Chapter 170

His fingers came off my wrist.

Not because he let go. Because Caspian had his arms, from behind, above the elbow, and had pulled them down and away from me as you pull a man off a ledge, and Malachai’s hand went with them, and mine was suddenly my own again, white and bleeding and shut.

I stood with my back against the stone. It breathed in past my shoulder, long and slow, and the cold that came out of the seam on the out-breath had nothing in it at all. Not a smell. Not a sound.

“Majesty,” said Malachai pleasantly, over his shoulder. “You cannot hold me long.”

“Long enough,” said Caspian.

His voice was rough and too low. The frost had come out of Malachai’s sleeves onto his hands and was going up them as I watched, white over the knuckles, white over the backs of the wrists, into his cuffs. His face was grey. There was a dark place on his coat under the left ribs that ran down into his boot, and the floor under his boot was red where the melt-water ran