The air inside the tent had closed in around us; the red haze in my eyes was so thick it was as if someone had repainted the world from within. Seraphine writhed in my grasp, and beneath my fingers at her throat I felt the tiny, fragile movements of desperate swallows. The bandage at her ribs was soaked through, and warm blood trickled into my palm in a thin stream. She spoke my name—once, twice—but her voice broke like the rim of a frozen lake underfoot.
A sudden crack from the tent’s entrance. Canvas slapped against a pole, and Cassian burst in as though the wind had fired him here. His movement asked no questions, sought no permission. Two steps and he was already between us.
“Enough!” he snapped, his voice slicing through me like a battlefield command.
In the next instant his hand w
