CHAPTER 20

ALL her fear had been for Tristan, but it was her father she found. He lay on the ground behind a knot of Verdeau soldiers. Though they fought ferociously to protect their king, they fought with little hope. As the rear guard fell back, too beset even to notice that Jerome had fallen, the king’s guard was stranded on the field. Soon they would be overrun.

Ignoring the roar of battle and the litter of corpses around her, Gabrielle dodged through the screen of soldiers, dropped to her knees and cradled Jerome in her lap. She could not, at first, see where he was injured. The ground was stained red about him, and his breath came in rasping gasps. She laid her hand along his neck. At her touch, his eyelids fluttered open.

“My Gabrielle,” he whispered. “Do I dream?”

“Shhhh,” she soothed, stroking his brow. She could not have managed words, so close were her tears.

“You must go,” Jerome said, each word a painful effort. “Go.”

Gabrielle rested her hand on Jerome’s forehead, closed her eyes and sank into him. As her vision shifted, she could find nothing at first. Heart, lungs, limbs—all were fine. Wait. Something funny about his legs. What was it? They seemed ... whole, but dead. No, that made no sense. She continued on ... and then she saw it, and her heart sank. Jerome had been struck in the back—by a battle-ax, she guessed. The powerful blow had all but severed his spine.

Despair welled up in her. Gabrielle saw all too clearly her father’s fate if he were taken off the field now. The move would be almost bound to kill him. If by some chance he lived, it would be to face paralysis, organ failure, an early wasting death. It was unthinkable. Now, before the fragile nerves of the spinal cord began to deteriorate, she must reattach them. She could do it. Was it not for this she had been sent here? She would do it, and if any of his men still lived, they would carry him to safety.

Never had her concentration been so fierce. The fury around her vanished; her own body vanished; even Jerome himself was only vaguely in her consciousness. Nothing existed for her but the intricate repair of the delicate hair-thin shafts, the healing light that shone through and over the tissues, the power pulsing through her hands. An hour crawled by, and miraculously the king’s guard held, and she worked undisturbed. The repairs were fragile yet, but they were true—she could feel the energy pulsing through the newly joined fibers. If she could just finish all the initial joins and then firm up the cracked spine, she would risk moving him.

She did not hear the final call to retreat. The soldiers did, but by then their avenue of escape had long been cut off. One of Jerome’s men shook her shoulder and yelled for her to make haste and run. Gabrielle’s eyes snapped open, blazing with such fire that he flinched from their heat. “I cannot leave him!” she snarled, shaking off the soldier’s hand, and sank back into her work. So motionless was Gabrielle, so deeply bent over her father’s body, that while one by one the king’s guards were slaughtered, the swarming Greffaire soldiers took no more notice of her than of the corpses under their feet.

One noticed Jerome, though. Having joined in the pursuit of the retreating rear guard, and then been recalled by the horns cutting short the chase, a Greffaire soldier trudged across the field with his company. He was more than glad to disengage; his armor was damnably hot and his arse ached from a horse kick. He swung his sword as he walked, looking forward to a long drink and a well-heaped plate. A shock of reddish hair and a gleam of white throat caught his eye. As casually as a boy kicking a stone, he swung the sword high and brought it down through the exposed neck. Stepping over the head that rolled at his feet, he continued his stolid walk.