Page 49 of The Brute and the Blade

Varkos' blade wrenches free of my flesh and I crumple like a rag doll, limbs refusing my commands. Distantly, I feel her catch me, cradle me, her tears scalding where they drip onto my face.

"Grok, no, stay with me, you can't...you can't leave me..."

I force my eyes open, drinking in the sight of her. Even streaked with blood and muck, she's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen. The only thing I want to take with me into the dark.

"Love...you." The words are a ghost, little more than a blood-flecked exhalation. But I have to say them, give her the truth of me. "Always...forever..."

Something in her face shatters. But then she's moving, so fast she blurs, Varkos's triumphant snarl choked to a gurgle. The clang of a blade falling from his hand. Varkos's howl, high and horrified. Lily standing over his writhing form, blade dripping crimson.

The tide turns like a finger snap, the remaining knights throwing down their arms, fleeing before my warriors' renewed charge. The battle is won, but all I can see is Lily, falling to her knees at my side.

"Hold on," she commands, voice cracking as she fumbles with bandages, packs the wound with desperate haste. "Grok, stay with me. Don't you dare leave me."

I'm trying, clinging to the fading world with numb, shaking fingers. But the grey is crashing in, relentless and hungry. She hauls me up, wedges her shoulder beneath mine. Every step is agony, each ragged breath bubbling wet and thick in my throat.

But we're moving, staggering towards the tree line as the world smears in a sickening blur. Her voice fades in and out, choked but fierce.

"Almost there. Almost safe. Just hold on, my heart. My love. Stay with me..."

The green shadow of the forest closes over us, cool and quiet. My legs buckle, taking us to the moss-soft ground. Her arms curl around me, pulling me into her, my head lolling on her shoulder.

"Lily," I rasp, the world narrowing to the pale moon of her face, the gleam of her eyes. "My mate. My miracle. I...I'm sorry..."

"Shut up," she chokes. "Just shut up, you great idiot. You're going to be fine, do you hear me?"

I try to smile, to obey. But the cold is rising, smothering, dragging me down. I force leaden lips to shape the words, one last time.

"Love you. Always have...always will. In this life...and whatever comes after."

The grey takes me then, and the last thing I feel is her lips on mine, desperate and lingering, and the salt of her tears on my tongue.

Then...nothing. Nothing but the dark, and the aching absence of her.

My Lily. My heart.

20

Lily

I don't know how long I stumble through the forest, Grok's massive weight bearing me down, his blood soaking my side. It could be minutes. Hours. Each second stretches into an eternity of fear and desperation, of fervent prayers to gods I barely believe in anymore.

Please. Please let him live. Let me save him.

At last, just when my knees are about to give out, a miracle. A cottage, little more than a rickety shack, rising out of the gloom between one blink and the next. A woodcutter's hut maybe, or a trapper's, long abandoned from the look of it. But it has four walls and a roof, a door that still hangs straight on its hinges.

Shelter. Safety.

A place to heal my love...or watch him slip away.

With a sob of relief and terror, I stagger across the clearing, shouldering the door open with a creak of rusted hinges. Inside, the single room smells of mildew and mouse droppings, of time and abandonment. But there's a narrow bed shoved against one wall, a table and chairs, a hearth with a spiderwebbed stack of firewood beside it.

Enough. It will have to be enough.

I lower Grok onto the bed as gently as I can, my muscles screaming with the effort. He moans low in his throat, head lolling, face ashen beneath the grey cast of his skin. Fresh blood oozes between my fingers as I peel back the makeshift bandage, hot and slick.

Ancestors, so much blood. How can anyone lose so much and still live?

No. No, I won't let myself think it, entertain the possibility. Grok is strong, so strong. He'll survive this. He must.

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