I swam on my back, still clinging to Brindle. My heart was in my throat. I wasn’t sure if I should be swimming to shore or trying to wait for Adalbrand to join me.
I kept my eyes fixed on the doorway I’d leapt from. There was no sign of Adalbrand — hadn’t been for as long as I was in the water. I blinked hard against tears that would not stop welling up.
Was he stuck? Had he fallen into a hole in the monastery? I should have stayed. I should have stayed and helped him and not taken the dog with me. I was a fool for making Brindle’s remains a priority when he was already gone.
A sob rose up and choked me.
And it felt strange not to have two more opinions in my mind. Where was the voice urging me to drown and die? Where was the voice assuring me all would be well?
Gone. Lost to me forever.
A sudden crack split the air and I gasped as I finally caught a glimpse of Adalbrand. He flung himself into the sea at the same moment that the monastery collapsed, caving in with powerful force and sucking water in after it.
The pull of the sudden void dragged the sea backward toward the collapsing city. Adalbrand swam — frantically — but he was being dragged backward despite his efforts.
And that was too much for me. With a cry, I dropped Brindle, turned around, and began to swim with all my might.
I nearly screamed when something huge in the water streaked by me. I sucked down a lungful of water before I realized it was Hefertus.
“I’ve got him,” he roared, and then returned to slicing through the water as if he were a gleaming fish and this was his bay.
Reluctant, I turned back to Brindle, finding his body and dragging him to my chest once more so that I could swim backward toward the shore. He deserved a respectful resting place. He deserved to be honored.
Perhaps it was best I had not been the only hope for Adalbrand, because before I reached the shore I grew so tired that I was bobbing under the waves, losing hold of Brindle only to grab at him again. I hit the rocky beach breathless and exhausted, clawed us out of the inky depths, and collapsed on a shore that smelled of fecund seaweed and lashed at me with bitter winds.
I was alive.
That alone was the God’s own miracle.
I had cast the demons out.
I was free.
And yet I was not.
I clung to my doggy friend — to what was left of him — and sobbed into his fur, stroking the head that would never lift again.
No apology from me could ever be enough. I’d betrayed the great bond between man and beast — the bargain where we promised to protect them if they would follow us.
I gasped in another shuddering sob, but I could not stay here mourning. Not now.
Worry forced me to my wobbling feet, though my vision was blurry with tears. I rose, trembling, just in time to find Hefertus breaking through the waves and hauling himself onto the shore, supporting a sputtering, half-drowned Adalbrand. They rose together from the slate-colored sea, the water pouring off them as if in holy baptism, and my heart leapt with something that sliced through me like hope. Adalbrand was whole — bleeding badly from one side, but whole.
“Adalbrand,” I gasped, relief filling me as I looked from him to the angelic Hefertus. That giant who could lure in a thousand maidens just by walking dripping from the waves. I had questions for him later — specifically about why he’d abandoned us — but for now, my heart was full of Adalbrand and I cared not for any answer but his. “Are you whole?”
To my shock, he did not meet my gaze, did not so much as look up as he strode onto the beach with what seemed to be the last of his energy and fell to his knees beside Brindle.
I wanted to fall there with him, to wrap him in my embrace, but his lack of acknowledgment made me hesitate. Perhaps he had only wanted me while we were within the monastery walls. Perhaps all that was over now.
I exchanged a helpless look with Hefertus.
“You drown them because drowning is something you can come back from,” Adalbrand muttered, and then he half leaned, half collapsed on Brindle’s body.
His beautiful lips, dragging against the soaked doggy fur, muttered a prayer so quietly that I couldn’t catch most of it.
I’d seen Adalbrand glorious and burning with light. I’d seen him best enemies who outnumbered him, arms rippling with the fury of the God raining down. But here, praying over my dead friend, vulnerable and broken, here he was beautiful.
He laid his hand on Brindle’s head and I thought I heard him mutter, “Amen,” before he passed out, his body going slack.
I looked at Hefertus again and the big man looked sharply away, as if this was all too much emotion for him.
Movement caught the corner of my eye.
It was the rise and fall of a brindled fur chest.
A cry escaped my lips and I fell to my knees just as Brindle wriggled out from under an unconscious Sir Adalbrand.
He hardly seemed to know what to do with himself. His tail wagged to an irregular rhythm and he barked sharply before slathering Adalbrand’s cheeks in doggy kisses and then jumping up to put his paws on my chest and knock me backward so that he could give me the same treatment.
I was laughing, I realized, laughing in wonder. Laughing with joy. I caught the big furry face on either side of his head and tugged his ears gently back and forth.
“Who’s a good boy, then?” I asked affectionately.
“Adalbrand is. Just like always,” Hefertus said dryly, but his eyes were glassy and red-rimmed, too.
“Of course he is,” I agreed with a grin. “And so is Brindle.”
“I won’t ask you if he’s still full of demons,” the golden-haired paladin said, lifting Adalbrand from the rocky shore.
“That’s polite of you,” I said just as dryly.
He narrowed his eyes and I laughed.
“They’re gone,” I assured him. “All gone.”
And if my voice sounded sad, it was not for the demons. It was for my old friend, Sir Branson, buried now with honor beneath the rubble of the Aching Monastery, just as I’d asked the God to help me achieve.
“I suppose there won’t be any more trouble coming from that place?” Hefertus glanced at me.
