Page 44 of Heart’s Rescue

Cold and soaking wet. I can feel her teeth chattering against my skull, or maybe that’s my teeth. I’m soaked too, and this is bad. Damn it all, this is bad.

I look up and take stock of our surroundings. The trees are thin here, and the weird purple cast to the light means we’re almost at the border of the void. But not close enough to escape the cursed cold, which is currently slicing through my wet clothes like a blade. Arryn’s shivering is so violent she’s almost convulsing.

We need fire. Fire, and shelter, and we need to get out of these wet clothes. I slowly unwrap my arms from Arryn’s back and shrug out of my pack. It’s going to take too long to build the shelter. I need to get firewood while Arryn gets in her bedroll—

And Arryn’s bedroll is now at the bottom of the river. Shit. I hiss through my teeth, then grab Arryn’s chin and meet her eyes.

“I need you to get out of your clothes,” I say.

Despite being half-drowned and mostly frozen, Arryn still manages to look shocked. I shake my head. I’m starting to shiver now too; not a good sign.

“They’re wet,” I explain. “You need to get out of them, or you’ll freeze. Get in the bedroll. I’ll g-get f-firewood.”

I don’t like the way my chattering teeth are making it hard to speak. With numb fingers, I force my pack open and drag out my bedroll, scattering food and clothes across the dirty snow. Arryn’s hands are fumbling at the catch of her cloak, and her face has gone a sort of dusky gray that scares the crap out of me. I reach for her, undo the catch with my own stupid, shivering hands, and then tug the bedroll through the snow toward her.

“I’m s-sorry,” I say, through clenched teeth. “This is g-gonna be awkward.”

“Okay,” Arryn manages. I think she might be trying to nod, but I can’t tell if it's an agreement or just her body’s desperate attempt to warm itself.

I pull off her cloak, then the blue wool sweater I’d stitched back together last night. She’s still wearing the old shirt I gave her after the void beast’s attack, which might have been satisfying in some weird way under vastly different circumstances. As it is, I leave her shirt on until I’ve gotten her out of her pants, not without noticing that she’s wearing something white and silky-looking between her legs, and then I reach for the hem of her shirt, pull it up, and close my eyes.

“Okay,” I say, once I’ve tossed her shirt blindly off into the snow. “Get in the bedroll.”

There’s a chattering teeth sort of sound that probably comes from me and then the heavy rustle of furs. When I dare to open my eyes again, Arryn’s in the bedroll, with her wet hair spread out on the snow beneath her.

She’s stopped shivering. In fact, she’s stopped moving at all; the flutter of her eyelids is the only sign that she’s still alive. Her face is still that unhealthy shade of ash. And now I’m shivering so violently that the world is jittering up and down.

“F-f-fuck,” I mutter.

I’m not going to make it to get firewood. Maybe if there were any trees nearby; maybe if I hadn’t been such an idiot and tried to cross the ice on foot. But as it stands, I need to warm up now, or I’m going to keel over and die. Like an asshole.

I glance at Arryn. There’s frost on her hair. She looks perfectly miserable.

Well, what the hell. Why not make a horribly awkward situation even worse?

With a shivering sort of sigh, I tug off my own cloak, sweater, and shirt, kick off my boots, and pull off my pants. Then I climb into the bedroll next to Arryn and hope that we aren’t both about to freeze to death.