Page 105 of His Realm

Of course I could raise the barrier in protection, even with the yelling around us, Balon fuming that he couldn’t descend and the other guards couldn’t get closer to us. We sat, perched on the stairs. The confines were too tight to shoot through. If they shot arrows at us, they ran the risk of them passing through the barrier and striking one another. They had already learned they could throw things through, but still, there were risks involved. And Balon didn’t want to hit me. He needed my blood, after all. And spilled on the floor wouldn’t help. He needed to drain it from my veins.

So I sat there, holding Cirillo, whose face had changed to a horrible gray color as he lay dying. “I will make sure everyone knows⁠—”

“Shh,” Keres and Carice both hissed at me.

When I looked up from his face, I noticed that Carice was doing what I could only liken to Lamaze breathing, and Keres had his chest resembling a pincushion. The skirt truly was a marvel with everything she carried within its many folds.

“What’re you doing?” I asked Keres.

“She’s concentrating on stopping the bleeding,” Carice answered for her. “The blood loss, if you look, is not that great an amount.”

It was everywhere, so I had no idea what she was talking about. “I saw Nerilla die with a similar blow,” I choked out.

She nodded. “While I am truly sorry for that, Nerilla was much slighter of body than Cirillo, far younger, and could not have healed the damage he’s taken here, nor that which, I understand, she sustained.”

I stared into her eyes.

“Nerilla lost too much blood far too fast, did she not?”

“Yes,” I ground out.

“Cirillo’s heart, though Balon tried to take it, is untouched, as I can still hear it beating.”

“You can hear that?”

Quick tip of her head. “That’s why, even though it hurt, he pulled himself off the blade and used his weight at the edge of the step to fall back.”

I checked him then and could not believe the pinking of his lips or the gold color returning to his face. “He’ll live?”

“We need to sit here and be still and coax him back here to us, to the living,” Carice soothed me, taking a deep breath in, holding it, and then after a long moment, exhaling. “He has no one waiting in the halls of the dead, so there is no rush to go there.”

I looked at her, feeling the familiar ache of sadness for my lost friend.

“Nerilla went to Cassius, who was waiting for her. I know this.”

I nodded.

“My mother waits for me, I know this as well. Someday, I will wait for my son, and this is how it should be,” she murmured as tears filled her eyes and made them a beautiful, glistening blue-green wonder. “I have made many mistakes, but I promise, from this time until my end, I am your servant.”

I was going to say something, but she started singing softly to Cirillo, leaning down close to his ear.

When he jolted, like a muscle spasm ran through him, Keres stopped concentrating on his face, looked at me, and smiled.

“He lives?”

“He lives, though this may be pointless if we are not allowed to climb the stairs.”

“You are allowed to climb the stairs, lady,” a deep, rumbling voice said, and I knew that one as well as my own. We all looked up at once, and there, standing in the doorway, framed by light, was Varic.

He blurred as tears filled my eyes.

“You waited to save us until the sun rose and the light was behind you,” Cirillo whispered begrudgingly. “This showmanship is beneath you.”

“It’s perfect,” I said, sniffling. “He’s perfect.”

Cirillo gagged softly, already tiring.

Varic came down the stairs, clad all in black leather armor, his sword on his hip, followed by Hadrian and Zev. He stepped easily through the barrier, then went down on one knee beside me. Not moving my knee since Cirillo was using it as a pillow, I wrapped my arms around his neck and cried into his shoulder.