The crownsworn acted in the only way they could. The bodies on the floor, the single figure standing alone before the near-dead king.
Their crossbows were familiar: gwaed-steel armour-piercers used to kill sorcerers.
The first bolt buried itself in Meilyr’s lower ribs. The second plunged straight through his heart.
Osian’s wordless roar ripped the hall apart.
‘Stand down!’ Aldreda shouted. ‘Gods –stand down!’
Meilyr put his hand to his wet chest and sank to his knees.
Osian caught him. Pulled him into his arms and against his chest. ‘Meilyr – no no no, Meilyr –no!’ He tried to touch the bolts with shaking hands but stopped. Agony rolled across him like clouds over the mountains. ‘Get a healer!’ he cried, pulling Meilyr closer. ‘Meilyr – Meilyr, if I take these out, you can fix it? You can – you can fix this. You can fix this.’
Meilyr smiled brokenly. Gods, he wanted to. He wanted to prove him right, to spend another moment in the light of his eyes.
But there was so much damage. His heart was in tatters, blood spluttering frantic and then slow. Gasping around iron and wood. He did not even have the strength to try after the exhaustion the night had wrought.
There was too much damage. Iron in his mouth, slipping over his lips.
‘Meilyr, no, you have to – you have to…’
Osian.
His hair caught the rising sun, spun gold. His eyes were a depth no sea could match.
Gold from the dappled light, from the flames behind. Warmth as his hand caught Meilyr’s and pulled him away. Away from the death and the horror, through the trees.
Two children, led to one another by the fox in the wood.
Oh.
Meilyr’s mind finally came to the truth his heart had longed for.
Oh, of course.
‘You were the boy in the woods.’ He huffed a bloodied bubble of a laugh.Thatwas how Osian had known the truth. ‘Of course you are. Of course you are…’
Osian was the boy the fox had led him to. The boy with golden hair who had run with him through the trees. The boy who had led him to Idwal, to Lowri. To Celyn.
The boy who had saved him. Who had never stopped saving him.
‘Meilyr –Meilyr…’
Meilyr grasped Osian’s bloodied hand as fiercely as he could. Those sea-storm eyes were at tempest. Beautiful. He was beautiful – and alive.
Alive.
There was no regret for the choice Meilyr had made to come back for him, even knowing how it would end. He firmed his grip, swallowed and focused. ‘Live,’ he commanded. He pressed it through his hands and coursed it through Osian’s body with the final fragments of his strength – with his blood as it pooled beneath them.
Osian had to live. Celyn had to live. They all had to live.
‘Live.’
Devastation tore through Osian’s features, which was a shame. He really was most beautiful when he smiled.
‘Live,’ Meilyr told him. The memory of that smile made his lips quirk.
It was not a bad image to die to, really.