When addled energies had flagged at last, the hollowness began. Being attached to anyone is a poison, much less this boy not of her blood, whose recoiling steps had drawn her down into murky depths.
She was in a shock, and could not take it all in. The whole thing seemed like a nightmare, yet here she was in flesh, chasing after a halved shadow, tonguing fear from her spying roost. Any time she found herself thinking it an illusion or a dream of some kind, the cold took form and ravaged her heels. Yakone obliterated all with sea-hunter jaws— fighting so on, and so forth, spinning the emotional torrents to Trygve.
Meanwhile, the end of their species was taking place before their very eyes.

