she cried in pain.
"Agnus Dei, come on!" Kyrie shouted, grabbed her again, and pulled her back. Maybe the pain of her wound changed her mind. She flew with him. They crashed through a dozen dividers, heading back toward Osanna.
The dividers followed, howling, bat wings flapping.
"We're back in Osanna!" Kyrie cried over his shoulder. "Leave us."
The black-crested divider leered. Its fur had burned off, revealing scraggly, blackened flesh covered with scratches and blood. Blood filled its mouth, and smoke rose from it. "You have touched the Divide," it said. "You will die."
The hundred dividers, eyes like raging stars, stormed forward.
Kyrie cursed under his breath, grabbed Agnus Dei, and pulled her with him. They flew east and down, moving close to the grass.
"Let go!" Agnus Dei demanded, squirming as she flew, trying to release his grasp. "I flee from no fight."
"I have an idea," Kyrie said. "Just do what I do."
Lightning crashed, and the clouds roiled. The dividers screamed, their bat wings churning the air. Kyrie flew behind a hill crowned with boulders. For a moment, he couldn't see the dividers behind him. The boulders shielded him and Agnus Dei from view.
Kyrie landed by a stream and turned human. His wounds ached even worse this way, and the deer meat grumbled in his belly.
Agnus Dei glared at him, still in dragon form. "What are you doing? They'll eat you."
"Agnus Dei, shift now!" he shouted.
She grunted, blew flames to the sky, and shifted into human form. She stood by him, her clothes tattered, her black hair a knotty mess.
A hundred dividers came roaring over the hill, flying east. They glanced down at the humans, barely registered them, and looked around in puzzlement.
"They went that way!" Kyrie shouted, pointing east.
The dividers howled. "Who are you?" their chief asked, its last patches of fur still burning.
"We're neither dragons nor griffins," Kyrie cried up to them. "We're only two-legged travelers. The dragons you seek fled east. You can still catch them. Fly, fly after them!"
The dividers hovered above them for a moment. It seemed like an eternity to Kyrie. Then they howled and flew east, a few still flaming.
Kyrie and Agnus Dei stood panting, watching them disappear into the distance.
"They're mean bastards, but they're dumb as dung beetles," she said. She sat down hard and took deep breaths. Blood dripped down her shoulder.
Kyrie collapsed onto the ground. His head spun, and his wounds ached.
Agnus Dei tore strips off her shirt, including both sleeves, and bound their wounds. Though Kyrie ached, and felt more weary than ever before, he couldn't help but notice Agnus Dei's exposed flesh. With her shirt mostly torn off, and her leggings tattered, only thin strips of cloth covered her. Her body was bloodied, bruised, and cut... but also tanned, lithe, and intoxicating. As Agnus Dei leaned over him, bandaging his shoulder, Kyrie's blood boiled. He gulped and looked away quickly.
"Cool it, pup," Agnus Dei said wryly. She tightened the cloth around his wound painfully enough that he winced. "Put your tongue back in your mouth before it hits the dirt."
Kyrie shut his mouth and muttered under his breath, face hot. He forced himself to stare at the ground rather than at Agnus Dei, but could still sense the mocking smile on her lips and in her eyes. Strangely, that look of hers, and that crooked smile, only boiled his blood hotter.
What was it about Agnus Dei? Kyrie had seen beautiful women before. Lacrimosa was beautiful, her beauty like starlight. Lady Mirum had been beautiful, a beauty like the sea. Gloriae was beautiful, a beauty of ice and snow. Yet Agnus Dei... she stirred something new inside Kyrie. She was no starlight nor sea nor snow; she was fire. And Kyrie liked fire.
"You're done," Agnus Dei said, bandaging his last wound. She punched his shoulder. "You okay?"
He nodded and looked back at her. "And you? You took a beating up there." Bruises and cuts covered her. The worst wound was behind her shoulder; it was a bleeding mess. "Let me help you with that."
He cleaned her wound with water from the stream, then bound it with cloth he tore from his shirt. Sweat covered her brow, and her jaw tightened when he bound her wound, but she made not a sound. When he was done, he wiped the sweat off her brow... and found himself smoothing her tangled hair. Despite its knots, her hair was soft, damp, and—
"What," she asked him, "do you think you're doing?"
He pulled his hand away, muttering. "You have