Page 62 of The Last Wish of Bristol Keats
Slowly the edges of the shadow took form, a soft doeskin boot, a green tunic, until it wasn’t a knight lying there at all, but a boy gasping for breath, his freckled face dirty and taut with alarm.
“Who are you, boy?” Tyghan asked gently.
But the boy only coughed, blood trickling from his mouth, his eyes wildly glancing back and forth between the knights hovering over him. Bristol dropped to her knees and brushed a curly red lock from the boy’s eyes. “Samuel? Samuel of Rookswood?”
He nodded, tears trickling from his eyes. Between labored breaths he answered, “Yes, my lady. Where am I? What happened?”
Tyghan knelt beside him. “You’re at Badbe Garrison. I have to ask you, Samuel, are there more coming?”
“More what?” he gasped. “What’s happened to me? Am I in trouble?”
Tyghan had seen a lot of brutal deaths, but this—His eyes stung, then blurred. Samuel was only a boy, snatched from a farmhouse roof, too young to even understand where he was or what he was supposed to be looking for. The claws of the hyagen had stripped him of his humanity, just as his father had feared, throwing Samuel into the limbo existence of a shadow where he became the eyes of the enemy. To see one of his fellow knights reduced to this was gutting, but to see a child—Tyghan swallowed, remembering the sobbing father’s plea in the throne room.He’s a good boy. Ease his passage. He reached down and held the boy’s hand. “No, Samuel, you’re not in trouble. In fact . . . your father is very proud of you. He told me himself.” But Tyghan also remembered the father’s request,Make his end quick.
The boy coughed and choked, but managed a weak smile. “My father?”
Tyghan nodded. “Yes. He told me how much he loved you. And even now, the gods are smiling upon you, ready to welcome you into Paradise. Your work here is finished. You can rest now. Is that what you want?”
The boy’s face clouded, his chin dimpling as he tried to be brave. “Yes, sir, please. I don’t want to go back to—” The boy couldn’t even finish, because he didn’t understand the dark world where he had been.
Yes, please. Tyghan struggled to smile at the small plea, not wanting Samuel’s last glimpse of this world to be one of tears. “You have brought your family honor. Go to your deserved peace, young Samuel of Rookswood.”
Quin gently slid a knife between Samuel’s ribs into his heart, and the boy took his last tortured breath, the glistening fear in his eyes finally gone.
There were coughs, heavy drawn breaths, seasoned knights struggling to hold back anger and grief for a boy they didn’t even know. Tyghan’s throat ached as he scooped Samuel’s limp body into his arms. He carried him to an empty wagon and covered him with a blanket, then rested his hand on the boy’s chest to be certain he was dead. His voice cracked more than once as he told the driver to take the body to the infirmary to be properly cleaned and wrapped before it was returned to the boy’s parents, and then he heard shuffling behind him. He cleared his throat and turned.
His officers were waiting for orders. He was glad for something to focus on, something he could control. “Kasta, set a high alert. Quin, dispatch platoons to the border to watch the skies. The rest of you, search the immediate area. It’s not likely from his position that the boy saw anything more than the water trough, especially with wards in place, but we can’t be certain. If they did see anything, they will be on their way. Keats, you come with me. And your squad. We have coordinates to mark.”
Tyghan turned to August last, stroking his neck, words caught on his tongue again, but August understood his touch and softly whickered in reply.
The stretch of time that followed was grim. Tyghan paced silently like a hungry wolf, eyeing the hills, the sky, and then stopping abruptly to drill the squad at length that Bristol was never to be left alone. Ever. If he wasn’t with her, at least two of them would be. At all times. It was a reprimand where none was needed. Rose cried into her hands.
Tears never moved Tyghan in drills, but today he backed off, raking his hand through his hair, and headed into the hills without a word.
“I think he needs a moment,” Avery said softly.
Bristol agreed. She knew he didn’t walk off because of Rose’s tears, any more than her tears were because of his orders. No one could get over what they had just witnessed in only a few minutes. Not even the Knight Commander, who had encountered countless deaths in battle.
Bristol settled herself on a bench that overlooked a distant paddock and after ten minutes said, “You all go back. I’ll wait here for him.”
Julia shook her head. “You heard our orders. We can’t leave you alone.”
“Those weren’t orders. That was pure frustration.” Bristol scanned the garrison grounds bustling with activity with over a dozen knights at any time within earshot. “Besides, do I look alone to you? I’ll wait here for him. He might be a while, and you all have plenty to do—like find out which horse is going to be yours.”
“You two are a perfect match, you know?” Hollis said. “Whenever one of you is down, the other is there to hold them up.”
Bristol wasn’t sure she was doing anything at all except waiting. Maybe that was all she had to offer—being there for him when he returned. Believing in him even when he struggled to believe in himself. Samuel’s death weighed on him. Every death weighed on him.
Rose pursed her lips, still looking weepy, and nodded. “You’re strong together. It’s what we all need right now. Especially after this.”
She hugged Bristol, and the squad left.
Bristol stared in the direction Tyghan had set off. He was no longer in her sights, heading into the hills in his effort to quash his feelings. She understood his frustration—and guilt. It gnawed at her now.
When they encountered the dying Samuel, instead of focusing only on him, her mind had jumped to her sisters—more innocents. Earlier that day, as she opened and shut portals with ease, she’d had a smug and dangerous thought. Why not open a portal to Bowskeep? One that went straight to her front yard? She wasn’t sure she could even do it—a portal that went all the way from one world to another. But she imagined it anyway, going through the portal, walking up the porch steps, and knocking on the door, and then seeing Cat’s and Harper’s surprise when they flung it open. She would spend time with them, just an hour or two, to reassure them and make sure they were well, and then she’d go back through the portal to Danu, filled with the joy of seeing them. It would hold her over until she got home. She had almost made up her mind to retrieve her timemark to try to do it, but on seeing Samuel, the risk instantly crystalized. Samuel was a complete innocent, snatched from the safety of his own home and plunged into a netherworld by monsters. The fear in his eyes had gutted her. It was impossible not to think of Harper and Cat. The distance between this world and theirs now seemed like a treasured safety zone. A sacred distance. Yet she could have led someone directly to their front door and put them at risk, only to satisfy her own wants. There was no lock and key she could put on a portal—anyone could pass through it, even monsters. The infinite power she had been feeling instantly vanished. Waiting a couple more weeks to see her sisters now seemed like nothing.
The sun was setting, a glowing ball settling between the crook of two hills, when Bristol and Tyghan finished marking the fourth coordinate. Each designated spot had distinct surroundings that Bristol memorized, plus an added rock with a symbol to differentiate it for the troops who would pass through the portals: a sun, a star, a crescent moon, and this last one, a needle—the eye of Danu that was the symbol of power granted to the daughters of Brigid. The power that Bristol now possessed.
She watched Tyghan staring at the rock bearing the needle, wondering what he was thinking. They had hardly talked since his return—he only wanted to get down to work. Now he was swathed, like everything else, in the pink glow of the sunset, like Lugh, the sun god himself, was trying to heal him with his magical light.
