But his body was settling. The new bone drew back inside the confines of his flesh as he let go of the roar, night flowers closing with the press of dawn.
He left red streaks on Haydn’s face as he touched him. ‘Haydn?’
He was breathing, but shallowly. Pained. None of his injuries felt immediately life-threatening, but he mumbled a hopeless version ofMeilyr.
Meilyr untied his wrists and stumbled beneath his weight as he came off the wall. ‘Haydn, I am going to get you out of here, but I need you to walk. Can you help me?’
Haydn put his feet down and swayed. Meilyr pulled his arm over his shoulders, braced as much of him as he could and made for the door.
A dark, steep set of steps led down. Somehow, agonizingly slowly, they made it without falling, Meilyr’s senses straining for signs of approach.
But the storehouse beneath remained silent. They fell down the last step and had to steady themselves against the wall.
There was no one inside, only more dust and boxes lining the walls. A small lit brazier with mugs and dirtied plates. One of the nearest double doors was partly open, night air stealing in – voices distant but there.
There was nothing else for it. Meilyr tugged Haydn more securely and pushed off towards the rain.
Hewn shapes of stone outbuildings reared in the dark, the sounds of men and horses andsteelabruptly amplified. Meilyr slipped in the mud as the ground veered, and he pulled them uphill, away from the noise and the glinting, moving shadows at the bottom of the slope.
There was a clutch of trees near the far building – far better than getting caught in whatever fighting was happening.
But through the rain stinging his eyes, they came like the Tylwyth Teg. Mounted otherfolk, outlined against the rise. The first rider was carved from white moonlight and gold.
Meilyr’s heart keened.
Osian tore down the hill, slipped from the saddle without halting and closed the distance between them. He touched Meilyr’s face with his free hand, the one not gripping his bloodied sword. ‘Blythe,’ he summoned, thunderous.
Blythe leapt from the saddle and took Haydn easily across her shoulder, moving him towards the other knights.
Osian’s eyes had not left Meilyr, absorbed his bloodied lip, his bleeding temple, the blood and dirt on his hands and clothes.
His voice was liquid fury. The sea at storm.
‘Who did this to you?’
There was a tempest in Meilyr’s chest. ‘Osian…’
The prince let him go and leapt back atop his horse. ‘Blythe, get him to Eascild. Now.’
‘Osian, wait!’
Blythe grabbed his arm. ‘Come on, he’ll be fine.’ Her expression said it was everyone else Meilyr should be afraid for.
But it was not. He needed Osian to be no further from him than this – needed him not to walk into danger alone.
‘Osian!’
‘Come on, we’ve got your friend to take care of.’
It was almost not enough.
Meilyr tore his gaze away and saw Haydn safely up behind Macsen. Allowed Blythe to haul him into the saddle behind her and craned to try to make out the glow of Osian’s body and his horse even as she set off fiercely, away into the dark.
There was nothing but the rain. Nothing but the fury pooling through Osian’s blood, burning the world to a distorted haze. Suffusing his body with lightning.
Not a flicker of hesitance slowed his sword. There was only the rain, and uniformed fabric meeting sharpened gwaed-steel, as thunder roared above.
There was nothing but the rain – and the thought of Meilyr.