“Come on!” I yell, looking over my shoulder, but Calder remains steady. The deer charges toward him.
Then, right at the last moment, it veers past him—to me.
It’s faster than I am. I run and run, choking on frigid air, looking over my shoulder, watching it nearly impale me—
And then it’s gone. Everything’s gone.
Because I didn’t see the cliff ahead.
And I’ve gone right over its edge.
At the last moment, I grab onto something,anything—and my handgrips a rock, the skin of my palm splitting. My body hangs, my legs kicking over hundreds of feet of empty space.
I’m going to die. The fall will kill me instantly.
There’s the scraping, crunching sound of an approach—
I look up, and I don’t see a crown of horns.
No. I see Calder, peering over the edge curiously as my grip begins to weaken.
This is it, then. The moment he’s been waiting for. The moment he can watch me die and perhaps feel a fraction of vengeance for his father’s death.
Our eyes meet. I want to beg him to tell my mother I’m sorry. I want to ask him to tell Egan I’m proud of him. I want to say a thousand things to Enya.
I open my mouth, feeling my fingers begin to slip. Wondering if he plans to kick me to hasten the fall.
But he does the unthinkable.
He reaches a hand toward me.
This has to be a trick. It has to be false. Alie.
His gaze is clear.
I reach the hand that isn’t holding on to the rock toward him. He grabs it. Without a moment of hesitation, he pulls me back up. Blood soaks the snow in front of us. The deer that was chasing me lies there, Calder’s blade buried in its side.
This could have been the end. I would have been dead, if it wasn’t for him.
I’m still here. I get another chance at this. Endless relief and gratitude heat me from the inside. I fall forward, hands erupting in flames.
“You got it,” Calder says simply.
Then he lifts the deer onto his back and turns toward our shelter.
“Why?” I ask later from my place by our fire, as Calder chomps at his hunt, his teeth breaking bone.
He hasn’t spoken since he pulled me to safety, but now he looks up at me. “Why what?”
“Why save me?”
He continues eating. It’s only when the entire dinner is almost gone, that he says, “You’re my roommate,” as if it is as simple as that.
I blink. “But ... you could have let me die.”
You could have used me to get back at my father, I think. He doesn’t know my father wouldn’t necessarily care.
Calder just blinks back at me. “Why would I do that?”
