Merciful stars, he thought and sighed. His every part ached, and he had barely slept with the girl clinging to him. It's an amazing discovery, he thought. A creature for one of Mori's bestiaries—half woman, half leech. "Up, up!" he said. "It's morning." He struggled to rise, but Piri only mumbled, scrunched her lips, and wrapped her arms more closely around him. She kept sleeping. For such a slim young thing, she was surprisingly strong, pinning him down. "Piri Healer!" he said with a groan. "Stars, get off." The girl was intolerable. Throughout the night, whenever he would crawl away from her, she would snuggle closer, trapping him in her embrace. Whenever he did fall asleep, moments later she would mumble or kick her legs, waking him. And now dawn had risen, and still he could not extricate himself. Bayrin groaned and let his head fall back onto his pack. He looked up at the sky. Clouds rolled there beyond the branches of maples. It would be a long day of flight, and Bayrin knew his wings would ache, but anything was better than lying here.
