Valkar lay still, deathly quiet, his chest rising and falling so shallowly it seemed as though the very beat could cease at any second. The color of his face, the unnatural tension of his body, told Kael what he had already surmised—Valkar was in a coma so deep it was more of an in-between state of life and death.
Kael's own heart pounding, he knelt by Valkar, his hands closing around the still hand as if the tension of his own grasp could hold the dragon-man fast to life. The cold reality bore him down like a massive weight: Valkar could no longer defend them both.
And Kael was more at risk than ever before, for since he had first blundered, sightless and unready, into this cruel world.
