The weight on my lap suddenly vanished, my arms were freed, and the expectation of my imminent demise drifted into the background like a cloud after a storm. My eyes flew open, landing on the creature hovering above me, a wriggling worm on a hook, screeching inaudibly. Cair was behind it, and the rage radiating through our bond was enough to have me crawling backward, a whimper lodged in my throat.

Cair’s eyes snapped to mine, softening in pity, but I couldn’t calm my erratic nerves, couldn’t find comfort in the look that typically soothed me. He barked an order—words I couldn’t hear over the blood rushing through my ears and the repetition of death, death, death echoing in the space around me—and suddenly there was someone in front of him, blocking my view.

There was silence for a moment before a sickening crack broke through the fog in my head, and another body dropped to the ground. Four in total. There had been five. Where was the fifth? Where had it⁠—

“Shh, little one, it’s alright.” Cair’s hands were on my cheeks, sticky and wet, and I didn’t want to think about what had made them wet. “You’re safe. They’re gone.”

I shook my head. “One more. There’s still one more.”

Death, death, death.

“It’s being tracked down as we speak,” he said, his voice gentle, surrounding me in warmth. “There are no more. You can come back to me now. It’s alright.”

Blindly, I reached for him, hands roving his chest, his arms, his face, checking for injuries, checking that he was whole and there. “A-are you hurt?”

“I’m okay.”

Tears welled in my eyes, and I plastered myself against Cair’s chest, inhaling the scent of him. Listening to the familiar beats of his heart. “I was useless, I’m sorry,” I sobbed. “I didn’t know what to do. I panicked, and I’m sorry.”

“You have nothing to apologize for.” He kissed the top of my head, and hugged me tight. “They should not have gotten close enough to use their power. Forgive me.”

“Nothing to forgive,” I muttered mindlessly, letting myself breathe and gradually claw my way back from the void I’d strayed into. The heaviness in my chest loosened first, before the haze waned, and once clarity hit, it was immediately replaced by embarrassment. Self-loathing.