Page 73 of Silverbow (The Godsung Saga #1)

thirty-seven

Oryn

O ryn carefully lowered Enya to the floor.

It was the only place wide enough in the cramped little cabin to crowd around her limp form.

Her breath came in ragged wheezes and her skin had turned clammy.

Colm sidled in behind her, the heavy farrier’s snips ready in his hand.

Oryn stared down at the broadhead, his own hands braced around her shoulders to keep her upright.

“Can you hear me, Enya?” He asked as he plunged into his gifts. They’d been running wild since the gate, swelling in their divine power with each drop of blood that wept from her wound.

He had known since his first wielding that her injuries far exceeded his skill.

He could staunch the bleeding with a patch.

He could knit the skin. But he could not fix what had been severed in her shoulder or damaged in the lung.

That kind of healing took real skill and the kind of training that could only be found in Oyamor.

Either way, the bolt had to come out, so he spun out a barrier or air to seal the sound into the captain’s cabin.

“We have to take it out, Enya. You’re going to wish I’d let you fall on the paving stones in Windcross Wells, but after that…after that…”

Her eyes fluttered as she tried to open them. A weak little whimper escaped her.

“Ready?” Colm asked .

Oryn gave a nod and with a clean, sharp crack , the fletching that protruded from her back clattered to the floor. Enya jolted beneath his hands. Emerald eyes flew open as she let out a choked scream. The sound seemed to burrow beneath his skin.

“It’s okay. We’re almost done,” he lied. “I’ve got you. I’ve got you, Enya.”

“N-N-needle and thread…” It was hardly more than a breath.

Oryn swallowed. He hated that gods damned list, but he hated even more that her teeth started chattering. Gods, no. There was nothing he could do for that kind of cold. “Hold on, Enya. I’ve got you.”

“Oryn…” Her eyes fluttered again.

The sound of his name on her lips wrecked him.

He had to steady himself as he flexed his fingers and it had nothing to do with the rocking of the ship beneath him.

He spun air, water, and spirit together, readying another patch.

Colm, seeing the wielding come together, wrapped his arms around her middle, pinning her elbows to her sides.

Her face twisted. “Oryn, please,” she whimpered.

With a breath, he took hold of the shaft and pulled before he lost his nerve. Enya screamed and tried to thrash against Colm’s grip.

“Oryn!”

Every inch felt like a gods damned mile as a fresh wave of blood surged from the patch he’d just torn open.

“I’ve got you, Enya. Hold on.”

The moment the bolt was free, he dropped his healing wield into place, letting it knit as much of the tattered flesh as he could.

She shuddered violently and fell back against Colm’s chest, still.

He didn’t slam the damper back down this time.

Instead, he watched the way Mosphaera and Sakaala took hold of his own wieldings to caress her.

Nimala twined around her in a brilliant little blanket of moonflowers.

He realized with a start that they matched his own vow mark.

They had been trying to tell him all along.

Seemingly satisfied with his understanding, the gods let his wieldings fade with one last flourish. He stared at the rise and fall of her breath and listened to her battered heart beat.

Colm heaved a relieved sigh. Oryn stared at the bolt on the floor, nauseated by the stained length of wood and enraged that the cowards buried it in her back.

He felt the weight of Colm’s stare as he cast the bolt onto the table.

He cleared his throat and got to his feet, retrieving the towel and bowl of water Colm had undoubtedly thought to gather while he waited for their arrival.

“What was it Hylee whispered to you?” He asked.

Oryn soaked the towel and wrung it out. That secret was his own. “Why is it you didn’t tell me she was Trakbatten?”

“Who we are has very little to do with our names,” he answered.

Perhaps that was true for most men. But it wasn’t when you were a Trakbatten. Or a Brydove.

“And it wasn’t my place to tell her,” he added.

Oryn could understand that, but he didn’t think learning it from Hylee Starseer was much better. “I can take it from here.”

Colm nodded at the clear dismissal. He reached up and pulled a pillow from the captain’s bed, carefully settling her back as he extricated himself from around her. Crimson smeared his shirt where it had leached from her own. He gave Oryn a knowing look as he slipped from the cabin.

He wouldn’t let her wake covered in blood and he wouldn’t let her soil the sick bed she would remain in until Tuminzar.

