The pain from my arm was rippling through me now, and my body jerked against it. My eyes opened wide as it went up another notch.
The sky was still blue above me and the figures standing around me were a blur I couldn’t focus on. My body went rigid as a new wave rippled through me.
“What’s wrong with her?”
“The cuff. She’s still wearing the cuff.” Gideon knew. He had been with us and he knew that Marcus and I couldn’t be separated. But it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered.
“What?” My brother’s voice was sharp, staccato, afraid. Maybe he would be sorry to see me go. It would have been nice to have had a brother. There was a rumble of voices answering him, explaining.
The pain receded and my body went limp. The brother I barely knew picked me up and cradled me in his arms. At least I wasn’t alone. At least I had family at the end.
Another wave ripped through me, stronger this time, more intense than the last and I screamed, unable to keep the pain inside.
“Help her,” Rion’s desperate plea came again. “Help her.”
There was no way. However the Empire was removing Marcus’s cuff I didn’t know.
“Take her hand,” Gideon said. There was the sound of a sword being drawn. Of course. Violence. The answer to all life’s problems in his mind.
“No.” I tugged at the grip that caught my arm. Freed, I pulled my arm away, bringing the agony, the source of the pain, in closer to me. I didn’t want to be saved. Certainly not if it meant taking my arm.
“Look at me.” Hands cradled my face. “Can you hear me?”
Gideon. Was he looking for permission? He would not have it. I would not give it. I curled into a ball and shook my head, attempting to dislodge his calloused hands. Another wave tore through me and again I arched up in my brother’s arms, rigid against the pain. I couldn’t take much more of this. Not too long now.
Devyn would be waiting. He wouldn’t be gone too far.
Gideon’s hands took my face again.
“Dammit, Cat, listen to me,” he commanded. “We have to try. I know you don’t want to be here, but what about your baby? We have to try for the baby.”
The baby.
I opened my eyes and met the blast of Gideon’s fierce golden ones. So alive, so full of vitality. Not like Devyn’s dark eyes that were now blank and emptied of his soul, fixed in a kind of faded brown; it had always fascinated me the way his eyes had seemed to change colour, from a rich coffee brown to a black so dark I could fall into them for ever. Endless depths. No more.
Gideon took hold of my hand and began to extend it.
Would I die from blood loss before the pain took me?
One of the other soldiers took hold of my hand as Gideon raised his sword.
“No, don’t want…” I mumbled, but Gideon didn’t so much as glance my way as his sword descended on my outstretched arm and bounced off. Putting the great lummox on his arse where he belonged.
The pain blasted through me again. Was it hurting the baby? I pulled my hand free of the stunned warrior who was still holding it and wrapped it around my belly as I curled into a foetal shape around her. It wasn’t right; this wasn’t right. I needed to protect her. Devyn would have loved her. I could see her: dark curls like her father, but would her eyes be a rich brown like his and her skin bronze? The pain was receding again, and then it came back even harder. Could she feel it? Was it scaring her?
I could feel fear and despair coming at me. Not my own. Was it hers? Our little girl’s.
I could save her. I could still save her.
“Married,” I mumbled. My lips felt so dry I was sure they must be cracked.
Rion leaned over me. “Did you say something?”
His face was streaked with tears. I wondered which were for me and which were for his childhood friend.
“Married… falls off,” I pushed out, the words so faint I could barely hear them myself. It was so loud, the waves, the burning, the smell of smoke and the grit of the sand. How was the world still here when all I had loved was gone?
“What is she saying?” Gideon asked, his tone so deep I felt it reverberate through the air as he dropped to his knees in front of me once more. Again he was manhandling me, lifting my face to his. I wished he would stop… The pain struck again and I barely had the strength to react to it now.
No. I was strong; they just needed to act.
“Marry. Me.” It was all I could do to grit out the words.
“Marry you?” Gideon echoed.
And finally the druid seemed to understand, his babbling words explaining to them what I already knew. A marriage vow would release me from the cuff. Any marriage vow, not just a marriage to my intended. It was a basic contract charm, and once the contract was completed by marriage or death, even for just one of the parties, it would be enough to satisfy the charm. It was a technicality, but certainly an important one when one of the parties was sailing off into the horizon.
“But who…?” began my brother. What did it matter? Any of them would do.
My hand was taken and gripped by another; the cloth that had so recently bound Devyn’s wrist to Gideon’s now bound mine. Blood stained the cloth; I couldn’t look away from it, the red on the white. I felt so distant, the pain now an almost constant thrum through my body.
The druid started to intone what I presumed was some wedding rite. Then I heard Gideon’s deep rumble. Gideon. I couldn’t marry Gideon, no matter how short-lived it was.
Before I could answer, another wave of pain ripped through
