“Aurie, wake!” She had never heard the voice this loud. It wasn’t thunder through her bones, it was quaking, nearly shattering her.

  Aurie jolted from the bed with a roll and landed on her feet and hands. Her eyes had yet to open, but the room appeared to her through her eyelids in shades and shapes of blue, a clear path glowing brightly through the doorway. Her legs kicked her into a sprint. It was her hands that opened the door, but she wasn’t the one directing them to do it. Even as her eyes were opening to adjust to the dim firelight of the hallway, sprinting down the pathway glowing in her vision with all the strength in her legs and beyond, she knew it wasn’t her carrying her.

  The voice was explosive, “The Bailey!” She dodged around the shocked and wide-eyed Paladins. She burst through the door in her chemise and barefoot onto the thinly snow-covered balcony beyond it.

  “Jump down!” There were cries from the knights on the outside of the door, guarding the balcony, as her hands dug through the snow and ashes capping the rail of the balcony for a hold to brace her bounding leap over it. She landed to the bursting, “Move faster!”

  Splashes of dark pink peeked through a smokey sky that sprinkled ashes and snow over the heads of the three Paladins. Once across the drawbridge, it already looked like a raging battlefield even though the siege had yet to begin. Snowcapped tents were pitched in organized rows rounding the lake along the icy shore lit by torches and smoldering campfires here and there. They became more disorganized as they ventured further into the village, past the first trench. Houses had thatching stripped to the stone and wood skeleton beneath. Shanties had been deconstructed. The closer they came to the third and last trench, the less structures remained, the more it looked like a muddy ruin. Draka had to grit his teeth and crinkle his nose like a snarling wolf to keep the tears at bay.

  Slumbering soldiers were waking in the tents. Some had found spots for themselves in the corners and along walls in the houses they had stripped down. Balthazar’s shop had been completely emptied of the furs and Draka recognized many of the pelts being rolled by Clerics as he passed their tents, having been used by them and as many others through the night as they could fit beneath them. Other knights and soldiers had crowded together within the muddy trenches, where the flurries of the snow only faded into the brown puddles their boots and whatever they found to prop under them was planted in while they rested. He could see the glistening thin sheet of ice rimming the puddles and their boots as they passed over it. It wasn’t so long ago that he was among those men, with their spears propped on their shoulders and a cloth around their collar to keep the metal from freezing to their skin, hoping that water didn’t seep into his boot through the night. Hoping they didn’t attack while he was asleep.

  “Where is he now?” Qasim asked as they followed Enya across a plank bridge over the second trench after the drawbridge.

  Soldiers below perked their heads with curious glances. Some tipped their metal rimmed helmets at them, others to cover their faces against the morning light until their leaders officially called for them to wake. They were already nearly indistinguishable from the mud they sat and lay in.

  “I assigned him to a Cleric I trust, under Probationary Investigation,” She said over her shoulder. “He’s kept under guard by two others at all times and away from any areas of interest. I wanted him in the dark to all affairs.”

  “I wonder how much he’s fed our enemies,” Qasim gave Draka a scowling shake of his head. “Certainly explains why they didn’t come through the forest yet. They’re waiting for the snow to cover the oil and freeze it out.”

  “And our defenses, our weaknesses,” Enya looked like she wanted to spit every time her glances back gave Draka a chance to see her expression.

  They were thinking about the siege; he was thinking about Gerard sitting him down on a log hollowed out by years in the desert sun and giving him a horn of ice water that washed the taste of camel’s blood from his throat. He was thinking about when Gerard knocked him from his feet to lift his shield in the path of an arrow that would have struck him during one of the first skirmishes he ever fought. As they followed her between tents, stepping over the hammered picks into the ground with taut ropes, he was remembering each smile, each tipped drink, each slapped shoulder of congratulations, each time they spent drunken nights singing to a starry sky with gladness that they survived yet another fight.

  And as they neared the tent she pointed to, he found himself thinking about the pleading faces of the people running from the darkness enveloping Heblem from Golgotha. His jaw tightened and he squeezed the hilt of his sword as he remembered the demons diving out of the sky and pouncing from the shadows on them. The children being dragged into shadows by monstrous claws that tore them apart on the way, the jagged teeth that tore them apart while he was helpless to save them, while his Paladin Commander and Phillip dragged him toward their Cathedral. How he fought them, how he screamed at them, how he watched and did nothing because there was nothing he could do. Because of Gerard.

  Enya threw the tent flap open and stepped in. Clerics and knights shuffled in their cots to get to their feet as Draka and Qasim filled the opening behind her. All the cots were filled but one.

  “Where is he?” Enya growled at the Cleric hunched over her knees on the side of her cot.

