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I have no idea who she is.

She clearly knows me.

Before I can ask, Boone pulls his tear-stained face away from my chest and turns toward her. Whatever question I might have had disappears when I feel him tense in my arms.

“Mara.”

The woman’s stern expression changes when she looks at him.

“Do something.” Boone tries to pull away from me, one hand reaching toward his father while the other remains tangled in my shirt. “Please. Mara, do something.”

Her gaze moves toward the body behind us, where several villagers remain kneeling in the dirt with blood covering their hands and those useless strips of cloth scattered around them. She looks for no more than a few seconds before returning her attention to Boone.

“There’s nothing to be done.”

The words are matter-of-fact, delivered without the careful softness everyone else seems determined to use around him. Boone jerks back against me.

“No, you haven’t even looked at him.” His voice rises when he turns in my arms. “You need to look at him. You need to—”

“I know what death looks like.”

Boone stops struggling.

Mara’s expression remains stern, but something changes in her eyes when she looks at him. The sympathy is there, even if she has no intention of putting it into her voice.

“There is nothing I can do for your father,” she says. “But there is something I can do for the living, and one of you is bleeding badly enough to leave a trail down the road. So both of you are coming with me.”

She turns without waiting for agreement.

“Gideon.”

One of the men kneeling beside Boone’s father looks up immediately.

Mara gestures toward the body with two fingers. Nothing else needs to be said. Gideon glances down at Boone’s father before giving her a single nod.

“No!” Boone tears himself out of my arms so suddenly that I nearly lose him. “Don’t touch him.”

I catch him before he can reach them.

His entire body goes rigid against mine.

“I’ll…” He stares at his father, his mouth opening and closing before he manages to speak. “I’ll take him. I can take him home. I’ll—”

“You’ll do no such thing.”

Boone looks at her.

“You can barely stand.”

Mara steps closer until she is directly in front of him, apparently unconcerned by the fact that I am standing behind him with both arms around his body.

“You are covered in your father’s blood, you’re shaking so hard that I can see it from here, and the man holding you has been shot.” Her gaze flicks toward me. “Neither of you is fine.”

Boone’s eyes fill again.

“I can’t leave him.”

“You aren’t leaving him.”