Page 141 of Beds and Blades

“He rests with Yravel. He put up a glorious fight.”

Cato lowered his head. His mouth settled into a firm line, and grief passed through his eyes before discipline closed over it.

“Varia?”

“Her soul is free,” I said.

He nodded again. It was the same measured assessment he had given me in the first war room, but it no longer held skepticism. It held something else. Respect.

“Let’s get you home,” he said.

***

The garrison consolidated. The casualties were real, but not catastrophic. The plan had worked as intended.

By morning, its cost would have names. Gaius. Three soldiers from the assault force. The cost of choosing to act rather than wait.

We rode home through the snow. The ring on my finger cast its quiet gold light into the dark.

Cato rode ahead. He had not spoken since we cleared the village perimeter. That was discipline. He understood that some things required the silence of completion.

Skip rode without faltering. His seat remained steady, though I felt the effort it cost him with every mile.

Despite myself, I was impressed.

The ride back had a quality I had never experienced before: terrain crossed in darkness during a crisis, now crossed again in the first approach of dawn.

Everything was the same. The stone walls half reclaimed by the earth. The old field boundaries. The road beneath the horses’ hooves.

But the darkness that had felt alive was thinning around us.

I thought of Varia. Of what she had meant to me. Of the warmth I had felt when her soul left her body.

Before that night, I had not believed in anything I could not measure, test, or explain. But what I had felt was unmistakable. Something had remained when the body fell away.

Something beyond flesh and blood. Beyond the spark an empiricist might locate in the brain or reduce to the firing of nerves. Something that had been wholly, unmistakably Varia.

I would carry her for the rest of my life as the natural consequence of having loved her.

That was what it meant to have someone stand beside you to the end. They did not vanish when they were gone. They became part of what you carried forward.

The outpost rose ahead of us, its walls lit against the dark.

The line held.

***

We passed through the gate in the gray hour before dawn.

Skip’s exhaustion came through the bond in heavy, unbroken waves. He had endured hours of pain. Cuts crossed his chest and arms. Burns marked his skin. The bruises spoke of repeated blows. Now that the danger had passed, his body was presenting its invoice.

The infirmary was already lit when we arrived. Caen was waiting.

We helped Skip onto the nearest bed. He offered no resistance, which told me more about his condition than any words could have.

Then I helped Flavia to another. Soldiers and attendants moved around us, guiding the rest of the wounded toward empty beds.

The pendant at Caen’s throat was already bright. Her instruments waited on the side table in the calm, practiced arrangement of someone who had anticipated exactly what the night would require.