  The Cleric’s head turned suddenly toward the empty cot, then up at Enya with wide eyes.

  Enya grabbed her by the chin, nearly lifting the Cleric from the cot as she roared, “WHERE IS HE?”

  Senna was glad that the morning was finally coming through the icy window of the infirmary. Most of the night, the little infirmary, with its ten beds, had been filled with moans and screams that made her ears ring, but in that past hour or so, they had finally quieted. She had moved from one to the other, trying to calm them, tending to their dressings, cleaning and redressing them as they needed, sometimes giving them what she could to sooth their pain—which tended to be wheat liquor or a tonic that Faruq gave her to drop on their tongues two drops at a time every few hours at most—but it wasn’t until Nina joined her that she felt like she was able to breathe. She never felt so overworked in her life.

  Nina had needed her own wound redressed just before the dawn’s light reached them. She was hissing at the ache while tending others, limping here and there, but otherwise didn’t complain. It wasn’t until she nearly fainted that Senna forced her into her bed and had her lift her shirt to look at it. It had been bleeding again. She must have pulled her stitches apart while gathering wounded during the battle and didn’t stop to let anyone know.

  Senna pinched her leg hard enough that Nina flinched as she sponged the gash.

  “What was that for?” Nina squealed and slapped her hand.

  “You should know better!” Senna squeezed out the rag over the bowl of water.

  “Hello?”

  Both of them looked up with blinking glances at the Monastic Knight standing in the doorway grinning down at them.

  Nina’s eyes narrowed. Senna sighed and let the rag drop in the bowl with a splash before getting up from her knees.

  “How can I help you, ser knight?”

  “I was told you were in need of donors for blood,” Gerard grinned warmly at Senna. “I happen to be a universal donor.”

  Senna glanced over her shoulder at Nina. The look on Nina’s face was making her wonder…but they did need donors and universal ones were so few. She shrugged it off and turned back to Gerard with a wide smile.

  “Come, I’ll get you set over in this room,” Senna led him toward the doorway that used to lead to the shopkeeper’s office, which they converted into the blood donor’s area.

  The room had three chairs and the tubing that Faruq’s physicians had given them, along with the bottles and special needles they needed for transfusions. She wasn’t very good at finding the veins yet, still felt lightheaded about poking them at all, but he seemed like a burly enough man that he might not mind being poked a few times. She sat him in one of the chairs and had him roll one of his sleeves up while she gathered what she needed.

  “It’s a good thing you came when you did,” Senna said as she wrapped the ribbon around his arm as tight as she could to make his vein bulge the way she remembered being shown. “We have several Clerics and even a couple Paladins in need of blood for their surgeries as we speak. I sent the last we had out not but a few hours ago. You’ll make Head Surgeon Faruq very happy. A real blessing, you are.”

  Gerard smiled at her as she pressed the needle in, somehow perfect the first time. “Just glad I can help.”

  “Huh,” Senna blinked, shocked by how quickly the blood pumped through the tubing into the bottle. “I don’t think I’ve ever done it this perfectly before.” She brimmed proudly.

  “Another blessing.”

  “I suppose it is,” Senna smiled even wider. Once the first bottle was filled, she quickly switched it with another and put that one in the box hanging in the window that still had a few in it that had been donated during the night. The second one was filling a little slower. She knew she could fill one more after that one. “Call for me when this one gets to here and I’ll switch it out, I have to get back to her,” she pointed at a spot on the bottle.

  “Of course,” Gerard grinned and leaned back in the chair.

  Nina was on her feet with a hand pressing on her gash when Senna emerged from the room. Her brows were pressed together and she was limping toward the door from one bed post to the next with a look of hesitant determination.

  “What?” Senna stopped halfway to her.

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  “He shouldn’t be here,” Nina reached to shove her aside. “He’s under investigation. You need to get a Cleric or Paladin, now.”

  Senna shook her head, gaping. “Okay, but…I already…”

  “Just go!” Nina pushed past her.

  As sudden as Senna’s stumbling step passed her, as sudden as a blink, the infirmary filled with pitched darkness. Senna’s skin crawled as Nina’s hands wrapped her, the air moving around them like a thousand breaths being taken in at once. The silence that came with it was ear-poppingly sudden. And then came the screams. A million different screams. It pressed on their temples, filled their heads, crashed against the insides of their skulls. They were on their knees. They were screaming. They couldn’t hear their own wails.

