Chapter 41 · Edge of the Chasm

The dagger came up out of the dark like a snake.

I saw it before Vane did. I was flat on my belly at the lip of the Bleak Chasm, both fists wrapped around the rope. The wind screamed so loud I could barely hear myself.

"Wrist!" I yelled anyway. "Vane, your wrist!"

Garrick hung twenty feet below him with one boot hooked in a loop of line. His face was split open and grinning red. The blade in his hand shone wrong. Too bright. Silver, with a green gloss of poison on it.

Vane twisted. Not fast enough.

The steel missed his wrist and opened his forearm from glove to elbow. I felt it. Not saw it, *felt* it. The bond lit up in my chest like someone had jammed a hot poker between my ribs. I choked on the cold.

*Seraphina.*

His voice came through the bond, not the wind. Low. Rough. Barely holding together.

*Don't let go.*

"Wasn't planning to, jackass," I said out loud, and hauled.

The rope bit straight through the bandages on my wrists. The cuts I'd made on the ancestral stones tore open again.