I shook my head and he let out a relieved sigh as he scratched his beard.
“Survivors?”
I paused. “Sir Sorken still lived when I fell into the sea. Adalbrand was … trying to help him.”
Hefertus grunted. “If he had been salvageable, then the fool would have stayed and died with him. We won’t need to go back looking for survivors. Come along, then. The fire should still be burning.”
“Fire?” I asked, surprised.
Hefertus frowned at me again. He did that a lot.
“Obviously you were all going to come out in ten hours and you were going to come by sea. Did you really think I wasn’t paying attention?”
He held the full weight of Adalbrand as if he weighed nothing at all, not looking even fatigued when I made him pause so I could pull up the edge of Adalbrand’s tunic. The slash across his ribs was still bleeding far more than I’d like. I hissed as I tried to probe how bad the injury was.
“We’ll take care of him at the tent,” Hefertus said.
I nodded and we set out, Brindle trotting out in front of us, nose to the ground.
The shore was rocky and uneven and it took us some time to wend our way around to where Hefertus had set up camp.
It was slow going for all of us except Brindle. Hefertus was being careful with his charge. I was wearied from the journey through the sea and the tumult of emotions that had raged through me at the fountain and the strange, scouring fire of the God that had performed his miracle. I felt as though I’d been scrubbed inside and out and was now a limp rag fit for nothing but drying in front of a fire.
“The God saw fit to set me on the other side of the door,” Hefertus explained.
“After you left the battle to us?” I couldn’t help myself. No fire or tent was enough to keep the bitterness from my voice.
“It was not my fight,” he said simply. It must be nice to have that kind of confidence. “At any rate, it seemed to me that either the demons would win and come screaming out of there, in which case I would be required to spend my life on eliminating them — a thing I’d rather avoid — or someone would defeat them and the place would be a ruin. Either way, I could hardly leave the poor horses there.
“I took them with me. And my gear. And Adalbrand’s. If you had something precious to you, I fear it’s lost. I didn’t want to steal anyone’s things. Adalbrand wouldn’t care. He is a brother to me.”
“You two are definitely very close,” I said wryly as we turned a corner in the shore and I saw three horses hobbled beside Hefertus’s silken tent and a roaring bonfire.
“Oh no, I mean he’s actually my brother. Most likely. My mother claims I am one of King Abrent von Menticure’s many bastards, though there’s no saying for sure. She’s a Duchess of Shannamara. They aren’t fussy about bed partners. And they’re matriarchal, so I have her name, of course.”
I found myself blinking at that. “Does he know?”
Hefertus paused and frowned. “I don’t know, now that you mention it. I don’t think I’ve ever told him. He’s suspicious enough of me as it is. No need to make it worse.” He gestured dismissively. “He doesn’t like my devil-may-care attitude. But it’s bred in the bone. It’s going nowhere.”
“Oh.” It was a foolish thing to say, but we’d reached the camp now and Hefertus pointed to a pile of blankets on the shore.
“I did take the Seer’s blankets. She wasn’t going to need them. Put them by the fire, would you?”
I arranged the blankets in a pallet and Hefertus set Adalbrand down on it and went to find his kit. The Poisoned Saint would need stitching along his side and possibly in his neck. Brindle had torn him up there, too.
When Hefertus wasn’t looking, I threaded my fingers through Adalbrand’s hair. He looked so pale. He’d given the very last shred of himself for me.
My gaze strayed guiltily to where Brindle yawned beside the fire. Just Brindle. No demon, no paladin, just an innocent dog again. Behind him, the horses nickered, and when Hefertus returned with Adalbrand’s small black bag, I raised an eyebrow at him.
“You only kept three horses?”
“I let the rest go. I don’t need nearly a dozen horses.”
“But why three?” I pressed as I dug into the black bag to find thread and needle so that I could stitch Adalbrand’s side.
“One for me — obviously. One for Adalbrand. I knew he’d make it. He’s too tough to kill. And one for you.”
“For me?” I looked up, feeling amused despite myself.
“Just stitch the man who might be my brother,” he said grumpily. “I’ll brew tea.”
I didn’t ask if he’d stolen the tea. He could keep his secrets. I just stitched Adalbrand, drank my tea, and complied without complaint when Hefertus insisted on bundling both Adalbrand and me in blankets inside his tent.
“Two will be warmer than one,” he said when I suggested I help him stand watch. “You can stand watch tomorrow.”
I thought that after all that had happened, I should maybe spend the night in vigil. Or prayer. Or just being grateful to have survived.
I watched Adalbrand breathe for a time. Made sure he sounded fine. Marveled that he was alive and not drowned in the sea. His short hair was lovely, plastered to his head by the sea and then ruffled by my fingers, and his lips were soft as they were parted in sleep.
But he hadn’t clasped me in relief like I’d expected. He hadn’t even shared a single warm glance with me. Though that ached when I turned it round and round in my mind, it wouldn’t be fair to hold him to things he’d said when we were both in that dark place. It wouldn’t be honorable.
I wanted to try to think about what that might mean and how I should broach the subject with him when he finally awoke, but I was spent and weary. When Brindle padded into the tent and lay down over my legs, a warmth came over me and I couldn’t keep my eyes open. I drifted away to sleep to the sound of doggy breath, the gulls shrieking overhead, the pounding of the sea’s turbulent breakers, and Hefertus outside the tent humming a tuneless melody.