  Gerard had his arms shielding his face when the shadows pulled away from around Maud in whirls of smokey tendrils, her green eyes blazing down on him. Her dark hair blended with the whirlwind of darkness around her. She was baring her teeth, her lips curled and her nostrils flaring like a snarling wolf as she stood over him, one hand in a fist gripping a stuffed bear by its arm at her side. Slowly, he lowered his arm, his gaze drawn to the other hand at her side, the one that was shaking as it tightened around the hilt of a dagger with a blade of tarnished silver.

  “Maudeline,” Gerard held up his palms, ignoring the pinch of the needle in his arm. “Whatever you’re thinking of doing…”

  Maud was shaking with fury. Her lips were trembling in that snarl. Her blade was vibrating wildly.

  “You,” her voice was just beyond a roaring whisper. “My brother…my father…all those people…you were a knight of God!”

  Gerard swallowed, his eyes moving from her fierce look to the blade and back, “You need to put that down. You don’t understand what you’re about to do, trust me. You need to put that down, Maudeline.”

  “You killed them,” Maud was breathing harder and faster with every word. “Why? How could you? For what? For my mother? For greed?”

  Gerard’s eyes were still drawn to the dagger. “Maud, put the knife down…”

  “ANSWER ME!” Maud didn’t move as she roared but the room shook with the whirling tendrils of darkness around them.

  Gerard shielded his face and jerked back in his chair, lifting his knees defensively. “For Aurelie! It was for Aurelie! I was promised her! I love her! She was mine first! You were supposed to be my daughter!”

  Maud shook, grinding her teeth. “So, you killed them? You killed my brother and my Pa thinking that would make my mother love you? A fat, lazy, piece of shit like you?”

  Light burst through the door, forcing the darkness to retreat in swirls from around Nina and Senna. Their eyes burned from the brightness when they tried to see who had slammed through it. The feet that leapt over them were shrouded in brightness, carried by it, cutting through the pitch as it receded into the walls.

  They were still screaming when Enya’s voice cut through it, “My God, go!”

  Boots thudded in running steps around them as Enya wretched them apart. They couldn’t see. They just screamed, their heads only beginning to empty of those tormented shrieks.

  Gerard lowered his arms and planted his feet back on the floor. He growled back, “It wasn’t like your father was an angel. Land stealing piece of trash who tricked his own brother out of inheritance. You know that’s why your cousin died, don’t you? That’s why God let him die! Because he caused a newborn to starve! He was a murderer and a thief who coveted after your precious Draka’s holdings as well. And he would have sold you to him for barely a year’s labor if Draka had accepted, with or without your permission.”

  Maud took a step back, causing the whirling darkness to ripple around her, her snarl intensifying.

  Gerard ripped the needle from his arm and got to his feet, baring down on her, “And Draka, all high and mighty. Ask yourself, why does he fail so much? He’s nothing more than a blundering idiot, a pawn just like the rest of us, who lusted after another man’s wife while still married. And you, you made a deal, didn’t you? You made a deal and still think you’re better than me? Yes, I caused the fall of Heblem, I made those high and mighty self-righteous pricks fight against each other on the very ground that Jesus bled on, I made them see each other for what they really are, a bunch of pawns. I’m no pawn. I’m a man. I made a deal that would make your mother and I free of all this, free of the shit and piss and hell of this world. I would make her a queen, give her the life she should have had with me,” he thumped his chest as he stepped toward Maud, “with our children, in a kingdom that belongs to us. Not that moron out there who has no idea what the hell he’s doing. Your father didn’t deserve her. She married him because he was convenient. She was thinking of me when she lay with him. I know, he let me possess him when you were conceived.”

  Maud raised her fierce glare. The shaking of the hand gripping the dagger steadied.

  Gerard smiled down at her with malice. “I guess that would mean, really, you’re my daughter. The real reason you were spared that day.”

  It happened all at once. Maud raised the dagger underhanded and plunged it for Gerard’s chest with a thunderous roar as light rushed through the door behind and around her. Gerard had his own knife drawn from his belt and thrust for her gut with lightning reflex, driving it deep, twisting. Maud was pulled back by arms reaching from within the light, arms that he knew as it blinded him were Aurie’s, taking Maud’s blade from his chest—the little bit it had gone into his skin—and the knife in his hand from in her gut.

  He didn’t see Draka’s leap into him that drove his blade through his armor, through his ribs, to the hilt into the chair and the wall behind him, pinning him there. In the same breath, he felt the hand holding the knife cut off by a different blade swing.

  “Maud!” Aurie cradled her on the floor. “No, oh please, God, no.”

  “Lord, forgive me,” Maud was already pale, looking past them. “For I have…sinned. I wanted…vengeance. I committed…murder and made a deal to…”

  Draka asked for True Sight, gaping as he looked down on her. He couldn’t see her. He was trembling. He couldn’t see. His knees were shaking to keep him on his feet, one hand still on the handle of the sword that was driven through Gerard.

