She yawned, her jaw actually cracking her mouth opened so wide. “Sorry.” She covered her mouth with bound hands.
Dray drew back from her, and she made a sound of protest as she lost his warmth, but she couldn't seem to find the energy to do anything about it.
“We need blankets too.” Dray's voice was so loud, she forced her eyes open.
The soldiers were sitting huddled close to the hovers under the tarpaulin, settling themselves in with thin sleeping mats and blankets, and they seemed momentarily astonished.
“Now.” Dray's tone was implacable. “She's cold enough already. Do you want her to get sick or die of exposure?”
Clin rose to his knees, looking at them with dislike, but he eventually shuffled to the storage hold of the hover they were leaning against.
He tossed them a single mat and a blanket.
She wondered if there were more available and he was just being an asshole, or if there really was only one spare.
Dray laid it out lengthways along the hover, so they were completely under the tarpaulin, and then lay down, the blanket in his bound hands. He lifted his arms again, and seeing where he was going with it, she hesitated a moment, and then wriggled until she fitted in beside him, head on his shoulder, hands tucked between them. His arms came down to encircle her again.
The blanket settled around them, and she anchored one side under her hip, so no cold air could get in.
For a moment, she just lay, her body weeping with joy at being horizontal, and warm.
Conscience prompted her. “Your shoulder will be numb if we stay this way.” It was also intensely personal, intensely intimate.
She could hear his heart beat beneath her ear, felt the small adjustments he made beneath her.
She'd thought him attractive from the moment she'd seen him, but running for their lives, dealing with captivity, had redirected her focus to simply stay alive.
Now that she had a small moment of safety and calm, he was all-encompassing.
She shivered, and it had nothing to do with the cold, although his reaction, tightening his hold, told her he thought it was.
“I'll let you know when I can't feel my shoulder.” His already gravelly voice sounded a little raw.
She lifted her chin to look up at him. “Are you getting sick?”
He cleared his throat. “No.”
She subsided, and eyes closed, decided to nap a little if she could.
She woke with a start she didn't know how much later.
For a moment she was confused. There was no sound, even the wind had dropped, and she was lying on her side, Dray spooned around her.
She was warm and as comfortable as sleeping on a thin mat on hard, cold ground could be, but her heart was racing.
She could hear Dray's quiet breathing, and careful not to let in cold air, lifted up on an elbow to look around the camp.
The Tecran were sleeping.
She frowned at the scene, sure something didn't make sense, and then she worked out what it was. One of the soldiers was missing from their mat.
Her mind cleared. They'd obviously scheduled a watch.
Maybe the guard moving around was what had woken her.
She relaxed back down under the blanket, but now she was awake, she realized she also needed to answer a very pressing call of nature.
She tried to convince herself it could wait, and then gave up, sliding carefully out from under Dray's embrace and the blanket.
A hand gripped her upper arm.
“What is it?” Dray's voice was alert, as if he hadn't just been in a deep sleep.
“I have to go . . . um . . .” She didn't know what the colloquial Tecran was for using the facilities.
But she didn't have to. Dray nodded, started rising.
“No. You don't need to come with. I'll be quick.”
He hesitated.
“I don't need an audience.” She grinned at him in the darkness, and he subsided down. Gave a nod.
She had gone to sleep with her boots on, so she crawled over Dray, an awkward maneuver with her hands restrained in front of her, and then squeezed through the gap between their hover and the one beside it in the circle.
Once she stepped out, she blinked in sudden realization that the fog had almost completely cleared.
The night sky glittered, something she hadn't been able to see with the tarpaulin overhead.
It was magical.
And it could wait, because she really needed to answer the call of nature now.
She made out a nearby bush by the light of Gyre, which was full and bright, its much smaller companion, Anar, in perpetual crescent because of Gyre's shadow.
She walked behind it for privacy, cursing the restraints at her wrists. They weren't tight, but they made everything more difficult.
She supposed she should be grateful Virn had retied them in front of her body, or this would have been near impossible.
When she was done, she emerged and walked back to the hovers, looking up at the beauty above her.
It hit her every now and then that she was in an extraordinary situation, that there was an element of wonder and adventure about it that was no less real even though it had been forced on her.
But she was here. And she couldn't go home. Bane had made that clear. So there was something healthy and healing in seeing the good around her as well as the injustice.
After looking up for a few minutes, it occurred to her that whoever was on guard hadn't so much as approached her, let alone asked her what she was doing up.
Frowning, she turned to looked toward the camp, only a few meters away, and realized she couldn't see anyone.
She moved back to the hover circle, her gaze sweeping left and right.
A sound to her left made her freeze.
She turned, but there was nothing visible in the darkness.
Worried now, more than a little uneasy, she took the last few steps to reach the hovers, and as she squeezed between two of them, something threw itself at her.
In the dark, she caught the glow of eyes and flash of teeth before she got on the right side of the hard, cold metal of the hovers.
She smelled the stink of fetid breath, felt the splatter of saliva against her cheek, and she screamed as she fell backward, landing on her back in the center of the camp.
“Kol?” Dray was beside her, so fast that he had to have already been moving before she fell.
“I don't know. Something with teeth.”
The Tecran were awake, now, she could hear them shouting at each other, and perhaps whoever had been on watch.
Whoever it was, their absence now took on a more sinister significance.
She scrambled to her feet, Dray helping her up. They stood together, hands bound, while the Tecran ripped the tarpaulin down to take up position with their shockguns against the barrier of the hovers.
Rua took a shot, and she heard the high-pitched squeal of an animal in pain.
“Got it.” Rua glanced at the others. “Didn't take it down, though.”
“Put it on a higher setting,” Virn ordered.
“It already is on the highest setting. Their coats are thick. I've heard you have to hit them somewhere like the eyes or into the mouth to get a kill shot.”
At Rua's words, the tension seemed to escalate.
“Where's Graven?” Krian's soft question fell like lead into the silence.
“As he was on guard, I'm assuming he's dead.” Virn's voice was a little unsteady.