Between one breath and the next, the injured male stopped lifting his breast.
He did not go still. His ribs continued moving beneath the female's body, but each rise ended lower than the one before it. Their chick shoved its burned beak under his neck and called until the damaged edge turned the sound thin.
Jiang moved his belly off the chick.
Cold found the ragged gap in his flank before he had completed the motion. He set his sound foot wide, let the straight leg drag, and lowered his beak beside the male's eye.
One dark eye opened. For a breath, it fixed on Jiang. Then it moved to the chick.
"He is here," Jiang said, though no emperor throat could give the words their human shape. "You kept him here."
His beak closed around a fold of the chick's neck feathers. There was no strength in the grip, only enough pressure to keep the small body where he could feel it.
Valea approached without her blade.
