Page 65 of Of Sword & Silver

For the first time in my life, I am so stunned by what’s happened that I can’t do more than stare at the slain beast.

Morrow brushes past me, heaving at the dead animal, and Kyrie’s blood-and-muck-covered hand appears, fingers wriggling.

I finally breathe.

She lives.

She did the unthinkable.

Her silver tongue magic is more powerful than it has any right to be, and the truth of that knowledge, of what she did to the manticore, means that destiny was leading me to her this whole time.

It should be impossible.

I drop the broadsword on the ground, helping Morrow heave the huge beast off Kyrie’s body.

Faintly, I can hear her cursing up a storm under the massive dead creature, and when her shoulders emerge, her red hair unrecognizable, I seize her under around her chest and pull.

Morrow grunts, and she slides out from beneath the beast with a disgusting suctioning sound.

I fall back at the sudden shift in weight, unused to the balance of my armor and the woman in my arms.

Kyrie is alive, blessedly warm against my bare chest.

I can’t bear to loosen my arms from around her. Her shoulders heave, she’s covered in the gods only know what from the monster, but so am I, and I have never been so glad to hold a life in my hands as I am in this very moment.

Hot blood trickles from my nose and I swipe at it, an aching pain behind my eyes.

It cost me.

The fight, ensuring Kyrie had enough time to attack. It cost me more than it should have.

“We smell like shit,” she says in a muffled voice.

A laugh trickles out of me in spite of myself.

It was worth the price. She will be worth every price.

Even if she hates me when all is said and done.

“Is it dead?” A crowd has gathered around the body of the beast.

I don’t need to look at it to know.

“It is dead,” I confirm.

“It better fucking be dead,” Kyrie snarls, her sharp elbow catching me in the ribs as she gets to her feet.

My chest is cold without her against it.

“We owe you our lives,” a woman with a trembling chin says. “There are no thanks we could give that would be enough.”

“We will feast in your honor this day,” a man yells, and the crowd circling around us cheers, the sound weightless with relief.

“All of Mossbury will thank you,” another calls out.

“I could eat,” Lara says, leaning heavily on Morrow. The crowd cheers.

“I need to bathe. Desperately.” Kyrie sniffs herself experimentally, her blood-soaked hair hanging in wet strings around her face. “Immediately.”

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