An immense weight slammed into Vladya’s shoulder, piercing at a pressure point between his scapula and neck so that his merciless vice grip on Kershov’s jugular snapped reflexively open. If the ligaments responsible for producing noise hadn’t been shredded into nothingness by their previous chorus, Vladya would have snarled in rage. Instead he found himself tumbling—silently—into the talon-shredded mud, sight blacking out completely before attempting to skitter back in blurred snapshots. He drowned in the heavy darkness. Where was light? Where was the surface? Where was Kobato?

Her final frenzied scream wrenched a sympathetic cry from the wounded serpent’s maw. His searching stare finally found her. He could see the panicked glimmer of white limning her honey irises. And then—

What was that piled up beneath her chest—

“Wh-what did you . . . do to her?”

The medics on the tundra had sardonically called them “ice packs.” When you were bleeding out, your fur so soaked and slimy with red that it felt more like mud than a part of yourself, you got an ice pack: snow pressed high and heavy over your wounds until the lava of your own life melted through. In theory, the fresh blanket of ice was supposed to staunch the flow of imminent death; everyone had noticed how it took longer for your split paws to bleed when they were nearly frozen solid. The cold slowed your heart and shrank your veins. The very substance that transformed landscapes into barren horizons of glittering white and stole your brothers in their sleep was utilized to buy a few more precious seconds of life . . . seconds, perhaps, that would save you in the end. That was the joke, anyway. As if a few snowflakes were going to stitch your limb back to your body. As if enough snow would stop the artery spurting copper-flavored crimson like a geyser. Everyone knew what it really meant to see your comrade lying on his side with snow plastered to his wounds. Beneath that useless bandage were slowly failing organs. Ice packs were just pale dirt on your shallow grave.

Seeing Kobato laying limp on her side with ruby-stained crystals heaped against her abdomen felt like looking at her in her coffin.

“Ko. . . bato . . .” The sound was hardly more than a hiss. There were knives in his throat. He pulled the weak weary words from his chest and winced at their abrasive scrape as they caught on the scream-blistered tissue of his trachea. Curved barbed wires of rust tangling in his ruptured vocal chords. The slow leaking sensation of heat . . . internal bleeding. Bone-deep ache of bruising. The taste of blood and hair and bile like a swath of fetid flesh on his tongue. So much heartbreak that wanted to be a roar and could only escape like a corpse’s last exhalation. He hurt he hurt he hurt.

“I . . . I’m . . . c-coming . . .”

It was impossible to tell anymore if the acid burning down his cheekbones was the sting of tears or the burn of blood. One pyrite eye had swollen shut. Beneath the fathomless night canopy, the only ivory that still gleamed on Vlad’s ravaged hide fluttered in frayed pieces along his shoulders and hips. Everything else . . . stained. Ruined. The soldier had been transformed into draugr, strips of flesh exposed that had no business in the open air, all four of his legs stripped nearly bare by his own bewildered knives. When he panted, his lungs rattled with thick liquid. Viscous skeins of red dribbled from his open jowls, leaking like oil from a broken machine. This . . . this was not a state that one survived without help. These were mortal wounds. Kobato, limp and helpless under that cruel moonless sky, was in no better shape. The mound of crystallized water lumped against her stomach had already turned black. His worst nightmare had come true. Their love story was no fairytale. It was a tragedy.

He had to drag himself the rest of the way when his legs finally gave out, unable to support his half-dead weight. Paws made of solid lead shuffled clumsily, sluggishly toward that precious silhouette. Vladya could smell them now—the ones that didn’t make it. He tried not to look at the two lifeless shapes on their alabaster stage. He didn’t want to smell the briny fluid that made their fine fur slick. He didn’t want to think of them as real, but there they were, miniature copies of himself and his princess, lifeless symbols of all the potential—all the glory—that had been robbed from their lives. The soldier’s guts heaved. Not fair. Why . . . why had this happened to them? No—to Kobato, Archangel of Compassion, Queen of Peace, the goddess who in her endless mercy descended to tell Vladya of dreams and wishes and a meaning beyond suffering. She deserved generations of children and a mate who could shield her from misfortune. Instead it had come to this . . . a death without dignity before the heartless gaze of winter. A crime.

But . . .

Fading vision focused on the squirming squeaking bundle of life nestled under Kobato’s chin. The single child still breathing. Tiny, stumpy legs that ended in miniscule paws. Sweet pink lips opened in soft, demanding mewls. A plush rounded body as incredible as it was defenseless. A little girl . . . absolutely perfect in every way. Their daughter. Their Brielle.

He had promised himself to be better for Kobato. The least he could do was be there with his family when they died—with a heart absent of hatred and filled instead with resplendent love.

Vladya slumped down next to his mate, no longer capable of crying out at the needles that stabbed into his nerves each time he moved. He lay so that he was parallel to Ko, tattered banner draped gently over her damp flank, mutilated limbs folded beneath him. His muzzle—striped with nacreous scars and filled with traitorous teeth—nudged the pup with infinite care closer to the downy nook of Kobato’s caramel-silk throat. With a sigh, the dragon snuggled closer to his brood, until impure snow wove itself into a desert tapestry: sides touching, Kobato’s cranium nestled under his jaw, and Brielle cradled protectively between them. They would share each other’s loving warmth . . . for as long as that warmth may last.

And then, if the goodness that had given birth to Kobato’s soul existed beyond this plane, he would walk with his empress and their children beneath a never-ending waterfall of light.