Jinx reached the wreck. The sleek, angular starfighter was almost unrecognizable, a skeleton of twisted metal and burning components. The front canopy was completely shattered. Inside, slumped in the pilot's seat, was a man.
He was unconscious, his head lolling against the restraints. Blood streamed from a gash on his temple, painting a dark trail down the side of his face and onto the high collar of his uniform. It was a combat suit she'd only seen in passing on interstellar newsfeeds—a matte grey, form-fitting armor with glowing blue circuit lines, designed for vacuum and combat. A real soldier, or a mercenary. Not someone who should be crashing in the middle of a frozen nowhere.
She didn't understand how he got here, but the pull she felt was strongest here, at his side. It was a low, persistent hum of clinging life.
Carefully, she reached in, her fingers finding the pulse point on his neck. It was there, but faint and thready. He was bleeding out.
"Stupid," she muttered to herself, her breath puffing white in the air. "This is so stupid." But her hands were already moving, fumbling with the complex harness release. It took several tries with her frozen fingers, but finally, the restraints retracted. The man slumped forward.
Getting him out was a brutal struggle. He was heavy with muscle and armor, a dead weight. She braced herself, hooking her arms under his, and pulled with all her might, ignoring the scream of protest from her own recently-healed body. She dragged him clear of the smoking wreck, his boots leaving twin grooves in the snow, dotted with bright red blood.
When they were a safe distance away, she collapsed beside him, panting. The trail of blood leading back to the fighter was alarmingly long. He was still bleeding from the head wound and a deeper gash on his side where the suit was torn.
If he keeps bleeding, he'll die.
She looked down at her own clothes—the thin, torn gown. Tearing it for bandages would leave her virtually naked in the freezing cold, and it wouldn't be nearly enough to stop this.
Then she remembered. Her own miraculous healing.
The goddess did that. But she gave me a part of her essence. That power is in me now. Isn't it?
But how did she use it? She hadn't done anything before; it had just happened.
Desperation clawed at her. She dropped to her knees in the snow beside the stranger. "Nythera," she whispered, her voice raw. "I know you can hear me. Or… I hope you can. I don't know how to do this. Tell me how to heal him. I don't want him to die. My stupid conscience won't let me just walk away."
There was no answer from the wind or the smoke. Only the man's shallow, struggling breaths.
Frustration and determination tightened her chest. She stopped praying and placed both hands directly over the worst of his wounds on his side. She closed her eyes, blocking out the cold, the smoke, everything. She focused every part of her will on a single, forceful thought: Heal. Be whole.
For a second, nothing happened.
Then, a spark. A trickle of warmth in her palms. It grew, flowing out of her, not as a violent blast this time, but as a gentle, green-gold light that seeped from her hands into his broken body. She watched, awestruck, as the deep gash on his side began to knit itself together, the flesh weaving closed beneath the torn suit. The blood flow from his head slowed, then stopped as the skin sealed over.
But as his wounds closed, a deep weariness invaded her limbs. It was like the energy was coming directly from her own life force. Her arms began to tremble. The light from her hands flickered. She pushed until the last visible wound was closed, then the connection snapped.
The green light vanished. Jinx swayed and collapsed onto her back in the snow beside him, utterly drained. She couldn't feel her fingers or toes. A deep, cold exhaustion rooted her to the spot.
I regret that, part of her thought hazily. I'm weak now. Vulnerable. She turned her head to look at the man. His breathing was deeper, steadier. The color was returning to his face. But at least he's alive.
Her hatred for men, for Fenris, was a fire in her heart. But this stranger… he hadn't done anything to her. Yet. She hoped, with the last of her conscious thought, that she wouldn't come to regret this mercy.
The cold of the snow beneath her seeped into her bones, but she was too weak to shiver. She didn't know when sleep took her in that deadly cold, but her eyes slid shut, and the world faded away into a deep, silent black.
___
It didn't take long for the man to wake up. His mind snapped back to consciousness with the memory of alarms blaring, systems failing, and the sickening spin of a controlled flight turning into a death plunge. He remembered the impact, a jarring slam of pain, and then nothing.
He expected to be dead. Or at the very least, dying in agony.
But he felt… fine. Better than fine. He felt whole.
He opened his eyes to a stark, snowy sky. Pushing himself up on his elbows, he saw the smoldering, twisted skeleton of his starfighter a short distance away. A wave of cold, familiar anger surged through him—not at the crash, but at the ones who had engineered it. This was no accident. This was an assassination attempt.
He was about to get to his feet when he felt a presence beside him. Instinct took over, and he spun, his body tensed for a fight.
It wasn't an enemy. It was a woman. A fox-beastman, lying unconscious in the snow beside him. She was dressed in rags, the tattered remains of what might have once been a fine gown. Her face was pale, her lips tinged blue with cold, and her single visible fox tail was curled pathetically around her legs in a feeble attempt for warmth. She looked like she'd been through her own hell.
He sat up fully, his eyes scanning his own body. His combat suit was torn and scorched, but beneath the fabric… nothing. No wounds. He looked back at the trail of dark, frozen blood leading from the wreck to where he now sat. The evidence said he should be dead. The reality said he was perfectly healed.
His sharp, analytical mind connected the points. The crash. The blood trail. The unharmed body. The only other person here.
Her.
This frail, frozen woman had saved him. But how? Medical tech that could do this didn't exist outside of high-tech med-bays. And she had no equipment. He looked at her again. She was slight, malnourished even. How had she dragged his armored body clear of the wreck?
A rare, unfamiliar feeling prickled at him—gratitude. He wasn't a man accustomed to receiving help, let alone owing his life to a stranger. In his line of work, crash sites like this attracted scavengers who would loot a body or sell it for parts. Others would avoid it entirely, fearing implication. But this woman had done neither. She had intervened at great cost to herself, it seemed, given her state.
He couldn't stay. Whoever had sabotaged his fighter would send a team to confirm the kill. They would be coming soon.
Moving with efficient grace despite his recent near-death experience, he got to his feet and strode back to the wreckage. He ignored the smoke, rooting through the crushed cockpit until he found a sealed, armored case. His comms were ash, but this had survived. He popped the latches. Inside, a few valuables, some untraceable currency chips, and a sidearm. It was enough.
He returned to the woman. She hadn't moved. Her breathing was shallow.
Without thinking he bent down, slid one arm under her knees and the other behind her shoulders, and lifted her. She was unsettlingly light. He tucked his case under the same arm that held her legs, his grip secure.
He took one last look at his destroyed fighter, a million credits of tech turned to scrap, and his jaw tightened. This isn't over.
Then he turned and began to walk, carrying his unconscious rescuer away from the crash site, leaving only footprints and a mystery in the snow.