“Pull, Kolibri, pull!”
The ice chunk lifted at the corners.
“PULL, KOLIBRI.”
With an audible grind, the ice chunk flipped forward. Once it gave, momentum was all Kolibri needed to surge slowly up the mountain. Wet friction scraped behind us as the slab came free, and I abandoned Kolibri, rushing back to the frayed rope which lay flattened over the surface of snow.
I plunged my hands under. And felt something solid.
A black rider’s hat. Smooshed and crusted with snow. I flung it aside, reaching back in, fingertips grazing soft fur.
A dappled gray shoulder.
It lay completely still.
Dread twisted in my gut. I slid my fingers down the curve of Sero’s leg and latched onto the edge of fabric.
A sleeve.
Like the hat, it was covered in a fine layer of dust, inflexible as though frozen in the minutes since being buried.
How long had he been under? Five minutes? Ten?
I wrapped my hands around the sleeve and tugged, leveraging my weight on my heels.
Kye’s arm broke free, snapping into the air as it cleared its barrier of hardened snow. The curve of Kye’s hip lay visible underneath. Motionless.
But extracting his hand gave me a clear idea of where his head might be, and I shifted to dig a few inches away.
Skin met with my fingers—damp hair and the shell of an ear.
I pulled him up from the drift, blue and lifeless. A purple knot protruded from his forehead, his nose and mouth packed with snow.
“No, no, no,” I breathed, wiping snow from his face. My fingers wrapped around the fur collar of his coat, and I hauled him up with a desperate groan, unearthing his body from the shroud of ice.
No heartbeat echoed in his chest, nor wind from his lungs. His eyes hung open, the white edge of his teeth visible through his slack mouth.
But I knew he was here. He hadn’t left me yet. He was here, he was here, he washere.
I knew it, because I refused to believe anything else. Because something in me would recognize if he wasn’t.
It had been months since the first time I’d breathed life into him. I knew more now than I did then. How potent my Naiad oxygen was. How to listen for sound within a body. How to command the fluid inside.
I fit my hands over his chest and straightened my elbows, forcing my weight down in a sudden jolt through my arms. Terror spilled over, my arms shaking with panic. Sweat dripped from my forehead, though every inch of my body burned with the numb bite of cold. Terror sealed my throat.
A crack came through my fingertips as his sternum broke.
I pumped a few times; certain I was doing it wrong. There were no instructions to follow except the whisper of instinct, and I blindly let it guide me as I leaned forward and fit my lips over his frozen mouth.
I’d forgotten how hard it was to force air into another body. His lungs protested at the expansion, pushing back, and I drove my Naiadic oxygen into him with all the force my ribs couldcontain, then rose up on my knees to push once more against his chest.
Come on, Kye.
I didn’t have the time or breath to say the words out loud.
But they were there in my head.
Come on, Kye. Come on, Kye.
