Chapter Twenty-Seven #3
I knelt beside Erindor, fingers still tangled in his collar, pressing close to the warmth of his chest. My fire had gone quiet now, but its memory lingered, a phantom ache beneath my ribs, like the ghost of something sacred.
His eyes fluttered open again, unfocused. He looked at me, then over my shoulder.
“You didn’t…”
“No,” I whispered, pressing my hand firmer against the scorched wound at his side. “I didn’t. I couldn’t.”
The ravaged battlefield groaned beneath the weight of destruction.
The air stank of blood and charred stone. The only sounds were the crackle of something still smoldering and the ragged breaths of the barely living.
Jasira moved first, slowly and trembling.
She tried to rise but faltered, knees buckling.
Gideon caught her without hesitation, blood still seeping down his side from a vicious gash beneath his ribs.
He pulled her close, standing between her and the worst of the carnage as if he could still shield her from it.
“If I die,” he muttered dramatically, voice hoarse but playful through the pain, “I want you to wear my armor and avenge me. Gloriously.”
Jasira let out a broken laugh. “You’re not dying.”
“I’m serious,” he wheezed. “Sword raised. Cloak billowing. Crying vengeance to the heavens.”
“Shut up,” she said, but her hands curled into his shirt like she wasn’t ready to let go.
Slipping an arm under Erindor’s shoulder, I helped him up. He was heavier than I expected, his weight sagging against me. His eyes met mine, pained but steady.
“Go,” he said, his voice low but firm. “Help them.”
“I—”
“Wyn, go.”
My hand froze on his arm, a tremor of doubt running through me.
His answering pressure was barely there, a ghost of a touch, yet it urged me on.
Every instinct screamed to refuse, but his plea, unspoken yet palpable, tugged deeper.
With a ragged breath, I began to ease him back, each movement a battle against rising dread.
I gave him one last look, long enough to memorize the set of his jaw, the way the firelight caught in his eyes, before turning away.
I tore open the satchel at my side and pulled out the bandages, the salve jar, and the bundle of dried redflower bark.
“Hold still,” I told Gideon, already pressing a clean cloth against his wound. My hands were shaking, but I had practiced the movements. Years of study, of tending scraped knees and bruised ribs, flooded my memory. I knew what to do.
“This’ll sting,” I warned, as he raised his shirt so I could pour the tincture over the gash. Gideon hissed through his teeth.
“Sting? I feel reborn. Baptized in agony.”
I shot him a withering glance, but the corner of his mouth twitched upward, anyway. He was still bleeding, but the worst of it slowed. I packed the wound with herbs and bound it tight with strips of linen.
Jasira sat beside him now, her hand trembling as it brushed his arm. I passed her a poultice and guided her fingers to press it against the slice on his arm. “Keep pressure. Like that. Good.”
Alaric limped over next, his pant leg torn and streaked with blood. Bran was nearly carrying him, shoulder to flank. I dropped to my knees at his side, ripped open the fabric, and winced.
“Straight cut, deep. Missed the artery, but it’ll need stitches.”
“Lucky me. These were my favorite trousers too, you know,” Alaric muttered through clenched teeth.
“You’re lucky I brought a needle and gut thread.” The words were clipped, but a flicker of concern softened the sharpness in my eyes.
I cleaned the wound and sewed it closed, my fingers trembling but precise. He didn’t make a sound, though Bran let out a low, protective growl every time the needle pierced flesh.
When it was done, I sat back, wiping my hands on a cloth already soaked dark with blood. My knees throbbed from kneeling, my back burned from hunching, but they were alive.
I looked up. Alaric’s usual grin was gone. In its place was something quieter: gratitude maybe, or relief. He gave a small nod. Nothing more, but it was enough to make my throat tighten.
“What the hell happened?” he choked, his gaze sweeping across the blood-soaked wreckage and the battered faces of the survivors.
Silence.
No one looked toward the path where Riven had vanished. No one asked why I’d let him go.
Struggling to stand, and the world threatening to topple with every dizzying shift, I staggered my limp body through the clearing.
Erindor slumped against the fractured column, his breath ragged, one arm pressed tight against his splintered ribs as if his sheer will alone somehow mended the bone beneath. His discarded armor lay in a scattered heap at his feet. Blood had soaked through his tunic in a deep, spreading stain.
His head rose slowly as I approached, his face haggard from weariness, but a gentle light bloomed in his eyes. And in that moment, with the ruin of battle all around us, it said what neither of us could.
“You’re hurt,” I said softly as I reached him.
“I’m fine,” he replied, but he didn’t stop me when I knelt beside him and reached for the edge of his shirt.
“Let me see.”
His jaw flexed, but he let me lift the fabric. I sucked in a breath. A gash curved beneath his ribs, angry and red, still weeping at the edges.
“Fine!” I echoed. “You’re bleeding.”
“I’ve had worse.”
“That’s not a reason to let it get infected. So, sit down.” I demanded, my eyes fixed on him before adding, “Now.”
For a moment, it seemed like he might argue. But then his jaw tightened, and he lowered himself onto a chunk of fallen stone with slow, grudging compliance.
He watched me with that unnerving stillness of his, the kind that always made me feel like I was being studied, weighed, and judged all at once.
His skin was hot under my hands. Too hot.
I dipped the cloth into clean water and began to quietly work on the wound.
My hands were gentle, but inside I was shaking.
His breath hitched when I pressed too firmly, and I caught the subtle flinch he tried to hide, along with the slight, tensed pull of his shoulders as if he was refusing to show me the pain.
“You didn’t stop,” I whispered, not looking at him. “Even when he threw you. Even when you couldn’t stand straight. You still got up.”
His gaze searched mine for a moment, then his hand lifted. His fingers lightly brushed my temple, where Riven’s action of slamming me into the stone had split and made the skin tender. His touch was feather-light, causing my breath to halt but also flinch a little.
“I had to,” he breathed. “He was going to kill you.”
A sudden constriction tightened in my throat.
And the silence in the air seemed to hum.
“I would’ve died,” I said. “For all of you.”
“I know.” His voice was rough. “That’s why I couldn’t let it happen.”
I finished wrapping the bandage and placed my hand on his chest to feel his heartbeat pulse beneath my palm, steady and strong.
“You scared me,” I admitted. “You looked at him like you weren’t afraid to die.”
His eyes met mine, and something in them flickered. “I wasn’t.”
“Don’t say that.”
“Why?” he asked. “Because dying should scare me?”
“No,” I said, swallowing hard. “Because I fear losing you.”
He stared at me as if I’d knocked the wind out of him. Like I was the blade now, cutting too close: “You spared him.”
I nodded.
“Why?”
My fingers curled where I had placed them on his chest.
“Because killing him wouldn’t have saved us,” I whispered.
His eyes flicked to mine. Searching.
“Then what would?”
“I’m not sure,” I said, shaking my head.
But I believed in a fire that destroyed nothing. In truth that didn’t come at the end of a blade.
Maybe mercy couldn’t win a war.
But it could change one person.
Even if that person was me.
I scrambled to my feet. My hands still smelled of blood and herbs. My heart still ached with the weight of what I hadn’t said.
But I felt his eyes on my back as I walked away.
And I knew he was still bleeding in ways I couldn’t fix with stitches.