Light was sitting up when we came back into the chamber.
He had his back against the wall and one knee drawn up and the wyvern's head across his lap, and he was working his fingers slowly through the ridge of scales behind its jaw the way you do with something that has decided to live on you. The lines were gone off his throat. What they left behind was a faint grey tracery under the skin, like an old burn that had healed badly.
He saw me first. Then he saw Ilse in my arms. Then he saw the boy.
His hand came off the wyvern and went to the sword beside him.
"Don't."
I got that out before he was halfway up.
"He's the reason your head is your own. Whatever you're about to do, do it later."
Light stopped with his weight on the balls of his feet and did not sit back down, and I decided that was as good as I was getting.
