Her traitorous body had given in to the exhaustion that clouded her mind, and she had slept. She’d be grateful, for little though she desired it she needed the rest, except for the dreams that had haunted her.
Oddly, they were mostly of killing. Of her killing—therein the oddity—for death visiting her dreams did not seem unusual when it had so invaded her waking life.
Yet that moment replayed in her sleeping mind had felt almost insignificant when it had occurred, eclipsed in the horror that had followed it. For yes, she had done what she had needed to do, and in almost a dance she and her husband had worked to bring down the man attacking them. It had felt right—not using her knife to take the life of another, but to be fighting alongside Alphdir.
But in her dreams it felt anything but right. She was alone in them, only occasionally catching sight of her husband through a thick mist, alone except for her foe. And she cursed the ease with which the Elvish dagger refused to resist as it snuffed out the light in her enemy’s eyes.
Death, a wave of death had crashed down upon her. No, was crashing. Already it had taken so much, already she was an agent of it, surrounded by it. Heledd had scrubbed her clothes last night, but still she could see the faint stains of blood.
She had fully intended to run. To flee back north, away from here, where even the effort of understanding the language had started to give her a headache, away from the Elf who smothered her in pity, yet could not understand. Away from her husband’s grave, where lay still and cold lay the body of a man she could not think of except as full of life, with dancing fingers on lute, a man who laughed as he waded in the streams of the Angle, who spoke with steely passion of his oaths, of his desires to protect the lands of which she kept the memory.
Usually she felt safer with the dagger at her side, but right now it lay at the bottom of her pack. She could not bear even to look at it. Desire for revenge competed with revulsion at the instruments of death. Pick one feeling or another you useless woman, she chided herself. Yet her traitorous feelings refused to be consistent or make sense, so she shoved them aside. She was a coward, for she knew as likely as not her mind would betray her if she had to fight again in this state. Even now, her hands trembled as she took up the pen. There was one thing to try.
She despised the thief who so falsely kept information from her. Nor could she comprehend the woman’s motivations—and that was even more terrifying. Though much grief could have been avoided had she told Gwetheril her intentions from the beginning, the woman had gone back to rescue the man she’d been hired to kill. Gwetheril supposed that counted for something. At least contacting Li was one avenue to try.
Wynne, blunt and sharp-tongued as ever had returned, and Gwetheril took stock of her ideas and plans to present to the young huntress. There would be time later to grieve.
