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TENN

Iwoke to the rather unnerving sensation that a shuldu had stomped – and stomped several times – on my right shoulder, chest, and neck.

When the blazes had I gotten under an angry shuldu’s hooves?

I cracked my eyes open, and found myself groaning with the effort.

Even the groan hurt. The sound felt as if it throbbed out of the side of my neck before it reached my throat.

It was agony. All of it.

“Tenn?”

Except for that.

“T…sh...” I mangled her name. Not enough breath in my lungs to fully shape the syllables.

But when my tired eyes blearily focused in on her, she was smiling anyway. Smiling like I’d just completed the most impressive feat she could have put before me. Like I’d just passed every possible test. Like she was proud of me.

Sunlight spilled in from a window I thought I recognized. Only, I was certain I’d never seen it from this angle before.

I was certain I’d been on the outside looking in.

“We’re at Warden Hallum’s,” Tasha said. She was sitting in a chair beside the bed I was lying in.

Herbed. The one she’d been sleeping in while I’d spent my nights outside in the tent.

I wanted to reach for her. But when I tried to lift my right arm, there was no corresponding movement. Nothing but an alarm blaring through my nerves.

My arm… Did I lose it?

“You’re in a splint. Your shoulder and collarbone were both injured.” Tasha leaned forward and gently patted what I now realized was my right arm, strapped sideways against my chest.

“Don’t try to talk,” she said. “You’ve lost a lot of blood. There are stitches and bandages on your neck. Just… rest. OK? And listen.”

Her hair was down. I watched the way the sun adorned each strand. Beads of light gathering like brambles.

“Yesterday, we went to Rivven’s saloon. Do you remember that?”

I couldn’t verbally say yes.

But I could drag my tail up and put it into her lap.

She grasped my tail. And held it tight.

“Yes? Yes. OK. And you told me… You told me about Silar. And we were fighting. But there was a storm.”

It all came back like thunder. The rain and the sky and the look of betrayal on her beautiful face.

I told her that I loved her…

And then…

There was nothing.

“The roof collapsed. On top of you.” Tasha’s eyes glistened. “You saved me.”

I remembered it. A mere sliver of it, anyway. The dread I’d felt when I’d heard the beam’s ominous crack.