Len Vey dropped to his knees beside the workbench. He leaned down so his cheek was barely two inches from Doma Reel’s lips.
The air coming from her mouth was hot, shallow, and smelled sickeningly of fresh dark blood, bitter bile, and stale boiler steam. Her fingers, hooked into the canvas of his coat around the top copper button, tightened with an unexpected, packed surge of will. The last packed ounce of stubborn life from a woman who had refused to bow to twelve years of darkness.
“Len...” she whispered. The sound was barely a voice. It was a wet, rattling gasp that scraped past the blood pooling in her pharynx.
“I’m here, Doma,” Len said, his voice hoarse, his sound right hand reaching up to close over her cold, trembling fingers. He pressed her hand firmly against his chest, right over the brass boiler plug resting in his waistcoat pocket. “I’m right here beside you. You’re in the forge shop. You’re off the wet stone.”
Her dark eyes, glazed with the dull, gray film of end-post hypovolemic shock, rolled slowly in their sockets until her pupils locked onto his.
“The... Children...” she murmured, her chest shuddering with a violent burst that sent a dark bubble of crimson over her lower lip. “Avel... Did they... Did they get... Across?”
