She grabbed Ronan by the elbow and hung on with all her strength. He turned his head slowly, focusing on her; his eyes were narrowed to slits, dark gray in a pale, rigid face. Merciless. The expression of a trained assassin.
If ever she had needed her telepathy, it was now. She forced her fear aside.
No, she projected, closing her eyes. No, Ronan.
He flinched and blinked rapidly. His muscles flexed and relaxed in her grip. He lowered his hand.
He had heard her. The killer’s ardor went out of his eyes. The connection was still there between them: She sensed a vague surprise in him, as if he didn’t know where he was or how he had come to be there.
Cynara uncoiled a rope from her pack and held it up, waiting for Ronan to understand. He continued to stare at her in bewilderment, even after Gunter lunged up and sank a knife hilt-deep into his side.
Ronan fell, not as a man falls, but like one of the great trees in Jyri forest, slowly and without grace. His cheek struck a surface both firm and giving that shaped itself to the contours of his face. Melted snow wet his tongue. Somewhere there was pain, but it did not reach him. It had fled to the same place the cold had gone when he prepared his body for its ordeal.
Sharp pellets of sound came to him amid the drone of the wind. Motion flashed in the corner of his vision. Someone touched him with the gentleness of the li’laik’i nurturers of Ain’Kalevi, taking him back to his childhood.
Ronan! He heard the voice, but not with his ears. It rang in his head. He tried to turn toward it, but his limbs would not obey. Blackness grew behind his eyelids.
Fight it, Ronan! I’ll get you back to the shuttle. Just hold on.
Strange how the sounds seemed unfamiliar, in a language he did not recognize. Yet he understood. He would try to obey, because the one who demanded his obedience held his life as surely as his mind.
“It is when you face the most difficult challenge that you must call upon all Paths,” Sihvaaro said. Ronan tried to summon the chant. The words dissolved before he could grasp them, like the snow melting in his mouth.
“There is a time to battle for what must change, and a time to accept what will be.”
Acceptance. Relief. All at once he knew that it was better to end here, because what waited on the other side was too terrible, like the death he had seen in his enemy’s eyes. On the other side stood a stranger who would steal his soul.
Accept.
No. Curse you, no! Warmth like distant memory caressed his face. Heat scalded his mouth, life-giving fire. He knew the lips that touched his.
Cynara. She was with him, holding him, breathing her will into him with her body as her mind laid siege to his. But another Ronan fought against this woman and her promise of healing as if she brought not life but eternal damnation.
The battle was lost before it truly began. Cynara swept past the ramparts, carrying all resistance before her.
Cold. Pain. Ronan opened his eyes. He smelled his own blood, heard harsh breathing nearby—Gunter, who had tried to kill him.
Something slapped his bared arm. Cynara crouched over him with her lips almost brushing his forehead.
“A coagulant patch,” she said. “It’ll help stop the bleeding until we reach the shuttle. Gunter won’t be any more trouble. I’m taking you back now. Zheng and Lizbet are on their way—they’ll carry Kord. Do you understand?”
He understood her perfectly, remembered all that had happened with crystal clarity.
Remembered everything.
He knew why he had wanted to die, and why he must not. Laughter hissed between his teeth, jarring the deep wound in his side.
“Don’t try to talk. I’ll get you back. Just hold on.”
She braced her legs and lifted him, and he did what he could to support his own weight. Pain could be ignored, and biting chill. But not what he had remembered. Not the knowledge of why he was here. Knowledge that brought not certainty and confidence but turmoil.