur at the edges, starting to forget
