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Shards of Hope(22)

By:Nalini Singh


“Line. Of. Sight.” It was ground out between his teeth, and she saw more than heard the words.

She understood regardless. “I won’t go far!” It’d be easy to become turned around in this terrain and weather, lose one another.

Crawling on her hands and knees in an effort to get below the wind, she banged her knee into the sharp corner of a metal object. The medkit. Immediately taking it back to Aden, she put it by his thigh. It held the implant he’d taken out of her head; Zaira knew it was critical they protect that. Even if she and Aden didn’t make it, if the squad found the implant, it would offer some answers.

She protected the medkit with her body as she opened it to retrieve the last tiny bottle of concentrated nutrient drink. “You need strength,” she said when Aden would’ve pushed it toward her. “I’m not leaving you and we need to move.” This group of trees had appeared strong earlier, but the wind was all but pushing them over now, revealing their dangerously shallow roots. “I can’t carry you. You’re too damn big.”

As if in a period to her words, a tree not far from them crashed to the earth with a sound so loud it cut through the weather, the impact reverberating along the ground. Another tree fell soon afterward, snapped in half like a matchstick.

“Quick,” Aden ordered, and took the drink.

Crawling forward again, in the direction of the wind, she found the now empty daypack plastered against a tree. The only other things she found were three solid energy bars trapped in the roots of a tree and, oddly enough, the penlight, which had become stuck against a large rock.

She put the items in the pack, crawled back to Aden’s side, and added the medkit to it. “Can you walk?”

In answer, he levered himself up and seemed to find his balance after a shaky start. Getting up, she rose on her toes as he bent forward so they could speak. “The energy hit helped,” he said. “My head’s pounding, but I can function.” Taking the daypack, he pulled it on, then slipped his arm around her waist. “Stay together!”

She gripped the back of his jacket. “Go!”

Another tree slammed to the earth only inches from them. It was no longer safe to stay here but heading out onto open ground left them brutally exposed to the elements. And those elements were in a punishing mood. Lightning lit up the sky in a jagged white-hot burst in the distance, thunder boomed, and each drop of rain hit like a tiny shard of ice, cutting at their faces and soaking everything not covered by the rainproof barrier of their jackets.

Her combat pants had some built-in weather protection but nothing designed to deal with this kind of a storm. She could feel water trickling into her socks, knew her feet would be ice-cold before long. Aden had to be in the same situation. Cold, however, was a problem they’d handle when it became an issue. Right now, it was about making it to safe harbor, any safe harbor. They could not stay expos—

Her stomach suddenly cramped again and this time, she couldn’t control the nausea.

Bending forward to throw up, she tasted blood.





* * *


ADEN helped Zaira up after her convulsive retching, shivers wracking her body so uncontrollably that it felt as if she’d shatter. Holding on to her more tightly, he used all his energy to help her move.

“I’m going to lose consciousness soon,” she said against his ear when he bent toward her. “I’ll be dead weight.”

He’d carry her until he couldn’t walk anymore. Because he would never again watch one of his people die without doing everything in his power to stop it. “Do you know how many Arrows I had to let go?” he asked her. “How many I couldn’t assist, couldn’t get out when they began to fracture?”

“They understood, Aden. We all did.” Her fingers clenched in his jacket, her left leg beginning to drag. “You were fighting for our survival and they died in battle.” Harsh breaths. “Don’t take that honor from them by using their deaths as a whip with which to punish yourself.”

His shin hit a rock hidden in the dark, the impact hard enough to bruise bone, but he kept going. “Stop talking. Conserve your strength.”

“And stop winning the argument?”

If Aden had known how to smile, he thought he may have at that instant. Zaira’s razor-sharp words told him she was still fighting. But he didn’t know how to smile, his emotions crushed beneath the heavy weight of Arrow training until he wasn’t sure they existed—but he wanted to find out.

“Thank you,” Zaira said unexpectedly the next time he bent toward her. “For not leaving me alone in the dark.” A breath that didn’t sound right. “For keeping your promise.”