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Why was he sitting?
She ran to him, skidding onto her knees in front of him, her hands frantic onto his face, his body, searching for blood, for a bullet hole. “What—what happened—are you injured—why are you just sitting here—did I hear two shots—where is everyone—”
“Stop, stop, Elle.” He grabbed her hands, pulling them from his body as he shifted to get his face in front of hers.
He didn’t say another word until she stilled, her eyes finding his.
“I’m sitting on the ground because I was waiting with your head in my lap for you to wake up.”
Her eyes closed with a long exhale, her head dropping as the terror from a moment ago ran raw through her body, slow to dissipate. “I turtled?”
He nodded. “You did.”
“How long?”
“An hour. A bit more.”
Her eyes opened wide to him. “Are you hurt?”
“No.” His left arm lifted. “A bullet grazed my arm, nothing more. Hardly enough blood to even cause a scab.”
She tore her gaze away from his face to look at his upper arm. Only the smallest tear in his white lawn shirt with a bandage tied underneath it. The tiniest splatter of red on the white cloth. Not even enough blood to ruin the shirt—a quick stitch and it would be fine.
“If that…” Her words choked off and she had to shake her head. “If that had been inches to the left, it would have been your heart.”
His right fingers lifted from the clamp on her hand to wrap along the side of her face. “But it wasn’t. I am fine.”
Her heart still wild in her chest, she sank onto her calves as she found his eyes again. “What happened? Did you kill him? Is the magistrate coming for you—it was a duel but if you killed him—”
“I didn’t kill him.”
An exhale choked out of her throat and she slightly doubled over. “Thank the heavens.”
“But I did shoot him.”
Her look whipped up to him. “Is he going to die?”
“Not likely. His friends took him off to the surgeon—that’s why the field is cleared.”
“Where did you hit him?”
Rune’s mouth closed into a tight line.
She grabbed his leg, shaking it. “Where did you hit him, Rune?”
“I castrated the bastard. I let him live. But it won’t be a life worth living.”
She recoiled, her hand going over her mouth.
She hadn’t fully understood it before, the savagery that had been in Rune’s eyes. The savagery that he was capable of. The darkness that he’d openly admitted was in him.
He’d wanted Sangton dead—hell,she’dwanted Sangton dead—but Rune had held back because she’d begged him to.
He’d held back, but served unto Sangton a fate quite possibly worse than death for a man like that. A fate the man deserved. Savage. But brutally appropriate.
Rune’s copper-green eyes turned into steel. “He hurt you, Elle. And he was going to do it again if I’d just taken a hand, a leg. Nothing would have stopped him except this—this was the crux of the matter. It was the only way I was going to let him live.”
Her hand slowly dropped from her mouth.
