"You're an extraordinary amount of trouble," I tell her, quietly, to no one. Her head has fallen against my chest and she doesn't stir. "For someone who cannot manage a forest at night."
Mirelle is waiting in the entrance hall, as she always is when I return from a hunt past the second hour. Her gold hair pins catch the candlelight as she turns, and then she stops, and her sharp green eyes move from the unconscious human woman in my arms to my face with an expression that I recognize as restraint at considerable effort.
"My lord." Measured. "Is there something you would care to explain?"
"Get Nyssara."
"She's preparing for?—"
"Now, Mirelle."
A pause. Two seconds of it, which is as much as she allows herself. "And the human?"
"Will be placed in the east guest quarters, which you will have prepared by the time I get there, and will not be moved or touched or spoken to without my explicit instruction." I'm already walking away. "None of that was a question."
Her footsteps follow at a precise distance. "The staff will talk."
"The staff talks regardless. That's what staff does."
"The noble houses will?—"
I stop in my tracks. Turn to face her. Mirelle halts, and to her considerable credit, holds my gaze.
"She is under my protection. Every person in this house will know it before morning. If that creates political discomfort for anyone, including you, they are welcome to take it up with the grevhault that I pulled her away from. Otherwise." I turn back toward the corridor. "Get me Nyssara."
Nyssara is in the guest quarters when I arrive, pale eyes already moving over the woman in my arms with clinical attention. I set her down on the bed with more care than the situation technically requires, but I don't think about that.
"Shoulder, leg, the palm. The shoulder concerns me most."
Nyssara is already working, fingers moving over the joint with careful pressure. "Dislocated, likely. Palm torn deeply enough for stitches. The leg may hold once the swelling comes down, but she should not be walking on it tonight."
"Then she won't."
Nyssara glances up. "She may disagree when she wakes."
"Then I will be informed before she reaches a staircase."
"She'll need the night, at minimum."
"Then you'll have the night." I step back, toward the doorway. "She stays alive, Nyssara. Whatever it requires."
I don't wait for acknowledgment. I close the door behind me and stand in the corridor for a moment, in the dark, with the weight of something I can't name and will not attempt to yet.
Somewhere inside that room, the human woman with the belt blade breathes in and out.
I glance at my hands and see the blood I must wash off and retreat to the loostrayn to wash it off my hands.
3
ELOWEN
That's not my ceiling.
That's the first thing that registers — not the pain, which does exist — but the ceiling. Vaulted and dark, the stone carved in long sweeping arcs that converge overhead like the ribs of something enormous turned inside out. The rock is nearly black but threaded through with pale mineral veins that catch candlelight and scatter it softly, warmly, into the upper reaches of the room.
The candles are in iron brackets shaped like antlers. There are too many of them.
I blink. My eyes drag at the edges, gritty and slow. The ceiling blurs, then sharpens, and finally holds.
