Chapter 2

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The healers’ tents just inside the dusty red walls of his city were filled to capacity. The cries of the wounded broke his heart, but he couldn’t stop to see them yet. Soon though, once he had taken care of his charge. Instead, he turned away from the tents and sought out the first able-bodied person he could find. The elf in his arms gave a shallow wheeze.

“Hold on.” Solna clutched the elf tighter and took off running. “Just, please, hold on.”

After a minute, he stumbled across a woman on guard duty close to the gate they had come through. Her eyes widened, but she stayed at her post. “My Lord?”

“I need a horse,” he gasped. The guard didn’t question him, just pivoted in place and loosed a sharp whistle to another guard farther down the wall. The elf in his arms flinched weakly.

The guard in front of him gestured at the other one and in no time at all Solna was given the reins of a placid bay by the second guard. They helped him situate himself with the elf practically in his lap, and then stepped away. Solna could only nod his thanks.

Solna pulled on the reins hard and wheeled the horse around. The beast responded with ease and he dug his heels into the sides of the horse. Damned thing took off like lightning.

The streets of his capital flashed by in a blur and Solna concentrated to keep them in the saddle as the horse thundered along. A scant handful of minutes passed before they came to a jittering halt inside the massive courtyard of his home. The manor was never a more beautiful sight than in that moment, plain though it was.

A young stable hand was already rushing towards them to pull the reins out of his slack grip. “Do you need help, Sire?”

Solna looked at the boy for a moment, mind blank with adrenaline. Suddenly he came back to himself. “Yes. And healers.”

The boy yelled over his shoulder, calling for Allag, the stable master and a gentle giant of a man. Solna was grateful that he was on hand that day, for it meant Allag’s wife Ke was there as well and she was a better healer than any Solna had ever come across. He slumped around the elf in his arms as Allag trotted out and tapped the boy’s shoulder with a quiet murmur. The boy took off for the manor with the reckless speed of youth.

Allag grabbed the bridle in a firm hand and planted his other against the elf’s sternum. It took some quick work, but Solna dropped off the horse in a graceless lurch and pulled the elf back into his arms just as Ke burst from the front doors.

She took one look at the bloody, dying mess in his arms and ushered them into the house. Solna paused a foot inside though, indecisive. Inexplicably, he wanted to take the elf to his quarters instead of the little infirmary Ke maintained off the main hall. He buried the impulse deep when Ke flashed a confused look at him.

He forced himself to follow her down the first hallway that turned right, past the open doors of waiting rooms and offices and archives, until they came to a room bigger than the others. Sterile but warm cream-colored walls belied the tragedies the room had seen over the years, tragedies that made Solna cringe every time he passed the threshold. Futilely, he prayed that Daphion wouldn’t take this soul to add to Her collection just yet.

“Over here, my Lord.” Ke drew his attention to one of the farthest beds from the door and started to strip the bedding away even as Solna laid the elf down. “His clothes need to be removed,” she added, tone flat, direct.

Solna unsheathed his belt knife and started cutting away the blood soaked tunic, rumbling quiet, meaningless nonsense for comfort as he went. The damn thing was tacky, stuck to the skin underneath, but Solna carefully peeled apart the cloth. The first of the sluggish, oozing wounds was low on the flat belly, the start of a disembowelment if Solna had to guess. Second revealed was a deep knife thrust between the ribs on the right. The last, most dangerous one was the stab wound just under the left collarbone. An attempt at a heart thrust, no doubt.

It felt wrong to slice the laces on the bracers, once he was down to them. A deft stroke of his knife severed the laces without damage and he set them aside to clean and repair later. One last bit of cutting at the long cuffs of the tunic and finally the elf’s upper body was completely revealed. Solna immediately wished he wasn’t there to see it.