BATISTA'S POV
I kept at it until dawn washed the sky pale. We tore the ground up like men trying to pull a secret out of the earth. Eric and a handful of my warriors took shifts; we moved from one hole to the next, following the place I last saw her feet before the ground swallowed her. We searched every corner of the woods, overturned every stone, pushed aside roots like we were pulling at a stubborn wound.
By the time the birds started their first calls, my shoulders ached, my hands were raw where the shovel handle had bitten into them, and there was still no sign of Rain. The place where the earth had closed over her looked ordinary again — soft soil, a scatter of leaves — but I knew what I had seen. I would not let the memory of that mouth of earth be the last thing I held of her.
I was on my knees, pressing the shovel into a fresh mound, when a voice said, quietly, "You should stop."
