Chapter 80
MYRA
As the battle began, the camp quickly fell into disarray.
More wounded soldiers arrived, their comrades carrying them back to the camp.
Everywhere Myra looked, pain soaked the earth.
It drenched her feet and soaked the soles of her shoes.
It was like walking through quicksand, but Myra refused to let the stream of emotions drag her down.
She took a deep breath, steadying her racing heart, and kept her back to the capital, where smoke once again filled the skies.
I’ll come back to you.
Laurince’s last words wrapped around her, and she held onto them as tightly as she could.
She tried not to think about whether those would be the last words he ever spoke to her, and instead let those words bolster her courage.
Hoping and praying he would not be the next body that lay in front of her in anguish as the God of Death dug his claws into his next victim.
She lifted her hand from the soldier’s chest, his brow finally unfurling as she soothed his qualms. A familiar set of wings entered her peripheral, and she looked up.
"Anything?" Myra called out, both craving and fearing an update.
Moris shook his head. He already held the record for the number of return trips. Each time, he came back with no news of Laurince. Myra wasn’t sure if that was a blessing or a curse.
"No news is often the best news," he reminded her.
Myra pursed her lips and swallowed the rising fear. No news also could mean that Laurince was already gone.
She tried not to think about that too much, though.
"Are Sebastian’s troops letting up at least?" she asked, begging for something that would give her hope. The battle had already been going on for a few hours. How many lives would they have to lose before someone ended it?
When Moris' mouth fell into a flat line, she immediately regretted the question.
"Sometimes, it’s best not to ask," Gerald, the healer, said quietly, peering up at Myra through his thin-rimmed glasses.
"I—I’m sorry," she whispered. "I’m not used to this."
"Most of us are not," the healer said as he tightened the tourniquet around his patient’s thigh. "There hasn’t been this bloody of a battle since the Great War. Even the skirmishes that have happened on the borders and the small rebellions here-and-there could not have prepared us for this."
"How do you keep going?" Myra asked.
"You stay busy," Gerald said, handing her a bucket and tipping his head toward the man Moris placed on the ground.
Myra took the bucket and began cleaning the stranger’s wounds. Across from her, Phaia did the same. While she hadn’t gotten over her distaste for the sight of blood, she no longer gagged every time she saw a wound.
A light hand fell onto Myra’s shoulder. "I’ll try to see if I can find something out."
Myra looked at Moris with more gratitude than she could have ever expressed. Thank you was on the tip of her tongue, but before she could speak, a scream ripped through the camp.