To Bind in Blood

Chapter 3

Weeks passed before Jurion had the will and the time to visit their graves. The news of their deaths had made him numb when he first heard, and the numbness had persisted as he went through the motions of his new duty. Had he really grieved? Truly grieved? Now, standing here with their grave markers, he knew this would be where the process began.

The markers were nothing special—just an engraved wooden post capped by snow like all the other burial markers on the grounds. He'd been standing in front of the two posts for what felt like an hour now. He hadn't said a word, had done nothing but brush the snow off the tops and take a step back. It was surreal, here on the hillside where what was left physically of his mother and brother remained. He hadn't gotten to see their bodies before they were buried—just as well, because he didn't think he could stomach seeing their slit throats and lifeless eyes.

I wish I could have stopped it. Jurion watched his breath puff into the air as a silent, uncontrolled sob shook his shoulders. He stopped himself from letting it continue, taking a breath and holding it, then letting it go. He adjusted the neck of his fur-lined cloak to keep it from choking him with its weight and glimpsed Wrell Draekon standing a short distance behind him, having already resumed her role as the Great Lord's bloodbound servant and personal guard. She'd been with him since his ascendance to his new position and was dressed in the usual leathers of a Quellen soldier, armed to the teeth, looking mostly recovered but still a little ill by Jurion's standards.

It felt wrong to have her by his side when she had once been by his brother's. Almost like he had replaced Gaelin. He supposed he had, at least in his role as Great Lord, because that was what Jurion had always been besides Lord General—the spare.

"My brother," Jurion said without looking back at her. "Gaelin."

He heard boots grinding against snow.

"He was a good man," he continued. "A good leader. A good brother, too, though I did not see him as often as I would have liked. I . . . am jealous that you likely knew him better than I." He let his gaze wander past the grave markers to the mountains behind. Those big, beautiful, rugged mountains. Sometimes, he was ashamed to admit, he wished he could escape his duties and flee to those peaks, to be able to throw off every care and responsibility and just live.

"What did you think of Gaelin, Wrell?" Jurion asked, turning toward her. The fact she was bloodbound to him with a greater sense of his moods, emotions, and well-being made him unsure how to act. He had tried to treat her as he would any other person, to refer to her in the familiar address of a given name, and to attempt to forget that she had pledged herself to protect him with her life if necessary.

"He was my master," Wrell said. "He was my friend. I—I should have died in his place." Her head began to dip toward the left when she sensed his stare. "Great Lord?"

"You should know," he said slowly, avoiding looking at her scars. Doing so would probably upset her; he suspected that was the reason she turned her head to the side when he looked closely at her. "I do not blame you for their deaths. It has been two weeks since the bind, yet I failed to tell you that. Forgive me."

"There is nothing to forgive, my lord." The corners of her mouth twitched with a hint of sadness. Initially he had found her somewhat . . . detached, and perhaps she was, but there were things he saw in her expression when he looked at her that reminded him too much of himself.

"Do you blame yourself?" Jurion asked. "You should not." He paused. Yes, she should not blame herself, as much as a part of him wanted to assign the blame to something, someone. "What happened to Gaelin was beyond your control."

She fingered the hilt of the sword at her side. "I know it was impossible for me to do anything to stop it. I just . . . I wish I could have done something."