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Each breath is like welcoming knives into her lungs, and her legs burn, growing heavier with each step. At this last campsite, the embers are still warm, and through a gap in the rocks ahead, she thinks she sees the glow of torchlight, if she squints against the snow.
Then their voices ring out, over the howling wind and the wolves in the valley (she's so lucky they didn't find her), the voices that have become familiar over the strange weeks since the sky opened, and now, as she shivers so hard her teeth rattle in her skull, even comforting. Their faces appear from the white-grey haze ahead.
Breathing a sigh she can scarcely afford to release, for it's the very last of her heat lost to the blizzard, she sinks to her knees.
The Commander is the first to reach her, kneeling beside her in the drift, his armour like ice, but his skin radiates warmth, his breath hot and sweet as it touches her face (he has been eating something with cinnamon). The feathers tickle her neck and, delirious and unable to feel her fingers even as she grasps at him, she almost giggles.
She closes her eyes and sags against him as he pulls her to her feet, and on her other side she feels Cassandra, sturdy and welcoming, wrap an arm around her shoulders. But it is Cullen she leans into, and his arm tightens around her waist, pulling her to him as if to shield her from the cold that has already burrowed so deep inside.
"We need blankets," Cullen orders, and she feels the vibrations of his words through her chest.
Then, under his breath, "You're safe." She can't tell if it's a promise or an affirmation, but it's the last thing she hears before she slips away.