Lilia fought fresh waves of pain with every breath. For hours, she had watched a tanglevine creeping toward her bloody leg exposed through her torn trousers. She saw red welts on her ankles now, in the bright light of the moons. Out in the sandy creek bed, she was completely exposed.

The raptor was a karoi, one of the four kinds of nighttime scavengers. This one stood as tall as her thigh. A pack of them could tear the flesh from her in a few hours, and unlike their daytime counterparts, they didn’t always wait until their food was dead before they started eating it.

Lilia watched the bird. Her tongue felt large and thick, her throat parched. The moons were up and Para had set. She had spent twelve hours enduring the pain in her torso and increasing numbness in her limbs. She was so thirsty. Death would be welcome. But being ripped apart… no. Not that. Fear, panic, terror… Now she lay exhausted, staring dumbly at her broken right wrist. The blood had clotted. If she didn’t reset the bone soon, she might lose her hand. She may have already. But the one time she had tried crawling back into the trees to find a broken branch, the pain was so intense, she blacked out.

And that left her here.

The raptor hissed.

Lilia watched it lever its long tail. Most bones in the tail were articulated, like the spine, but not the bone at the base of the tail. It was as sturdy and straight as any splint.

She closed her eyes. Flexed her good hand. Waited.

She heard the scuffle of the karoi’s claws in the sand. Its wingtips brushed her arm.

Lilia shot out her hand. Gripped the karoi’s neck. Pain jolted through her broken body. She screamed. The raptor drove its beak into her cheek. It flapped its wings and raked at her face and hand. Lilia tried to get up. Kept her grip on the bird’s neck. She felt the neck snap.

A mistake, moving. She was too broken.

Her stomach heaved. Darkness swam across her vision. The bird screamed and screamed.

Blackness took her.

Finally.

But she had beaten the bird.

“You know the price.” Not her voice. Someone else.

Lilia woke to the smell of wood smoke. The hungry claws of a bone tree dangled in front of her, and at their end – the hooked beak of a karoi. She realized the claw of the bone tree was not attached to a tree; it was just a severed limb from one, hanging now from the end of a long stick driven into the ground.

She tried to roll over. Pain blossomed across her chest. She hissed. Tried to raise her left hand. It was bound from shoulder to wrist, wrapped securely around a long, straight branch neatly cut in two. Pain stabbed up her shoulder.

“Drink,” the voice said. She knew it.