falling back behind her head before her fingers relaxed in the first throes of shock and then death, and she dropped the sword to the floor with a metallic clatter. Her weight, combined with my position, left me with trembling arms that quickly gave out and her limp body fell on top of me.
Her breath rattled in her chest, and her glazed eyes sought mine. “I am only one spoke in this wheel, Madeleine Niteclif. My death changes nothing.” Blood trickled from her mouth and ran down her chin as she fought for air. “We won’t fail.” Her face went slack, and the last remaining tension in her body dissolved. She was gone, and I’d never been able to ask her what she meant.
Bahlin took several large steps toward me and yanked her body off me like it weighed no more than a bag of grain and tossed her haphazardly to the side, falling to his knees at my side. I lay on the floor, arms and legs akimbo like a crash test dummy. The first shakes of the receding adrenaline rush paired with shock, and I began to shake. He snatched me up to his chest, holding me so tight it was difficult to breathe.
Was he shaking too? I wondered. Because I felt like I was coming apart at the seams, and he was the only thing holding the pieces of my body and soul together. I had killed a woman and my mind was rejecting this new reality, trying to deny that I was capable of taking life. He was murmuring to me in Gaelic and rocking me gently. Through the haze of fear, I realized my stomach was wet.
“Bahlin? Bahlin,” I said in a reedy voice. “Bay, I’m okay…I think. We need to get up because I’m having a Fatal Attraction moment where I’m waiting for her to surge up and try to strangle one of us from behind and we never see her coming and it scares the shit out of me and I think my heart would stop beating if she twitched and—”
“Hush, muirnin,” he crooned, “hush. She’ll no be gettin’ up again, I promise ye.”
“But—”
“Hush, I say. Let’s make sure yeh’re okay.” Without releasing me completely he leaned my body back in one arm and concern creased his brow. He plucked at the bloodied dress and ripped open the bodice without pretense. Modesty be damned. I was too scared to look, afraid she may have snuck in a slice before I killed her, because I knew with certainty what my mind rejected. She was dead. The spreading pool of blood under her body was unquestionably unforgiving.
“Yeh’re fine, a stór. Yeh’re fine.” The relief in his voice was palpable. He folded the fabric back across my bared torso then gripped my shoulder and gave me a harsh shake. Apparently the compassionate portion of my recuperation was over. “I told ye to run ye fool. I’d ha’ taken her in a moment more.”
I had a flashback to the color of her eyes and a wave of nausea rolled up my spine and out my mouth in a heated rush before I could do anything about it beyond turn my head. He pulled me tight to his chest once the sickness passed. When I closed my eyes in relief, I remembered seeing parts of Bahlin’s arm that no human eye should ever see. I scrambled out of his arms and knelt in the heat of her slowly advancing blood and at the edge of my vomit and grabbed his wrists. He yanked one arm away while the other twitched in my hand.
“Let me see,” I ordered him. With a long-suffering sigh he acquiesced. His forearm was still cut deeply, but the wound had begun to heal. Not as quickly as the aftermath of his fight with Tarrek, but it was healing. Blood only seeped from the tissue. It seemed that if I stared at it without blinking I could see the muscle reknitting itself as we sat there. I touched the clean edge of the gash, and he hissed.
“It may heal quick like, but it burns like a bugger while it’s doin’ it.” He glanced at me and then looked around the room, not quite ever making it back to my face. “And I seared the tissue.”
I looked at him questioningly, and he grinned a huge grin.
“I’m a dragon, Maddy. And speakin’ o’, I’m goin’ to have to get fuel soon. At this rate I’ll need a