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“Must be…” Mirona said, and I couldn’t help but notice how hollow the words sounded. Like there was barely any breath behind them. “Oh,” she gasped, then hiccupped. “Donis? I don’t feel so…”
She collapsed into his arms. He caught her, thank the Mother, but her limbs stayed limp. I only started to panic when her eyes rolled back into her head. Gods, she needed help.Kalen, I thought. I could go to Kalen. If the wine has been poisoned, then it might be too late to help her, but someone needed to know. Iwas about to turn when Donis began to speak.
“There, there,” he said. Lowering himself to the ground and pulling Mirona across his chest. Her eyes had focused again, wide and afraid. She looked at him, and he looked at her, cooing, “Hush now, do not be afraid.”
Mirona began to squirm at the waist, and her head snapped to the door. Mirona’s sea blue eyes met mine, and the terror in them made it clear to me she wished to escape his embrace. Then Donis began to mumble words, gibberish really, and that made her squirm more. Whatever he was saying scared her. A dull moaning came from her mouth, and he shushed her in between the intelligible speech. Reaching behind him, he brandished a dagger, and all the breath in my lungs escaped me. “The next life will be a beautiful one. Think of it. Us, together. Never-ending.”
With a grunt, Donis drove the dagger into Mirona’s heart. I screamed, unable to help myself. Something overwhelming had taken hold of me, watching him attack her. Without any thought, I burst into the room, driven by something I could not explain. When I entered, I grabbed the first solid object I could, a candlestick from the side table immediately next to the door. And then I sprinted, not for Mirona, but for Donis, and slung the metal towards his head.He tried to duck, but because of the awkward position he sat in, failed. A crack rang out, and then a thump as Donis hit the floor.
With gentle, but shaking hands, I lifted Mirona gently off of him, sitting her body at the foot of the bed. She was still alive, her breath hitting my face in shallow wheezes. “You’ll be okay,” I said. “It will be okay.” I knew I was trying to calm myself just as much as I was trying to calm Mirona, so I took a deeper breath and tried to focus on stopping the bleeding.
I remembered a time, in the Binding, when a small beast had fallen from one of the many ridges on the side of the Mountain.Its hooves lost footing in the rock, and it landed sideways, sticking itself upon an orphaned branch. I only needed one look at Mirona’s wound to deduce it was much the same. The beast had not made it, but to comfort him, I’d placed my hand upon the wound and held him still. It seemed to keep him alive longer.
I decided I would hold Mirona similarly. It was possible I could keep her alive long enough for someone to stumble upon us and save her. Keeping my eyes on Mirona’s dulling ones, trying to reassure her I wouldn’t hurt her, I placed both hands over her chest and held it firm. Blood squashed between my fingers, dribbling over my knuckles. I didn’t mind. I’d seen enough blood in the last weeks. I turned over my shoulder anyway, looking towards the open door. Surely someone had heard me scream and had sent for help. Or at the very least notified Kalen.
Another wheeze rattled from Mirona’s throat. I snapped my attention back towards her, but when I looked into her eyes, they were empty, unseeing.
“No,” I whispered, keeping my hands pressed on her wound but shuffling closer to her. “Mirona,” I tried, hoping her name would bring her back to herself. “Mirona!”
“What in mortal hell,” came a voice from the doorway.
I turned, and let out a sob to find Kalen, in his night clothes, his dagger clenched in his fist, and his eyes as worried and wide as mine.
“Kalen!” I shrieked, wiping the tears from my cheeks with my shoulder. “Thank the Mother! You have to help her. I heard them, and I thought she was alone so I came to meet her, maybe be her friend, but thenhe stabbed herand…”
Kalen knelt to the floor, but not to aid Mirona in any way. No, he had picked up the chalice she had drunk from, sniffing around the rim of it before cursing to himself.
“What are you doing?” I shouted. “Help her!”
“There is nothing that I can do,” he said, running a handthrough his hair. Then he placed his hands across both of my wrists and began to pull me away from her body. I fought against him, cursing him as he tried to lift me from the ground. She couldn’t be dead. She could not be dead.
“Gwynore, stop!” Kalen yelped when I elbowed him in the side and scrambled back to Mirona.
“She cannot be dead.”
“For Mother’s sake stop it, Gwyn!” In my haste, I had kicked Donis’ limp body, and he groaned, rolling to his side. “He’s still alive?” Kalen looked at me, his eyes accusatory.
I nodded my head, then said indignantly, “I struck him with the candle when hestabbedher.”
Kalen cursed, and then rushed to Donis’ side, sitting him up and checking the small slice across the man’s temple I’d caused. A sudden anger struck me watching him. It was as if Kalen had no concern that a murderer was in our midst.
“So you will tend to a monster, but you will not help her?”
“The only person in this room I need to be helping right now is you,” he yelled.
“What are you talking about?”
Kalen growled with frustration, turning to me. “You had no business being in these halls at this hour. You had no right to interject yourself. How many times do I need to tell you to stay in that gods-damned room unless I say otherwise!”
“Are you insane?” I was nearly screaming. “He just murdered a woman. You should count yourself lucky that I was here to put him down!”
“No, I should count myself lucky if Donis doesn’t remember anything about what has happened tonight. You should count yourself lucky if it turns out he did not recognize you!”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
Kalen stopped what he was doing, and turned to me with a rabid look in his eyes. “It iseverything! Look around this room,Gwyn. What do you see?”
What? Kalen let out a huff of air, waiting.