  Gerard spat blood, laughing as his head drooped. “You’re on your own now, old pal. He’s already won. He’s always wanted you.”

  Enya crashed through the door and froze. “Oh no,” she gasped.

  Gerard gargled as he smiled. Draka turned wide eyes on him.

  “You were never worthy,” Gerard's smile dripped blood.

  Aurie wailed, rocking Maud in her arms as her tears poured from her, “Lord, God, please, I beg you, don’t take her from me!”

  Maud’s fading voice echoed as Enya quickly knelt beside her, “Forgive me, Lord. Forgive me, Lord, my God…”

  Draka turned on Gerard and the glow of the corruption emanating from him.

  Gerard’s lolling head lifted with weak defiance, “The answer to your question is yes.”

  Draka’s lips peeled from his teeth in a grimace as he gripped his sword with both hands braced to pull it from the wall. But he heard the voice in a thunderous, “Not you.”

  He was thrown aside as Aurie crashed through him in a roaring scream, bursting with Holy Light. She ripped the blade from Gerard, from the wall, from the chair, and whipped it in an arc. Gerard’s head hit the ground as his body, along with the chair and the wall behind him, exploded outwards from the burst of the Holy Spirit in a concentrated smite that blew all of it into chunks of debris. The blast sent Draka airborne to the side as everything in front of her blasted away into the bailey, through everything that was beyond it.

  Womanly guffaws echoed around them as if from a distance for a moment as Aurie stood with Draka’s sword in her hands. She was still as a statue at the edge of the opening she had blown through the building.

  Scrambling faces stared as she stood, dripping in blood, shaking and gnashing her teeth, the sword raised as if she were ready to swing it again. And she roared. With all her might, with all that she had in her lungs, she roared into the smokey sky, into flurries that fell over the wreckage that reached through the barrels and crates from the wall that was no longer where she now stood, out across the drawbridge, across the trenches, up to the hill where the army was approaching from.

  “I will find you! I will hunt you down! You hear me! I will kill you for this!” Aurie growled so loudly that her voice cracked. “I will destroy your very existence! Jehovah thy God will be the sword I use to slaughter your family while you watch before I make you bleed your last breath through your stomach!”

  Draka eased himself cautiously to his feet through the chunks of wood to get to Aurie. He wrapped his arms around her.

  She began crying as her cracking voice became weeping wails of anger mixed with pained, “I will destroy you! I will climb into the depths of Hell and burn your world to ashes! You took my daughter, you bastard!”

  Aurie turned into his arms, burying her head against him as she let her knees fall from beneath her. His own were aching to give from beneath him and he lowered her to the ground, cradling her against him as tightly as he could. He didn’t know what he could do. If he could do anything at all other than hold her. He didn’t want to look. He didn’t want to feel or see what his heart already knew. He didn’t want to see Maud’s lifeless eyes staring up at him, to hear the Holy Spirit deny him again. He just held Aurie to him and let himself cry with her.

  Then Enya’s hands glowed blue as she pressed them to Maud’s wound with a sigh of relief, “She’s going to be just fine.” She drew them both to her smile, “He agreed. She wasn’t corrupted.” Her smile faded, “When she wakes up…She’s going to answer for what she did. She was carried here by unholy forces. We need to know who.”

  Aurie turned her head against Draka, never taking her cheek from his chest, even as she nodded. “What will you do to her for it?”

  Enya winced.

  Qasim shrugged, leaning against the doorway behind her, “God let her be healed, which means she was forgiven by Him. But we will need her to answer for her actions and cleansing to prevent further tainting. And we’ll need to isolate her, under guard, even from you.”

  That made Aurie’s lips tremble even more uncontrollably. She turned a pleading look to Draka and he tightened his embrace around her. “Even from me?”

  Draka hesitantly nodded. Her face twisted into her pouring frustration, “How much more of this can we take, Draka? They almost took Maud. My—our daughter! How can we fight this kind of enemy?” She burrowed into him, rocking them backward, “I feel so weak. We’re so weak against them.”

  Enya and Qasim directed Clerics to lift Maud and carry her away as Draka cradled Aurie in his arms. He knew she was watching them in between those tears that were dripping down his armor plates. Once she lifted her head from his shoulder, he held her gaze in his and helped to wipe them away with his fingers.

  Her mouth was gaping, her eyes were bloodshot as she stared up into his, and her voice was trembling with worry and determination, “I was just told that my oath was accepted.”

  Draka hardened with much the same expression as he looked into her eyes. He nodded.

  “Her Oath is thine Oath,” the voice boomed.