By this point, Dawn is shivering. Uncontrollably. Her teeth are chattering like you only see in cartoons. Her fingers and her toes and her nose are all numb.

She can hardly think straight. But with about the last of her brainpower, she remembers how the ridge they were hiking to get to the Raven’s Claw a few days ago joined with another ridge, somewhere along the way. Both ridges combined in, like, an upside-down Y, so she’d barely noticed them coming together.

But where the ridges came together on the outbound leg, they would have to branch apart on the return trip. And now Dawn realizes how easy it would have been for her and Lucas to take the wrong leg of the Y. The stub end. Especially in the dark, and with no cairns to guide them.

It’s impossible to say how far they’ve come along this incorrect ridgeline, only that it’s clear they’ll have to go back.

But Brandon and Evan are back there.

And it’s cold. Very cold.

Suddenly, Dawn wants nothing more than to just lie down and sleep, but however beaten down she’s feeling right now? Lucas is worse.

Lucas is pale. His lips have a blue tinge to them and he’s shivering even though he’s trying not to show it. He’s clutching his jacket at the spot where Warden’s knife stabbed him, and his movements are slow, like he’s numb from the cold or from blood loss or both.

“I think we have to find shelter,” he tells Dawn, and his voice is scary weak, and he can’t meet her eyes.

Dawn looks around at the barren rock and doesn’t see how shelter is possible. “Where?” she asks.

Lucas rubs his forehead. “I think I saw a little protected alcove back there,” he tells her. “It should keep us out of the wind, anyway.”

It’s their only hope, Dawn knows. They can’t stay out here any longer. Now that they’re not moving, the cold’s really settling in: bitter, life-sapping cold, blasted into their faces by an unrelenting wind.

And it’s clear that Lucas can’t make it much farther.

She nods, weakly. Turns around. “Let’s go.”

Fifteen minutes later, they’re huddled inside a shallow crevice, shielded from the wind on three sides by the rock. Dawn lets Lucas go first and then crowds in behind him, and the gap in the rock isn’t quite deep enough to fit them both, so she still feels the wind at her back as she squeezes in and crouches beside him. Still, it’s marginally warmer here, and if they huddle together, they can probably survive the night.