He carefully unbuttoned her shirt and let it fall open to wipe away the blood.

There was so much of it, he thought the scent might linger in his nose forever.

As he wiped away the crimson, dunking and wringing the towel, the angry red scar marring her porcelain skin became more apparent.

It was likely the relic would remain, even after Alloralla healed her.

“Forgive me, Silverbow,” he muttered. “Some people collect them.”

The water in the bowl was red by the time he turned her carefully to her uninjured shoulder. He drew his belt knife and cut away the ruined shirt. As it fell, air seemed to seize in Oryn’s lungs.

Black wings spread across her shoulders, their tips caressing her nape. Intricately worked scales twined around her spine with a massive spiked tail coiled at her waist. In its front claws, the black dragon inked upon her skin clutched the moon.

Holy gods. It was the biggest vow mark Oryn had ever seen.

He’d wondered how exactly it was she had convinced Drulougan to give over the clutch he’d guarded for nearly three decades, and fresh horror washed over him.

Enya Silverbow had very nearly met the gods with an unfulfilled vow. An unfulfilled vow to a dragon.

Oryn realized he was staring and wrung the towel again .

When he’d overcome his shock enough to see her tucked carefully between the sheets and piled every blanket he could find atop her unconscious form, Oryn trudged back out to the deck. It was the Bay of Mists and the mists needed watching as much as the girl.

Enya

She drifted through the strange shadow world Hylee had shown her. In some places, the edges were fuzzy and blurred no matter how many times she blinked. She let herself drift through the glimpses of memory and foretelling the witch had shown her.

Some, especially the ones she hated, were long drawn out scenes she wanted to escape. But many were just flashes. Flashes that she felt , body and soul, even if she didn’t fully understand what she saw.

Marwar stomping in from the snow, a baby in his arms.

Oryn’s payment to the witch.

A cottage burning by the sea.

Renley Ryerson’s tears mixing with the rain as he dug the grave in the orchard.

A flash of blue scales.

“Goat’s milk,” a gray robed scribe said as he peered at a blonde haired babe.

Marwar full of so many arrows, he looked more a porcupine than a man.

Maia Trakbatten smiling at her in the milky mirror as she called her daughter.

Her father tortured in a cell.

Maia sobbing into a leathery blue wing.

Originally recorded as dark of hair and eye.

The queen’s foretelling.

Pallas’s bargain with the witch.

A great golden eye opening in the dark.

Enough flame to burn all of Elaria to rubble.

A blue eyed girl with Maia’s face.

Liam, beaten and stabbed in an alley.

A white haired girl with violet eyes.

A plea for sanctuary.

A bronze skinned woman sobbing in her arms over a body beneath a golden shroud.

Holding the clutch in her hands.

Corpses on a battlefield.

A heavy, silver crown.

Glassy eyes staring up at her, unseeing.

A pine box for a child.

She felt it all as a terrible, crushing pain in her chest. But it was nothing compared to the flash of silver that opened her throat.

She heard the twang of a crossbow, and sat up, gasping.

Oryn

Oryn had hired the captain’s cabin, or rather, Colm, on his behalf, had threatened the man within an inch of his life and paid him enough gold to buy the gods damned boat.

Still, Captain Bailer might have tried reclaiming it if not for Bade’s vigilant glowering.

Oryn mostly left his companions to it, not trusting himself to keep the man aboard if he had to deal with his grumbling.

No sails chased them on the southern horizon, and only once had Oryn had to whip up a wind strong enough to push back a mist that wandered too close.

Some of the mists in the Bay of Mists were as deadly as the beasts that lurked beneath the calm waters of the Bay of Beasts.

The only problem was, sailors didn’t know if it was an ordinary mist or the deadly kind until they were in the thick of it.

That he could wield them away should have been enough to buy their passage, but he didn’t mention that to Bailer or his men.

When he left his companions to mind the mists, he closeted himself in the cabin, sitting vigil beside Enya’s still form for three days.

Morning, noon, and night, he wielded air, water, and spirit, probing the wound and placing another patch.

It wasn’t doing much more than his initial healing, but he hoped it was easing some of the pain.

Her heart had returned to its normal rhythm, and the hum filled his ears, but the longer she slumbered, the more he worried.

His form of healing drew on the body’s own strength and if she could not support it, the recovery would be more difficult.