“Krynn, no, don’t rub. Not the arms. Not the legs. We warm the heart and lungs first, in time … When I tell you. If you heat the limbs too fast, the cold blood in them floods back to the core. That’s how you kill someone trying to save them … You hold their hands, if you want to help. That’s all. Just hold. Keep the fingers from stiffening. No rubbing.”
“Do you still see them?” Yu asked eventually. “I mean, sense them? The witch?”
“Yes,” Imbiad said.
“Me too,” said Yu. “I hear her, I mean.”
He did not.
That was a lie. Or half of one.
He pretended, at least. He pretended to listen. Pretended to track the lingering pulse of her presence. In truth, he had shut it out — everything. The voices and the whispers. Yu did not allow the heartbeats in, nor any more of Estingar’s careful instructions. He let the storm fill his head instead. He drew in the wind to run wild, to disturb and distort an drive away everything else. Because he needed space. He needed room to hear the echoes of his own thoughts.
They said that he needed to find someone safe.
There was only one other person who had been there for the whole encounter, from the moment the witch stepped into the light to the moment the shaman passed through the door. Imbiad. Even if Yu was utterly alone with what he had heard and seen and felt, Imbiad had at least been present.
Yu did not know what he was hoping for. Maybe a sign. A glance. A breath held too long. Anything to prove this was not just happening in his head, anything to show that Imbiad had also felt how much of all of this was … wrong.
But Imbiad said nothing. Gave nothing.
And the longer the silence stretched between them, the more room it left for worse things, for other voices.
Could he trust Imbiad?
Could he trust anyone from Harrow’s party?
Yu wanted to. But that was the danger. Wanting was not the same as knowing. Trusting without reason or proof was just … fear. Fear with a mask on. Desperation disguised as hope.
What did he really know about them? About Imbiad, Harrow, about any of them?
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