Concern flitted across her emptiness. Worry for the patient.
Dualayn straightened and shook his head. “He was too weak. The White Lady sustained him, but it left him with nothing else. Shock must have finished him.”
Disbelief slammed into her and drove back the emptiness. She drew in a shuddering breath as grief and frustration welled inside of her. He couldn’t be dead. Not after all their care to get him here. Not when he’d survived for so long.
She clutched the rag with blood-stained hands.
“No!” she shouted with anger, marching up to him. “We’re not giving up.”
“His breathing stopped,” said Dualayn, his voice gentle. He wiped at his own red-smeared hands. “His heart’s not beating. We knew there wasn’t much chance. The injuries he sustained . . .”
Avena snarled against the injustice of it all. A raw pain struck her, deep to her core. She had promised Ōbhin he’d be fine, that they would save him. The anger in her metastasized into the agony of grief, her mouth bitter with failure.
She yearned for the coldness to embrace her utterly, but she knew it for a trap. Once, she was almost stuck in it. It took Daughter Heana’s patience to draw her out. It never fully left her, that emptiness always lurking in her, demanding to be filled or it would swallow her.
She didn’t want it to swallow her.
“I wanted to save you,” she said to Carstin. She touched his face. He looked peaceful. At rest. “I’m sorry.”
“We both did,” Dualayn said. “I’ll clean up. You can go. Tell Ōbhin that we . . .” He drew in a steadying breath. “Tell him that we failed.”
“Okay,” she said, voice tight. Disappointment pressed on her sagging shoulders.
She ripped her gaze away. She grabbed a clean rag and scrubbed his blood from her hands beneath the stream of water from the aquifer. The last bit of his life spilled down the drain that led to the manor house’s leach field.
It all seemed so pointless to care for him. To hope for him and . . .
She shook her head. She couldn’t think that. Trying was never hopeless. Never pointless. If no one cared, then suffering would rule the world. She wiped the last of the blood off her hands. She marched out of the laboratory and into the warmth of the rest of the house.
She had her destination fixed. She marched ahead, her steps echoing around her. She stared down at clean hands, the beds of her nails sparkling. A roil of emotions shot through her, too tangled for her to understand. They all mixed together into something black and raw.
Ōbhin stared at the window.
He turned at some sound she made. His expression fell on her. His face hardened as he drew in a deep breath. His hands went behind his back as she stared at him.
“I tried,” she whispered as she crossed to him. She didn’t quite know why. To comfort him, or to find it herself. “I truly tried. I wanted to . . . I did . . . No matter who he was.”
“I know,” Ōbhin whispered, his voice soft. His arms engulfed her and pulled her to him. The pain grew too great. Her frustration threatened to overcome her. It had to escape her. The emotions welling up inside of her. She had to let them out. She couldn’t bottle them up and slip into the coldness again.
Her tears flowed as he rocked her. She mourned a man she’d never known whole. She knew nothing of his life save he’d engaged in banditry. His crimes didn’t matter. He was her patient, and she’d failed him.
Chapter Ten
A numbness gripped Ōbhin as he gained the top of the hill cloaked in blackberry bushes, a shovel over his shoulder. Behind him, the three guards who worked for Dualayn set down the cloth-wrapped corpse of Carstin on the grass. Breaths came in deep inhalations, thighs burning from the exertion of the climb, Ōbhin leaned on the handle of his mattock, studying the ground.
Someone had been standing up here recently. He frowned at the impressions of feet around the base of the tree growing nearby. Work boots, rough, the soles damaged and worn. The butt of a staff had dug an impression in the soil.
Or maybe the end of a bow . . . drifted through his thoughts.
“Are you okay, Ōbhin?” said the genial tones of Dualayn. “If this task is beyond you . . . ?”
Ōbhin shook his head. “No, no. He was . . . was my friend.”
He glanced down at the cloth molding to the form of Carstin. The impression of a broad nose and the shape of his forehead bled through the linen. It fell over his torso, his missing leg marked by the fall of the fabric.
“Sorry,” whispered Avena, her voice a low croak, destroyed by her sobbing.
“Come on, boys,” grunted a bulbous-nosed guard, the eldest of the three. His hair grayed. He cracked his swollen knuckles one hand at a time, pressing a fist into the opposite’s palm. “Hole’s not gonna dig itself.”
Miguil the groom was the first to thrust the wooden blade of his shovel into the grass covering the hill. He stepped on it. Despite the delicate cast to his features, he didn’t shy away from the work. He hefted a large chunk of soil and sod to the side, exposing the dry-brown dirt beneath. Ōbhin stepped up beside the man and drove his shovel into the rocky soil, feeling the jar of buried stones.
The guard they’d met at the gate, his smile forgotten, slammed a rusting mattock into the dirt, breaking up the soil as Ōbhin, the other two guards, and Miguil dug the grave. Thoughts
