Page 138 of Keldori By Daybreak

His face turned stark, and his grip on my arms tightened to the point of being painful. “You look fine.”

I shook my head.

“My real body.” I tried to focus on his eyes, wondering if they were the last thing I’d ever see.

“When?” He was yelling. Panicked. “Just now?”

“Ciarán, I think I’m dying.”

His breath hitched.

“Then I’m sorry, Blue.” His voice wavered. “But you’ve got to fight like hell. I’m coming, okay? I’m on my way, but whoever it is, give them hell, do you understand?”

I didn’t understand, but I nodded anyway. His neck bobbed as he swallowed hard.

“Then I release you from my service.”

The night closed in, and I existed for a half-moment between my bodies, painless, weightless, and thinking that if this was death, maybe it wasn’t so bad.

But then agony erupted in my flank, and I awoke to the flashing of a red dagger overhead.

30. Anatomy and Physiology

The red dagger flashed.

Red like pain.

Red like the blood spilling from my side.

Red like the furious panic that propelled me forward.

I grabbed my assailant’s wrist, but the man was strong. My shoulder and elbow gave under the weight of his attack, and I scrambled sideways to avoid the slashing blade.

Pain seared in my chest, side, and abdomen, and my legs buckled beneath me. I slumped against the cave wall with one arm pressed over the wound in my lower chest. I gasped for air, but nothing was enough, and the left side of my ribs refused to expand.

I had a half-second to register that my lung had probably collapsed before the man attacked again.

Ciarán screamed in my head, bellowing defense commands along our bond, but I curled into a ball on the floor as the man bore down with the weapon.

“A shield, Wren! A shield!” Ciarán screamed, and a blazing blue flashed between me and the man, staving off his attack before fizzling back into nothing.

Ciarán swore, and started yelling promises that he would be here soon, to just hold on, to fight.

“I thought you turned yourself in, Saergrim.” The gravelly voice was vaguely familiar. Opal-rich tree roots dipping in and out of the cave ceiling, offering a dull glow, but my vision blurred with tears of pain. “Lucky I came out here myself looking for your friend. Figured I’d find him nearby. Didn’t think I’d be lucky to find you taking a nap.”

A heavy boot slammed into my open wound, and I choked on air that refused to reach my lungs.

The man crouched down, and I met his gaze through watering eyes.

Kamryn, the Barony guard we’d left unconscious in the alleyway, grinned back, the corners of his beard turning upwards. The red of his weapon hid the discoloration, but ulcers pocked his face and the fungus I’d infected him patterned his skin in flaking ridges.

“How,” I wheezed, “are your fingers?”

“You tell me.”

He reached for my throat, and his Skal-healed fingers wrapped around my neck.

Blood, or maybe Ciarán, screamed in my head, and my blurred vision darkened. Kamryn laughed at me from the end of a closing tunnel. I tried to pry his thick fingers from around my throat, but my strength was failing, and Ciarán was starting to sound farther away…