The wind was changing.
It didn't smell only of ash and smoke anymore. Now there was something else—something older, lurking in the deep folds of night. The smell of iron and ice, of fur and wind off mountaintops not kissed yet by flame.
Serena did not talk as they ran. Beside her, Kael's breath rasped, stuttered. He had been overextending himself. The gash in his side had begun to bleed anew.
Lucian found his way up to them at the edge of the rise. "He won't make it like this."
Serena turned to Kael. His face was gray beneath the blood and dirt. He was using his sword as a crutch, leaning on it as if it were the only prop keeping him standing.
"He has to," she said, but at the same time she said this, her hands were trembling. She gazed up at the dark sky, at the stars twirling slow circles overhead.
She felt something stir.
A pull.
It wasn't coming from the Hollow. Not this time.
It was coming from within.
She knelt next to Kael and took his hand. "Let me try."
