Book One – Chapter 2

The temperature dropped past comfort, then past the threshold of pain, and further still. Yves felt it first in the joints of his fingers, then it gathered in his hands and feet, and from there it crawled upwards into his legs and arms. With his next breath, it crept into his chest. He felt the ache wind around his breastbone, push underneath his ribs and burrow within spine, and then everywhere in between. There, the cold spread until it spanned every space between one heartbeat and the next, and with every heartbeat it sharpened and stiffened and stung.

Yves freed the Cinderwake Draught from his belt. He offered most of it to Midnight, then he drank the rest himself, all but a few remaining sips. It was a variant of stamina potion, one that forced the body to burn through its own reserves and convert the depletion into heat. It did not make Yves feel any warmth, nor relief. The cold remained horrible. It still carried that lucid edge of high altitude and the knife-dry bite of an Albweiss ice storm, and it would stay that way. The draught merely prevented the shock that should have come with it. It kept his body from surrendering, for now.