I tuck the switch back in my belt and lean over him. I’m not sure how to help him without doing more damage, but I set a hand under his back and another right beneath his hip. Wedging both hands as close to the stone as I can, I lift him away from it. The blood sucks and smacks and the pain snaps him awake. A protest escapes his shaking lips. Blood pours out from the back of the wound as I get him free. He passes back out a second later.

I’ve got a head of height on him, so it’s easy to tuck my head over one of his shoulders and bear-hug his chest to mine. I get one hand pressed over the wound and the other tight against the base of his neck. Careful to not let his head bounce or his spine shift, I stumble back through the valley. He’s not light by any stretch, but it’s only a few hundred paces. I set him down beside my ashes and rummage through saddlebags. There’s not a whole lot of light, but I practiced enough that I could stitch a wound in the black of a cave.

I clean it out first, wasting my own bandages on him. I’m thankful he’s blacked out from the pain, because this would be a nasty welcome back into the world. The entry point is easy, but the frontal wound ruptures twice while I’m patching him. Cursing, I waste even more of my bandages to finish. When that’s done, I wash off my hands and put my back to the canyon wall. I sit there, eyeing a gap in the raised mesa where the sun’s supposed to come.

Before sunrise, I know I’ll have to wake him. If he’s paralyzed, I’ll have to take him with me. It’s far from ideal, but it’s also the only way to guarantee he stays alive long enough for me to reach the end. Leave him behind and helpless and it’s likely he’ll die the next night. In fact, I wouldn’t put it past the Empire Racing Board to lure something over that would finish him off and get me disqualified.

This is an unexpected complication. I can almost imagine Daddy pacing through his study as he watches me, a hundred strategies spinning through his head. But that thought chains itself to an image of the Dread offering to protect me, and Daddy rejecting his offer. I shake my head and know that out here, no one can help me.

I’m my own general now.

Every choice I make is not just a choice for me. It will echo back to the Reach. Feeling the weight of all that on my shoulders, I take a second to close my eyes.

Chapter 32: Barriers