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Spine stiffening, she lifted her head, shifting her gaze his way. Blood dripped from her mouth.
For a moment, they looked at each other.
Darach’s mouth tingled as his fangs retracted. His fingers flexed while those claws drew back too. He could feel everyone staring at them.
The air around them drew taut. Some of them had been warned, of course, about their beasts. But that likely hadn’t prepared them for the sight.
Darach didn’t look their way. Instead, his gaze continued to hold his lover’s. His breathing grew shallow. “Ailsa?” he repeated. Could she even hear him?
Her throat worked as she swallowed.
Straightening up, she lifted a hand, wiping blood off her face with her forearm. And then she favored him with a smile that punched the breath right out of him. “Don’t look so worried, Darach,” she said hoarsely. “I’m still here.”
36: ALLEGIANCE
THE WIND DIED after the battle.
The Gales of Complaint settled to barely a whisper that eddied through the dead, making standards that poked up here and there flutter gently.
Large shapes circled overhead: vultures, waiting for the living to depart so that they could feast.
Ailsa wouldn’t leave. Not yet.
After the fighting had stopped, she’d initially gone to the healing tents on the hill to the west, wanting to help, but the purple-robed healers there had sent her away. They didn’t want her underfoot.
And so, she’d returned to the battlefield instead.
She now limped her way down the corpse-strewn road, boots squelching in the mud, aware of the frailty of her own body. Cuts, some deeper than others, stung across her arms and legs. She’d also pulled a muscle badly in her left thigh during the fighting and hadn’t realized it until now.
The edge of a blade had nicked her temple, too. Not all the blood that splattered her face and clothing belonged to others.
But, somehow, she’d survived.
She raised her blood-encrusted hands then, studying them.
What had happened back there?
She’d walked into that battle, confident that her bavaan side would keep her safe—yet it had deserted her.
She’d been fine until she stared into that young warrior’s eyes.
Everything had unraveled after that.
She hadn’t thought of her compassion as a weakness—but it had nearly gotten her killed.
Ailsa kept moving, setting her jaw against the pain in her thigh.
Up ahead, she spied some of Lara’s warriors picking up their fallen and carrying them back to camp. It appeared they’d be taken home to be mourned. They were shifting the corpses of Circines warriors too, into a large pile on the southern side of the road, clearing scrub and trees to make space for the pyre.
Come nightfall, they’d burn.
Ailsa stopped then, looking down at the staring face of a Circines woman.
She was stocky with light brown hair matted with blood. Blue woad tattoos snaked over her naked arms—designs that had glowed silver during the battle.
Dropping to a crouch, Ailsa leaned forward and gently closed the woman’s staring eyes.
Her gaze slid down to the binding mark on her right arm.
