Voices. In the darkness.
"Is the Lord all right?"
"He seems — is he just exhausted?"
"He is breathing. His pulse is steady. Let me check—"
"Heal him. Both of you. Now."
The world was moving. Not metaphorically — literally. The floor beneath me was shifting, the rhythm uneven, the motion of something carried rather than something walked. My body was vertical, my arms draped over something warm, something strong, something that smelled of sweat and steel and — faintly — of lavender.
I opened my eyes.
Seraphine was giving me a piggyback.
She walked with the steady, powerful stride of a woman whose body had been healed by two healers and whose guilt had been reinforced by the sight of a man lying unconscious on a dead monster's chest. Her blonde hair — loose, tangled — fell across my arm. Her shoulders — bare, the under-tunic the only covering, her armor gone — were broad, muscular, the shoulders of a warrior who carried weight for a living.
