No. No, it certainly had meant something. He’d had his chance to run. He hadn’t taken it. But that didn’t mean that someone couldn’t have come before her.

She tried to calm her thoughts as two healers came to work on her; she knew too much turmoil in their presence would drain their energy unnecessarily and made her body not want to heal. They looked her over in a mix of surprise and excitement.

“My goodness, Miara! You’re in just terrible shape,” the blond one named Fesian cooed. “We hardly ever see anything like this.” She was just barely veiling the pleasure in her words. “You are bleeding profusely. I can’t believe you’re still standing. This is wonderful.”

“Sorin is really eating this up,” the other added. He was a redheaded man named Tameun. “But not you. Not that I’m surprised. Lie down now.” Miara complied and lay down on the cot.

“Isn’t that always how it is,” Fesian muttered. “The real warriors don’t puff up their chests and prance around. Now this will just hurt a little.”

Miara stared up at the wood beams and tried to keep her mind blank and calm. She didn’t know if she should be happy or concerned that the healer considered her a real warrior. But bloody as she was, perhaps anything else would be ridiculous. She was indeed fresh from a battle—both physically, and in her soul. At least the physical fight was over.

Fesian circled around, moved her hand over the scratch on Miara’s face, and began to focus on it.

Miara held up her hand. “Leave that,” she said.

“But why? We’re not short on energy. We’ve got more than we know what to do with, I promise you. You needn’t skimp.”

“I’m sorry,” she replied. “I can’t explain. I just… I have to keep it, at least for a little while. I don’t want to completely erase it all. Maybe I’ll change my mind and be back tomorrow.”

This seemed to assuage them. The talon punctures required several stops and starts and rests in between as they healed them back and forth in waves. The world was fuzzy and seemed to buzz around her. She lay mostly still, eyes shut, dazed, stuck like an insect cocooned in amber.

Each healing spell itself was agony. But they only barely registered in her mind. She had forced herself to stop thinking about the stupid knight. All that was left was… nothing.

There was nothing to think of, nothing to work toward, nothing to care about. Nothing but the tendril of a thought of him, the feeling that someone who had just been in the room was now gone, the cold feeling after a warm hand leaves your side. She sighed. It wasn’t that there was nothing left. Something was left: the glaring absence of him.

How could she care in a world that would let Aven die? How could she build anything in a world like this? Why would she bring herself to even move? How could she do anything at all, really?

She didn’t.

Fesian paused for a moment, frowning at the eternal wound on Miara’s shoulder. “Hmph. Odd.”

“What is it?” Miara managed.

“Oh, nothing.” The healer returned to fussing over the talon punctures on her back. “Just a few more, hold on.”

Finally, Tameun roused her with a pat on her forearm. Had she fallen asleep? When had she closed her eyes? “That’s enough for now, Miara. Let’s see if it finishes the last little healing on its own. There should be few scars.”

“On the outside, anyway,” she muttered.

Tameun gave a friendly snort, and Fesian wrapped her arms around Miara in a hug. “All things heal with time,” she whispered.

Death doesn’t, Miara thought. Slavery doesn’t. But she didn’t voice her thoughts.

The healers left her. She trudged back to the dorm. Her father wasn’t there, nor Luha. Of course, it was the middle of the day, and they were working. She sat down on her bed, then threw herself carelessly down, burying her face in the blankets.

There she lay, thinking very little, hardly moving, just staring, as the day marched on.

At one point, she thought she heard a scream in the distance. Was that Aven? She leapt up, running to the window and throwing the shutters open, listening. Nothing.

No, no, it made no sense. It was probably long done. Before she’d even left the healers. The branding didn’t take long. It could not be him. It was probably just children playing.

But in her heart, it might as well have been. She may not have heard it, but at some point during the day, there had been at least one such scream. And her heart broke at the thought that they had broken him, that they’d made him into a slave. Just like her.

Now instead of just sitting and staring, the tears finally came. She forgot the open window and collapsed back onto her bed, slowly crying herself into an exhausted sleep.

Exhausted as he was, Aven gave the guards his fair share of trouble getting him up off the table in the smithy and vertical again. One slung Aven’s branded arm over his shoulder to hold him upright, and he groaned at the shockwave of pain that resulted. He wasn’t aware of anything in the next few moments beyond that pain.

Then they were dragging him somewhere. Where had the woman said? The dungeon? Yes. They entered the main building from the back this time and hauled him down several excruciating flights of stairs. Blackness replaced the midday light, and only a sporadic torch made further progress possible.

Finally, a small, dank room opened up before them. Wet, rugged stone surrounded them on all sides. In the center of the room, red-hot coals in an open hearth left the room almost as sweltering as the smithy. The air reeked of sweat and worse. Cells lined the walls.

Into one of these he was dragged. A guard shackled his hands to the wall and left. He saw the two masters studying him from the base of the staircase before they, too, were gone.

Hell. There was no starlight here. Nor light from the sun or the moon. Nothing to sustain him or revive him as Miara had taught him. His heart started to race in mild panic, that same feeling of being trapped returning so suddenly.

He shivered, finally recovering enough to notice the deep, icy feeling in his chest. At least he had expended some magic. Whether it had accomplished anything, he was glad he now knew enough to try.

The dark, heavy walls pressed in on him, bringing back his very worst memories of Estun. How much had changed in just a few days. His worries had been for hiding his magic, finding a wife, getting out of yet another boring social event. Now he couldn’t imagine hiding his magic, or finding anyone to marry other than Miara, or wasting a minute in an event he didn’t want to take part in. In retrospect, though, brandy and conversation didn’t seem quite so bad or so boring.