Page 121 of Slaying the Vampire Conqueror

That was my job.

I clung to the cliff walls, pressing my hands to the damp stone, threading my awareness through them. It took all my focus—I kept stumbling over the uneven terrain because I couldn’t keep track of our larger path while also seeing what lay directly in front of me. Atrius remained by my side, one hand keeping his sword at the ready, the other holding onto my arm, as if he was terrified of losing me.

We walked for hours. The one benefit of the pass’s brutal environment was that it shielded us so well from the sun that we didn’t need to stop to take shelter from it. There was little difference between night and day. As a result, time blurred. The vampires had far better stamina than humans. They didn’t need to rest as often.

But eventually, I was suffering. My head pounded. The ache of my injuries from the recent attack, still not fully healed, nagged at me, and the constant focus was exhausting.

“You need to rest,” Atrius said after a while.

I didn’t even dignify that with an answer. I just kept pushing forward.

There wasn’t enough time.

Atrius did, eventually, command that everyone rest, though I’d long lost track of the hours by then. I couldn’t even sense the fall or rise of the sun through the mists. By now, even the vampires were exhausted, gratefully sliding to the ground at the order, reaching for their canteens of deer blood.

I couldn’t make myself move from the rock, my fingers still curled against the stone.

After a moment, Atrius gently took my hand. The moment he pulled me away from the stability of the wall, my knees buckled.

He caught me and the two of us sank to the ground together. My head was spinning. I felt, for the second time in my life, truly blind—my exhaustion so deep that, in this dead place, I couldn’t grip any of the threads around me.

Except for Atrius’s. His presence, solid and unshakable, was a single stable harbor.

He didn’t say anything, but his worry radiated through me like a trembling string.

“Drink,” he muttered, pressing a canteen to my mouth—tilting my chin up when I struggled to hold it myself. The liquid inside was sweet and thicker than water. Whatever it was, my body screamed for more of it from the first drop.

“A tonic,” he said. “It’s better for you.”

He’d prepared for me. Gotten human-specific tonics to help me make the journey. I knew him well enough by now that I shouldn’t have been surprised by this, and yet... my heart clenched a little.

He pulled away the canteen, and my head sagged against his shoulder. I wouldn’t admit it aloud, but I needed this, to be cradled against his body. His aura grounded me after so many hours throwing myself far away in the threads.

“I need to stay awake.” My voice slurred. “There could be slyviks?—”

“You need to rest,” he snapped. “Here.”

Something touched my lips—a little piece of jerky. I took it and chewed, or did my best to.

“I’ll watch,” he said.

I swallowed the jerky, with significant effort.

“But you won’t be able to see?—”

“Enough.” His hand reached out to caress my cheek. Something about the harshness of the word combined with the softness of the touch made all further protests fade.

He laid his sword beside him, and I settled deeper into his hold, my head sliding down into his lap.

The last thing I remembered before sleep took me was my hand curling around his—a mindless impulse, like a compass drifting north.

I slept so deeplythat when the warm liquid spattered over my face, it took me several long seconds to realize that it was blood.

But once I did, I knew it was Atrius’s immediately.

His pain was a sharp twang to the threads, loud enough to snap me back to awareness. At first I couldn’t grip anything else, jerking upright only to fall against the uneven rocks, the mists and darkness and all-consuming lifelessness of the pass surrounding me.

The sound that cut through the air was a high-pitched scream, not unlike a child’s terrified wail, starting bone-chillingly high and then falling into a guttural chatter.

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