Leonis laughed, a low burbling noise through sticky globs of red. “Daechir,” she said, her eyes tender and far away. Suddenly she seemed small to him, very small in his arms. She shuddered something horrible and blood leaked into his hands.
“Mother,” he said. The words thudded like stones down an empty well.
She looked at him and laughed again. “Mother? Alas, not me! For I have died, and I claim you not as my own. Deserter, traitor! And still you stay your hand.” She squeezed her eyes shut with a painful hiss.
The air felt thick in his throat as he tried to suck in breaths. Black fuzzed around his eyes and threatened to swallow her up. He chanted the words of his oath, silently, his lips sealed as a vault while his tongue sought for the verses. Look toward me, O Divine Ones. Though I am unworthy, by your grace be the hurts of my charge healed.
There came no cooling light. The magic of his oath had been spent. Unworthy. He would find another way.
He laid her down and held her close, desperate now, a child clinging to something long since departed. His chest against hers, a makeshift pressure to stopper the wound. Warmth bloomed from her heart to his, thick and red, and there they lay, beseeching.
“Let me save you,” he said. “Let me try.”
“I will save us both,” she answered. And then she snatched the knife at his belt.
