Page 112 of Guiding Reason

The first one’s knife arm was bleeding heavily, and he’d dropped his knife. The speedling—he’d become a shield to Avan, giving the gift of protection—covered Col now, turning shield for the healing soother.

“No! Run!” Avan yelled even as he felt Rose’s roots rise from deep below their feet.

The third Southerner, the silent one, he was reaching for the speedling, and where human eyes were too dull to see it, Avan made out the black ring low in that one’s left ear.At that placement, he can bend the speedling, or worse, drain him.

“This is no Vashana! You cannot!” Avan shouted at them.

That was when Rose’s jaw dropped. Rose knew what it meant to have your will bent if only by Anandas. A thick root broke through the packed soil right next to the bender, but it was toolate. The bender slapped his palm against the speedling’s neck, made doubly easy as he was sheltering Col with his bulk.

The neck was good for draining them fast, and Avan, dread coiling through him, expected the speedling to drop.

He did not. The bender was surprised. Just then, the skin shifter roared, slashed Chipped Tooth and kicked the one who’d wanted to stab Avan, then punched the bender.

Rose’s root twisted, pushing the skin shifter back and pulling the bender the other way.

“Are you okay?!” Col fought the speedling’s hold, reached up to his neck. “What did he do? What the fuck did he do to you?”

The rest of what he said, Avan didn’t understand.

However, the skin shifter turned toward them. There was blood on his face, not his own, but more strikingly, small blades as well.They almost look like the spikes of a winter king’s crown,Avan thought.It’s beautiful.

“What the fuck was that?” the sharp one asked.

Avan understood that too, but he didn’t know how to answer it.

39

COLDIS

“Are they dead? Fuck, Hyran?”

Hyran huffed, and the arm he wouldn’t unwind from around Col’s middle was shaking.

“It’s not too bad, Col. I’m fine.”

“Don’t be such a fucking idiot and let me go. Taros,are they dead?”

Col brushed his fingers all over Hyran’s neck, but everything felt fine, the skin there unbroken.

“You’re safe. Thank the Covenant that you are safe.” Hyran smiled a stupidly faint smile, and his voice was a stupidly wispy shadow if its normal self, and it pissed Col off.

“Pull yourself together, you big baby. You didn’t see me whine when I got concussed, did you?”

“Uh.” With that, Hyran collapsed forward onto Col, but luckily, Taros was right there, helped support the stupidly big Guardian.

“Don’t you dare collapse onto me, do you hear? Stay on your fucking feet, you idiot.” Hyran’s eyes looked distant, as if he were about to pass out. “Hyran? Hyran!”

“Fuck,” Taros said.

A Hound appeared at Hyran’s shoulder, and Col raised his gun.

He recognized Avan just in time. “Oh, fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck. I’m sorry.”

Col lowered the gun and stumbled with Taros as they both tried to keep Hyran upright. Avan said something urgent.

“He says that’s poison on the blade.”

A creaking swishing sound forced Col’s heart into a harsher pace.